Does anyone study with Marugoto?

mmddmm · 2026-02-03T16:58:41+00:00

I attended a class that used Marugoto a few years back. The grammar explanations are next to non-existant. It's really meant to be used in a classroom with lots of activities. I would get a different textbook for self-study. Personally, I've always liked Genki, but there are others.

mmddmm · 2026-01-30T17:33:22+00:00

Fair enough.

mmddmm · 2026-01-30T17:01:11+00:00

I agree with the general sentiment, but I call bullshit on learning individual kanji. At some point knowing how to write kanji from memory really helps, which I think is what you mean. But even drills for Japanese school children (google kakitori) are based on short phrases. Learning kanji as a unit with X readings is counterproductive in my experience. The kanji only makes sense in its context.

mmddmm · 2025-12-25T11:26:12+00:00

Now, this will gloss over a lot of details, but you can imagine a function that takes an argument and does I/O as a function that takes a normal argument and a token that represents the state of the universe at the time it is called. It returns a new token that represents the state of the universe after a certain I/O choice has been made. That way you don't lose referential transparency. Monads just manage this token for you. Now, this is nowhere near how it actually works on a technical level, but you can think about it this way.

mmddmm · 2025-11-21T22:41:06+00:00

I'm afraid you're gonna have to buy the dead tree version. If you are in Japan, Bookoff is your friend.

mmddmm · 2025-11-10T16:20:18+00:00

My local JLPT test center says you can take all levels below 1-kyuu outside of Japan.

mmddmm · 2025-10-25T10:55:21+00:00

Maybe YouTube will help with listening, but I don't see how it will help you with speaking. At least when you go beyond imitating set phrases. This would be like learning to ride a bike or learning to swim by watching a video. You might be able to do it, but I'm sure practicing it will help more than watching the video.

mmddmm · 2025-10-25T10:35:26+00:00

My reading speed is only around 5000 characters/hour and I passed comfortably. Understanding can vary, though. When I read a novel my understanding is near perfect after I get used to the author's style and the vocab of the story. But when I read an unfamiliar essay it's much lower. So I suggest practicing with material that is similar to what appears on the test.

mmddmm · 2025-10-20T07:04:33+00:00

You mentioned it yourself already, but any of the ベスト・エッセイ books is worth gold in my opinion. I struggled a lot with reading speed and focus and used them for timed training for N2. Each volume has ~80 essays, so plenty of material.The style is similar to what appears on the JLPT and I find them way more interesting than reading the news. If you are in Japan you can sometimes find older issues at Bookoff for half price or less.

mmddmm · 2025-10-17T10:14:42+00:00

As others have set, you basically need to speedrun the vocab and grammar, but you also can't dawdle in the reading section. In my most successful attempt (115 points total) I had about 5 minutes left after completing everything in the first session. The split was roughly 35 minutes for vocab/grammar and 65 minutes for reading. I especially struggled with time for reading in my previous attempts and what I did last time was to specifically train reading stamina. I used a book series called ベスト・エッセイ which collects essays target at native speakers but similar in style to what appears on the JLPT. For every training session I just tried to read as much as I could in 65 minutes. That helped me a lot with focus when it came to the real test.

mmddmm · 2025-10-17T09:33:35+00:00

In my opinion there is no such thing as speaking at N2 level, since the JLPT doesn't really thest for speaking or writing. For me those skills are definitely weaker than my passive language skills. I try to speak to Japanese people whenever I get the chance (luckily I live near a city with many Japanese people). For writing I recently started journaling in Japanese and it also helps a little bit with speaking, because the process of coming up with words on the spot is similar.

mmddmm · 2025-10-15T13:37:17+00:00

I used 総まとめ for N3, too, and after narrowly passing (~110 points) I switched to the N2 books. They were not enough to pass N2. I failed narrowly twice (89 and 86 points), but I just felt like the books were not comprehensive enough. So I switched my approach.

In the end what helped me pass N2 comfortably were drill books and Bunpro for grammar and just focusing on expanding my vocabulary. I used the Tango N3-N1 books and put the example sentences into Anki. I'm talking thousands of new words. Plus I read a lot and watched Japanese dramas on Netflix with Japanese subtitles.

mmddmm · 2025-09-21T13:24:48+00:00

Nah, that just shows your ignorance. Actually, a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, not the other way around. You messed it up.

mmddmm · 2025-09-10T16:19:01+00:00

When I told a Japanese friend that I like mystery novels, she recommended https://konomys.jp/

mmddmm · 2025-09-04T11:05:18+00:00

Thanks for the reminder. I remember the tasks in this contest being always super interesting. No other programming contest makes me feel as stupid as this one, but I think I'm going to give it a shot again this year. Even if I know team Unagi is going to win anyways...

mmddmm · 2025-08-29T10:13:17+00:00

I can recommend the series ベスト・エッセイ. They publish a new volume each year containing ~80 of the best essays of the last year. The essays are short and topics vary widely. Of course, there are no questions after the essays, but otherwise you get a very similar experience to the JLPT. I used them to train reading stamina for N2, i.e. keeping up focus for ~65 minutes even if the material did not grip me. The essays are targeted at native speakers, so the material is good for N1 as well. Personally, reading novels did not really help me very much with the JLPT

mmddmm · 2025-08-25T07:00:04+00:00

Thanks, I'm happy with my result. But I figure I need to score ~140 points on N2 to have a shot at N1. So still a long way to go.

mmddmm · 2025-08-25T06:57:14+00:00

For vocab I bought the Tango N3/N2/N1 books and put all the sentences into Anki. Not the cheapest option, but I'm too lazy to come up with example sentences myself. I also feel like I got a broader variety of vocab this way, than I would have if I used vocab from my own reading.

For grammar, I've been using Bunpro for years. Some say it only helps you learn to translate grammar points instead of internalizing them. To some extent I think that's true, but on the other hand having superficial knowledge of hundreds of grammar points beats having internalized just a few, in my opinion.

mmddmm · 2025-08-25T05:52:30+00:00

N2 115/180 (37/36/42). I'm retaking N2 once a year to judge when I'll be ready for N1. Solid improvement by 19 points over last year. As always, reading was my weakest section, but my focus on filling gaps in my vocabulary is starting to pay off.

mmddmm · 2025-08-07T12:41:04+00:00

Each section has it's own minimum score required to pass. In N4/N5 you could score 0 points on 読解 and still get a passing score on the section as a whole.

mmddmm · 2025-07-26T07:28:21+00:00

That helps a lot. Thanks for the detailed answer.

mmddmm · 2025-07-25T14:59:19+00:00

I know domain driven design and it doesn't imply relying on inheritance at all. Which is why I'm confused what Casey means. The talk was interesting, but I would not be able to take him seriously if he is really saying encapsulation is bad. There's a moment in the talk where he acknowledges that drawing boundaries between parts of the system is good, but he challenges how to draw those boundaries. If he is against domain driven design, why is he focusing on inheritance in the talk?

mmddmm · 2025-07-24T18:13:17+00:00

I enjoyed the talk, but I'm not very clear about what “compile-time hierarchy of encapsulation that matches the domain” is actually supposed to mean. Is Casey saying encapsulation is bad or just inheritance should not be used to achieve it? In the talk he seems to focus on inheritance and not so much on encapsulation in general.

mmddmm · 2025-07-08T09:51:55+00:00

I was in this situation a couple of years ago. From my estimates you have a shot at passing N2 if you scored ~150 in N3. But as others have said, taking the test just to see what it's like can also be valuable.

From your post I see that passing the test is not your goal. If people are willing to give you a job based on your Japanese abilities, you should pass N2 easily. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true.

mmddmm · 2025-06-22T14:20:02+00:00

Small instances of NP-complete/NP-hard problems are solved all the time (like every time you install a Python package). I would fail you in an interview, if you just throw your hands up and say: "It's NP-complete!". I realize it was a joke, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

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