🧭 The Workweek Routine
🔗 Watch my live study sessions and VODs on YouTube
Monday through Friday, your Japanese study is structured into three equal 1 hour blocks:
- ☕ Morning: Reviews + New Cards
- 🎧 Daytime: Passive Listening
- 🌙 Evening: Raw Immersion
This routine is predictable, sustainable, and effective for long term progress.
☕ Morning (1 hour): Reviews + New Cards
Step 1: Make a cup of coffee.
This step is absolutely essential. If you skip it, your Japanese progress may collapse instantly. (Just kidding, but also not really.)
Step 2: Open Anki and clear your daily reviews.
In Anki, enable the setting “Show new cards after reviews”. This ensures you always begin the day by stabilizing what you already learned.
- Strengthens your foundation
- Prevents buildup of forgotten cards
- Keeps the deck manageable
- Prepares your mind for new material
Any review you mark as Again moves to the Relearn queue. A typical relearn cycle is 1 minute, then 10 minutes, then back to the normal review schedule. When reviews are done, Anki moves you to your new cards.
📊 How Many New Cards Per Day
On Monday, take the number of cards you mined on Saturday and divide by 5.
- 100 mined = 20 per day
- 65 mined = 13 per day
- 40 mined = 8 per day
This keeps your workload aligned with your mining output.
📘 How to Handle New Cards
First pass: Mark new cards as “Again”
On the first exposure to a new card, read the sentence, listen to the audio, understand the general meaning, and press Again. This keeps the card in the 1 minute learning loop, which is easier to manage than sending it to a 10 minute delay.
The 1 minute loop
As you go through your new cards, you naturally create a small batch that rotates together. Any failed review cards will also join this loop when their relearn timer expires.
Second pass: Try recall
If the card returns and you do not remember it, flip it, read the sentence again, listen again, and move on. Learning happens across multiple exposures.
The sentence is the anchor
Because your cards come from immersion, rely on the full sentence, context, grammar, and audio.
SRS will handle spacing
Once you press Good, the card moves to its 10 minute step and then enters normal reviews.
📌 Important Note: Deleted New Cards Are Normal
Mortician often deletes many new cards. If you start with 20, you may end with only 10 to 15 added. This is normal. Buried cards usually cause problems later, so deleting them is fine. You will encounter the same vocabulary again and can mine it again when you are ready. The goal is efficient progress, not saving every single card.
🎧 Daytime (1 hour passive): Episode Audio
The daytime block reinforces what you learned last week. You listen to the audio from the previous week’s episode, the one you already mined and learned vocabulary from. The goal is one hour per weekday.
✅ Why Last Week’s Episode Works Best
You already watched it, mined from it, learned its vocabulary, and reviewed those cards for a full week. You actually understand what you are hearing. This makes it very effective passive listening.
🚗 How I Get One Hour
My commute is about 15 minutes each way. I drive four times per day: to work, home for lunch, back to work, and home for the day. Four drives of about 15 minutes equals about 1 hour of listening. I do not listen outside the commute. The commute alone completes the block.
🔁 Repetition Across the Week
The listening stacks naturally:
- Monday: about 3 listens
- Tuesday: about 6
- Wednesday: about 9
- Thursday: about 12
- Friday: about 15 total listens
Hearing an episode about 15 times sounds like a lot, but it works because the audio is familiar, the repetition is spaced, slice of life has clear dialogue, vocabulary reinforcement is huge, and you switch to a new episode every Monday.
🎛 About the Audio File
I use a script that removes only the opening and ending songs. I tried trimming silence and non dialogue sections, but it made the audio feel rushed and unnatural. Now I keep everything except the OP and ED. I have a separate article explaining the script and how to use it.
🎵 Other Listening You Can Do
You can also listen to other Japanese audio if you enjoy it, such as Japanese music, live news, podcasts, YouTube, or radio. These are true passive listening sources and are great for work, the gym, or chores.
They do not replace the main block. The core of the daytime routine is still one hour of the previous week’s episode audio. Everything else is optional bonus exposure.
🌙 Evening (1 hour): Raw Immersion
The evening block is simple. Sit down, relax, and watch raw Japanese content with no English. There is no studying or pressure. Just exposure in a relaxed environment.
🎬 What to Watch
Do not raw watch the anime you are currently mining. You mine it on Saturday, learn its vocabulary during the week, and raw watch it on Sunday. Save it for Sunday.
For weekday evenings, choose something else. Good options include current season anime, shows you enjoy that you are not mining, dramas, movies, Japanese YouTubers, or variety shows.
📺 How to Watch
- No English subtitles
- No Japanese subtitles unless they are baked in
- No pausing
- No rewinding
- No looking anything up
Just let it play. This block is exposure only.
🧠 What to Expect
At first it may feel like noise. That is normal. You do not need to understand. Just watch and let Japanese exist around you. Over time, comprehension improves naturally.
🌱 Why This Block Matters
This block keeps Japanese enjoyable and part of your daily life. It builds comfort with native speed Japanese and reduces overwhelm. It is a no stress environment where you simply watch and enjoy.
📈 Long Term Benefits
With consistent raw immersion, Japanese feels more natural, dialogue becomes less overwhelming, familiar words pop out, and comprehension increases gradually. None of this needs to be forced. Just watch and relax.
🧮 Summary
- ☕ Morning (1 hour): reviews and new cards
- 🎧 Daytime (1 hour): previous week’s episode audio
- 🌙 Evening (1 hour): raw immersion from a non mining series
Repeat this simple routine and your Japanese will grow steadily and reliably.
🔗 Related Posts
Next Up: Sunday: Reinforcement Day
🔗 You can also watch me run this routine live on YouTube
9 to 5 Japanese 