I bent a valve when hitting neutral many moons ago, since then I've always done 2 things, reversed the gear linkage (1 up 5 down) and more importantly, short shifted out of first asap.
1 up 5 down takes a little getting used to but you get a better shift up the box and down doesn't really matter as you don't bang the throttle wide open every time you select the next gear
Unfortunately reversing the linkage would take a little work on the Fazer but its not impossible