What guidance do you have for when to start "immersion?"

Japanese Language
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Since I’m very early in my studies (I started barely a month or so ago) I’m not bothering with immersion too much, mostly focusing on learning simple grammar and vocab/kanji with WK.

That being said, I still regularly try to “read” native content, be it by launching a videogame in japanese or browsing manga online (ideally games and manga I already know).

I usually can’t read a single sentence without encountering a word or kanji I don’t know, but it’s still fun scanning the text for kanji, words and grammar I do know and since I know what the text is supposed to mean I can try to piece things together.

It’s fun to gauge your progress that way (you can review the same content over and over again, getting more out of it every time) and I find that viewing vocabulary and grammar “in the wild” really helps with memorization, otherwise your brain only learns to answer WK prompts and that’s it.

For instance today I was flicking through the first issue of One Punch Man, understanding barely anything at all (but I already know this manga well, so not too frustrating) and I did encounter some familiar grammar and the word 兄弟 which I’ve just started learning on WK. It’s also good practice for reading kana.

My current objective is to continue that way till I reach about level ~15 in WK (that should mean about 500 kanji and over a thousand vocabulary words) and survey all basic japanese grammar, then I’ll try to read basic manga and actually try to look things up to make sure I understand most of what I’m reading. Now it’s too early I think.

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Hear hear!!

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Update: walked into a Dunkin the other night, and music was playing and I went…“wait, this is in Japanese” and ha! whatever streaming service they were using was displayed on a TV in the corner with the name of the song

空色デイズ

I SQUEALED! I grabbed my partner and was like OMG I CAN READ THAT!!

Tears this time…of joy :face_holding_back_tears:

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I had a go over lunch:

Obviously someone with far more knowledge of Japanese than me would have to do it.

[Edit - Actually, writing this is great practice, so I’ve done 12 pages of shonky Japanese with borrowed images which I’ll proofread and de-copyright-infringe over the weekend]

Simon.

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Sorry I was super busy in real live and could not answer earlier. I don’t really know because I don’t listen to anything audio only right know. Usually I either watch movies, anime or japanese tv. My japanese listening got better after watching the 80th or so movie in japanese. In my case watching videos in japanese is super fun I don’t even need to force myself to do it. I tried JLPT mock tests and every time I would pass the listening part even at the N1 level.

Something funny but it’s impossible for me to watch any japanese content in another language. It feels so wrong.

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That’s because you the secret of “the way of the translator.” They take a simple “I win” to “I’ve shattered your life into 1000 piece, now bow before me.”

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Remember those moments!!! Those are so good for your motivation, particularly if you’ve been having a frustrating time recently.

As for the thread question, I don’t have anything nearly as detail-oriented as some of the responses that have been given, but here’s my two cents:

1.) I do actually agree that watching anime with English subtitles can do something. It may not be a lot, depending on your skills and focus, but it gives you the opportunity to listen for things you know AND to just get your ears accustomed to Japanese pronunciation, rhythm, etc. It won’t be magic, but watching with English subtitles and getting 5% rewards out of it is better than trying to watch without subtitles, getting frustrated or losing interest, and stopping (and getting 0% rewards). The immersion you can do will always do you more good than the immersion that makes you want to quit. (I know in your case its concerns of time and effort rather than quitting, but my general point is that frustration can hurt your efforts worse than using ‘weaker’ immersion.)

2.) Related to the above, finding the type of immersion that works for you is always super important, too, but especially in the sense of finding something that you enjoy doing.

Personally, I don’t do podcasts, because I have trouble focusing on them in the first place and they tend to be topics that just don’t hold my interest. However, I can and will spend money to go see a movie in theaters (I’m currently living in Japan, so that’s automatically No English Subtitles). Do I only understand maybe half the dialogue? When I’m lucky! Do I miss a lot of detail? You bet! But the movie looks cool and the visuals help me to get the broad strokes of the story, and I have fun watching it.

In the same vein, I don’t have much luck with graded readers, for the same reasons (focus and lack of interest). But I have manga that I’ve read in English previously that I’m reading in Japanese now. It’s a lot harder than a graded reader probably would be (because it’s a murder-mystery series rather than a learner-oriented story about colors), and I still don’t know a lot of the vocabulary I come across, but since I’m A) interested and B) have previous knowledge of the story, I can look things up or guess from context as I go along.

3.) Finally…don’t be afraid to wait! Plenty of people have said it so far, so I’m adding another hat to the pile. If you’re feeling like immersion just isn’t helping you yet, you can always keep studying and come back again in the future.

Now, I’d probably recommend trying a few different types of immersion before backtracking (because like I said, finding something that works and is interesting to you is really important imo), but if it’s just not working yet then you can always take a step back. Again, I find that frustration is a worse enemy than ‘weak’ immersion (or no immersion at all). And if you try again later on, you may find that you get one of those great Happy Tears moments – because maybe this time you do understand that phrase, or this vocabulary, and you can see the progress you’ve made!

No matter what, though, good luck and do your 頑張りbest!

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The time to start immersion is when you feel like you’re ready for it.

I started slowly I guess, gradually changing devices to Japanese, playing simple games in Japanese, reading some graded readers and then gradually upping the difficulty when I felt like “yeah, next challenge plz”.

The one thing that I personally didn’t get on with was content aimed at children because… ehhh, no, I’m not a kid and I hate that stuff even in English (your mileage may vary).

Now I’ve kind of got to the point where I can probably tackle anything with a decent level of success. Not saying I’m good at it but I can usually get the job done (often to my own amazement). Managed to ship 12 boxes full of goods and somehow do all of the forms/customs/etc in Japanese this year so yeah, just keep escalating tasks and it’ll happen. Don’t sit still!

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People have already said much of what I would recommend already, but on the subject of watching and subtitles I’ll add in that watching shows I love with Japanese subtitles has been pretty helpful for me! I like it because if I get too lost in what the characters are saying I have the subtitles as a fall-back without leaving the only-Japanese bubble. Most of the time when I watch no-subtitle shows I start getting bogged down by words/phrases I don’t know, and as they build up I get more stressed out. The whole experience is draining, and I get burnt out motivation-wise. With the Japanese subtitles it helps keep me on track, and I can pause and go, “oh, I don’t know that word, but it’s probably a place name based on it’s location in the sentence because I didn’t realize that that に is a particle not part of the word” or “I have never heard that word but it’s said like this with this pitching and this kanji” and I can easily look it up if I want to. It’s always good to start with slice-of-life shows if you’re just starting learning Japanese because it’ll probably not be throwing any way-out-there vocab or grammar at you. don’t try to start with Fullmetal Alchemist like I did…

Also graded readers have always been kinda meh for me, so I struggled a lot with finding resources I actually wanted to read when starting out. Short stories, especially ones for kids, tended to be pretty good, but most of my reading practice that could be considered “immersion” were connected to textbook concepts until I got to a place where I felt comfortable attempting to read Japanese manga (and even then, I stuck to manga on concepts that I knew about - sports manga/anime are great for this).

Best of luck! Remember to have fun with learning, don’t get bogged down too much by the methodology :blush:

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Looks at my 名探偵コナン movies and manga
does a running-for-almost-thirty-years murder mystery series count as slice-of-life
I mean I’ve learned how to say criminal, and scream, and murder, and kidnapping, and victim, and-

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image

(For those who don’t know, this is actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I just explained the joke.)

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I’ll also explain my joke: this is Edogawa Conan (yes like Arthur Conan Doyle) from the EXTREMELY long-running, extremely popular series 名探偵コナン (Meitantei Conan)… Also dressed as Sherlock Holmes.

Would I have an easier time using a different series for practice? Yes. But where’s the fun (murder) in that??

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One thing to add that I just remembered is that youtube is there. There are many short videos in Japanese about the culture, language, food, hobbies, etc. You can watch those with subs, without, whatever. Might be good practice that doesn’t need you to fully immerse yourself.

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This. Effective is more important than efficient – what types of studying are you wiling to grind through? And what types make you feel like this:

For example, there are people on these forums who use (and make) anki decks for popular manga. They memorize all the vocabulary before they start reading, so they don’t have to look anything up.

That sounds like hell to me. I’d much rather dive into the fun content right away and if I have to look up every other word and only understand the gist, hey it’s all part of the puzzle.

That is, apparently, hell for other people. :joy:

IMO it sounds like raw “native” content immersion (in quotes cuz I don’t know if graded readers count as native?) is not gonna help you right now. You’d be better off with a bilingual storybook or a textbook that pairs little stories with grammar notes and vocab lists. (And go watch some subtitled shows and celebrate when you catch that 1 word in a sentence (“neko” that’s a cat, she’s talking about the cat!) without feeling like you need to understand everything.)

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Long-running, you say… Sazae-san might like a word.

名探偵コナン started in January 1994. It doesn’t seem possible to me, but that is almost 29 years ago!

Shockingly, 29 years is actually longer than Sazae-san’s original run (1946 - 1974). The TV series is still running since 1969, though — that record is unlikely to be broken.

コナン starting in 1994 also explains the contents of my kid’s childhood bookshelf (my oldest son is now 32 — note the second shelf from the top):

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It occurs to me that I should probably try to read some of these now!

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Let me know if you do! I’m (very, very, VERY slowly) trying to re-read it in Japanese! It does take me like…45 minutes or so just to get through a chapter :sweat_smile: and I don’t necessarily understand every single bit of dialogue, but I love the series so I’m having fun with it!

I may or may not be trying to familiarize myself with the murder-mystery vocabulary for when the next movie comes out in April…
I also may or may not plan to eventually collect the entire series in Japanese from Bookoff (previous volumes) and Lawson (new volumes)…

I’m totally with you on that! I figure, if it shows up enough in what I want to read that I actually need to look it up…then I’ll be getting some practice with it just by doing the reading! Plus, sometimes I can get something from context or a mix of partial-knowledge and context, which is always ridiculously satisfying. (I realized in the aforementioned reading of 名探偵コナン that I understood 世界的推理小説家 (albeit with furigana for 推理) and that was such a rush. Probably the longest string of kanji in one go that I’ve understood without looking something up.)

But yeah, the studying you have the patience/interest for will always go more smoothly than something ‘ideal’ that bores you out of your skull.
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Shameless plug: I have available frequency lists for the first 12 volumes of Detective Conan, and will add volumes as I work my way through the series. There are no English translations, but you can sort/filter the words based on their frequency if you want to pre-learn the most common words you don’t yet know before you read a volume.

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I mean Conan is a great way to get murder mystery terminology down. I encourage everyone to do it at least once! :smiley:

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I haven’t read the whole thread, so someone else may have mentioned this.

The thing about podcasts, audio-only courses, etc. is that they’re great “background” when you’re actively doing something else. If you have a long driving commute, for instance, or spend a lot of time working with your hands in some way. If it’s “teaching” content, with vocabulary and transcripts and such, great. But even if it’s a native-only Japanese radio program, you’ll still be teaching your ears about rhythm and intonation and such. The use of particles in Japanese means you’ll be able to hear sentence structure, even if the vocabulary is a complete mystery.

Would I devote a lot of time to this sort of thing? No, probably not. (Although this kind of passive immersion is exactly what infants do.) But it’s definitely a low stress way to increase your exposure to Japanese audio.

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I will admit the toughest aspect of listening for me so far is actually hearing those particles. i cant definitely hear the verb conjugations (even if i don’t fully know what they always mean), but knowing if sounds like で or に or と etc are acting as particles or part of the word stems themselves is still kinda beyond me.

The guidance here has been immensely helpful though - for my part, Ive started the following to help jumpstart my audio comprehension:

  • I’m now pulling up lyrics when a jpop song comes up on my spotify

  • Listening to beginner japanese podcasts during my short drive to drop the kids off at school (about 20 minutes total) and playing the “spot the word/particle i recognize” game

  • I’ve even started wading into some anime, watching with english subs with my kids and trying to just listen and check if i got the gist, and then rewatching the episode after they go to bed with japanese subtitles turned on.

  • When I do my bunpro lessons and reviews I play the audio for the sample and review sentences (on SLOW, istg bunpro reads things SO FAST).

I can feel my ears sloooowly getting smarter, but it’s definitely going to be a matter of consistent practice, I can tell. I’m sure it will be more rewarding as I progress further with my vocab and grammar.

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