madojapan

6 things I'm doing to learn Japanese without a tutor

N2, four months out from an art university entrance exam in Tokyo, written down mid-process so you can watch whether it works.

I’m N2. In December I sit the entrance exam for an art university in Tokyo, entirely in Japanese. I have never written a Japanese composition in my life.

This isn’t a method that’s been proven on anyone. It’s what I’m actually doing, written down while I’m still in the middle of it, so you can watch whether it works.

01 · Input daily. Output weekly. Minimum.

Most self-learners only consume anime, textbooks and apps, and then can’t produce a sentence when it matters. Understanding and producing are separate skills, and one does not become the other on its own.

Why this is first: it’s the mistake I made for years. I could read comfortably and still froze when I had to write something down.

The input/output loop Input feeds output, and output reveals the gaps that send you back to input. Most self-learners only ever run the input half, reading and listening, and never close the loop by producing something. understanding INPUT reading, listening · daily OUTPUT writing, speaking · weekly producing the half most people never close

02 · Learn kanji through radicals, not strokes

語 isn’t fourteen arbitrary lines. It’s 言 (speech) + 五 + 口 (mouth). Around fifty radicals will decompose most kanji you meet into three or four parts you already know.

語result=言speech+五five+口mouth
休result=亻person+木tree

Then build a story from the parts. 休 is 亻 (person) + 木 (tree), a person resting against a tree. Sillier sticks better, and the ones you invent yourself stick best, because inventing them is what encodes it.

03 · Mine sentences. Don’t memorise word lists.

Take words from things you’re actually reading or watching, and keep the whole sentence around them, not the isolated word.

The reason: an isolated word gives you a definition. A sentence gives you the shape it appears in, which is the thing you need when you’re the one writing.

04 · Cap Anki at 20 new cards a day

The failure mode of spaced repetition isn’t forgetting. It’s opening the app to four hundred reviews, closing it, and never going back.

Small and permanent beats ambitious and abandoned. Twenty a day is seven thousand cards a year, which is more than you need.

Where the cards come from: I don't hand-pick every word. I feed Claude whatever I'm actually reading (a manga page, a news article, a draft of my own composition) and ask for a vocab list and a grammar list out of it. It does the boring part. I still have to sit with each card until it sticks.

What one card looks like

That one is live. Flip it. It is the same card the practice deck serves, minus the rating buttons.

An example list, generated the same way

Five words and three grammar points Claude pulled from a page I was reading. This is illustrative, not part of the site's real vocab.

覚悟かくごmental readiness, being resigned to something hard
妥協だきょうcompromise, settling for less than you wanted
見逃すみのがすto overlook, to let something slide
実感じっかんa felt, tangible realisation rather than just knowing something abstractly
手間てまthe effort and time something costs to do properly
〜わけにはいかないcannot possibly ~: a social or moral obligation rules it out
〜ざるを得ないhave no choice but to ~, cannot help but ~
〜かねないmight well ~: used for a risk of something bad happening
Twenty cards a day versus the four hundred card cliff A steady twenty new cards a day stays open. Letting reviews pile up toward four hundred is the point most people close the app and never come back. Twenty a day is about 7,300 cards a year, more than most learners need. TWENTY A DAY day 1 day 2 day 3 ··· stays open let them pile up instead 7,300 cards a year at 20 a day 400 app closes for good

05 · Speak before you’re ready

Everyone waits until they’re good enough. There is no such point. The readiness comes from the speaking, not before it.

Free options exist: HelloTalk, language exchange apps, Discord servers. None of them cost anything, and all of them are uncomfortable for about two sessions.

HelloTalk specifically is what moved the needle for me. Daily voice messages back and forth with native speakers, corrected in real time. That’s the closest thing to a tutor I have right now, and it’s free.

06 · Track something you can count

Days studied. Compositions written. Cards reviewed. Pick one and make it visible.

Motivation is unreliable and it will leave you somewhere around week six. A number you can see doesn’t.

The plan itself is another thing I hand to Claude. I give it the exam date, how many hours I actually have, and what I am weakest at, and it comes back with a week I can tick off. Below is a real one.

A week, generated

Mon20 new cards + one news article20
Tue20 new cards + mine 5 sentences25
WedReviews only · no new cards0
Thu20 new cards + HelloTalk voice message20
Fri20 new cards + mine 5 sentences25
SatWrite one 300-character composition1
SunReviews only · no new cards0

Two rest days are in there on purpose. A plan with no slack is a plan you abandon in week three.

And the thing I actually count

One square per day studied. Not hours, not cards. Just whether I showed up.

24 of 28 days · 4 missed, and the month still counts

One thing this list can’t do

Everything above, you can do alone. There’s one thing you can’t: see your own mistakes.

You cannot reliably find your own errors in a language you’re still learning, which means it’s entirely possible to practise the same wrong thing ninety times and get faster at being wrong. At some point you need another pair of eyes on your output. A language exchange partner will do it for free.

I’m doing all six of these right now, four months out from an exam I might not pass. You’ll see the scores either way.

All lessons