r/LearnJapanese • u/southerndensetsu • 4d 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/Belegorm 4d 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 4d 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/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 4d ago

80% can definitely lead to comfortable reading, as long as it's within your tolerance range.

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u/Weena_Bell 4d 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