How I Passed JLPT N2 Through Oshi-Gaku

Today the results arrived. I passed JLPT N2: 122/180.

No language school, no tutor. Just daily flashcards, grammar drills in anime character voices, and lots of Japanese novels, while working full-time as an engineer.

I call this method 推し學: learning a language through the works and characters you love.

The starting point

Five months ago, my first N2 grammar diagnostic was 57%. Reading was worse. Listening was the only hopeful part: 100% on a five-question listening quiz, probably because years of anime and Japanese songs had trained my ear without me noticing.

I took a three-month introductory course in high school. After that, I was self-taught.

One anime film gave me the reason: Cosmic Princess Kaguya! (超かぐや姫！), an original anime film released for streaming in January 2026. It first took me to its setting, Tachikawa. I returned until I loved the city itself. Tourist phrases stopped being enough. I wanted to talk normally with the owner of my regular place and understand station announcements. I wanted to laugh with friends I met there without translation.

The film pushed me twice: first to Tachikawa, then back to itself as study material.

Based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, it follows Iroha, a high school student who is excellent at academics and sports but says, “I can do a little of everything, but I don’t have one thing I’m good at.” She finds Kaguya, a girl from the moon, and they enter a streamer competition in the virtual space Tsukuyomi. Its administrator is Yachiyo, an AI streamer whose profile says she’s 8,000 years old.

Grammar: the Yachiyo classroom

Grammar was where I took 推し學 furthest. Each rule got a character voice and a mnemonic built from a film scene.

I made a system called ヤチヨ教室, named after one of the three protagonists. The format was simple: a morning lesson using a one-line criterion, a four-choice quiz during the day, then review of mistakes at night.

The main idea was replacing textbook definitions with 判断基準 (handan kijun), one decision criterion for when to use a grammar point. For ～たとたん, instead of memorizing a definition about something sudden happening immediately after an action, I remembered: “ド〜ンーダンパーン: a dramatic collision.” One image, instant judgment.

The novelization is by Naruto Kiriyama and published by Famitsu Bunko. It retells the story from Iroha’s viewpoint and fills in her conflict with her mother. It also shows her feelings for Kaguya and Yachiyo’s past.

I scanned the whole novelization, marked every N2 grammar point, and took the examples directly from it. Textbook example sentences are said by strangers. These were said by Iroha.

うちに got an hourglass because time was running out. The 限り family lived in 限りマンション. For を通じて, there was お通じトンネル.

Across 26 lessons, the scores were uneven: Lesson 1 was 72%, Lesson 2 was 50%, and the review of Lessons 1 through 5 fell to 27% because the early lessons still used my old method. By Lesson 7, I got 70% on the first attempt.

Vocabulary: Anki

30 new cards a day. Every day. I didn’t skip travel, weekends, or days when I was exhausted.

I used a ready-made deck with a 200 review cap. Things sped up once words felt familiar. A lyric or novel phrase helped; so did an expression a friend used on Discord.

Reading

Reading was 49/60, my highest section. Five months earlier, it was my weakest.

I finished the novelization and the short かけ恋 (Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky). I’m still reading 無職転生 (Mushoku Tensei) and 転スラ (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime) because they’re long. I also read fan fiction on Twitter and Japanese conversations with friends on Discord.

None of this felt like studying. It was Japanese I wanted or needed to read, and the exam measured what had accumulated.

The early advice I kept was simple: preserve the flow on the first read. Don’t stop for every word. If I got the gist, I kept going and came back for the details later. It was uncomfortable, but I learned to keep reading with uncertainty. That was exactly what the exam required: no dictionary, limited time, get the main idea right.

Listening

I entered the exam most confident about listening and left least certain about it. The result was 37/60.

Listening had been my best area in every mock exam. But JLPT listening, especially Question 5, integrated comprehension, requires organizing what several people say and choosing the right summary under time pressure. My ear was trained; my test-taking wasn’t.

On 2/22, at my first live stage greeting at Shinjuku Wald 9, my brain stopped after 15 minutes.

On 6/19, at the graduation commemorative event at Tachikawa Cinema City, the stage greeting lasted one hour. I understood roughly 90% and laughed in the right places.

So it did improve.

The gap was exam-format listening. Its question types need separate practice, and that has nothing to do with 推し學.

I just didn’t do it. That’s all.

The scores

Section	Score
Language Knowledge (Vocabulary/Grammar)	36/60
Reading	49/60
Listening	37/60
Total	122/180

Language Knowledge combines vocabulary and grammar. The pass line is 90/180, with at least 19 per section.

The reference grades were vocabulary A / grammar B, as expected. Anki covered vocabulary. Grammar still needs faster reflexes with conjugated forms.

What I actually learned

I never had to force myself to study.

I wanted to finish the novel and understand the lyrics, and I kept talking to people with broken grammar, so vocabulary and grammar came along for the ride.

Grammar drills and flashcards were an extension of those things, one more tool for continuing what I loved.