Japanese 2025 in Review

Discussion post on reddit.

(Long) Video on youtube.

Summary (tl;dr)

In 2025, I spent 1265 hours and 6 minutes doing the following:

Seeing the trend from the last two years (2024 and 2023), where I averaged pretty consistently at ~1700 hours, this year was significantly lower.

However, at the end of last year I had told myself I would limit my content consumption to about 1200 hours, so I could invest some of the extra time on new hobbies and activities. While I ended up going above that limit by about 50 hours (if we do not consider anki), I’d like to believe I managed to stick to a pretty consistent pace as can be seen by this moyase burndown chart.

You can see a more accurate graph breakdown by month and activity by looking at this picture and a total cumulative view from this picture.

As always, I also track all my content consumption activities on my lingotrack account.

A few highlights and comments I want to make about this year as a whole:

• I tried to reduce my Japanese consumption to prioritize other hobbies. I will admit this didn’t work as well as I hoped. I just love spending all my free time on Japanese media and it’s hard to cut back. This said, I did start some cool new projects like the yokubi grammar guide and a new youtube channel.
• I did a manga-volume-a-day reading challenge for the month of July, which is why my manga consumption time went up during that period. I also did a light novel reading challenge (20,000 characters per day) in August and it shows.
• The month of August and November were my most “active” months. August is definitely because of the reading challenge. For November I don’t have a specific reason. I guess I just had some extra time on hand.
• Early in the year I moved into my new house in what some would consider the “countryside”, and since then I’ve been interacting a lot more with both my Japanese family and other local businesses/activities. Having to deal with kindergarten stuff for my kid, talking to teachers every day, interacting with the local neighborhood association, etc. I do not track my output but I can confidently say that compared to last year I’ve been using Japanese way more in my every day life too.

I go in more details about each media type in the following sections, or you can watch my summary youtube video although it’s kinda long.

Manga

Just like in 2024, 2025 also was a relatively slow year for manga. I read most of my manga in burst in July as I did my one volume a day challenge. Throughout the year I also read a bit of shounen jump series (mostly ルリドラゴン and ケントゥリア).

In total, I have read 55 manga volumes (+ a lot of shounen jump).

Some of my favorite series I have read, with no particular order:

• あさドラ！
• MUJINA INTO THE DEEP
• エリオと電気人形
• 魔女と傭兵
• 終の退魔師 ―エンダーガイスター―

Videogames

As usual, videogames are my main media choice of consumption and I really cannot get away from them. As I said last year, I was going to branch out to also some non-Japanese content, and I can say I have thoroughly enjoyed Expedition 33 and Silksong. Both amazing games. But we’re talking about Japanese here so let’s stay on track.

In 2025 I played a total of 14 videogames to completion, with one carry over into 2026 (Octopath Traveler 0).

Since 2023 I have been accurately tracking my currently played games in a spreadsheet and I only try to make myself play one game at a time. This year I am afraid I kinda slipped a bit as I started to play a few games in parallel and that made me drop and stop playing a bunch of them, to much of my shame. Some notable examples: Final Fantasy 13, Dragon Quest 11, Valkyrie Elysium. I just did not enjoy them as much to continue playing them, but I need to be more attentive to the time I dedicate to each of them rather than jump from game to game like I used to do in the past.

This said, back in August I ended up buying a “retro” Xbox One X so I could play some older Xbox 360 RPGs like Lost Odyssey, and I’m looking forward to playing Blue Dragon and Infinite Undiscovery next year.

Likewise, I got nerd sniped into some retro stuff and toward the end of the year I bought an old Dreamcast console. I’ve always been interested in some of the retro JRPGs and VNs on that console and I stocked up with some of my backlog touching games like Sakura Wars, Skies of Arcadia, and a bunch of other games which I hope to tackle next year.

Visual Novels

Continuing the trend from last year, I feel like I have finally grown into the Visual Novel genre as I enjoyed quite a bit of them this year too. I read a total of 5 VNs to completion (I did drop a couple along the way though):

I go in more details on a few of them in my youtube video, but basically I can say I have thoroughly enjoyed most of them, aside from one specific side story in 白昼夢の青写真 which was insanely creepy to the point of almost souring the whole VN for me.

As for the rest, in 2024 I had read EVE: Burst Error and now with a new dreamcast waiting for me, I am planning to pick up some of the other VNs in the same franchise. I already bought EVE: The Lost One on PC which is a fairly controversial “sequel”, and I also got EVE: Zero on Dreamcast which is the prequel. I’m really looking forward to reading them, but that’s a story for next year.

Light Novels / Books

Back in 2024 I had a few novel series that I was in the middle of reading. Majorly the 星界の紋章 and ある魔女が死ぬまで series. In 2025 I finished both, and some more of others. I have read a total of 12 books, and here they are:

• 星界の紋章 2 and 3
• ある魔女が死ぬまで 3 and 4
• Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear volume 21
• レーエンデ国物語
• 火狩りの王 main series (vol 1~4) and side story (vol 5)
• 転生吸血鬼さんはお昼寝がしたい 1 (yeah… we don’t talk about this slop)

Overall I’d say my highlights of the year were the ある魔女が死ぬまで series which I really enjoyed the end, and 星界の紋章 which was… fairly hard but ended on a note that made me want to get into the main sequel 星界の戦旗.

The レーエンデ国物語 book was also very good from the point of view of someone who likes “proper” western-style fantasy series (not isekai). I plan to read the next books in the series too, once I get the time.

Anime

I don’t really have much to say about anime anymore, unfortunately. I have been watching a bunch of stuff here and there, mostly one or two episodes a week during lunch break. I don’t actively look super deep into new anime releases, unless there’s something major coming out. I can say from recent memory I really enjoyed the Ranma 1/2 remake though. That was a very pleasant surprise that brought me back to my childhood. I’m also really looking forward to the new Madoka movie in 2026, but that’s a story for next year.

Plans for 2026 and the future ahead

As I mentioned, I ended 2024 with the idea of trying to hold back my Japanese time so I could dedicate more of my free time to other hobbies.

While I’d say the plan kinda worked, at the same time it made me realize that I would rather not do that and instead continue with more Japanese for 2026, so that’s where I stand right now. I have a fairly extensive backlog of games and novels I want to go through, so I think I will try to tackle that. I need to tackle my Dreamcast and Xbox backlog, while also keep up with new releases too.

This year taught me that it’s okay to also do stuff not in Japanese (like playing Expedition 33) so I might look into exploring new media and non-Japanese stuff, but I won’t force myself to do that via fake guardrails (like “no more than 1200 hours of Japanese” or whatever). I think last year’s challenge was fun and gave me some more strict discipline, but at the same time I can now move on from that.

From a personal project perspective, I want to refine and continue working on my yokubi grammar guide, maybe even introduce more special grammar points that I rarely hear talked about in other resources (We could call it yokuyokubi / 翌々日!) but first I need to finish the main guide.

I also want to work on my Youtube channel more. I’ve been using it as a way to build new skills both in public speaking and video editing because it sounds fun. I have no expectations to become a popular youtuber or even make stuff that people find interesting, necessarily, I just like talking in front of a camera and discuss various things that I am into, like when I write on this site. Ideally I’d like to post a minimum of one video a month, but I can’t make promises. I’d also like to start streaming on twitch more regularly again, ideally Japanese-related or Japanese-teaching related content, but with the way my life is structured now, streaming at home with a family and a young kid is difficult. I have also a couple of “secret” projects that I don’t feel ready to talk about yet. Maybe I’ll get to them next year, maybe not. They hang on a couple of fairly volatile variables in my life so I cannot make promises.

皆さん、今年もよろしくおねがいします