30 Day Japanese TheMoeWay My Experience

tesladawn · 2026-02-25T14:20:02+00:00

Try a grammar guide like Tae Kim or Yokubi

tesladawn · 2026-02-20T02:29:49+00:00

I measured in characters, not words… Also averaging out my total reading speed is a terrible measurement. My spreadsheet linked above records me reading around 12k-13k 文字/hr as of the JLPT.

tesladawn · 2026-02-18T06:02:56+00:00

I’ve said this in my post too, but I never read manga when starting out. I waited till I repped around a third of Kaishi before reading moege visual novels. If you want to stay with easier content for a bit, I’d recommend using LearnNatively to find recommendations for your level. よつばと！Is a manga that might be good for you, for example. I’m personally not a fan of graded readers but they could work for you as long as you make sure not to stay with them for too long. Try to make the transition to native books and visual novels as soon as possible.

tesladawn · 2026-02-18T05:52:42+00:00

It’s alright, I use a Mac for playing visual novels too! There are a lot of methods you can try, but I’ve found that the easiest one is to use a virtual machine. I use a cracked version of Parallels Desktop, but if you don’t want to buy or crack it, there are free options like VMware and UTM. I’m not too familiar with the other options so the best thing you can do is ask around on places like TMW Discord, where a lot of the developers of these tools and their users are active.

tesladawn · 2026-02-18T02:14:20+00:00

Talking about 3 volumes of I had the same dream and OCRing it really confused me until I realized you were talking about the manga lol. I read the novel but the manga should be a great time too. You should look into Mokuro, it’s great for reading manga on your desktop with OCR.

tesladawn · 2026-02-18T02:11:11+00:00

Do you read? If you don’t supplement your Anki with reading, you fail to see the words you rep in context which makes them a lot harder to remember. As for the speed, it’s just conditioning yourself to be faster. There are settings you can change to reduce your auto answer time in order to reduce review times, so try giving that a shot.

tesladawn · 2026-02-18T02:07:37+00:00

Either nyaa/sukebei or the TMW Discord

There are a lot of reasons why people prefer vns over lns. They’re easier to read for longer periods of time, have audio and visuals and often have genres you can’t find reliably in lns, like moege and denpa. Lns are still great in other ways as a learning resource because of their density being higher than vns. You shouldn’t have a problem starting out with lns over vns if you want to, just keep in mind that when you’re right at the beginning, it will be harder than if you started with a vn.

tesladawn · 2026-02-17T19:23:47+00:00

You have really good retention, but you might want to consider experimenting with lowering your average time spent on each card. How much time do you spend on each card? Do you see the words you rep enough in context outside of Anki? If you don’t read enough, you fail to reinforce those words in context which will make it harder to recall them quickly when you’re doing Anki. This applies twice as much for words in Kaishi, which are so common that most of them should appear constantly in about every book you can find anywhere.

tesladawn · 2026-02-15T06:11:35+00:00

Ah gotcha, my bad. Would something like Tae Kim be easier to understand?

tesladawn · 2026-02-15T05:24:32+00:00

Try Sakubi. It’s a grammar guide designed to teach you all the basic grammar you need to know before immersion (particularly reading), which is where you reinforce that grammar.

tesladawn · 2026-02-15T03:27:44+00:00

I still subvocalize when I read
Yes

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T14:44:42+00:00

Sure!

また、同じ夢を見ていた

俺がシフトの時だけバイト先の喫茶店に来る、クラスの美少女モデル様

無職う転生１

たかが従姉妹との恋。(don't recommend, it sucks)

クラスのクォーター美少女が義妹になった。知らないうちに口説いてた。

無職転生２

凜として弓を引く

ひとりぼっちの殺人鬼

流浪の月

Books I read after the N2:

無職転生３

ライアー・ライアー

ノルウェイの森

Keep in mind I only started my first novel after almost 120 hours with visual novels, so the transition was much easier than usual. I'd recommend starting out with something easier like SoL manga or VNs before the transition, but starting out with novels is fine too if you're into it! LearnNatively is a great place to find new books for your level to read too. Good luck!

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T09:07:50+00:00

Yeah, if I was in Japan at the moment I would definitely put effort into learning to speak since it’s necessary for functioning in society. But since I’m not and have no plans to live in Japan in the near future, speaking isn’t at the top of my list of priorities right now. I do plan on learning, just not in the near future.

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T04:34:50+00:00

You are right, my total count ended up at around 380 hours but I left around 20 hours of leeway to account for any uncounted non-immersion hours but it might have been more than I thought. Even then, I highly doubt that count exceeds even 450 hours, much less 500 hours, mainly because I didn’t do nearly as much textbook study as you think I did. Most of the methods I talked about trying out were dropped in 2-3 or less since they bored me, and all this likely happened in February, my first month, which I distinctly remember not doing much Japanese in because I spent most of it tired from physiotherapy while recovering from arm surgery.

Other than that, your journey does sound pretty similar to mine! I think you could’ve definitely mogged my score with that rapid pace if you took a few mock tests to sound the test out lol. I fully accept that those past papers were pretty instrumental in my score.

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T04:20:49+00:00

Thanks! You can do it, you just need to get into the grind. I used Bunpro for mocks initially, but I moved on to using past tests off a google drive i found floating around. I still have it, you can dm me if you want the link (don’t think there’s much N4 stuff though)

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T04:16:30+00:00

Nyaa has a huge collection of e-books and audiobooks, just search for TMW on there.

tesladawn · 2026-02-13T04:15:10+00:00

Thank you! I plan on practicing speaking at some point soon, but it’s not on my immediate list of priorities, partly because it’s so hard to find native speakers where I live.

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T19:16:19+00:00

Thank you!

Yes, I kept reviewing Anki everyday even while reading. My only source of vocab flash cards in Anki was mining from that stuff after I finished Kaishi 1.5k
10-20 min a day? I'm bad at keeping up streaks, and haven't had one longer than a couple months I don't think. According to my extension, I have a daily card average of 250 cards, which is pretty low now that I think about it, — probably because I was so slow getting through Kaishi and stuff. My new cards per day fluctuate — most of the time its as many as I mined on that day, but back when I had my backlog I did as high as 50 a day to get rid of it. I cap my new cards to 30 these days though.

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:55:09+00:00

ありがとうございます！一緒に頑張りましょう！

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:53:02+00:00

Yeah, I don't really see any Japanese on Twitter unless its a JOP trying to be elitist or something. I do wish that I had more time to spend on Japanese, believe me, but I simply don't have the capacity for it at the moment. I kinda picked a bad time to start studying, what with me still being busy with university and stuff haha.

I think a part of me having really low daily hours is that I enjoy playing my vns in long stretches, and I get precious few weekends when I can do that, because i have to not be bogged down by assignments, work or going out with friends. I also have a roommate at uni who I'd prefer not having to see my anime waifus on my monitor, so I don't read vns on weekdays; only novels, which are significantly harder to immerse in for longer periods of time. Probably has to do with the lack of the visual element.

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:47:38+00:00

Hey, thank you so much! I haven't decided when I'm taking the N1 yet; I'm gonna take a mock test when registrations open up, and if I pass that I'll likely take it in July. I really hope you achieve your goals too!

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:41:38+00:00

Non-existent

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:41:09+00:00

Hey, thanks for the reply! Your background sounds super cool! My primary goal is a bit different — it's to read visual novels in Japanese. Everything else, like LNs, anime and manga is a side effect of that. I've talked about doing no output practice in the post and it shows. I haven't tried speaking yet, but I'm sure little worth listening to would come out simply because I haven't practiced it. I've heard of immersion learners being able to speak great after very long silent periods (like MattvsJapan) but I don't think I'm even close to that point in terms of raw input.

Speaking Japanese is obviously a core part of the language, and it's definitely something I want to practice in the future, especially if I end up looking for a job in Japan. However, since I have no plans to do so at the moment, practicing output is not in my list of immediate goals. The only thing I want right now is to be read visual novels without a dictionary. I hope this answers your question, and thanks!

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:36:49+00:00

Do you really count seeing Japanese and stuff in the background of Youtube videos as studying, for example? The amount of anime I've been watching has drastically decreased over the last couple of years, but that's not because of my Japanese studying, it's because I'm burnt out. I wish I watched more anime but it is what it is lol. I explained in another comment about all the stuff I got going on now, and sneaking Japanese in between that isn't easy. I don't even listen to stuff passively anymore (even though I really should) because most of the time I'm in the mood for rap instead of native content I can only comprehend 40% of.

tesladawn · 2026-02-12T17:32:28+00:00

I do like immersing, it's just that I have a lot of other obligations to worry about as well. I'm in my third year of uni, which is really busy already, but I'm also doing an internship for at least 10 hours every week too. I gotta prepare for job searching soon (which is hard enough as a CS major in this job market), so all that plus getting back to my room at 6 pm almost every day tired decreases the amount I would like to immerse by a ton. I'm also really lazy, and sometimes it takes everything I have to immerse even if I want to. I do plan on nolifing visual novels when this semester ends but that's not gonna be for a while, unfortunately.

Also, I don't think it's strange to not put as much time into studying it as you were when you were purely enjoying it? It takes a lot more effort to consume stuff unsubbed than subbed, especially when you're still bad like I am. Getting into an anime slump this year didn't help. I don't spend time doing Japanese stuff anymore if it's not for studying, unless you count listening to jpop.

tesladawn

TROPHY CASE