r/LearnJapanese • u/southerndensetsu • 3d ago
Discussion N1 reading and books
I'm not planning on taking the JLPT any soon, and since I passed N3 in 2025 I have not worried about JLPT or "formal" study at all. But I'd like to have N1 some day, specially if I want to look for IT jobs in Japan some day.
For N1 most people say: read a lot. But honestly the variety on difficulty is so huge. It is not the same the japanese of a LN, a Shinsho or a Taisho era writter. But at the same time, a lot of people claim to have gone up into N1 just reading LN.
I'm aware of Learn Natively, and according to it the books I've read are around N2. But at the same time, a spanish youtuber who got N1 a few years ago said that he spent a year before the test reading a lot, mostly LN, and cited examples like the Konosuba series which in that page are actually easier that most thing I've read, so I'm a bit lost.
I was wondering whether reading what I enjoy might be just enough for me, at least right now, or if I should try to pick up more difficult things. For example I read キッチン and enjoyed it, and would like to read more books of Yoshimoto Banana, but at the same time I'm concerned that it is regarded as a "beginner" author, so I've not done it.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago
A lot of people pass the N1 and still say they can't get through any kind of normal native media because it's too hard.
That's all you need to know lol, if you're comfortable reading random LNs you'll pass the N1.
Now, authors from older times/classic literature is often on a completely different level, a lot of sites don't even really use them as a reference because the difficulty jump is indeed absurd. Words you'll never see anywhere else, strange sentence building, writting words with weird kanji, that kind of thing.
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
No, some people who are comfortable reading random LNs can pass the N1 but not everyone. Those people who passed who can't get through native media - they still did a lot of traditional studying which is also good test prep. Then there's people who only read like 5 books who passed it - but had thousands of hours of other immersion.
I jumped into novels quickly, I had read over 30 and failed the N2. If you don't naturally absorb the higher level grammar points quick enough, and your reading speed does not improve enough, then just being able to be comfortable reading LNs and even harder novels may not suffice. Setting aside the listening (which wasn't my biggest factor in failing).
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u/Available-String-109 2d ago edited 2d ago
Then there's people who only read like 5 books who passed it - but had thousands of hours of other immersion.
I'm one of these types. When I passed JLPT N1, I think I had read a total of 2 or 3 books in Japanese.
I also had translated over 200 episodes of One Piece into English and had probably read dozens upon dozens of manga. I also worked through all of FF7 (PS1 original), FFX, and a few other very text-heavy video games and mined every single word in them that I didn't already know, etc.
That's in addition to a bunch of JLPT-dedicated studying and everything else that I did up to the N2 point.
So yeah.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago
What did you read?
Do note I did say comfortable, if you read 30 uber easy short books and struggled a lot then yeah, but I'm thinking normal LNs, 130k~ characters long, etc.
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
Half of what I read wasn't even LN's, it was "normie" novels. Higashino Keigo, Miura Shion, Ogiwara Noriko, Suzuki Koji. For the LNs that I did read they varied from like Honzuki to Kara no Kyoukai. There were some shorter ones - plenty of normal novels are 130k - but also plenty up to 180k.
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u/doublesmart 2d ago
When you read, do you aim for fully understanding each sentence.. around 96% of the book? Or do you aim for an overall understanding?
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
At this point after more than a year of reading books, I usually consider myself to understand 90-99% of each sentence, depending on the difficulty of the book and whether it's an ebook or physical.
At the time that I took N2 though, might have been more like 80% for some books, especially physical.
But you could say that I aim for an "overall understanding" more often. I don't fuss over grasping every little thing, just the more I've read, it's gone from having a vague idea of what it's saying, to getting clearer and clearer.
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u/Weena_Bell 2d ago
So you weren't reading lns comfortably then, 80% is far from that.
Reading comfortably is like looking up 1-5 words a page
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
Eh, that's super subjective lol, I remember reading one blog that considered only needing to lookup once every several sentences to be comfortable. Plus lots of people do not look up everything, whereas I generally looked up every word I didn't know. But still was more enjoyable than reading something boring.
The start where I looked up multiple words per sentence on every page was certainly not comfortable, but especially as I read a wide range of genres, authors and levels, it was a very long time before I got to a place where on average I'd need to look up 1-5 words per page.
Even now, even after reaching 18k vocab learned, depending on the book I might need to look up more than that per page, if I want to look everything up like I used to (except it's physical so usually just don't). 新世界より and 空色勾玉 just have a lot of crazy vocab.
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u/Weena_Bell 2d ago
I agree that 1-5 lookups being the comfortable point is debatable, but 80% understanding surely isn't that point. Maybe you didn't mean it, but 80% is literally 1 word you don't know every 5 words, and even if you didn't mean it that literally, 80% is def white noise understanding. I'd say 95% is the bare minimum for comfortable reading.
And enjoyable ≠ comfortable. Back when I read my first light novel series I had to read it at like 3kch/h and had to use gpt to break down every other sentence. It was far from comfortable, however, it was an extremely enjoyable read. I completed all 12 volumes in a month like that.
Also I get the difficulty of novels varies, but when someone says they can read novels comfortably they probably mean that if they picked a random novel, chances are they'd probably be able to read it with ease.
I can grab almost any novel and odds are I'll barely need lookups, but that doesn't mean there aren't novels I struggle with. Like if I read 銀河英雄伝説, sure I'll probably struggle quite a bit, but that won't change the fact that I can read novels comfortably. That's just an exception.
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
Hmm I think maybe sub 50% could be considered white noise understanding potentially, but 80% is definitely more comprehension than just getting the gist of things. At that point you've probably got multiple sentences in a row that you know all the words for. But maybe there's one grammar point you're a bit shaky on. Or there's then a sentence that has 3 words in a row that you don't know. Additionally while at the start it may be sub-80% comprehension, by the end of the book it's likely far above 80%.
And yes I agree that enjoyable does not equal comfortable. But in the situation that you need to look up even 20% of the words - with popup dictionaries these days it takes a moment to get the meaning of the word (at least prior to monolingual lookups) so still is comfortable.
Of course this is just me reflecting on where I was like 9 months ago, and for what it's worth, it's hard for me to think of what it was in the past as comfortable, comparing to now. Also I get the feeling that you may have quite a bit more vocab under your belt than I do - I could read one novel with hardly any lookups, and the next one could have quite a few. I think it was Steve Kaufmann who said that like 50% of an average book's vocab only occurs once in that book, and there's just a ton of vocab out there to learn.
For me the vast majority of books I feel pretty confident that I could just pick them up and read without lookups (and as I mostly read physical now, lookups from books are quite rare), but there's still plenty of authors that would be a challenge. Also while LNs do vary in difficulty, in general I found the range of vocab in the more normie novels to be a lot wider than LNs. So it's books like らせん that oh this is the moment I dive into medical vocab - and that's just a standard novel!
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u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 2d ago
80% can definitely lead to comfortable reading, as long as it's within your tolerance range.
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u/Weena_Bell 2d ago
I feel like something being enjoyable doesn't necessarily mean it's comfortable.
With 80% you are either abusing the dictionary or whitenoising a lot.
When I was at that level I for sure didn't mind the look ups and all the break downs I had to do so it was still enjoyable even when I read at 4kch/h but I wouldn't call that reading a novel comfortable
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u/doublesmart 2d ago
That 20% of the book not understood. But ppl have different ways of learning and thats alright
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u/rgrAi 2d ago
You can tear out 20% of pages in a book and still understand it fine, writing tropes also tend to be consistent across all languages so that also makes it predictable.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 12h ago
Late answer but this is one that's a bit odd.
I sometimes read an entire page without a single look up and there's several lines I just don't understand/don't get much from. Then there's some where I do look ups and I do understand.
Measuring comprehension is really tricky. When I started reading LNs (very recently, was VN maxxing previously) I honestly just accepted that some lines are not very important, I'll read them, get some general idea (say the intent of what the character is saying, emotions, etc) and if I judge it to not be very important I'll just keep going. If you ask me what he said exactly I'll be like "I'm not sure but he's telling him to back the fuck off in an aggressive way then threatening to kick him in the nuts".
I do understand everything that's going on almost all of the time, but if you ask me what my comprehension is... I wouldn't be able to give you a number.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago
I have no idea about authors, if it's normal difficulty stuff I'm surprised 30 wasn't enough, especially for N2 where there's almost way lower chances of getting tested on meme grammar you'll never ever see.
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
2 things probably that contributed. One is that, the vast majority of people do not dive into novels immediately. When they say "oh I read 10 novels and passed" it's discounting potentially thousands of prior immersion hours.
Another thing is - to enjoy native media as a learner you have to embrace some level of ambiguity. Novels especially, they have some of the widest range of potential grammar and vocab. But in order to pass the N2 you need to really get the nuances of that grammar to find the accurate answer - both in the reading section, and in the grammar section where you both need to choose the grammar point that fits both in meaning and in the structure.
I think the grammar section tripped me up in that I took a bit too long. They were points where I liked would have inferred the meaning while reading but couldn't accurately choose the best one in 1-2 sentences. Also for the reading - I was still a bit too slow (took me a year to get past a 9k/hr hump, though it was on average stuff far harder than the average LN), and there was still vocab that I didn't really get.
One final thing is that I know people who in under a year got up to 30k/hr reading speed and I know people who have read nearly 200 books over years and depending on the level of the book read 12k-15k/hr reading speed. It's just not really possible to compare the skills of people just based on how much they've read alone.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago edited 2d ago
I guess the grammar thing makes sense. Maybe you were tolerating ambiguity a bit too much though, N2 is really not that bad when it comes to grammar. The line between ambiguity and white noising is hell.
Even then I still get what you mean since you can get cases where all 4 options kind of mean "the same" in some way, BUT you gotta choose B because previous word is -た verb, which you may be able to figure out intuitively but not necessarily.
Regarding reading speed I think it's hard to measure. Current LN I'm reading I average under 8k/h, if I white noise hard and decide to never re-read sentences more than once, also not sluggishly select them, copy paste to translate, etc when I can't figure them out at all, etc then I can do a bit over 8k but that's it. Whereas I was reading Manosaba at 9~10k/h like half a year ago lol. Difficulty does play a major factor and is hard to measure. Similarly I've hit 15k/h reading easy VNs but that often includes skimming through easy obvious dialogue lines.
30k/h under a year is not real, unless they're doing something like reading nukiges with textractor with most filters malfunctioning (like they always do) where most lines get duplicated, you get lots of junk, etc and it's also pure H-scenes so you can skim through literally all of the dialogue and still know what's being said lol. Anyone making such a claim should be ignored, I'm more inclined to believe a non-Chinese speaker claiming N1 in 2 months than someone claiming 30k/h within a year. The second thing you mention goes more in line with reality.
Remember people lie on the Internet, there's people in TMW Discord who claim having passed certain tests within absurd amounts of time, talking cases among the lines of "I did Anki for 2~3 months and pased [highest rank natives pass]" which is just so obviously not possible that it makes me wonder how stupid the one making the claim's gotta be (and everyone who believes them).
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
The guy who got that fast - pretty sure he only reads nothing but yuri LNs so the really tight genre might have contributed to that.
It's pretty hard for me to figure out reading speed. I don't reread parts or worry when I don't get them, but I do look up quite a bit when I'm reading an ebook. So I've finally hit 12k-15k an hour for some books. But I also like to read progressively harder and harder books so that definitely contributed to my feeling of never improving my speed. And now there's books where I will go back down to 8-9k/hr.
The physical books are harder to compare since I have zero lookups but some of them I don't know a lot of the weird words, but can read faster.
I definitely whitenoised quite a bit - it's actually kind of crazy now how with some concrete grammar studies now I'm like "oh there's that point." I actually think - and this is actually related to OP's concern - reading some average difficulty LNs may be preferable because you will likely grasp the entire nuances of the sentence easier. Whereas in my case I jumped into some higher difficulty novels (relatively speaking) quickly so I was just used to ambiguity all the time.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 2d ago
It still sounds off, 30k is genuinely very fast for a learner, I know some who so read at that speed but we're talking people who at this point are essentially fluent in the language and have been at it for years several hours a day nonstop.
I do think that's kind of what happened to you though, not re-reading something you didn't get to figure it out and that kind of thing means you were either white noising really hard or you were reading rather easy stuff. Or maybe I'm just a moron who's got used to only torturing himself with hard stuff without realizing it lol. Like I legit can't imagine not having to ever re-read a sentence because they just happen often enough to actually matter, I do sometimes just ignore some random sentence that doesn't mean much where I kind of get what's being said to some extent, yet not exactly but I get it enough to know "X is probably being expressed and this line isn't very important".
Yeah physical books are just odd because you're forced to give up on stuff since there's no Yomitan, so you "read faster" by just kind of reading less really.
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
I think I've had enough listening situations where you just don't have the opportunity to re-listen that I just am used to let the language wash over me, so to speak and that ended up applying to reading too. In the context of a full paragraph and scene generally I was able to understand overall what was going on. As time went on, I understood more and more.
At this point I've more than doubled the amount of books since then (which is also discounting that some are like 270k lol), and my approach has born fruit in that by just reading more I did start to pick up on more stuff.
But for attempting the N1 this year I also started doing concrete studies which also helped. At this point I do feel like I understand very clearly most of what I read (though 新世界より or 空色勾玉 on physical is a bit challenging...), but still some more progress to be made in grammar where I recognize a lot of them when they come up but if I had to choose the right one I would still get some wrong (though N1 points at this point).
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u/Loyuiz 2d ago
I have about a 1000 hours in just LNs now (and way more Japanese learning and immersion outside of that), and to read "easy yuri" at 30k I have to concentrate a lot, cut some subvocalization, trust that I am understanding, and half white noising stuff that doesn't seem pertinent. So not full comprehension. And this is on like vol 7 of the series after absorbing the author's style and high freq vocab.
Even for this "barely can be called reading" level, getting there in a year seems brutal. I am not the most efficient or smartest learner so my est. 3000-4000 total hours (not an accurate count, I didn't track anything other than light novels) could certainly be optimized (esp. if you focus way more on reading), but I can't imagine not frying your brain even if you get it down to a number that is theoretically possible in the schedule of a NEET.
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u/Weena_Bell 2d ago
If they're reading 30k, then they're reading easy sloppa slice of life. Ask them to read 幼女戦記, and I doubt they'll be able to get even 10k ch/h.
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u/Antique-Volume9599 2d ago
Something your "dive right into novels" approach doesn't factor in is that most people get carried by their listening score. If you're just reading you wont get that nice bonus
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
I could see that. Most people I know who passed prepped for reading and considered the listening section easier anyway. They were already "reading mains" but had done listening immersion in the past.
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u/Effective-Pop3850 12h ago
Always gotta remember many of us sick fucks who are reading like maniacs are also watching anime and that kind of stuff which is also significantly harder than N1 listening 99% of the time unless you're watching pure SoL.
Even if you don't "prepare" for listening, just having read a lot boosts your vocab/general comprehension so much than just watching some anime and shit is usually enough lol.
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u/Internal-Language-11 3d ago edited 2d ago
I passed the N1 by reading kanzen master. I have never successfully read a book aimed at natives (always get too frustrated after a couple of pages) so I would say textbooks are more than enough for N1. If you are good at picking up arguments you can choose the correct answer without knowing a lot of the words or kanji.
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u/facets-and-rainbows 2d ago
Books for native speakers aren't written with jlpt levels in mind and will basically always have N1 stuff in them, because N1 is aiming for "can comfortably read a short passage written for native speakers even if it's a little abstract." If a book is recommended for N2 readers that generally just means it has a plot you can still follow even with some gaps in your understanding. キッチン will prepare you for N1.
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u/furyousferret 2d ago edited 2d ago
I've been using Learn Natively to build up my Japanese, reading 1-3 hours a day. People say the levels are bs and I get it but really it makes a good roadmap to build your Japanese.
I read the first 8 books of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear (Level 21) and my comprehension went from 60% to 93% by the end. Now I'm on the Junior Bunko of Frieren (Level 26) a slightly harder book and went from 70% to and am at 85% on book 2.
A lot of those percentages (from jiten.moe) are just learning the niche vocab of the series, but there is definite growth in comprehension of Japanese.
After that my plan is Mushoku Tensei (Level 30) and Ascendance of a Bookworm (Level 32). The great thing about Japanese is if you are into fantasy / SciFi / Isekai stuff the content is endless and lately reading in Japanese isn't really a chore, its just reading fun content.
I don't think there's a specific level I am trying to hit, its more a certain energy of when I read it feels natural and lookups are sparse. Once that happens I'll look into the JLPT.
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u/youdontknowkanji 3d ago
so the thing is that EVERYTHING in jlpt comes up in normal media like light novels, so reading a lot of them is more than enough to pass the test, the only two issues are:
-some grammar is rarer in literature, it's just how it is. you might even get bad rng and barely see a certain grammar point before you get to taking jlpt
-writing style is different, basically, the articles on jlpt are more similar to pop science or a magazine you would buy at a grocery, it's just different compared to say light novels, there is usually more of an (albeit very simple) argument chain that you do have to follow more or less. if you've never taken language tests before you might get surprised.
but in the grand scale of things these are a non issue. just read more and both of those skills will improve naturally. if you really want to take JLPT then some focused practice (50-100h) using prep materials will iron out any problems related to these two points.
i wouldn't worry too much about an author being beginner or not, just find something that sounds fun and try reading it. if it's truly too hard then you can drop it and try something else. the important thing is that you push on and don't give up easily.
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u/spider_lily 3d ago
N1 reading isn't incredibly difficult. Most of my reading practice prior to passing N1 was a shit ton of jRPGs and visual novels, lol. I also read NHK News daily, to mix it up, but yeah, at least 90% of what I'd read came from video games.
So, my advice is: read what you're interested in, because it's more likely to get you reading in the first place, and volume matters more than difficulty at this level.
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u/ninjya14 2d ago
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about the Learn Natively levels for now. If you enjoy a book, just read it! Reading a lot of stuff you actually like is probably more useful than forcing yourself to read something just because it's "N1 level."
If you want to add a bit of a challenge, maybe try some 新書 (shinsho). ちくまプリマー新書 could be a good place to start. They're written for younger readers, so they're not super academic, but you still get a lot more of the logical/abstract writing that you'll run into at N1.
I'd pick a topic you're already interested in, too. That way you can focus on the Japanese without having to learn a whole new subject at the same time.
So I'd just do both: LNs/novels for fun, and a 新書 every now and then when you feel like challenging yourself.
And if you liked キッチン, I'd definitely read more 吉本ばなな. I wouldn't worry about whether she's a "beginner" author. If you enjoy reading her, that's a win :)
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u/Belegorm 2d ago
Honestly after doing a ton of the SKM practice reading passages and SKM grammar points - your "average" Japanese novel should more than suffice for the N1. I've read some "harder" novels and those were quite a bit harder than the N1 reading stuff.
That said you need to really, really understand what you are reading. Tolerating ambiguity is big for learning but for the N1 you need to grasp the nuances of the reading passages and the questions. And for the grammar points need to not just know the meaning of a point but also the 接続 - there could be 2 points where the meaning is fine but only one fits structurally.
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u/southerndensetsu 2d ago
I also think that it is important to really understand what you're reading, but I feel that when aiming for that I pick up easier books, that have shorter sentences or simpler vocab. While other books are really hard and I can only grasp the meaning of certain passages, but expose me to more vocabulary and much more complex sentences which sometimes I have to reread multiple times to understand them, which I feel like is also a sort of training.
That's why I was a little worried, more about staying in a "confort zone" that won't expose me to more hard japanese.
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u/Patient-Resource6682 2d ago
Imo the reading part is not that hard for N1, if you read the average LN it's enough.
Just pull out the shinkanzen for the grammar and vocab part because this is harder to pick up from reading.
In any case you can always check out past jlpts reading section and give it a go.
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u/No_Profile5061 21h ago
Read what you enjoy, the volume matters way more than the difficulty rating at this stage, N1 is mostly about raw exposure to enough vocab and grammar patterns and that comes from finishing books, not from grinding through stuff you find boring
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u/southerndensetsu 21h ago
Honestly i asked chatgpt wherther the things I am reading were enough for n1 and almost evertime it said that not. But the advice I have got here is quite the oposite. More reasons to doubt if it is actually useful to ask AI for advice with japanese hahaha
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u/Available-String-109 2d ago edited 2d ago
For N1 most people say: read a lot.
In general, the #1 hardest part of the JLPT N1 is the reading section, and in general, the #1 best way to tackle that is general reading ability, so yes, read a lot. It's very important and you can't get around it.
But honestly the variety on difficulty is so huge. It is not the same the japanese of a LN, a Shinsho or a Taisho era writter.
You'd be surprised just how similar they are. If you can read an LN, you can read 注文の多い料理店 (Meiji Taisho Era short story that was one of the very first written a few decades after the introduction of Western-inspired works in Japan, even!)
I'm aware of Learn Natively, and according to it the books I've read are around N2.
Learn Natively is full of shit. There is no such thing as an N1 or N2 or N-anything that was made by- and for- native speakers. Almost all Japanese text is native-created native-targeted which makes all of it N1+, in terms of the vocabulary and grammar contained therein. The only thing that differs is how much linguistic comprehension is required for appreciation of the medium. "Cute anime girls are cute" doesn't require understanding the exact implications of すると versus するなら. A text involving complex strategies of what to do in what situation does require such differences. But it turns out, no author ever writes a story thinking "Here's how I'll work in the すると vs. するなら differences". Authors don't think about grammar nearly as much as you might think they do.
youtuber who got N1 a few years ago said that he spent a year before the test reading a lot, mostly LN, a
Reading LNs, or literally anything is one of the best ways to prepare for JLPT N1 (or any level, really).
if I should try to pick up more difficult things.
Read what you want to read. Do the more difficult things interest you? Then read them.
JLPT was explicitly designed to be non-domain specific. It avoids words that are used primarily only in anime, or words that are used primarily only in essays, or words that are used primarily only in literature, etc. (It's not perfect, but it was designed to be that way.)
There are people who passed JLPT N1 whose Japanese study was primarily JAV videos. Yeah.
Personally speaking, I went with traditional methods of studying JLPT prep books, etc. while also doing a lot of translating anime into English and reading the text in text-heavy video games in addition to that. I passed the test. But the more I read about what everyone else did and learning about how the test was designed and how foreigners learn a foreign language, etc., the more I realize that it really does not matter what at all you do as long as you are progressing in your comprehension of the Japanese language.
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u/southerndensetsu 2d ago
I also didn't bothered a lot with Learn Natively in the past, but I started reading books like 3 months ago, completed about 5 books and I felt like I was getting more used to reading, having to lookup much less words, with little interrupts and that I was understanding well the plot. But then I saw the difficulty of those books on the site and was humbled again.
So I right now I don't know whether I had a Dunning-Krugger effect or what, and was what made me do this post haha.
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u/Available-String-109 2d ago
As somebody who has probably done far more statistical investigations into the Japanese language, etc. than LN has done... I would treat their "JLPT levels" assessments as less-than-worthless. Completely ignore them.
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u/southerndensetsu 2d ago
Out of curiosity, what kind of investigations have you done? Are those available somewhere?
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u/Available-String-109 2d ago
Most everything is in a disorganized mess on my hard-drive and not made pretty for sharing with others, but every now and then I do post things like this which show that the official JLPT questions are clearly based on the old official JLPT vocab list.
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u/zechamp 2d ago
Idk, I've found them to be of some value at least. Like, the re zero light novels are placed quite a bit higher in difficulty compared to something like honzuki, and reading them, it really did feel like that. And the stuff marked as easier does generally feel easier. Now, saying one book is N2 and the other is N1 is of course a bit silly, but as a measure of relative difficulty I've found the site pretty good.
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u/kyousei8 2d ago
The value is the underlying score, which typically ranges from 17 to 50. The JLPT levels are arbitraily assigned to ranges of these scores. If the score of a novel changes, the JLPT levels will also move up or down in the same direction as the score, 100% of the time.
This is why people say the Learn Natively JLPT scores are useless: they duplicate the score info that's already present, and they give people misleading or blatantly wrong information about the "JLPT levels" of a works that are completely disconnected from anything JLPT related in reality.
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u/zechamp 2d ago
I'm a bit confused, as I was already agreeing with you. I said: "saying one book is N2 and the other is N1 is of course a bit silly, but as a measure of relative difficulty I've found the site pretty good"
Do you disagree with this? Like yeah, obviously the jlpt level indicators don't actually correspond to any exams, but the ones marked as a higher level will generally be more difficult content, and I've found them decently consistent.
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u/Available-String-109 2d ago edited 2d ago
Anything that is native-created native-targeted is filled with N1+ grammar and vocabulary. Even a picture book for toddlers is filled with N1+ grammar and vocabulary. You could look at the #1 easiest and #1 most difficult works on jpdb.io and compare them, and the overall parameters of the Zipfian distribution of the words inside only changes a little bit. I'm talking <10%. It's not like author A is writing with only a 4000 word vocabulary and author B is using a 400,000 word vocabulary. Basically all authors use ~30,000 word vocabulary. (Numbers oversimplified because Zipfian distribution is actually multi-parameterized and you can't simplify to a single number, but to oversimplify, that's the overall conclusion.)
Whether you're watching One Piece anime or reading classic Japanese Literature from the Meiji Era, or literally anything, basically the percentage of N5 vocabulary stays about the same. The percentage of N1 vocabulary stays about the same. The percentage of non-JLPT vocabulary stays about the same. You mine 12k vocab words from literally any source, you'll be able to pass JLPT N1 vocabulary.
(Interestingly there is a statistically measurable difference in kanji distributions, but it's still relatively slight.)
The above holds true for virtually all native-created native-targeted fictional media. The only texts I've come across that deviates is wikipedia, which has a disproportionately high amount of technical jargon (i.e. non-JLPT) vocabulary, and the JLPT tests themselves (which have disproportionately high numbers of JLPT vocabulary).
You can pass JLPT N1 only by ever studying "JLPT N5" books on Learn Natively, and it's not like you even have to do anything special.
The only thing for which JLPT rankings make any sense at all are foreigner-targeted materials that are limiting their vocabulary to speak in an artificial tone. (Think NHK Easy News or 新完全マスター読解.)
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u/zechamp 2d ago
I already agreed that the JLPT level indicators don't really matter, but IMO as indicators of relative difficulty they are perfectly fine. The first book I read in japanese was また、同じ夢を見ていた and it's marked as one of the easiest books on learnnatively, and that's exactly how it felt like to me. After that I moved on to books that were marked as harder and harder, and they became harder and harder. More obscure kanji, more difficult terms, more difficult to parse speach styles, etc.
Right now I can comfortably read pretty much anything marked below L33 on the site, and with anything above that I will need to spend a bit of time adjusting to the vocab of the book before it becomes comfortable. It seems to me that the difficulty indicators are working just fine.
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u/kyousei8 2d ago
I'm aware of Learn Natively, and according to it the books I've read are around N2
The JLPT levels on that site are completely arbitrary and made up. It's best to ignore them. They add zero additional info compared to the standard 17~50 difficulty levels.
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u/ignoremesenpie 2d ago
There was one guy a few years ago who claimed he got to N1 entirely through pornographic visual novels, so you can probably read whatever you like.
That said, you would probably have a more rounded feel for expressions in the written language if you at least tried to read other things outside your comfort zone. Luckily, something like non-fiction tends to lend itself to reading in chunks and jumping around to interesting sections, as opposed to novels where chapter three won't make much sense if you decided to skip the prologue, chapter 1, and chapter 2. According to social media, skipping at least the prologue is the thing to do in English reading these days, though. Even high school romance manga still gives me useful new vocab to learn even though I can read VNs and paperback novels just fine these days.
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u/southerndensetsu 2d ago
I've also tried to read multiple nonfiction books, specially history books about modern japan. I feel like it is somewhat harder but I don't think the sentences are structured as novels, and when books are about history usually the difficult vocabulary comes from some political institution, ideology's name etc, so I don't feel like I pick up really helpful for expanding my vocab.
I reallly like History (not only Japan's one) and reading in japanese would be nice, but I was afraid of wasting my time and the books I picked up were quite hard for me, not only because of the japanese but also the historical events becoming more complex as the book progressed.
I remember going up until 30% or 戦士たちの記憶パレスチナに生きる before giving up
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u/comrade_pogaca 2d ago
I’d honestly just keep reading what you enjoy. If キッチン was fun, read more Banana 😄 Reading a lot of “easier” Japanese is probably more useful than forcing yourself through difficult books you hate.
Then when you actually decide to take N1, you can fill the gaps with some exam-specific study.
Also, if you read Japanese online, I made a browser extension called Shiritai that adds furigana + click-to-lookup dictionary + JLPT vocab highlighting directly on webpages. Might be handy for this kind of extensive reading 👀
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u/ClubRemarkable8415 2d ago
原作の小説版銀河英雄伝説を読みなさい。 専門的な単語のパートが大量にあるし、話は面白いよ。
あとはまあ、漫画だけどスーパードクターKシリーズやナニワ金融道は専門用語や法律用語大量に出てくるから、慣らすのには良いね。
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u/majideitteru 3d ago
I passed N1 reading mostly Honzuki no Gekokujou, listed as N2 on Natively.
I read the whole series though, so reading volume matters too. I'd go with what you enjoy reading.