Advise on Japanese to Japanese studying?

[TheSokka]

It’s nice that I can memorize some vocabs, however I don’t think I am fast enough since I sorta use my English drawer occasionally. I’m try a affectively flip that switch over to Japanese. Tips and guidance would be fantastic

[Pizh]

You mean you want to learn Japanese in all Japanese? What is the level of your Japanese knowledge?

If you are just started to learn Japanese and have an idea that learning Japanese in all Japanese context like how a new born baby learn a langauge. I think you actually could do that but it would be a really long and difficult process. It took them a decade to be able to read and write properly.

It would be counter intuitive to open a dictionary every 5 seconds when you are learning something. I’ve tried that before when I tried to decipher and reading VN over a year ago. I almost didn’t learn anything. Even worst, whatever I learn doesn’t stick in my long term memory. It’s almost like I re learning everything again right now lol.

You could try this method I think it definitely work if you have time and dedication to do it.

Refold

[Wanumu]

(I have no experience with learning Japanese in Japanese btw)
I think it’ll come naturally over time as you get used to viewing more and more content in Japanese rather than your native language and for certain words, they just aren’t going to make sense in either of the two or will be too useless to learn legitamately. Visual pictures could help you out when you need a guide without switching back to English.

[Jonapedia]

You need to have enough basic Japanese knowledge in order to be able to learn Japanese purely through Japanese effectively. Otherwise, even if it’s possible to learn without using any other language to help you, it’s a lot slower, because you’ll take forever to understand things. As mentioned above, this is something that comes naturally over time. However, you can start the process earlier for sure.

The main things you’ll have to do in order to switch over to learning purely in your target language are:

1. Start using a monolingual dictionary as much as possible (for Japanese, the ones on Kotobank, Goo and Weblio are good examples)
2. Immerse yourself in native material that makes sense to you (i.e. try to pick something on a topic you care about, and in which the language used isn’t too difficult – understanding about 60% is probably a good guideline)
3. Start looking for links between words within your target language so you no longer need mnemonics in other languages to pick things up
4. Look out for materials that allow you to understand at least some of what’s going on without translation (for example, you can try this site, which illustrates common Japanese ideas with pictures: http://www.edewakaru.com)

In the meantime though, before you reach the point where learning Japanese purely through Japanese is possible, you may want to rely on other resources, including detailed English-Japanese dictionaries. I think the best free one is https://ejje.weblio.jp (Better than Jisho in my opinion, aside from the fact that Jisho has WK levels for words, and Weblio’s EJJE doesn’t.)

Ultimately, it’s certainly good to aim to be able to understand a new language without needing to translate anything into your native language, and that’s certainly the ultimate goal of any sort of language learning, but I’d just like to caution you about the fact that it can be faster to learn a new language using translations and explanations in English (or your native language) at first. Learning purely in the target language is definitely going to be more efficient in later stages, and is more effective for getting the exact meaning of new words down, but it may not be the fastest way to do things in the beginning.