Yipes this took a while

Hey folks of reddit, every now and then I've seen people post about finishing WK, so figured that since I just "finished" Bunpro, I'd share here and maybe give a little bit of info for what it's like once you go the whole way through. Also, so far I've passed one of each level of their practice JLPT tests.

I've hit 1.5 years since restarting learning Japanese recently, so far mostly with reading novels (3 month update and 1 year update). Grammar has always been a weak spot of mine. If I had to look at my strengths and weaknesses, reading and vocab are the strongest, listening is behind those, and then speaking and writing are also behind that. At the start of this year, grammar was definitely one of my weaker areas, but now with a bunch of concrete studies I've improved it a lot. Though still getting there! I did a grammar Anki deck, I did the Shin Kanzen Master N1 book, and then the main point of this, is Bunpro.

Not long after I restarted learning Japanese last year, I did Bunpro for a couple months. I felt like I was doing too much SRS so quit it for like a year or so. After getting my failed N2 results back (scored a 78), I felt like I failed the test due to taking too long on grammar. So back into Bunpro.

I think Bunpro is a great resource! I don't think it's going to be your 100% shop to learn all your grammar. It is a pretty good way to fill in gaps, and to remember grammar points though, especially less common ones. If you're early on, I personally recommend a quick read through of Yokubi. Overall, I still think that in the long run, grammar needs less dedicated study than you would think - if you're not prepping for the JLPT then just doing a lot of reading and listening, then some basic grammar studies are probably fine.

Bunpro isn't exactly 100% the equal of a textbook. Some of the chapters are a bit sparse. However, if you do decide it's going to be your main grammar resource, there are links to other grammar sites explaining stuff in more detail so I'd recommend reading them. I didn't personally but I also was learning grammar from a few different sources already.

Bunpro's grammar lessons still, are pretty good, and if you don't want to do SRS, you can freely browse and search them without subbing. You can also take their practice tests without subbing.

So anyway, I did Bunpro a couple months last year, 5 lessons a day for N5, and then 3 a day for N4, got most of the way through N4. This year, I picked up where I left off, did the ~ 300 or so reviews I had and continued N4. Since then, I always did 3 lessons a day.

Personally, I kept the lessons in English since I'd already done some monolingual grammar stuff here and there - I wanted to make sure that I was understanding as much as I could. I also left on their translations and hints etc. I didn't do the vocab decks - I have Anki for vocab.

What I did though, is mine from Bunpro itself. A lot of grammar points also had entries in some of my Yomitan dictionaries so I added them to my mining deck. The example sentences are also quite good. I figured that "well if this word is popping up in N3 level example sentences it's probably common enough to be worth knowing" so from when I first thought of this, N3 and up, I mined practically every word I didn't already know. Which was a lot! But it definitely helped fill out my vocab in some weaker areas. Also, with Sharex I was able to record the sentence audio. Combine that with an image from a Google image search, and the audio I already had with Yomitan for the word and it made very great vocab and sentence cards.

I did the lessons fairly quickly each morning, usually the part that took the most time was when there was a bunch of vocab to mine. I didn't really agonize over whether or not I knew the grammar perfectly. The SRS did help to get that ingrained. I also have always been pretty terrible with typos and verb conjugations, so typing out the answers helped with that aspect too (though apparently that question format is the reason we don't have FSRS in Bunpro). After I did my lessons and stacked up reviews in the morning, I did reviews here and there while on break throughout the day while working.

At some point I went ahead and took their N5, N4 and N3 practice tests - one of each. I wanted to just test to make sure that I wasn't forgetting some early things. I pretty much managed to go through them with hardly any mistakes.

After finishing the N2 grammar content I did an N2 practice test.

Yep, the site acknowledges it's Easy

Overall did pretty well on the N2 test, especially right after finishing the N2 content.

N1 I just finished the grammar lessons the other day, and then today went on for a practice test as well.

My Listening is miiiiiiiid

Bunpro acknowledges their tests are easier than the real thing - so while I do have some confidence having passed these, I'm not taking it as 100% that I'm ready for the N1. I pretty much stopped reading novels recently and pretty much only study with listening to YT, or to podcasts, or to games here or there. I plan to step that up more now. Also to keep reviewing grammar (both Bunpro reviews and that SKM N1 book), and find harder practice tests (cough past tests cough). After I finally take the N1, I think I'll pretty much stop studying grammar from then on unless I find out I failed. I'd rather focus on working on my listening, and then also working more on my speaking (which I've done a lot more of lately as well!).

Anyway, thanks for hanging out for my rambling sharing of finishing Bunpro, and thoughts on the site. I think it's worth it, or at least was for me. I also think the pace of it was pretty good. If you struggle with remembering grammar then maybe try it out some time!

Every once in a while I check in this sub and I get a little bummed out when nearly every post is saying "I created this new app it's awesome check it out!"

I'm not here to rag on people posting that - it's just if the amount of posts about actually immersing made up more of the posts that would be cool, so here I am.

Some stuff I've been immersing in lately:

Persona 5 Royal - I'm like 15 hours in for the first time playing, pretty fun!

傲慢と善良 - My 67th novel, not too far in but it's pretty good so far

Listening - I recently decided to go way more into listening (majorly dialed back books). I've listened to some podcasts lately. And then for my active immersion I've been watching a lot of YT. I had like 20 tabs open, each with a video from a different channel. I've been watching each of these one by one to try and get a feel for what I like.

What kind of immersion have you been doing lately?

And after that - close this tab and go immerse some more!

Not sure why images look so huge to me on reddit compared to the past, sorry about that

Hello folks, been a while. One year ago, I made this 3 month post on restarting learning Japanese after years of having given up. In a nutshell, I tried a bunch of stuff, some of which worked, some of which didn't, but made progress when I started reading manga and watching anime with Yomitan and adding Anki cards.

But... I don't actually like manga and anime that much, so pretty early on, I got into my main way of learning: reading novels. Perhaps I started quite early. I did have some prior attempts at learning Japanese. I dunno. You can read the original post to see more of my early trials and struggles. I originally intended to do a 6 month post but at point I just couldn't stop reading so now we're here past the year mark.

Disclaimer: Everyone learns at their own pace, and copying someo-- learns with their own method. There are absolutely people who learned far more efficiently than me. There are people who learned slower than me. My point of view is that as long as you get hooked on the process, it's relatively efficient and you put in the time then eventually you can learn Japanese with the material that works best for you.

And for me, that's books.

Introducing: The Main Cast

So far, 53 books read, mostly in order from newest to oldest

I thought about what to say at the 1 year mark for a long time. There's all kinds of update posts. YT AJATT vids have existed for years. Some people hate them. I personally like them - I find them motivating, I learn new ways to learn. I think the main thing for me this year was rediscovering a love of reading for the first time in years, so let's talk about some of my main favorites. Note that for my reading, I had a goal of "0-4 hours a day" for reading. It probably averaged out to 1-2 hours a day for reading but sometimes got longer. I didn't feel bad though if I read a lot less one day.

Caveat: Actually, 容疑者Xの献身 and 神去なあなあ日常 are still two of my all-time favorites, but I already talked about them a year ago. So I'll talk about some standouts here, in order from most recently read to the ones that I have to scrape my head about. 2nd caveat: also believe it or not I really wasn't a mystery fan until I started learning Japanese and reading Japanese books, so I discovered a whole new genre.

硝子の塔の殺人

Wish they could make a movie

硝子の塔の殺人 is actually my most recent finished book. A renowned scientist and mystery otaku invites a large cast of characters to his mansion in remote Nagano. A doctor (our main character), a super private eye, a police detective, a mystery author, a psychic, a magazine editor, a cook, a butler and a maid all come together for an amazing announcement. However, disaster strikes as the main character poisons their host in the first scene. What follows is this intricate series of murders that pays homage to the mystery genre. They call out Sherlock Holmes, they call out Knives out, and they call out Higashino Keigo, one of my favorite authors.

火車

Yep, here it is again

火車 is actually the longest book I've read, and another mystery. Honma, a police detective on leave due to an injury, is contacted by his... late wife's cousin's son (they make a joke of what their connection is). His relative is due to get married but his fiancée suddenly disappears after failing a credit check. He asks Honma to investigate, and it turns out the fiancée is not who she says she is. So follows this heartfelt chase for a missing person whose actual identity is unknown, plus the search for the original person. I definitely plan on reading more Miyabe Miyuki books soon.

告白

Freaky

告白 is another mystery, of how a teacher finds her daughter is unfortunately murdered. The story is shown in different sections from different points of view of the different characters. It turns out that every character, even the evil ones, have another side to them. But still, no one is a hero. The teacher decides that even if the criminals are caught, they won't really pay the price due to being middle schoolers - so she decides to get revenge in a totally crazy way that they will not forget for the rest of their lives. It moved me a lot, and I really thought a lot about empathy due to this book.

聖女の救済

For some reason this image was different?

I talked about 容疑者Xの献身 last time, making me a big fan of Higashino Keigo, but also I became a fan of his Galileo series, where a physics professor helps tackle cases challenging his police detective friend. 聖女の救済 is the fifth book in the series, and criminally is one that didn't get a film. A rich company president ends up poisoned while he is at home alone. Kaoru, the young detective, suspects the victim's wife, who was across the country at the time of the death. So she enlists the help of the famous Galileo-sensei to solve the mystery. This series often has times where you think the victim is terrible and empathize with the culprit, but while that kind of happens here, the actual truth was more moving to me.

リング

In addition to mystery, I also like horror!

I'm pretty sure most people on this subreddit are familiar with リング, the classic J-horror film. But it was based on a series of books. The movie adaptations of リング and the first sequel, らせん were released on the same day in theaters I've been told. But the original end of the trilogy, ループ never got an adaptation. I want to see the original end of the story, so I started reading リング. There's a lot different from the film. Main character is a dude actually, and the guy he asks for help he believes to be a criminal. The story is interesting, and unsettling, and also different enough from the film that you may find a lot of cool new stuff here.

本好きの下剋上

Not just mystery, but also light novels!

本好きの下剋上 is the longest series out of everything I've read, and I'm still only a few books into it. Also probably the most amazing light novel that I've read. I pretty much was done with the isekai genre long before I started learning Japanese. But everyone seemed to speak so highly of Honzuki that I had to try. Where most isekai are about someone getting these overpowered abilities and using their smarts to be invincible, Honzuki is about finding out how to get nails to make a box used as one step to make paper. Or bringing over a new recipe based on Myne's earth knowledge. Or astounding the adults with audacious inventions that make the lives of ordinary people happier. This is a book that I had a massive smile on my face the whole time. It's also written for book lovers, and the author really wants to get more people into reading.

ひとりぼっちの殺人鬼

It's (kinda) another mystery

This is an interesting book about a 5th grader who... kills her best friend in the first chapter. And then we see what happens to the culprit's life from then on. And the brother of the victim. And a reporter who was deeply influenced by the story. It's a pretty serious read dealing with deep topics about how to rehabilitate child criminals, or if they even should. How tragedy can ruin someone's life. And if redemption is possible.

凜として弓を引く

One of those books hard to say if it's a LN or not

This book I believe was commissioned by a Japanese national kyudo association or something like that. It's kind of a way to make kyudo, Japanese archery, look cool. Kaede just starts high school, played tennis in middle school but notices a nearby shrine where there is a kyudo dojo. And she just starts learning kyudo, alongside people of all ages, from high schoolers, to salarymen, to elderly people. I felt like this book was just really positive and happy and made me interested in kyudo (enough to start looking up kyudo videos). I've continued the series, it becomes a bit more LN-ish as they reestablish their school's dead kyudo club, but it is a book with a lot of heart.

RDG レッドデータガール

Ever heard of Shugendo?

This is a 6 book series that I'm two-thirds done with so far. Izumiko is raised on a super remote shrine in the middle of nowhere. Every time she touches electronics they break. She never sees her parents who are overly amazing people never home. But they say she has to go to a special boarding school near Tokyo, which she later finds out is a place for people with special powers. Along the way she reconnects with Miyuki, kind a super mean guy who practices Shugendo. Turns out our timid main character has a lot more going on than she realizes, and go through all kind of adventures steeped in Japanese traditional mysticism. It got turned into an anime that is probably one of the less known PA Works series. I plan on reading another series by Ogiwara Noriko that she wrote in the 90's, see some Japanese flavored fantasy from before the age of light novels.

I want to get up to 100 books read by around when I hit the 2 year mark; you can see all the books I've read on Bookmeter

Physical Books!

At some point I decided I really wanted to start reading actual paper books in my hands if I could. Turns out the big urban library near me had a lot of awesome Japanese books in their foreign language section.

The big urban library also loans out Japanese books to local branches like this set

We're not even a coastal city or anything. If you want to find some reading materials, try your local urban library!

Surugaya is an amazing site where you can order used Japanese books. They typically are about 650 yen (they charge $4.11 USD last time I checked). Surugaya also is on sale on like every day that ends in Y - they'll have bulk sales where if you buy enough it's all 20% off or 25% off. More importantly - they will have free shipping via DHL that will deliver your books in a couple weeks.

Physical book collection!

I've actually gone ahead and gotten a number of books in there. I've got the 2nd half of the Galileo series, all 5 that I knew were out of the kyudo series I mentioned, that other Ogiwara series, another Miyabe book, another book by the リング author, and some other stuff. 新世界より I read physical for a bit but it was really hard so switched to ebook with quick lookups.

Anki stuff

I learned way too many cards in the past few months leading to these Young numbers lol

https://preview.redd.it/77nj9d4yxj6h1.png?width=733&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd8965139f34122bdbd1ec85f00b771cb49167d3

https://preview.redd.it/113fors1yj6h1.png?width=721&format=png&auto=webp&s=bbffe285588d5951ce3a667b17be007950a8f722

https://preview.redd.it/gfzj8t03yj6h1.png?width=662&format=png&auto=webp&s=fa76db16593f357baed13d3a970aed02d332cbdb

Anki was a scary thing for me at one point, but at this point it's this thing ingrained in my head. Currently I have my Mining Deck, Kaishi (which is nearly all 1 year+ plus intervals), and this grammar deck. The 500+ cards from that grammar deck, and around 500 cards that are overlapping between mining deck and Anki, make me guesstimate that my actual vocab in Anki is around 15k. I was extremely liberal with mining though, way too many collocations. I gave up on monolingual cards multiple times, but this time I think I'm actually sticking with them.

Separate studies

Last December, I took the N2 and... spectacularly failed lol. I'm not one of those study for 9 months and pass N1 lol. I did kind of wing it though, mostly wanted to see how well I'd do after reading around 30 books at the time. I got a 78.

Since then I decided I needed some additional traditional studies. I lost a lot of study time for 4 months prepping for a job cert since then, but learned some study habits. I plan to take the N1 this December. Some things I have done and plan to are:

• Did a grammar deck to learn more grammery-stuff. It's monolingual, decently helpful
• Picked up Wanikani again. It's not really required, but I do mix up kanji all the time so I went with the familiar thing
• Picked up Bunpro again. I think they really help cement it in your head really well. Plus, I make tons of spelling errors so it's helping me there
• Ordered the reading and grammar Shin Kanzen master books, lots of people recommend them here, but haven't received them yet
• Doing the monolingual transition again

I don't know if I can pass the N1 but would be nice to!

Conclusion

If you've read this far then I can conclude that 1) reddit didn't break with such a long post and so many images and 2) if you can stomach reading a post this long you probably have the patience to read a novel in Japanese. I have a lot of thoughts on how I'd recommend to learn, advice I'd give (and gave a lot after my 3 month update), but this post is getting crazy lol. Just learn to enjoy a hobby in Japanese (like reading) and make it an everyday part of your life.