You have decided to go to Japan on the Specified Skilled Worker route, you need JFT-Basic, and you do not know a word of Japanese. This is what the first thirty days should contain.
The good news first: JFT-Basic is a defined, narrow target. It is A2 — the language of daily life and work — not fluency. That is a far more tractable goal than “learn Japanese”, and thousands of people reach it from zero every year.
Days 1–14: kana, and almost nothing else
Hiragana, then katakana, to instant recognition.
Not “I can work it out in a second”. Instant, like reading letters in your own alphabet. Two weeks of focused work gets most people there.
This is the single most skipped step and the most regretted. Reading speed caps your score in three of the four sections, and everything you study afterwards is slowed by kana you have to decode. Learners who rush this spend the following three months paying interest on it.
Do it with a simple app or paper cards, twenty minutes twice a day, writing them out by hand while you learn to read them — writing helps the recognition even though you will never write on the exam.
See learning hiragana and learning katakana.
Days 15–30: first words, first sentences, first listening
Now three things run in parallel, every day.
Twenty words a day, with spaced repetition. Not fifty. Twenty, plus review of everything you have seen before. Weight them towards the exam’s world:
- Numbers, times, days, dates, counters — these decide more questions than anything else
- Everyday verbs: いきます, きます, たべます, かいます, みます, ききます
- Places: えき, みせ, びょういん, かいしゃ, へや
- Adjective pairs: たかい/やすい, おおきい/ちいさい, ちかい/とおい
Basic sentence shape. は, を, に, で, and the ます-form. Enough to understand “I go to the station at nine o’clock” when you meet it.
Twenty minutes of listening, every single day, starting now. You will understand almost none of it. Do it anyway. Listening is a processing speed rather than a body of knowledge, it improves on a timescale of months, and it is the one thing that cannot be rescued at the end. Starting it in week three rather than week ten is worth more than any other decision in this article.
The two mistakes beginners make
Learning to write kanji. It feels like real study and it is the wrong skill. JFT-Basic is multiple choice on a computer — you never produce a character. Recognition only, and not much of it. See how much kanji you need.
Postponing listening. Because progress is invisible week to week, it is the easiest thing to defer and the only thing that punishes deferral absolutely. Twenty minutes daily from now.
What the first month is not for
Not for booking a test date. You do not yet know how fast you learn, and a date booked in optimism is a fee paid for information.
Not for buying much. Kana costs nothing. A spaced-repetition app is free. Our free practice test is free and explains every answer in your own language. Free resources covers what is honestly worth using.
Where this is going
From a genuine standing start, plan on three to six months at eight to twelve hours a week. The three-month plan sets out the fast version, month by month.
At the end of month one, take a full practice test even though you are not ready. It will score badly and that is not the point — it shows you the shape of the thing you are aiming at, and everything you study afterwards makes more sense for having seen it.