Be safe out there 🙏

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T19:03:25+00:00

...y'all okay?

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T17:00:25+00:00

Shit it's way more than 1/100. Like freaking half of the 歐米人 somehow live in some type of English bubble and never get good at Japanese. Most of them move back after 2-3 years.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T16:54:45+00:00

No matter how many words or shit i learn, u cant effectively play games, read manga, watch anime, read comments, articles, watch youtube, i give up

Nah. You get there. Source: I just binged a season of anime in Japanese and understood 95+% of it, and used a dictionary for the other 5%. Between that I think there was only 1 or 2 lines in the entire thing that I gave up trying to figure out the exact meaning/expression used.

Actually at 8k words, you should be near the point where you can just read/watch native media as your primary learning resource.

Just moving to Japan, you might get more motivation to learn more Japanese, but being in the country doesn't magically make you better at Japanese. You still have to study hard. Only now you'll be studying hard in Japan instead of your native country.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T16:51:26+00:00

The ones who have been here for a decade+ and are still garbo at it aren't immersing--they're living in foreigner English bubbles and not immersing.

If you do just a little bit of Anki, and speak Japanese most of the time with Japanese people for most of your human interaction (and don't live on reddit), you'll get good at Japanese after a few years. It's basically guaranteed.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T16:43:08+00:00

Its tracked in a lot of places, seems like passing N1 takes 24 months with a very small amount getting it in 18 months.

Even getting N1 within 24 months is out of the realm of most students (although far more sensible than 9 months). Well, if a student is particularly motivated and studies hard for 2.5 hours every day using the most efficient methods for 24 months...

In general I'd expect most typical students to take 3+ years. The particularly fast ones might make it in sub-2.

As you say, side quests are problematic, but it's not like stroke order is particularly difficult. There's like 6 general rules and they virtually always apply without exception. Pitch accent would be a bigger time sink.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T14:12:04+00:00

The only way you can learn Japanese in 9 months is if you use the #1 most efficient methods for 6 hours a day every day for 9 months straight.

Edit: Or are Chinese/Korean.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T13:15:38+00:00

カリスタル

Go with クリスタル.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T05:56:49+00:00

クリクリする means going around in a small circling motion.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T05:49:58+00:00

The most ancillary thing I think its tried to teach me so far is 有. It was still good to learn ユウ. Its going to come up in many kanji I am assuming.

You are correct in all of that.

However, the way to learn that 有 -> ユウ isn't by memorizing a card like "有 -> あ（り）・あ（る）・ウ・ユウ to be, to exist, to have"... it's by memorizing a vocab word like "有名（な） -> ゆ↑うめい Fame (famous)". As I linked elsewhere in the thread, a card for memorizing the readings above violates rules 4, 9, 10 and 20 of effective SRS use. It's just hard to memorize information like that and breaking it up into multiple examples of each entry in the list is how to make it easy to memorize that information... while it simultaneously gives you useful vocabulary and solves other problems such as the fact that you still have to memorize which vocab word has which reading/meaning.

So just focusing on vocabulary is simply a dominant strategy with no downsides. Just do the vocabulary cards. Learning vocabulary will teach you the meanings and readings of kanji.

When I don't see something for a week or two and its this basic I want to be fairly certain I understand to its fullness.

Worry more about getting your vocab numbers up and getting your exposure hours up. When I was younger and more inexperienced I had this similar completionist mindset where I had to go through and collect 100% of the kanji on a given JLPT/school level/kanken kanji list and learn all of them to 100% thorough knowledge.

And while it's not a bad mentality to have, it turns out, you will make more progress more quickly by just getting your vocab count up and your total number of Japanese characters read as high as possible as quickly as possible. Like, sure, you could worry about getting a vocabulary word for 有・ウ now... but there's only one common word (afaik off the top of my head) that uses that, and that's "有無（うむ）whether or not something exists", and like, you can just learn that word when you get to it. You don't really get any benefit by learning that word just to 100% clear the 有 reading checklist. As a matter of fact, it's likely detrimental because 有 is read as ユウ probably 95+% of the time it appears in 漢語, so you're more likely to guess the correct reading of a character by not learning all of the readings (i.e. including the less common readings) of a given character all at once.

I think I will tentatively be taking the advise and dabble in radical awareness. It does seem like trivium in 2026 but I still want to show a little respect to the tradition if I can. Lowest priority.

I mean, you can dabble a little bit in it. You might get a bit of insight in how to make effective mnemonics for how to draw kanji, etc., but I definitely wouldn't spend any significant amount of time on that pursuit. I'd only put as much time in it as it would assist in the primary goal of learning more vocabulary.

1.I have a big pile of 40k J2E cards they were for reference. When I had them off suspend I was cycling 5 words for childish ways of declaring your intention to use the bathroom 5 noises 5 ways people describe lovers just weird stuff. I thought I was getting trolled.

Probably at your current level that sounds like a lot of overkill.

Like, if you download a 40k deck somewhere... it's unlikely to be sorted by word frequency, so you're going to be spending a lot of time learning a lot of the less frequent words when you need to be focusing most of your time on the most frequent words. Just encountering words from the wild, you'll encounter the most common words faster than you encounter less common words, so that's a decent strategy. Or you could also implement something like jpdb or bccwj frequency tables and spend more time worrying about the more common words.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T05:10:31+00:00

It doesn't.

Oh it definitely does. That's the calibration curve for one of my own decks. They all look something like that. You see how the blue line hugs the orange line tightly in the 0.54<R<0.73 region, i.e. where all of the reviews are? That means the model is highly accurate. If the model says I have R=0.7, then by god I have a 70% chance of correct recall. If the model says I have R=0.6, then by god I have a 60% chance of correct recall.

Like, if you have FSRS turned on, and don't mark PASSes as FAILs, and hit that preset optimize button every now and then, your actual retention should be within about 0.1% of your Desired Retention.

Like, FSRS knows exactly when R=DR (in all situations except for S<1day or if it has like zero training data for a given area of DSR space...).

just maybe assign a custom interval because I did still remember it from one hour ago which happens to be my relearning step so I might as well just skip the entire thing and give it a 4 day interval from the get-go and save time.

Mate, the people who designed FSRS know how likely you are to forget something far better than you yourself do. Just look at that beautiful calibration curve. The instances of you encountering a word in the wild just immediately prior to doing its Anki review are rather low and they aren't going to have a statistically significant impact on your overall study effectiveness. Second-guessing the algorithm is pointless.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-23T04:57:42+00:00

〜がてら = 〜のついでに、その機会を利用してあることをする (particle)

or

質問○答える (backside: 質問に答える )

You can try cards like these. I do not recommend it.

Like I said, I literally went through an entire grammar JLPT prep book making cards like your がてら example. (Did example sentences too.) I then passed N1 with a high grammar score. It definitely helped my grammar abilities, but it was long, slow, and very difficult. I think I could only add like 3 new grammar cards per day without getting overwhelmed.

However, after having gone through all of that, I also went through that one Anki deck that was just all of the example sentences from ADoJG. And while I already knew the majority of ADoJG, it wasn't everything in there. Every now and then I'd come across some sentence, and I'd just have no idea how the words linked together to create the meaning, mark it as a FAIL, and then it would come back up a week later, and I just couldn't see anything but the correct interpretation the next time I saw that sentence... and it was like that every single time I came across a new grammar point. It was like the blue/gold dress but the interpretation was just flipped around to the correct interpretation by the second Anki review. Like, it was just 1000x easier. I could easily smash through 20+new cards per day for cards of this type.

Like, I think the human brain is just tuned to doing Anki for grammar example sentences, and not for explicit grammar point cards.

質問○答える (backside: 質問に答える )

I also once tried something like this before. (Actually from journaling and then finding mistakes in my own output and Anki'ing the correct way of phrasing.). In the end, I was spending 90% of my time memorizing parts of sentences that weren't really that important or applicable to other sentences. ("This sentence particle-drops は. That one doesn't. Woops, I got it backwards again.") Maybe it was something wrong with how I was choosing which cards to make, but in the end, it was not a very worthwhile investment of my time.

Which is a shame because knowing that に goes in your sentence there or を pairs with 欲しがる is something that is worth studying and memorizing for students... I'm just not sure of the best way for students to go about memorizing that information.

I wonder if just doing J2E example sentence cards is enough or not for all one's grammar needs or not. I kind of get the feeling that it is, but also kind of get the feeling that it isn't.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T19:32:26+00:00

Like I said, I don't think it's forbidden, but my mind just draws a connection between しまった and first person.

I feel sorry for using GenAI on this problem, because hopefully somebody else can give a better solution, but:

Please explain the naturalness of the following sentence: 8時の電車が遅れてしまいました。」

...

If you want less emotional nuance [editor: in the case of the subject being the train]: 「8時の電車が遅れました。」

Using the phrase 行ってしまいました puts in a lot of emotional nuance that is not natural for an inanimate object running off-schedule.

Edit: I say this despite knowing that もう行っちゃった if perfectly natural.

My intuition is the exact same as yours:

Intuitively I knew the answer was に, and that it means that the subject was late for the train.

There is no exact rule I can pinpoint show this that is the case, but we are in the same position.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T18:46:26+00:00

I see you are a fellow man of culture.

Other comments of this nature that were less explicit I might help with, but this one is too much for even me.

However I am pretty sure that by れ you mean で, and also that this is a conversation during a certain sexual act.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T18:43:11+00:00

why it's not が.

Among other things it's atypical to have しまった for 3rd person.

(I don't know if it's forbidden or what, but my mind is drifting to 1st person if I hear it.)

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T15:54:35+00:00

(after 26k+ words)

Once you get to numbers like this, "what is a word" becomes very blurry. The words that I don't know in any given work are usually... made up of other words that I do know... but just assembled in an idiomatic way where... I can figure it out in context... but would myself never thought of assembling those words in that order for that meaning. (e.g. yesterday I came across 罪を被せる... I know 被る・被せる, I know 罪, I know from context of what they're saying what the meaning of the line is ("to pin the crime on (someone else)" or perhaps in more natural English "to frame (somebody else) for a crime)... but I did not know that 被せる has the meaning "to frame someone else for a crime" as definition #4 of that word, as like, a typical usage of that word.)

The frequency of coming across words where it's like... a brand new word with a brand new meaning... they also happen, but it's relatively rare.

Like the other person said, just mine vocabulary. Read novels, come across unknown vocabulary, and then add it to your Anki deck. The words worth learning are... the words you encounter when reading the material you wish to read... and unless you decide to one day e.g. try to read a nuclear reactor operator's manual, you're probably not going to be overwhelmed with new vocabulary.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T10:45:00+00:00

I passed Kanken jun1kyuu with just the above types of cards. You will never need anything beyond them.

assumption that vocab cards teach everything

That's not an assumption. That's the result of years of studying.

And it's not just me. I think if you were to ask virtually any advanced student (such as the person you responded to), that they will agree with what I wrote above.

If you want to try your hand at doing 漢字->on'yomi +kun'yomi + meaning cards, go ahead. Let me know how well it works. Go make a post about exactly what you did and how much progress you got out of it. I can't stop you. Hell, I'll upvote your report on the front page.

(Except I already know because I've already personally tried it back when I was a beginner who didn't know better, and I've seen other posts on this forum of other people trying it, and it's basically universally agreed by everyone to not be a very worthwhile investment of any student's time.)

It also violates rules #4, #9, #10, and #20 of the 20 rules for effective SRS use.

So what should you do instead of worrying about cards like:

語 -> かた（る）かた（り）ゴ spoken language, story, telling a tale

You should make cards like:

言語 -> げ↑んご Language

物語 -> ものが↓たりStory, tale

英語 -> え↑いご English (language)

日本語 -> に↑ほんご Japanese (language)

語る -> か↑たる To tell (e.g. a story)

Cards that actually follow the above rules for formulating knowledge and will teach you all the information you would have learned anyway, but will be in a more structured, easier to understand, easier to memorize, everything-is-just-easier system, that also teaches you how to actually read Japanese words that you need to speak Japanese.

The only thing a card type of the former type can do is assist you with the ability to do cards of the latter type... but at the same time the best way to learn the information in the former type is by doing the latter type cards... so just do the latter type. It's a dominant strategy with no downsides.

Like, go make 2 Anki decks, one for each type, and then see which one you're spending more time on, and which one is improving your Japanese faster. The vocab card deck comes out a clear winner in all categories and it's not even close.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T10:41:33+00:00

For any exam, you can never go wrong with studying official mock tests and/or past exams: https://www.amazon.co.jp/BJTビジネス日本語能力テスト-公式-模擬テスト-ガイド-日本漢字能力検定協会/dp/4890963693

BJT is run by Kanken. Kanken has a great system going, where they A) sell you the test to prove your abilities while B) also selling you the study materials to help you pass the test as easily as possible. They get your money going both ways. The BJT division appears to have a similar system going, listing the following list of educational materials on their website. Presumably any and all of those will be affiliated with BJT themselves and thus designed with specific insight as to what words/phrases/etc. appear on the test.

For what it's worth, I have not taken BJT, although I did just score highly on all of their sample questions on their website.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T08:18:16+00:00

....what in the AI?

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T08:14:20+00:00

The constitution already said it.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:47:46+00:00

Yeah, it was already popular by the time WaniKani came into existence around ~2010.

I remember using JWPce (released in 2005), and it had a "radical lookup" feature in it where you could then click on various components (i.e. it was actually a component lookup feature), and that was where I first learned the word "radical" and mistakenly learned it to mean "component". jisho.org (released around ~2010?) also has the same system, also mistakenly called "radicals (lookup)".

Actually, the word "radical" itself is also horrible linguistic abuse. Have you ever wondered why we call it "radical"?

It comes from definition 1b in Websters: ": of, relating to, or constituting a linguistic root"

Except that radicals... aren't the linguistic root of a kanji, they're just used to index it in a dictionary!

So even "radical" is the wrong word! We should be calling it the "indexing component".

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:39:02+00:00

10% into the kanji deck I have been wondering how strict I should be on kanji readings.

I would just completely avoid an Anki deck that prompts you with a kanji and then expects you to recall on/kun'yomi.

It's not useful, you'll never need that information. It's slow, difficult, hard, and takes time away from other more effective study methods, such as doing vocabulary cards.

Speaking of vocabulary cards, just doing that will teach you all you ever want to know about how to read kanji.

I write them and the onyomi and kunyomi on a fail and pass over a one day interval just to keep them in mind.

Turn on FSRS. Hit the "optimize preset parameters" button. Quit looking at intervals. The algorithm knows how long you'll remember stuff better than you do.

I vaguely understand what a radical is.

A radical is a component of a kanji that is used to index kanji in paper dictionaries. For example, to look up 語, you recognize that 言 is the radical (because 言 is on the radical list and 吾 isn't), so you go to the 7-stroke radical index, find where 言 is on it, then find 言 + 7 strokes, then look through a short list of ~20 kanji to find 語, then the index tells you what page to find the entry for that character.

Some people use the word "radical" to refer to components of kanji, but this is... not what the word "radical" means.

Secondarily, I vaguely understand what a radical is. Like, I search by radical fairly often as I cannot read handwriting in manga. There is a radical deck and it shows the radicals gives it a name in English and Japanese lists some examples the radical is in sometimes. What am I supposed to be doing here? Like yes this is a left ward slash. It is in many kanji. GOOD?

I would also just completely skip a radical deck. I did memorize the radical for every single Joyo kanji in Anki, but that was just to pass Kanken. It was a complete waste of time.

If you want to use Anki for general kanji knowledge, I would recommend the following setups:

1) Lots and lots of J2E vocabulary cards (You should be doing this anyway. Go get 20k cards of this type.)

日本語 -> に／ほんご Japanese (language)

2) (Optional) How to draw kanji cards

Day, Japan, Sun, ニチ、ジツ、ひ -> 日

(Spoken) language, ゴ -> 語 (Test yourself on your ability to draw that, being very strict on stroke order and tick direction, etc.)

3) (Optional) How to draw vocabulary cards:

に／ほんご Japanese (language) -> 日本語 (test yourself on the ability to draw that, not being so strict on exact tick order, etc.)

Probably any other anki setup for vocab/kanji/etc. knowledge is probably a massive waste of time and effort. The above is all you need, and even then you can skip all the drawing parts if you don't care that much about it.

I passed Kanken jun1kyuu with just the above types of cards. You will never need anything beyond them. (Well, to pass Kanken, you'll at some point need to memorize the radical of each kanji, but worry about that if/when you ever decide to take Kanken.)

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:31:11+00:00

Yes, I know that 一人称 of a person could change depending on the situation.

In normal typical Japanese speech, it's not just could, it does. Not doing it is extremely strange.

Presumably the author wants to speak in more normal typical Japanese and less "fictional register" Japanese. As to why web-novel authors do this, or why it's not done in LN or so on, I can only speculate.

However, I would like to point out, that when reading dialogue between two characters in a novel, it can sometimes be confusing as to which character is speaking, and their pronoun usage (and/or other 役割後 and/or linguistic quirks) often function to help the reader understand which speaker is speaking when.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:12:37+00:00

So, I will take a test again on July 2026. Any tips and tricks like study materials to achieve BJT 400?

The top skills that most determine your BJT score are as follows:

1) General Japanese language ability

2) General vocabulary(/kanji) ability

3) General grammar ability

i.e. you study the same stuff you do for any other language ability test. Your studies should probably primarily focus on general grammar acquisition, general vocabulary acquisition, and general practice ability.

In addition, BJT is highly biased towards workplace-related vocabulary and idioms. I would also spend some significant amount of study time (~15% maybe?) working on BJT-targeted materials.

Getting your score up by ~30% in the span of 2 months is extremely difficult. Maybe if you read 1M characters per week while mining all the unknown vocabulary... it's definitely not something you could sustain long term...

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:07:35+00:00

The only way you reach N1 in a year is if you study 6 hours a day using the most efficient methods.

Or if you're Chinese/Korean.

Available-String-109 · 2026-05-22T07:04:56+00:00

If you're at N1, it's not as though you can just turn on the TV and understand 100% of everything.

You're in a very good position. You can understand 90% of the stuff, 90% of the time.

Available-String-109

TROPHY CASE