SOS Immersion Advice with stats

WaniKani Tips & Tricks
1

Konichiwa my tomodatchis!

On June 11th, 2023 I started studying Japanese after watching a video of Livakivi. I was impressed and took a liking to studying a new language. I started with Duolingo and transitioned to an Anki Core 2k/6k Deck. I hit an insane Anki and WaniKani Burnout got to Lv.15 on another account back in August 2024 In which i took 8 weeks off. I restarted my entire journey with both Applications. However based off ChatGpt, my statistics for both anki and wanikani are around 500hrs total.

Anki 2k/6k Deck = 240ish hours

WaniKani Level: 14

Typical Level-up: 19 days, 6 hours, 37 minutes

Time on Level: 8 days, 15 hours, 52 minutes

Level-up In: 10 days, 14 hours, 45 minutes

Start Date: 2024-10-30 (346 days ago)

Items Learned (Guru+): 277部首 473漢字 1434単語

Accuracy

Reading Meaning Total

Total Reviews: 21936 24673 46609

Correct: 20145 22969 43114

Incorrect: 1791 1704 3495

Accuracy: 91.84% 93.09% 92.50%

Radicals: — 94.53% 94.53%

Kanji: 90.45% 92.73% 91.58%

Vocabulary: 92.31% 92.99% 92.65%

With all this being said how the heck does one sit down and IMMERSE. Like for real it aint rocket science but I need to know what yall do. I got only 15 random hours in 2025 watching Anime with Japanese subs and I can only get 20% of most sentences i think. Am I supposed to just watch 1000hrs and continue wanikani and anki and eventually it will click? All advice GOOD AND BAD along with Constructive criticism is WELCOMED. imma sucker for the truth lol so if u get tilted lemme know :zany_face:

3 Likes
2

You can join the book clubs here on the forums to learn to read.

Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now Reading: My Love Story!

I also recommend reading this post about what reading is like as a beginner:

Joining the Absolute Beginner Book Club: Preparation and First Reading Experience Expectations

Basically, start reading stuff and looking up the words. All the vocabulary decks in the world won’t fix that it’ll be hard at first to engage with native Japanese content.

5 Likes
3

This is the kind of advice that you’ll actually see recommended here and there, and it should be avoided at all costs.

I highly recommend reading through Refold’s simple guide to learning a language:

Read through at least Step 2A of the simple guide (“Immersion Guide”, “Reading”, and “Measuring Comprehension”).

Then switch over to the detailed guide and re-read the section that sound closest to where you are now and the next section after that.

They also have a page specific to Japanese, but I haven’t read through it.

Note: You might get ads pushing to subscribe to Refold. You can read the guides I mentioned without signing up. The Japanese guide may include links to subscription resources, but you don’t need these.

After you’ve read through Step 2A, consider joining the Absolute Beginner Book Club, via the link @soggyboy provided.

4 Likes
4

I think you’re going at a good pace. I wouldn’t stress out too much about it. For immersion I do a variety things — watch anime, yes; but also listen to podcasts, watch youtube, listen to music, read manga and books. Basically, do what you normally do but in Japanese. For example, I switched to following a Japanese yoga instructor on youtube for my morning stretches. That’s the beauty of the internet age.

1 Like
5

My advice on immersion is that you need to differentiate between passive immersion and active immersion.

Passive immersion would be like watching anime or listening to a podcast while basically not really understanding anything and hoping that just by continuing to do this you will magically understand it eventually.

Active immersion would be the most meticulous and hard working one. You basically also do things like read, watch shows, etc. But you use tools or resources to translate and breakdown absolutely everything piece by piece so that you understand exactly what you just read/heard and then you continue to the next part. This starts off really slow and can be tedious and probably boring, but over time you end up seeing the same words and grammar over and over again that it begins to become more recognizable and embedded into your brain. You also begin to read things and watch things faster over time, so it becomes more enjoyable and less like work.

I think that when the word “Immersion” is used, it’s most often assumed to be the passive kind. Where you think about just having fun and watching TV to magically learn the language. Or just going to live in Japan where hearing random people speak it around you just magically makes you understand it.

If you want to get started right now on it, I’d recommend to choose something you’re interested in, like a certain book, or show, or game, or whatever. And just slowly start one line at a time. Use something like ChatGPT or a dictionary/textbook if you prefer, and begin translating and breaking down everything piece by piece. You will learn tons of words, tons of grammar, and most important of all, you will see all of it in CONTEXT, which will probably make it easier to understand and apply.

Maybe the first time you do this it will take you 2 hours to read one page of manga or something. But then in 2 weeks you will read 2-4 in 2 hours, and so on. The advantage of something like Wanikani is that it saves you time looking up every word if you already know it, and having done some grammar from a textbook might also save you time having to figure it out every sentence. So these tools can make your active immersion more efficient and let you get through more content faster.

I’d say start trying it now. You don’t really need a prerequisite to start doing it. It might just be slow if you don’t already know many words or grammar, but you can learn all of that anyway by doing it. It just takes a lot of patience and determination and some people might find that it makes something that they want to be fun, like watching anime, and turns it into very busy work and not as fun as they thought.

3 Likes