Dear people of reviewing the Kanji,

For my listening comprehension I try to watch anime,dramas,movies the news, listen to podcast that kind of stuff.

...but somehow it doesnt feel as entertainement... it feels more like ''listen /watch this because its good for your Japanese'' and you do insane stuff like having to schedule entertainement time as if you are planning a corporate meeting.

On top of that since my japanese level is not so high yet, restricts you allot, complex and deep storylines/jokes/information is not so accesable yet. That restriction makes it harder to find the good stuff.

The tragedy of it all is that in the end you dont entertain yourself at all and just overthink and procrastinate (on entertainment, can you even imagine!?).

Same thing with reading japanese , it feels like a study chore to me and I cant seem to decide wether I should count reading japanese as recreation or studying.

Then there is the problem of choice, what is one suposed to pick to read/listen/watch? indeceiciveness brings even more procrastination.

The only thing that I ''right'' in my opinion is SRS havent skipped a day and if I have to believe Anki im progressing decently.

I think I have trouble maintaining my ''non-work/studying'' time.

Somehow the only time I really enjoy Japanese is while im doing something else like commuting or a chore and I listen to a japanese podcast.

Sorry if my post is very confusing, but I wrote this in the hope that someone who kind of reconizes himself in these thoughts could have some kind of advice for me.

Thank you .

I went through a very similar phase, and I believe I just came out of it -

Unfortunately, there are no easy ways out, and I believe it is mainly a question of motivation. Now, I can't say this will work for everyone, but it did for me, so here is what I did :

I bought the two volumes of this novel I REALLY wanted to read (in Japanese, since this particular one hasn't been translated yet) - it helped keeping me motivated ; suddenly, I had a goal, and not just a very abstract notion such as "fluency" or "literacy" , but a concrete, physical goal : I wanted to be good enough to read and enjoy that book from cover to cover.

It might sound a bit stupid, but it really helps having reminders of why you even learn Japanese in the first place close to you.

Regularly, I would come back to it, and I would notice I was understanding more and more of it. I would also (still am, actually) brute force through a few pages every once in a while ; aggressively looking up and learning each and every bit of vocabulary I didn't understand, and reviewing them in Anki too.

Even though I'm still quite a way away from the level I want to reach, my reading skills have gotten much better, to the point where I can now kick back and relax with some Japanese reading materials. You don't need to understand EVERYTHING, just being able to read a few pages, hell, even a few LINES without having to look everything up is a great feeling, one that still keeps me going and going.

Bottom line being, try to find something physical to look forward to, like a game you really want to play in Japanese, or a book, or a manga, or whatever. Then use it to gauge your progresses, brute force through the first few pages, and regularly come back at them - and enjoy the smooth, smooth feeling that comes with reading something you enjoy in an alien script.

Are you watching without subtitles?

With TV/movies - just use English subtitles. People will rave on and on about how terrible they are but they're better than not watching anything at all, and better than watching something but not understanding it at all. If you're watching current weekly anime, you could watch all the complex stuff with subtitles for entertainment and maybe choose a show or two for 'listening practice' without them - a kid's show or slice-of-life is best.

With reading, find stuff that is incredibly easy and never use a dictionary.

I have done what you're doing now. Most of the 'listening practice' you're doing is a waste of time - if you don't have the vocabulary to back it up you're not going to make any progress listening to stuff you don't understand. Reading with a dictionary is study and IMO you're better off sinking the time into Anki until you have the vocabulary base you need to start reading for fun.

That said, there is still probably stuff out there that you can read for entertainment even if your vocabulary is limited. A lot of school life type manga is quite do-able even at a beginner level.

At this stage, I think you should focus on cramming vocab and studying grammar. Get graded readers, and start out with simple texts. You can use native media, but I think the best way to go about this is to use something like Subs2srs, where you can study and make notes.

Yes, I said "study". I'm not of the mindset that decrees that language learning has to be 100% entertainment all of the time. In fact, at the beginning, it is - by necessity - a crapload of hard work. It doesn't begin to get entertaining until you have foundational grammar and at least 5,000 words under your belt, and can start tackling simple stories and TV shows. Abandon the notion that you have to be "entertained", and find some semi-enjoyable method of study that allows you to make serious progress.

I haven't read the thread in detail, so I'm sure some of this has already been said, however, I'll state my experiences.

This is a perfectly normal phase in learning. To get to the meat of it, if you can't enjoy it and get no pleasure from it, set it down and go back to 'normal' studying. At this point, I only recommend picking up a book, watching television, etc. intermittently over weeks and months as a gauge of your progress; if you keep going back to something that was originally completely incomprehensible and find that you understand more and more of it as your studies progress, then it will serve as motivation and also clue you in on when a good time to actually start studying with those media will be.

I tried reading early on, but it was extremely hard to understand anything (everything I understood was gleaned from the pictures and a few words or phrases). Several months later, after increasing my grammar and vocabulary knowledge, I was able to make it through a volume of an easy manga over a few reading sessions. It was hard at first, but it got better as I read more; however, I must note that there is little use in just staring at incomprehensible texts, I only made it through the volume because most of the required knowledge was there or easily accessible (in a dictionary, for instance).

However, because I've done little practice for aural recognition, I still struggle with it (my next stage, perhaps).

My point being, you should prioritize which medium you'd like to understand the most, improve your vocabulary and grammar, and practice the skill(s) required for that medium. Getting a grasp on one skill is better than floundering with multiple skills at the same time (at least, putting equal time and effort into all of them; not saying you can't do a little bit with other stuff to mix things up).

I see Thank you for all your advice, I have a few questions though.
My philosophy to studying is like this: I have splitted into two sections.
The core study section which is standard studying of vocabulary and the language in general. Which has the maximum time of 2 hours.
The other section is basicly everything outside of that time. Everything that I do in japanese in this time is basicly bonus studytime disguised as entertainement. Stuff I read, words I look up, concepts I understand because of the news or something, stuff I see on movies.
It is not a must but its a a welcome extra.

Are you advicing me to let go of that for a while? Or atleast let go of being a Japanese only facist? a relax the tension of it?

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:At this stage, I think you should focus on cramming vocab and studying grammar. Get graded readers, and start out with simple texts. You can use native media, but I think the best way to go about this is to use something like Subs2srs, where you can study and make notes.

Yes, I said "study". I'm not of the mindset that decrees that language learning has to be 100% entertainment all of the time. In fact, at the beginning, it is - by necessity - a crapload of hard work. It doesn't begin to get entertaining until you have foundational grammar and at least 5,000 words under your belt, and can start tackling simple stories and TV shows. Abandon the notion that you have to be "entertained", and find some semi-enjoyable method of study that allows you to make serious progress.

Dear sir/madam, I apreciate your advice but I believe you are making certain assumptions about this topic which might not be true.

I study like 2 hours a day and thats on top of school and other obligations. I have a few precious hours a week where I relax and take a short break from the productivity rush. I thought if I use that time to relax why not have some entertainement. As bonus I filled this time with Japanese entertainement so that I might pick up a few words now and then. It is about this section of my life that this topic is about and not the section of my life where I study (which is what you sir/madam are talking about I assume).

Thank you .

Using an SRS it's possible to exit the "all study and no fun" phase in about two or three months, I think.

I started reading my first novel when I inputted around 2000 sentences in Anki and it went just fine (the book was Norwegian Wood, by Murakami Haruki).
It took me two months to finish, the next book took me a month, now it takes a week, circa.


Nevertheless, even today I have to choose my novels and postpone some interesting essays because I don't have the right vocabulary, yet.
I enjoyed every single day of "fun things in Japanese" but it's a different kind of enjoyment from the one I have in my L1 and I think it will never be the same thing.


Finding interesting material is more difficult in a language you don't master; it's a continuous exercise, and a part of the journey.
At first it's a bit difficult but then you'll get used to it and it will become easier, like a skill you can actually train.


Anyway, what your doing right now (study section + entertainment activities) is the path that leads to understanding.
I'd suggest to continue that way, trying to find what's really fun for you, because I think that if you don't have fun it's not even worth it.

If your entertainment time is causing you to not want to be entertained anymore - then yeah - ditch it. Especially reading, I think - it's easy to get turned off the whole idea of reading stuff by slogging through. It's better just to wait - try again in a few months and see how it goes.

gaiaslastlaugh's assumptions are pretty reasonable - most people making these types of threads are in this position because they've swallowed the immersion pill and think they should be immersed and having fun in Japanese all the time due to a particular website which advocates such things. Everything he's saying is true and relevant anyway.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:At this stage, I think you should focus on cramming vocab and studying grammar. Get graded readers, and start out with simple texts. You can use native media, but I think the best way to go about this is to use something like Subs2srs, where you can study and make notes.

Yes, I said "study". I'm not of the mindset that decrees that language learning has to be 100% entertainment all of the time. In fact, at the beginning, it is - by necessity - a crapload of hard work. It doesn't begin to get entertaining until you have foundational grammar and at least 5,000 words under your belt, and can start tackling simple stories and TV shows. Abandon the notion that you have to be "entertained", and find some semi-enjoyable method of study that allows you to make serious progress.

I've never studied Spanish or Italian in my life. I can understand basic conversation in both languages, just from hearing the two languages in movies and music. I've made no other attempts to familiarize myself with either language.

Of course you can watch entertainment, and listen to music, from the start. And you should. It helps enormously.

And, also pretty obviously, for anything you watch to be entertaining, you have to understand it. So you have to use subtitles.

To the OP: the key to finding entertainment you like is to constantly search for it. If you don't like something, drop it, look for something new. In the case of Japanese, the supply is too diverse for anyone to fail to find what they're looking for.

sunehiro Wrote:Using an SRS it's possible to exit the "all study and no fun" phase in about two or three months, I think.

It's also possible to exit that phase on the first day, as evidenced by the fact that I have done it, not only with Japanese, but every single language I speak, and so have many other people.

The VERY first thing I've done, when I decided to start learning Japanese, was to start searching for good Japanese music to add to my playlist, and for good Japanese movies and TV to watch. I haven't stopped since.

Doctorhabib Wrote:I study like 2 hours a day and thats on top of school and other obligations. I have a few precious hours a week where I relax and take a short break from the productivity rush. I thought if I use that time to relax why not have some entertainement. As bonus I filled this time with Japanese entertainement so that I might pick up a few words now and then. It is about this section of my life that this topic is about and not the section of my life where I study (which is what you sir/madam are talking about I assume).

Thank you .

I apologize if my message came off as disrespectful to you - that wasn't my intent at all. You sound like an incredibly hard worker, and I didn't mean to disparage that. My point was that immersion really isn't helpful(or, as you've noticed, fun) if everything is just flying past your head, and that laying some essential groundwork is necessary.

I see, yes you are correct , just immersion isnt the most efficient way of studying a strong foundation helps a long way. Thank you for your advice, and dont worry about apologizing, I thought you were being degrading or something like that.

I think ill try to balance it out, putting priority on core studying and loosening the tension on secondary immersion and mainly focus on the skill i want to develop most during immersion( as in pick wether I want to improve listening,reading or speaking)

Thank you everyone.

Well I don't know is what your "good" stuff is with
On top of that since my japanese level is not so high yet, restricts you allot, complex and deep storylines/jokes/information is not so accesable yet. That restriction makes it harder to find the good stuff.

But if you can do what I suggest, try it. So watch that with english subtitles and study from it afterwards going through certain scenes that interest you if it's a movie

Stansfield123 Wrote:The VERY first thing I've done, when I decided to start learning Japanese, was to start searching for good Japanese music to add to my playlist, and for good Japanese movies and TV to watch. I haven't stopped since.

Especially with the internet these days...this shouldn't be that hard.

I have a hard time finding new interesting Japanese entertainment that holds my attention too.

If you can find your favorite hollywood movies with Japanese audio, try that. I've watched Forest Gump and Edward Scissor Hands enough times in English already that it's a lot easier for me to understand in Japanese.

If your in Japan there is a series of books with Japanese transcripts of popular American movies for the purpose of helping Japanese study English.

You can search for Japanese blogs on topics your interested in and try your best to understand them with the help of a plugin like rikaichan. Here is a list of travel blogs I've been going through http://travel.blogmura.com/sekaiisshu/.

Start with materials that are intended for children and work your way up. You got to mix it up though and keep searching for new stuff or you will burn out on any single thing eventually.