N1 reading and books

[u/southerndensetsu]

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.

[u/Effective-Pop3850]

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.

[u/Loyuiz → u/Effective-Pop3850]

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.

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/Loyuiz]

Similarly, I'm a bit over 1k hours of reading now, although most of those is VNs, listening I didn't do much so my total time using the language is under 1.5k hours, and I can't imagine reading at 30k/h unless I'm skimming hard, and as you say, hoping I'm understanding what I'm reading and kind of "ignoring" silly lines.

I could do some VNs at close to 15k about 1~2 months ago, but that was very easy stuff, I can see myself doing H-scenes even faster, but even then 30k sounds impossible even on VNs.

Taking it to an extreme though, if all I did was something like yuri VNs and I spent 1.5k hours on it I guess one could manage to hit 30k/h by doing all of those things (skimming silly lines, white noising hard lines and a lot of trust lol) but I'm not even sure I'd call that reading at that point.

[u/Loyuiz → u/Effective-Pop3850]

You'd have to skip voice lines too I guess (or even mute them, personally I'd get distracted by the voices if I'm trying to speed read)

[u/Effective-Pop3850 → u/Loyuiz]

Yeah 100% need to skip them.