75 fluent Japanese challenge

It’s a Monday, and I’m not dreading it for a change. Instead, it feels like a fresh start, and I’m excited to see how the upcoming week will go!

More importantly, today is officially the start of my 75 fluent challenge for Japanese.

I’ve heard of the 75 hard before, but I never paid attention to it. After all, it sounded a bit too intense and daunting for me to ever attempt it. But a week ago, I came across an interesting video from Jo, one of my go-to language learning YouTubers:

75 fluent is essentially the 75 hard challenge, but adapted for language learning. It’s created by another content creator named Logan. Here’s the video where she delved into the specifics:

Here’s another useful, more updated video:

Do check out these videos for more context on the challenge.

Rules of 75 fluent

The challenge is pretty straightforward. It consists of 7 daily tasks you need to do for 75 days:

1. 60 minutes of study¹
2. Read 5 pages
3. One podcast episode or YouTube video
4. Journal
5. 5 minutes of speaking
6. Track your study
7. Immerse yourself as much as possible

NOTE

Logan also created the 75-Fluent tracker to streamline the tracking process. I personally won’t be using it because I want some flexibility (the daily tasks on her tracker can’t be edited), but I think it’s a pretty cool resource if you’re doing the challenge as is!

Revised rules of 75 fluent

The original rules of the challenge don’t work for me because I’m not producing anything in Japanese yet. I’m still in the early stages of my study—consuming content, building my vocabulary, and familiarizing myself with grammar points.

So, I decided to tweak the rules to make it work for my needs:

1. 60 minutes of study
2. Read for 10 minutes
3. One podcast episode or YouTube video
4. Renshuu
5. WaniKani
6. Track your study
7. Immerse yourself as much as possible

What I changed

• I’m not advanced enough to read books, so I updated “Read 5 pages” to “Read for 10 minutes”. It makes perfect sense for my situation since I use various apps to read stuff in Japanese.²
• I added “Renshuu” and “WaniKani” because they’re currently my main resources for active study. But since I took a break from Japanese for several weeks, my backlog is still… massive. So, right now, my priority is to just catch up on my reviews. I don’t want to be too strict with myself on how many words or how much time I should study per day.

How I track my progress

I’m using an app called Striving to track my study time across different areas of the challenge.³ Here’s my setup:

Meanwhile, I’m using Loop Habit Tracker to track the tasks I managed to do in a day.

Both apps have premium options, but the free versions are good enough for my use case.

What to expect

I plan to share progress updates every 25 days for accountability:⁴

• Day 25: July 24, 2026 (Friday)
• Day 50: August 18, 2026 (Tuesday)
• Day 75: September 11, 2026 (Friday)

I’ll share screenshots of the data from my apps and reflect on my experience so far. I might also post a write-up at the end of the challenge if I feel like it, but we’ll see how it goes first.

I’m not sure what to expect. It’s my first time doing such a major challenge, and it’s extra intimidating because I took a month or so off from Japanese. But I think this is the perfect opportunity to get back into it.

I know I won’t always hit 60 minutes, especially when I’m out hiking or on my little adventures, but I’ll do my best.

I’m giving myself a lot of flexibility to fail, start over, or update the challenge rules as I see fit.⁵

Anyway, that’s it for now! I’ll see you in 25 days.