Just like the first time in some eroges, I have a feeling it’s gonna be a painful experience before it gets better…

About a year ago, I chanced upon an excellent post by u/Orixa1 detailing how they cleared N2 (and could likely pass N1) just doing what they enjoyed - reading VNs. It was pretty inspiring, and the theory of Comprehensible Input linked in their post was life-changing with regards to learning the langauge. Suddenly it didn’t seem so insurmountable, and some of the points I took away from their post was quite encouraging:

  1. Authors tend to (statistically) stick to usage of a few words rather than using the entire dictionary, so you don’t need to learn the entire dictionary to understand a work by them, just the most common words they tend to use.
  2. It gets better and easier over time once one hits a “critical mass” of knowledge, and that critical mass may be closer than one expects.
  3. We learn when we understand the meaning of a message or a sentence. The more you understand, the more you can learn. So learning in an N+1 method (only having one word/phrase that you don’t understand in a sentence) is more efficient and effective than trying to read a sentence with multiple unknown words/clauses, looking up each of them, and forgetting what the meanings are after you’ve seen them once.

N5 certainly isn’t much to shout about, but it’s a measure of one’s reading and listening ability in a standardized exam, so it’s a nice morale boost. And if it means one step closer to being able to read and understand Japanese media in their original language without the risk of unfaithful translations and censorship by localizers, it’s a worthy journey to embark on (however far one may eventually travel).

If you’ve had even a passing interest in learning Japanese for whatever reason you may have, check out u/Orixa1’s post and the short Comprehensible Input video. See if it makes sense and interests you - if not, it’s fine. There are other worthy things in life you can spend your time on. But you’re encouraged and you’d like to give learning/re-learning Japanese a shot after that there’s a wealth of resources and inspiring stories of weebs made progress while having fun along the way. The famous “Coomer’s Path to N1” (as I call it) by u/Kamata954 is one such story, and the guide by TheMoeWay is one such guide (with tons of resources already linked). (There’s also a short guide here by u/gambs, a strong advocate for learning Japanese over at r/visualnovels.)

A year ago, I told myself I’d make some silly memes if I passed N5, and here’s that silly meme. The pass wasn’t the cleanest, more work needs to be done on my grammar and listening. (I literally just watched up till lesson 7 of Cure Dolly and did the TheMoeWay N5 Anki deck, so my grammar is pretty much in the shitter…). But it’s a nice boost all the same, and y’all can look forward to another silly meme if/when I pass N4.

Cheers~