I recently discovered a plugin on chrome that allows me to display two different subtitles on netflix at the same time. So I’ve taken to watching japanese media with japanese audio and japanese+english subtitles. I use the pause key and the skip-back-10-seconds key a lot and I feel consuming media like this is both fun and really enables active studying for extended periods of time.
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sounds really handy! what’s it called? :o
You might also want to try „Language learning with netflix“ on chrome then. You can jump back to the last sentence instead of always having to jump back 10 seconds.
I use that one to show jp subtitles and also subadub to show en subtitles on demand if I need them. That combination is perfect for me.
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It used to be avilable for firefox as well, but right now only the chrome version seems to be working. I had to restart the browser once after installation to get it to work
Echoing what everyone else said, now is the best time. But make it level appropriate. I tried to go for YA manga at N5 and got incredibly discouraged because it took half an hour to read one page. But I also didn’t want to sit around reading Doraemon, so I just didn’t read any Japanese other than the documents I encounter every day at work.
Two years later, somewhere between N3 and N2, I picked up 魔法少女オブジエンド (Magical Girl of the End, super gory, highly recommend) and finished the first volume in three hours. Wanikani deserves 80 percent of the credit for this. Any compound words I didn’t know I could easily look up since Wanikani had taught me the readings, which is far less infuriating than looking up kanji by radicals.
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I don’t have much experience with games, but for reading at work, choose something that’s fun and fairly simple to follow. Don’t try to understanding everything 100%, just get the basic story and keep going.
That said, you’ll probably have to look things up in the dictionary a lot, so here are some tips on making that less annoying:
- If you’re reading stuff on the web, you can copy/paste words into jisho.org
- For printed materials like manga (or I guess for handheld games?), get a good phone app dictionary. I highly recommend Akebi if you’re on Android.
- Look for manga that have furigana (the tiny kana over the kanji) that will help you look up words.
- Also make sure they don’t have characters who speak in a very nonstandard way – slang, regional accent, cwute widdle baby twalk, anything that might involve creative “spelling.” That stuff makes it very difficult to look up words or grammar you don’t recognize.
- Again, don’t get too caught up in understanding every detail, just keep going and enjoy the story.
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They provide different media for different level.
I’m currently reading Atashinchi for manga, and it’s definitely easier than, let’s say Hunter x Hunter. I also played Pokemon in Japanese, and it’s totally easier than Steins;Gate.
You can consume media anytime as long as you find the ones with appropriate level.
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