Hi, I'm new here....so I'll start by saying hi!

I'm pretty obsessed with all things Japan and have been for a looooooooong time now (getting old now, but my love has not diminished!) so I've decided to finally commit to learning the language

Now, I was browsing the forum before I signed up and I saw something someone posted about being able to reach upper intermediate level (I assume just in reading/writing since it mentioned RtK) in three months....now, I love a challenge and being self-employed I can work my schedule around to allow time to study

But what I'd like to get is a bit more information on how exactly I should go about this? (I already own Remembering the Kana although it's a slightly older edition than current and I'll be picking up RtK ASAP)

As for practice materials, I do have a few Japanese games I'd love to start to understand, and I actually at one point bought a bunch of manga magazines from Japan (the massive phonebook size ones) I could dig those out, plus I love anime so being able to watch that would be cool. I also downloaded anki since I keep hearing it's good

Also any tips on picking up listening skills would be cool too (speaking would be nice but I don't have anyone I can talk to in Japanese anyway ^_^)

Upper immediate? So like... JLPT1? 2? I'm sorry it's not possible in three months.

You should expect it to take a few years before you're fully able to enjoy anime and books and stuff... so just go at a pace that's maintainable for you in the long term and enjoy the learning process.

Please define "upper-intermediate":

JLPT level? Number of desired vocab?

I'd put myself at upper-intermediate at about 6000 words and a JLPT level of between 3 and 2. Some people on the internet would call even half that "fluent", while others would claim it's still lower intermediate.

Until we settle on what you mean it's going to be difficult to answer your question.

Nukemarine's thread is the best way to start for a beginner. It is located here http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110 . I'm not sure about where you read about getting to that level in 3 months. It sounds like "fluent in 3 months" where Benny Lewis claims he can speak fluently a language in 3 months (He failed with Japanese, by the way). Upper intermediate is a high level. I would say it is N2 on the JLPT scale. Expect to spend between 1-2 years on that. If you are serious about studying Japanese, follow that thread but expect it to take time. Start with RTK. If you finish RTK1 in 3 months I would say you are going at a good pace. Do some grammar while you are at it to get a taste of the Japanese language.

Whether or not it's possible to actually reach that level, you would probably burn out fairly quickly going so fast. I would take it at whatever pace is enjoyable to you. While it is possible to finish Remembering the Kanji in less that a month, I would likely burn out after a week of such a punishing schedule (to me).

First I would recommend getting the kana learned (I took about a weekend for the hiragana and a weekend for the katakana), it's a bit annoying to go so fast but once you learn them and start getting comfortable with them you are opened up to so much more.
In terms of Remembering the Kanji I would try and shoot for a 3 month maximum time limit to finish the book. To me 3 months seems like a decent pace, doing too much could lead to burnout whereas after too long it just starts to be a drain on the more important and directly related to Japanese studies (I've been doing it off and on for about a year and a half and I wish I had finished it a lot sooner).

While some might recommend you to do otherwise I would recommend getting some sort of beginning textbook series for the early vocab/grammar (Genki is one that I found useful) I would also recommend getting either a tutor or taking one semester in the beginning to get you comfortable with the foundations of the language, pronunciation in particular. Later on I think it's less important for tutoring/classes as there is a lot of self-study stuff online, but if you enjoy it then there's no need to stop as long as it isnt hindering your progress too much.

In terms of listening, expose yourself to A LOT of media would be my recommendation if you can't find a Japanese person to converse with regularly (particularly in the beginning when you barely have the vocabulary of a 2 year old and not as many will have the patience talk to you without compensation). For me this involved a lot of anime and drama watching (in japanese of course). I personally like subtitles, but I at this point I think I'm using them as a crutch so keep that in mind if you are watching stuff with subtitles later on (although in the beginning I found them invaluable).
In terms of vocab look into the core (2k,6k,10k, etc.) anki decks/forum posts, these are supposed to have some good vocab in them.

In the end do whatever you have fun with but keeps you advancing forward. So what if it takes you 3 years to reach N1 level instead of 3 months? Better you take it slowly and steadily and actually get there than burn out after a month and become one of those who rages against the difficulty of the language.

Upper intermediate in three months? Nah - no way.
The reason is pretty simple: there are too many words.
I think even the most diehard hardcore Anki-users on this forum couldn't get that many cards down in three months. Even if you did somehow I doubt you'd know how they're used or how to use them.
Japanese isn't so much difficult as it is big. It takes a lot of time to get exposed to all the different words and grammar structures and get used to them.

RTK itself is a 2-6 month project during which you probably won't learn much/any Japanese, so if you go that way expect to add that much more time to getting to where you can understand anything.

So yeah - just find a pace you can sustain every day for an indefinite amount of time. You can probably level up faster than, say, me - but setting a time based goal is just setting yourself up for disappointment.


If your main interest is anime, manga, and games - I think subs2srs is a really good way to go - much more relevant than the Core decks and it builds listening skills as well. Check the Nukemarine beginner guide already posted above for links and information.

Sorry for not clarifying much in my post, the post I was talking about is actually post #12 in the Fluent in 3 months thread (it's interesting to hear that he failed)

I'd say what I aim to achieve is eventually fluency, but in the short term just being able to maybe play through a game/watch an episode of anime without having to stop every two seconds to look something up

As for the whole burn out thing, I find if I don't force myself to learn things reasonably quickly I end up dropping off on the study schedule and forgetting things....I plan to start with just a couple hours a day, then ramp it up slowly until I hit what I feel is my limit

Quote:I'd say what I aim to achieve is eventually fluency, but in the short term just being able to maybe play through a game/watch an episode of anime without having to stop every two seconds to look something up

Ah, well, that can be done relatively quickly then. So long as you restrict yourself to things at your level. Expect things like complicated science fiction to be years away though. Develop a taste for mahou shoujo, battle shounen, and school drama. Manga is easier than anime, broadly speaking.

I agree with all the replies so far in saying that it is probably not a realistic goal.


BUT... ;-) Let me play devils advocate here. It might be possible to get close to that if you dispensed with ANKI altogether, and focused purely on graded readers or something similar for like eight or ten hours a day, getting all of your "spaced repetition" purely from the reading. You would be wanting to learn around 110 words per day, in the sense of "learn" as in "become somewhat familiar with". The more reading you do, the more familiar you become with the core vocab. With 90 days I think you could hit passive familiarity with 10,000 words.

Now the other requirement. That you are Chinese. ;-)

See, I don't think the problem with that time frame is necessarily the words, but the Kanji. You would need to hammer RTK while also bulk reading. Still... you could make a lot of progress in three or four months if you were super dedicated.

But why the hurry? The language isn't going anywhere. And if you get really good, at any stage in your lifetime at all, that is really cool.

Don't listen to the haters. It's entirely possible to do something crazy like 150 words per day and still leave a few hours left for more mandate purposes. If you chose that method, then I strongly recommend you do pre-built pure vocab decks with recognition only. Do not make your own vocab decks, that really slows things down.

That said, 10k words is not really enough. You need a lot of exposure to the language, both written and spoken. I'd say 6 months is a realistic goal for a functional level if you have 6 hours of day for your vocab deck. Make it 7 months if you need kana and RTK. Keep in mind that at some point, you'll start getting diminishing returns since the brain gets awfully cranky if you force it to do too much Anki all day, most people won't be able to study 12 hours every day.

tl;dr; If you have the mental fortitude, it can work. But it sure as hell will make you hate life.

I would love to have your motivation but I have a short attention span most days so it has either been 20-ish a day or nothing (A lot of work for engineers at university) however on my holidays when I go back to Iceland(I study in the UK) I have days where I can't get enough and end up doing 100-ish kanji/words.

Just don't overflow your brain, I tried to finish RTK in a month and well I had to do it all over again, just a mental block.

I admire your motivation but sadly I'm stuck on 30 vocab words a day, it might take me just under a year but the end goal is well worth the 'slow' pace I'm taking.

There's only so much you can do to optimise your learning. In the end, there will always be a limit to how fast you can learn a language. Let's assume you can learn 150 words a day from the start (and that this is enough for fluency...). What about the 20+ kanji a day you need to learn, what about all the grammar you need to internalise (that takes time!), what about the time you will have to put in for listening comprehension, and what about the time you will have to spend reviewing all of that? Even if you had enough time to do everything every day, I don't think your brain would cooperate.

Enjoy the journey to fluency instead. That's the best way to stay motivated and actually get there.

Heron Wrote:Enjoy the journey to fluency instead. That's the best way to stay motivated and actually get there.

I agree with this.

I would rather go with an enjoyable process at a comfortable pace, than doing nothing but repetitive raw work in an attempt to cram as much information into the head in as little time as possible.

Once you get into it you'll be able to learn by picking your way through the things you enjoy.

I had quick bursts of learning, as well as long, consistent streams. Actually, I always had something to do to learn, while sometimes, I'd go out of my way to do more. Both was helpful, but in the long run, the consistency wins.
How long can you maintain a highly intensive study program, and how much of your time will be spent by activities to prepare your learning? People do stuff such as "mine sentences", search for other material, parse "subs2srs" for stuff to incorporate in their SRS, and so on, and that, too, takes time. Might think about that, too, because at some point, your 3 hours of language learning will turn into 2 hours of preparation and other stuff, 30 minutes of repeating old stuff and only 30 minutes for new stuff. I didn't use real numbers here, just gave an example.

Review time would likely consume your day to the point of burnout. If a quicker method works better for you, though, then I'd say go for it.

Personally, though, I enjoy learning something new and then reviewing it for an extended period of time until my review time becomes something I would call idle. Meaning, I could review with a passing glance while watching TV in Japanese. And after reviews reached that level, learn something new and repeat the process.

For example: learning kana, reviewing it until it's easy for you, and then learning kanji and reviewing it in a similar way, and then moving onto vocab, etc.

Or if you're not necessarily interested in kanji, you could even focus on vocab and listening exposure while filling in the time you have between reviews with studying up on grammar rules and speaking with a language partner.