I asked an ai bot about learning expectations based on listening times adjusted to the fact that Japanese is much harder to learn for a native English speaker than Spanish would be. Do these milestones sound right?
[spoiler]
Japanese Listening Comprehension Roadmap (Modeled After Dreaming Spanish Framework)
| Hours |
CEFR Equivalent |
Comprehension Level |
What You Can Understand |
| 0-100 |
Pre-A1 |
~15-20% |
Basic greetings, isolated words, visual-supported superbeginner content. Slow, exaggerated speech with heavy gestural context. |
| 100-300 |
A1 |
~20-35% |
Simple daily dialogues, beginner podcasts with visual support (e.g., Comprehensible Japanese Superbeginner). Can follow slow-paced stories with familiar vocabulary. |
| 300-500 |
A2 |
~35-50% |
Routine conversations, common idioms, short narratives without subtitles. Beginner Satori Reader tracks, JapanesePod101 absolute beginner series. |
| 500-750 |
B1 |
~50-70% |
Native-speed news clips (NHK Easy), longer graded stories, most TV series with subtitles. Discussions on familiar topics become accessible. |
| 750-1,200 |
B1-B2 |
~70-85% |
Intermediate podcasts, unscripted conversations, anime with Japanese subtitles. Nuanced grammar recognition, wider vocabulary. Satori Reader intermediate passages. |
| 1,200-1,800 |
B2 |
~85-90% |
Unscripted native content, dramas, podcasts without subtitles. Regional accents and colloquial speech become decipherable. |
| 1,800-2,500 |
C1 |
~90-95% |
Native-speed dramas, complex podcasts, lectures. Abstract topics, humor, and cultural references understood with minimal effort. |
| 2,500-4,000 |
C1-C2 |
~95-98% |
Movies, variety shows, live broadcasts. Near-native comprehension across registers and dialects. Specialized discourse becomes accessible. |
| 4,000-5,000+ |
C2 |
~98-100% |
Any spoken Japanese instantly, including highly specialized domains, rapid speech, and low-context dialogue. Mastery-level listening. |
Key Differences from Spanish Roadmap
Japanese requires significantly more hours than Romance languages for comparable comprehension due to:
| Factor |
Impact on Hours |
| Writing system (kana/kanji) |
+200-400 hours for reading support |
| Grammar complexity (particles, honorifics) |
+10-15% total hours |
| Context-heavy communication style |
+10-20% total hours |
| Limited comprehensible input resources |
Variable (harder to find DS-style content) |
According to language learning community benchmarks, Spanish learners typically reach C2 at ~1,500 hours, while Japanese learners generally require 2-3× more input time (3,000-5,000 hours) to reach equivalent listening fluency.
Recommended Resources by Milestone
Resource Mapping to Hours
Superbeginner (0-150h): Comprehensible Japanese YouTube channels. Beginner (150-400h): Satori Reader beginner, JapanesePod101 Absolute Beginner. Intermediate (400-1,000h): Satori Reader intermediate/advanced, NHK News Web Easy with audio. Advanced (1,000h+): Native podcasts, drama, variety shows, novels with audio. At 1-2 hours/day, reaching C1 takes ~5-7 years.
Important Caveats
- These are aggregate averages—individual variance is substantial depending on prior experience with Japanese or similar languages, quality of input, and study methods.
- The “comprehensible input” principle requires staying slightly below your maximum comfort zone; jumping to native content too early reduces acquisition efficiency.
- Reading ability can accelerate listening progress if you already know kanji/kana, as written support aids initial comprehension.
[/spoiler]
This is not accurate. No one reached C2 in Spanish in 1500 hours. I also do not match anywhere near the hour resource recommendations either. This does not make clear when to read and how much but assumes reading is growing alongside of listening. This output is not really valid. I would recommend checking out Lejkos’ updates (last one found here) to get an idea of what a dreaming spanish approach can get you.
From what I have seen, doubling the hours seems like an accurate general rule, but it is not as simple as 300 spanish hours = 600 japanese hours. The earlier grind seems more like 3:1 instead of 2:1, but near the end of the 3k hours, it starts to look more like DS Level 7. Basically, the pain is frontloaded.
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I’ve been focusing way more on listening input recently. I used Wanikani to level 36 and stopped because it was becoming very time consuming and I was happy being able to read most kanji I came across at that point.
For listening input, I’ve been doing 2-3 hours per day since the last two weeks or so because I feel that was where I was most defecient being primarily a book reader. Hopefully most of the heavy lifting if behind and now it will simply be a grind. I mainly just wanted to get an idea of when I should expect to be at different levels
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From my experience this is way too optimistic, at least on the first half of the journey. Not just from my 1400+ hours experience but from what I see in the community. At least if you follow DreamingSpanish and/or NIJ guidelines and do not do other studies. And if you do other studies, the results are kind of muddied as the “understanding” and “understanding” is not the same.
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When you look at the few people that are honest about their japanese level and the time it took online we see closer to 10k hours. At 5 K is when they have the ability to start really consuming native content with no major issues. This is where you can actually start studying japanese fully in japanese.
If all you want to do is watch content you are done, but if you are talking about mastery of the language you are just getting to where you could start academic japanese at a higher level.
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Right now I’m doing about 2-2.5 hours everyday except Sunday where I do 1 hour. I think I can keep this pace up since I usually do my listening in the mornings when work is less busy.
Im in no hurry to learn Japanese. It’s mainly a hobby. I did do conversation practice for a while and that definitely helped me. Same with with Wanikani. I didn’t like the Wanikani process but it definitely helped me with recognizing kanji and kanji compounds in the wild. I’m willing to give listening practice a long while to work because I’d love to be able to make the language less opaque when I’m just listening in the long run.
I also started using Satori Reader more recently and I’m reading through 聞き耳ラジオ.
I don’t know if reading subtitles while listening helps or hurts progress. But I mainly just listen to Japanese audio but sometimes I will watch it on my tv with Japanese subtitles on if available. I find that I am able to understand a lot more with subtitles.
Bite Size Japanese is still a little out of reach to fully understand even with subtitles. I think I maybe follow 50 or 60 percent of it but sometimes if I’m tired I feel like I only understand 30 or 40 percent.
I can follow a lot of intermediate content on here so long as I have the subtitles on. I’m trying to focus on just listening when I listen during work because that is a skill I want to improve in.
What do mean between the two understandings?
do you really do not know the difference? When you learn the vocabulary the traditional way via memorization, you do not recognise the meaning automatically in the same way as your native language or the language you acquired in a natural way. You hear or read a word in you target language, recognise it, you realize the meaning in your native language and you move on to another part of the sentence. It a bit like hunting for known words. You can turn memorized words in to acquired words by lots of input though, that is what AJATTers typically do.
If you learn the language naturally, you just know what they say or what you read as if it would be your native language.
I will use a description Shan used on the Discord channel replying to discussion about subconsciously or consciously connecting Japanese and English words for which anki is particularly strong… " If you learned all your words that way your Japanese would probably just become English with a different hat on."
Side note: I am not native English speaker, so for me it comes with additional layer of friction.