I'm at a loss for Immersing

Japanese Language
21

Honestly, it looks like you’re doing an amazing job already have extremely high self discipline.

However, I’ve found that sometimes it really just takes time for your brain to have Japanese click. Especially if its your first new language.

When I was focused on learning Korean, it took me til year 5 to even begin to comprehend what I was hearing and around year 7 to comfortably say I could immerse without subtitles and just now, year 9 that I can (mostly) passively comprehend Korean. Now I’m not saying it’s going to take this long for you, especially with such a dedicated schedule as that. But I am saying that sometimes it really just takes a while. So just keep plugging away at it.

I find that language learning is much like riding an elevator, no matter how much you jump and run around inside, it’s going to get to the floor you selected when it gets there. The best you can really do is just to be patient (speeds will absolutely vary person to person).

Now this idea doesn’t really help you feel less terrible in the short term, and unfortunately that’s quite par for the course until you can comprehend without having to think about it. But I find that consuming the content you love goes a long way towards making that feeling bearable. It also enables you to set goals that actually feel meaningful.

Personally I’m currently reading 1 chapter a day of One Piece, it definitely doesn’t sound like a lot but in the past few months since starting, I’ve had to look at the dictionary less and less (around 3-4 words for the whole chapter on average). And that’s great progress with just one chapter a day.

Another big part I found rather late into the journey was not to feel the need to have to translate/check absolutely everything. I know when I started reading (around level 30 as well) I felt like I barely knew any words at all. But after reading consistently daily for almost year now (and certainly not as much as you), I don’t feel that overwhelmed anymore. If you can keep this pace up long term, you’ll certainly get there much faster than me. There isn’t really a penalty to being lenient about checking each word because as you say, it’s your life goal, which implies (at least to me) that you plan to be consuming Japanese content for the rest of your life anyway. So you’re going to get a lifetimes worth of reading, being lenient to keep sane is absolutely fine.

TLDR:
All this to say, your brain will get used to Japanese when it gets used to Japanese, we can only provide it a steady stream of immersion and study, but having it click enough that you can comprehend passive/active listening as easy as your native language just takes time.

22

oh, those heady days. i’m pretty sure i wasted it all playing xenoblade 1…

23

Maybe we need a YouTube thread?

This series is kinda fun, the announcer visits a town and asks locals for food recommendations. She tries a few different spots then picks a favorite.

コレうまの旅

This one is similar but a bit more polished.

おとな旅あるき旅

24

There’s a listening thread and community wiki here that includes youtube if anyone here is interested:

25

I want to add one very minor note here. I usually try not to speak on this to avoid crumbling a balancing act happening over there. But if you’re into gameplay stuff, Twitch is really, really good for immersion for one specific reason.

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You can filter content by main language.

So if you have a game you really like, a scene you’re into, you can very, very easily get the site to show content only in that language for you. Which also means you can very easily find smaller streamers who interact with their entire audience. Most of whom are quite happy to receive foreigners doing their best to speak in the same language as them, passionate about the same games as they are.

This helped a lot for me when I was starting out, moreso than watching say, Hololive or whatever. SF6 had just released when I started studying, and I found a 4 viewer streamer playing the same character at the same rank as me. (Cammy, Plat 2 at the time. We’re both Master now, though I switched over to Juri.)

26

Regarding immersion, the best bridge between learning material and native material is Satori Reader. You can find an appreciation thread here.

Is not only useful for reading because it has a big amount of audio material recorded by professional Japanese voice actors, so it’s great for listening as well.

Alternatively, YouTube is full of friendly Japanese youtubers who create tons of vlogs and video-podcasts for foreigners (the_bitesize_japanese_podcast, DailyJapanese, yuyunihongopodcast,Wasabito.Listening.Japanese just to name a few).

I see you spend 3 hours a day on just SRS. I am not an expert and I believe everyone has their own method, but in my personal opinion that’s a huge amount of time. I would suggest to reduce that time and invest instead more on immersion. My personal routine is usually 1 hour of SRS and a couple of hours of immersion (I work full time so cannot invest more time during weekdays). But again, this is just my personal opinion.

27

I do think you’re right in this category. Recently I believe I’ve been making too many new Anki decks, therefore adding an extra (10 ish) words to my daily routine for every new deck, which maybe hasn’t been my smartest idea :sweat_smile:

Maybe 3 hours was a little bit of an exaggeration, likely closer to 2 hrs 15 to 30mins.
I also think that in my current routine, Wanikani and Bunpro are quite essential for myself, as I wouldn’t know an efficient method to study Kanji and Grammar other than these SRS websites.

However, when I finish Wanikani (still a long ways away), my SRS time will decrease to hopefully about 1 hr 15 mins every day, giving me more time for immersion.

I’ll also have a look at Satori Reader (I’ve known about it for about a year now but have never delved into it), as well as the YouTube recommendations.

Thanks overall for the comment

28

You sound super intense about learning Japanese, and if you can focus that intensity over time I’m sure you’ll learn quickly.

Everyone has given you lots of good advice, but one thing I’d add is that repetition can be very helpful. Listening to the same thing (or reading / watching) five times is more effective than listening to 5 different things once, and listening to the same thing once a day over five days is better still.

Understanding while listening is mostly about recognising the words and grammar constructs being used as they are said (…obviously…) and being primed for them (because you looked them up last time when you didn’t understand) improves your recognition and cements them on subsequent listens.

29

You can try the demo of Wagotabi and Shujinkou. Both Japanese language learning video games on steam!

On YouTube there is Game Gengo who teaches Japanese through video games. Comprehensive Japanese is a channel about Japanese input through listening and they have levels for complete beginner, beginner, intermediate, etc.

Hope this helps!

30

I feel you. I’m there with you — I got to N4 a while ago, having successfully completed Minna no Nihongo book 2 and now I’ve forgotten most of it. I know a lot of kanjis though!

I came upon this video with an exercise I find very interesting. In a nutshell, the author recommends sitting in front of your webcam, telling your own 5 minutes stories, again and again, working on your vocab and sentences between each rep. I will try it.

31

Great thread. I’m in a similar boat. Been studying for a few years by myself using wanikani, bunpro and textbooks. Recently I got an online tutor and I struggle to remember vocabulary when speaking.

It’s tough to admit but it makes sense that I struggle to speak since I haven’t been practicing it. I understand japanese when listening and reading much better than I can speak it.

I haven’t seen anyone suggesting this but I have tried talkpal recently. It’s an AI you can talk with it via chat or speaking. You can have conversations with it and it can simulate phone calls so it feels pretty natural. It also corrects you when you make mistakes so you can look those up afterwards. So far I think it has value.

You are definitely on the right path. I am quite disciplined myself (you have to be so many SRSs right? lol) but you are putting way more time than me. So just keep pushing? :slight_smile:

32

Have you tried listening to music in Japanese? I find that that helps a lot with listening. I listen to Jpop and Disney songs in Japanese.

Video games help me too, but as I’m only level 15 of WaniKani I’ve been sticking to either simple games like Pokemon or games I’ve already played in English. I’ve noted that unless they’re specifically for adults, most modern games, even those rated for teens, tend to have furigana for more complex kanji, as they expect those playing might not yet know those taught in higher grade levels. Most modern console games have voice acting now, too.

33

It feels like 99.5% of words I look up and make flashcards of go straight out the other ear

Read stuff that is controversial (extreme political opinions etc…), 100% you will remember the vocab. At least that worked for me

34

Clearly the issue here is that you didn’t way until level 60 before you started immersing classic

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You seem to be doing fine, already some great advice here, just keep going and you’ll be there before you notice ~

35

That’s such a great idea. Thanks very much for posting, and I’m going to try that too. I’ve mentioned this in other places, but I speak Japanese into CHATGPT to see if it understands what I’m saying, so that’s something I might do in addition to the recording.