I am still a complete beginner, i’ve finished learning hiragana and katakana and i am level 3 in WK. I recently stumbled across a youtube video from a relatively small channel and he said that you need to immerse yourself in japanese for multiple hours a day to actually learn japanese because that’s also the way we acquire our native language as children. And i noticed that thats also the way i acquired english. I live in germany and we have english lessons since 3rd grade and back then i didn’t pay attention to the english classes at all, up until 5th grade. I learnt all the basic grammar and really basic vocabulary in school and i would watch many youtube videos in english every day. At first i could only understand the most important keywords and ignored the rest, but after 2 years or so i started understanding whole sentences just out of context and i acquired all the grammar in english that way. I always forget all the grammar rules in english, but that doesn’t really matter since i get most of the grammar correct anyways. And i wonder if i should approach japanese the same way. My plan is to go through genki 1 and maybe 2 and learn a bit of vocab and kanji with WK and then just immerse myself by reading manga and playing videogames in japanese and hopefully at the end acquire all this japanese vocab passively. Does that sound like a good plan?
That’s indeed how most people do immersion. It does work, though learning vocabulary on the side would speed up the process a lot, just because that’s a much more intensive study method.
I wouldn’t personally recommend starting with games. Unless you pick up a visual novel, they might just be pretty light on text, and even with visual novels, looking up words is way more involved. Instead just sticking to manga for a while and adding anime/youtube a bit later on would probably be a less frustrating experience.
Do you have any idea when i should start immersing myself and read light novels and manga? And is the WaniKani vocabulary sufficient for that?
As early as possible is the best. At least you certainly shouldn’t wait until you finish WaniKani to do so. If you know fewer words and/or fewer grammar patterns, obviously it will be harder, but it will always be quite painful to start.
You can try joining the Absolute Beginner Book Club. The next book starts in early September, which isn’t very far, but could try it.
If starting from the very beginning and wanting to use reading as the main path of immersion, take a look at the “tadoku” method of reading. The site linked below explains the method.
Also, under the Materials section of the navigation menu there’s a link to free online materials. You can start at level 0 even only having learned hirgana and katakana. The kanji builds up as the level increases.
Mhmm, looks interesting. But i think that i should at least build up some basic grammar knowledge first
Well, a good way to immerse in language is to start listening to podcasts. I highly recommend
I also second @potatonaught さん’s recommendation of tadoku.
There’s also a great resource called
It’s not free, but it is the easiest way to get into starting reading Japanese, so you might want to try it.
Anyway, your plan does sound quite good to me… Best of luck with your studies! 
You’re the perfect target for this video I watched yesterday, where this little penguin explains his immersion methods and what worked for him. There’s a list of helpful resources in the video description.
Tagging @IkeaTableKolvek さん、because penguin 
That‘s the Video i was referring to. It‘s the reason why i created this thread. But he doesn‘t explain what kanji to learn beforehand
That is essentially the opposite of immersion…
If you start from the level zero books you will pick up basic grammar as you go. There’s no harm in learning grammar and vocabulary as well, especially as immersion is going to be quite tiring. Once you reach the limit of what you can focus on in Japanese, watching / reading explanations of Japanese in a language you already understand is also useful.
There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to comprehensible input from the absolute beginner level upwards, like: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPdNX2arS9Mb1iiA0xHkxj3KVwssHQxYP&si=r_n0Cj-o00-qT2vS
For immersion it’s usually recommended that you learn at least the basics through a textbook or other resource. It would take probably hundreds of hours essentially listening to nonsense for an average adult to pick up on enough to understand anything, if it happens at all. And most wouldn’t want to pay attention to that for that long.
Which textbook should i use. I heard that genki is a good one, but it takes 12 days or so for delivery. I’ve also heard good things about Tae Kim’s grammar guide. And are these Genki yt videos worth watching?
I think, assuming you’ve learned the kanas, you could cover the basics of Japanese on a sheet of paper, or maybe go over them in one 20 minute YouTube video. With that you’d be more than qualified for a grade 0 reader, or an absolute beginner comprehensible input video.
I’m not saying you can just jump into ねじまき鳥クロニクル and hope for the best, but you don’t need to do very much at all to start the immersion process. And as I said, because the amount of time you can spend doing it is limited (your brain can only take so much), it leaves plenty of time for other study anyway,
Early on you don’t really need to learn any kanji, because furigana will always be present, so you can read the furigana above the kanji and then easily look up the meaning in a dictionary if you can’t work it out with context. If you’re accessing resources aimed at young children, often there won’t be any kanji.
As other people have suggested in this thread, check out Tadoku. You can get stuck in with just kana.
My personal method is consuming as many sources as possible. Youtube videos, textbooks, whatever. The more you read, the more likely that you find the explanation that just sticks.
Tae kim’s guide is great. It is sometimes controversial, how some grammar is explained, but honestly, it’s fine.
“How should I immerse, which textbook should I use?” is certainly a novel approach.
Genki always seemed to me to be the basis text of classroom teaching, and from what I’ve seen the video series provides the classroom bits that it’s designed for. Only watched a very small amount though so I could be completely wrong.
Tai Kim is… completionist grammar listing. If there is a bit of grammar you want more explanation of and you can find it in Tai Kim, then it will be helpful. I’m not sure it’s worth more than skimming outside of that. I wouldn’t try and study from it.
I found it helpful to start with easy stuff, like books for children, and then steadily increase. Manga seemed not that easy when I started reading books. (But sure some are easier than others, but I felt like there was sometimes more casual speech, which I found somewhat difficult first.)
I didn’t a pure immersion though, but learnt with text book, learnt vocabulary through Anki and Wanikani. I also tend to look up words with Yomitan. Not sure if immersion works better without looking up or not. (I think it can take away from thinking about what a sentence could mean. Like one could maybe figure it out through context. Not sure, I just know I didn’t actually look up words for English and it somehow worked with understanding more and more. Some also suggest to use a monolingual dictionary instead of a bilingual one. With that, you see explanation of words and stay within the language you learn.)
I learned Japanese grammar today for about 7 hours since i had nothing to do and it really cleared up things for me, now all these sentences aren’t just gibberish anymore and actually make sense. I was listening to a spotify podcast called “Learn Japanese with Misa sensei” and i read a whole lot of pages in Tae Kim’s grammar guide and the most important thing: i also practiced everything by building my own simple sentences
thanks! it’s a very nice penguin, educational too. approved