1 Year of Japanese: Results, Takeaways, and Future

Exactly one year ago, to the date, I decided to get on an accelerated timeline to become fluent in Japanese in 12 months. I even created a calendar reminder to mark the end of the “experiment”:

Let’s talk about:

1. My final results
2. What I did right
3. What I would do differently
4. My plans going forward

It’s amazing that I’m writing this.

What I achieved

I wanted to pass the N2/N1 in one year, by spending 2-4 hours per day studying Japanese.

That did not happen. I didn’t take the JLPT (but I know I’m not at the N1 level yet). I started a new company this year (totally unforeseen at the time of starting my Japanese), and naturally, the startup takes precedence, so my study time per day went down to 30mins max on most days.

What did happen: I made a huge breakthrough even by studying only ~30 minutes per day. My known words on LingQ went from ~500 to ~4,500 in one year. I’m moving to Japan next month (Nov 2023) and was able to talk about rental leases, contract terms and other logistics on Zoom calls with companies in Tokyo all in Japanese, without using any English (except for the final paperwork and important emails).

The foil is that because I had to shorten my study time to <20% of originally intended, I stopped learning kanji beyond what I already had, and refocused exclusively on my spoken Japanese.

Today, I can comprehend a surprising amount of speech in Japanese. Most sentence patterns are drilled into my brain to an extent that native Japanese people are shocked at how pera-pera (=fluent) I am.

This is one achievement that I’ll sincerely cherish. It’s like the language has *activated* forever in my brain, and I can officially count Japanese among the languages I speak. Now there’s no looking back.

What went right

1. I focused on reading and listening to lots and lots of authentic content. Didn’t follow any structured courses.
2. I consumed content that I genuinely enjoyed. No children’s stories.
3. I also didn’t consume content that was too complicated / so far out of my comfort zone that I couldn’t read a single sentence without a dictionary. Examples: classic Japanese literature, by authors like Osamu Dezai. Sticking to upper-intermediate content is my sweet spot. Most of this is in the form of slice-of-life anime such as Bakuman etc, which also have formal speech.
4. I used LingQ, and fought to maintain a daily streak of activity.
5. I stopped trying to fixate on grammar, instead choosing to pick it up “organically” from real content as much as possible. Getting familiar with patterns through sheer repetition beats any grammar textbook, any day.
6. I started focusing on phrases over individual words. Phrases make sense, and are easier for the brain to remember.

I analyzed my results in more detail here: No Plateaus in Language Learning.

Here are the overall stats on how much work I put in:

What went “wrong”

1. I started a new company in February, which meant that Japanese fell in priority — that is, instead of maxing out, I did the minimum I could while still staying consistent.
   
2. Missed a whole month of study (trip to Europe in Dec-Jan).
   
3. Did not maintain the same discipline with Anki flashcards (for kanji). I still haven’t finished the deck, and am very inconsistent with flashcards. Learning the kanji has been the main bottleneck to my acquisition of new words faster. I also changed my approach to kanji mid-way — first doing keyword on the front, and then doing kanji on the front.
   
   If I had to do it again, I’d either finish the deck in one way before doing it all over again, or I would find a different, more enjoyable approach to kanji altogether.
   
4. I tried keeping a daily writing habit (writing small sentences). It didn’t stick. The biggest issue was simply deciding what I’m going to write about.
   
   Facing a blank page depletes your mental energy really quickly, and subjecting yourself to this every single day does more harm than good if you’re an entrepreneur whose livelihood depends on it.

If there’s ONE thing I’ve learned about language-learning, it’s that the brain learns fastest in a zone where what you’re doing is just a little outside your comfort zone — enough to be super enjoyable. ANY activity that’s not enjoyable (eg: Anki flashcards) should be replaced with something else.

What I recommend to others

Since being in Japan, a lot of foreigners ask me how I was able to get fluent. Often they’re going to language school or something, or they’ve been living here for years but still haven’t picked up much Japanese beyond basic greetings.

Here’s what I’d say (and please take these to heart):

1. Don’t go to language school (or any kind of language class) if you can avoid it. I’ve never met someone who became fluent in Japanese (or in any language) from going to language school. The ROI is a joke. The only reason for going to a language class should be to socialize and have fun. Don’t put serious effort into it.
   
2. Don’t use Duolingo or any structured courses or programs. Any approach that forces you to engage with content that you didn’t choose for yourself, WILL NOT MAKE YOU FLUENT. You’re playing video games, not learning a language.
   
3. Don’t take advice from native speakers on how to learn their language. They can correct you when you make mistakes and sound more natural, but they have no idea about methodology / how to learn their own language from scratch as a foreign speaker.
   
4. Set goals around ACTIVITY, not RESULTS. DO NOT SET GOALS LIKE “learn X words in X time” / “achieve N2 level of fluency in X time” / “be able to give a speech” etc, because you simply cannot control how quickly your brain acquires a language.
   
   Your goals, if anything, should be activity oriented, such as “read X book in Japanese.” That’s something you can do one page at a time — and one word / phrase at a time. But you can’t change your brain one cell at a time.
   
5. Create a system that allows for EASY DAILY WINS. Related to the previous one: Easy, daily, wins. Each of these 3 words is important.
   
   For me, as long as I was doing a certain amount of reading or listening each day (done through LingQ, which makes doing this super easy), I was winning the day. There was NO external factor or luck that I had to control.
   
6. Find content that you find interesting, and understand it. That’s language learning in a nutshell. The converse is also true — do not engage with content that you don’t care about. This is why most people never become fluent in a foreign language. They don’t really care about the language in the first place.
   
   Whether it’s TV, or movies, or books, podcasts, anime / manga, or even having conversations with drunk people at a bar or at a host / hostess club, find YOUR thing and lean into it all the way. Remember — EASY, DAILY, WINS while engaging with authentic content.
   
7. Fixating on learning grammar rules is a waste of time. Spend no more than 1 month going through basic grammar courses on YouTube (100% free).
   
   The reason is that grammar is an academic approach to describe, in an approximate way, how a language works. Grammar is NOT a set of rules that, once learned, suddenly teaches you how to speak the language. A lot of natural expressions in most languages do not follow grammatical rules. There was no Japanese committee that sat down to make up grammar rules that everyone has to follow. Grammar was created by academics in order to study languages that already exist on their own.
   
   The way you acquire a language is by exposing yourself to lots and lots of content in it, which will drill the common reoccurring phrases and sentence patterns in your brain.

I have more related posts in this codex, but for now this is enough.

Closing Thoughts

My main reason for starting the Japanese learning journey in the first place was this:

I strongly regretted not having learned Japanese in the last 8 years. I didn’t want to wake up 5 years later and still be thinking, “what if” or “if only.”

I’ve learned that the combination of a strong motivation, deciding on a clear and simple strategy that you don’t change, confidence in yourself, and patiently focusing on the process as opposed to results, can help you achieve anything you set your mind to. The aforementioned things help you build up a habit and stick to it, and habits are what matter.

I can confidently say that learning Japanese everyday was the most influential habit I created in 2022-2023.

I’m now looking forward to applying this into other areas of my life, such as fitness, business, etc.

How much more could I achieve in life with strong habits? I guess we’ll find out!