I'm very curious about what fellow Japanese learners are doing to create a Japanese immersion environment at home, etc; especially those in the beginner/early intermediate stage. Personally, here's what I've been doing:

-Anki with sentences and RTK in one file, 20 new per day + review.
-My DS only has Japanese games on it, which I usually play at night after work.
-My MP3 player only has Japanese on it, which I listen to mostly walking before work.
-At home, I try to always have a Japanese anime/movie/podcast going on.
-I've been trying to read sites of interest in Japanese (gaming, etc.) but am finding it a bit difficult since even on kids sites, I don't know a lot of words. I feel this is where I need the most improvement. But maybe my skills aren't there yet?

My computer, iPhone, DS and all common websites (youtube, hotmail, facebook) I visit, all the programs on my computer I use are in Japanese.

I did actually have a mix of English and Japanese music but due to a crash I lost virtually all of it and since getting stuff back I've only got Japanese stuff.

All the games I play are in Japanese. Working through FF8 atm after that onto FF3 then maybe Crisis Core. I like to play those visual novel/dating sim games of anime that i've seen cos they're somehow enjoyable and involve LOTS of reading.

Often listen to Podcasts, mainly stuff from TBS radio.

I usually watch about 2hrs of shows a day. Just made my way through My Girl and Ohitorisama. Currently watching School Rumble (3rd? 4th? time) and have True Tears (loved it the first time) Kanon 2006 and Clannad all lined up to watch.

I usually waste lots of time doing something I can't quite put my finger or (else i'd stop doing it). Whatever that is, it's not in Japanese.

Then there's specific study time for things like KanKen.

I have my homepage set to a yahoo kids news so when a new news article pops up (like every 3 days???) I always have a read of it and learn a thing or two. Considering switching this to a major news site on sheer volume of information/choice every single day. For now it's a nice way to break me in to reading news.

Overall atm most of my study time is passive but i'm putting an average of 25 - 30 new vocab words into my SRS every day. I'm more than happy with 25 new words a day through pure coasting if you ask me. I'd like to up that to approx. 50 but it feels like effort to force myself.

Terrible. I rarely watch/listen to anything Japanese and I hardly goto any Japanese websites. The only thing I really do is my reviews to read/listen. I'm so ashamed.

However, I'm hoping to get a DS or an iPod so I can load a lot of Jmusic/podcast/audio rips and just have hours of stuff to listen to.

I don't have any. I quickly noticed that it completely drained my energy to force myself like that, I study Japanese for fun, it's not a full time job. When I lived in Japan, I had it around me all the time and that was more than enough, I couldn't stand forcing myself to do the same in Sweden. I use Japanese when it's needed, as in when I'm reading a Japanese novel, watching a Japanese anime or reading on a Japanese website. This happens quite seldom. I use it everyday when conversing with my girlfriend though.

The only Japanese I force myself to do everyday is my anki reviews.

Since it's holidays and everyone is off. I usually try to fill my day(70%) of it in japanese if possible. When school comes around i'd say 50%. Because 50% in school for half of the day and 50% at home I can usual just keep it on all the time, even when doing my school work,etc,etc. I remeber a while back I was listening to japanese one day around 90% of the day. And when I went to sleep I was dreaming in japanese and in the dream I was talking in japanese lol. It was soo weird. Because usually I don't dream in japanese. But creating an immersion enviorment if vital if you wish to obtain fluency. Solely because you're brain makes connections to what's being heard and what's being seen in you're SRS. Plus it's a natural effect that you're japanese will get better if you keep listening to japanese. SRSing by itself is effective in memorizing, but with immersion+SRS can create a whole new level of Japanese. What i mean by "whole new level" i'm refering to obtaining japanese in the natural sense. It'll force you to think in japanese which i'm sure everyone wants.

I don't really have an immersion environment. I study using my SRS about 2-3 hours a day, but other than that, it just depends on my mood. Sometimes I'll go through periods where all I'll do is watch Japanese doramas or play Japanese video games; other times I just do my reviews and learn new vocabulary and that's it. I can't do my job while listening to Japanese (it's too distracting), so I don't have much opportunity to create an immersion environment as it is. On the other hand, on the weekends I'll spend the entire day studying Japanese, except on the rare occasions that I feel like having a life.

ta12121 Wrote:I remeber a while back I was listening to japanese one day around 90% of the day. And when I went to sleep I was dreaming in japanese and in the dream I was talking in japanese lol. It was soo weird. Because usually I don't dream in japanese.

I read before that dreaming in a foreign language is a sign of developing fluency, but every dream I've had in Japanese that I can recall has made absolutely no sense. Like, 「猫な顔に踊ってるそばをついてますよ！！」 type stuff. In fact, most of the dreams I have in Japanese are after a long day of studying. Usually they are nightmares. Hopefully your dreams are more pleasant (and make better sense).

As soon as I wake up (it's the holidays now, so that ends up being in the early afternoon) my penfriend's online so I talk to her in Japanese for half the time for a few hours. Then I watch whatever anime I have to watch then do 2-3 hours total of maintenance RTK reviews, sentence reviews, and 50 new sentences a day from core6000. By this time it's already dark outside and I still have my maths to do so I end up working till around midnight and then I might play games a little.

I tried doing 100 new sentences a day before but 4 hours a day of sentence practice is not something I'd enjoy.

@mirina
"I read before that dreaming in a foreign language is a sign of developing fluency, but every dream I've had in Japanese that I can recall has made absolutely no sense. Like, 「猫な顔に踊ってるそばをついてますよ！！」 type stuff. In fact, most of the dreams I have in Japanese are after a long day of studying. Usually they are nightmares. Hopefully your dreams are more pleasant (and make better sense)."

That's interesting to hear. I never heard that before. I can't say I'm fluent as I'm not! I don't think I'm there even. I'm intermediate level at best. But I think when it comes to dreams and such+immersion. I think i may gaining Japanese fluency in the natural sense. My japanese-related dreams were pleasant. Recent dream I had were that like, people were talking about there age and stuff. And i stated mines and they keep correcting me saying there own ages for some reason lol. It was soo weird but I did understand what they were saying. The dream was more about speech than kanji. I did have a dream were majority of the text was all in kanji. But my recent one was just playing talking about there ages. I was speaking full-blown japanese. But I was understanding everything they said. But yea i agree with you that, most of the dreams that I have in japanese are always after a day of listening to it sooo much+seeing it so much in a day.

This thread you may find useful as it talks about what people did to set up their "environment".

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2793

The search keyword was "environment" which also brought up this thread talking about being resistant to setting up one

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=2793

For myself, it's iPod, carry around some dramanote scripts, paste newspapers or printouts on my wall, only have Japanese reading material in my room.

I'm more of the opinion as you get into Japanese, then turning more things around you to reflect Japanese is easier to accomplish. Depending on your mindset, going full bore early on can be counter productive.

I'm breaking my environment by even being in this forum right now but here is mine:

bedroom - old VCR with a 10 hour long tape of itteQ episodes which I play repeatedly as I'm going to sleep
bathroom - PSP in japanese mode browsing japanese websites. Good for those occasional long sessions
computer room - that's where to learn and entertain myself in Japanese. Bluetooth headphones with 12 hours battery life stay on whenever I am home. The range is pretty far, I can go to the kitchen with them still on. (Sony DR-BT140Q). Soon I will probably have a nice brain tumor from the excessive use of bluetooth. It's itteQ episodes, JustinTV, and anki. That's it. I'm convinced I can reach a decent level of understanding with the 90+ episodes of itteQ since it is the very definition of variety (and it's educational!). Truly one of the best shows ever made. sample
Living room - I called my cable company to cancel my cable so they came out and took my cable box. I have no cable at all now. If there is a fire in my neighborhood then I won't know and I will die in a flaming blaze of Japanese glory. I took all my english DVDs and music and put them way up in my closet. I softmodded my Wii so it now plays japanese games. I finished playing monster hunter 3 (even though it doesn't require any japanese to finish it) and I'm currently playing through Calling on wii. I don't learn much by playing those so I try not to.
Car - Cancelled my sirius satellite radio subscription and put nothing but burned CDs of Jpod101 in there. I thought about putting real japanese materials in there but at least I can learn new words during my 10 minute commute
Work - I just listen to Miki's blog (the 100% japanese one) from jpod101 in a loop. Random episodes play. Not very effective since I'm on the phone all day but it's better than nothing I guess.

How are the bluetooth headphones? I've been wanting to get a pair since the cable on my current headphones annoy me, but I've heard that reception is pretty poor on portable players. Ex: iphone in pants pocket = 0 reception, iphone in shirt pocket = good reception, etc.

Unfortunately stores never have demo models of wireless headphones, and it's not that easy to return stuff in Japan, especially if it's opened & used.

Well compared to my traditional radio frequency Sennheiser RS120's the quality is much better and there is zero static but there is a huge drawback: There is about 5-8 millisecond lag. Sometimes you can't notice it but sometimes you can and it will piss you off for a while until you get used to it. I got these DR-BT140Q because I like the clip-on-the-ear design so you can turn your head completely upside down and they won't come off. The lag might vary with operating system and bluetooth dongle...I haven't tried different setups. I'm using a cheapo 15 dollar bluetooth 2.0 USB dongle which I have plugged into an extension cord to hang up for extended reception.

For big ear people like me the DR-BT140Q are less comfortable than their older cousin which I think they were framed after which were the PSP headset accessory. Those also had spring loaded ear clips but they fit better. To compensate, I wrapped some pieces of paper towel around the ear clips so now it feels great even after 12 hours straight. I probably look gay but it's not like I would go walking outside with the paper towel pieces on my ears...

In the city where I'm studying, I live in a small house with 2 rooms, kitchen and a bathroom. Oh, and a woman (35 years). I'm quite limited here.

When I come to my bedroom from school I turn on chinese/japanese TV or put some japanese/chinese pop playing.

Now that I've downloaded a timer I will be able to study, to force me to study. It's pretty effective.

I barely listen to my MP3, since from house to school it's like 2 minutes. But I'll fill it with rosetta stone. It already has Genki 1's audio, a few "Tokyo Local" podcasts and of course, pop music.

At night I put my headphones and start listening to music or TV, but I give up after a while because it makes me headicks.

I'm about to buy the R4i, for my DSi, so I'll be albe to play japanese games. Hurray, finally.
I also want my PSP to turn japanese, but I'm kinda scared if then I don't know how to put it back in english/portuguese :|, nevertheless, I can't buy japanese games so I think that's useless. I don't even use it much.

headicks are awful ;D

Dunno how to write/use it |:

CarolinaCG Wrote:Dunno how to write/use it |:

I give up after a while because it gives me a headache.

/correction

Currently I am in Japan and on vacation, so this month getting immersed has been easy. However when I am not vacationing in Japan, my wife speaks Japanese to our children, so I have a high level of natural Japanese (+yelling) at home. I just purchased a short wave radio (kaito - primarily to keep up with morse code) and will start listening to Japanese radio broadcasts. I don't care to much for internet radio. As far as other Japanese materials I am a bit lacking there - save ドラえもん manga.

As a side: getting around in Japan makes me realize how far I have come (thanks to Heisig), but also how far I need to go.

Now I'm on vacation, so usually I spend 2 hours or so using this site and Smart.fm. I recently got the ADSL so I watch something like 1h of anime a day. Subtitled.
Read manga when I manage to find some, I live in a small town, so it's difficult. At the moment よつばと　and ひとひら。But the second one have not yomigana at all so is quite a pain. On my car there is an old cassette player so, when I drive around, I listen to some old japanese course's cassette. Full stop.
I've realized that the more japanese you know the more japanese stuff you can add in your env. I'd like to be able to read some light novel, but at the moment my level isn't that good. How sad...

I've been studying Japanese for close to one year know, and my environment has changed drastically as I had acquired new materials to add to my immersion environment. From the start, like Khatz, my main focus was to eliminate any situations at home where I would be without Japanese. Before, I just had an iPod with headphones and a computer with speakers for podcasts at night, but then eventually got a fm tuner and shower radio for enjoying those tunes while cleansing my body. After that, I was able to achieve a Japanese listening environment close to 100 percent, so I think listening is the strongest input in my environment. A few months ago, I had acquired an HDTV, Japanese Xbox 360, Japanese PS3, and ultimately, a laptop. I use my laptop for sentence reviews and Japanese internet browsing, my computer for kanji reviews and downloading media (usually BD-anime rips, dramas, dvds, manga etc.) I use a shower radio/fm tuner to enjoy J-audio in the bathroom (and yes, I find this very cool and effective). I use my external HDD to transfer files between my PS3, PSP, laptop and Xbox 360. My PS3 is usually on all day playing video of any kind (been running a Dragon Ball Z marathon lately). The major sources for my sentences lately are manga and FF8 (PS3/PSP ver.) that I am going through currently. I use my ipod (now coupled with an outlet charger for unlimited playback ability) hooked up to a pair of generic speakers for listening during the night. Sometimes, the audio (usually news podcasts) plays all the way till noon when I finally turn it off in order to put some video on. Finally, the biggest thing to take from this unorganized rant is that AUDIO IS ALWAYS ON AND READILY AVAILABLE in my immersion environment. Also, this is how my environment is during school times as well, just much less free-time, but audio is still present via my iPod in between class periods. At first, I was so proud of myself for closing the gaps, and I think doing so has helped my a lot so far in my studies. Well, back to work, happy studying!

KREVA Wrote:At first, I was so proud of myself for closing the gaps, and I think doing so has helped my a lot so far in my studies. Well, back to work, happy studying!

Kreva, that's quite an impressive hardcore amount of immersion. Can you sum up how it's helped your studying exactly?
How much of the audio can you understand now, and have you been a marked improvement?

aphasiac Wrote:

KREVA Wrote:At first, I was so proud of myself for closing the gaps, and I think doing so has helped my a lot so far in my studies. Well, back to work, happy studying!

Kreva, that's quite an impressive hardcore amount of immersion. Can you sum up how it's helped your studying exactly?
How much of the audio can you understand now, and have you been a marked improvement?

Well, I'd say that most of my improvement has just been through constant exposure over time. When I first started out learning Japanese, listening was so hard because I would focus so hard on what was being said just to have nearly 99% of it go right over my head. It was so frustrating, yet I persisted with the train of thought that the more I listened to it, the more I would start to understand. As time went on, listening got easier, and I didn't do much for this to happen besides having audio playing in my environment close to all my waking hours. Now, words that I had mined in my SRS are being understood and registered passively in the native audio in which I encountered them (even right now as I am passively listening to tv as I type this post). One thing I realized recently is that I cannot remember the time when I stopped focusing on what was being said, and just started to hear what is being said for what it is. At some point, I just gave up focusing really hard and just let the audio be heard. Eventually, my brain caught on and started making connections. It's very similar to English where if someone was close to you and they could be heard while you were not paying attention, you still understood what they said. It's starting to become like this for me in Japanese. I don't need much focus any more, even words that I have yet to learn. I feel like I am at a stage where I can easily hear words that I don't know, look them up, and put them in my SRS. Before, I was so worried about doing so because my listening just wasn't good enough to pick up words that I didn't know (just couldn't make out the sounds clearly for words I didn't know), and I didn't want to make guesses.

I understand a good amount of audio, of course, excluding words and phrases that I have yet to learn (which can easily deplete your understanding in specialist situations or topics); however, I would say that I am starting to develop a keen ear for Japanese only because I've listened to it sooo much this past year. A lot of people on here think that constant listening doesn't bring much results, but now I can see why they would come to that conclusion. It's mainly because the listening process is so slow that most people would give up and say it's not effective instead of sticking it out to realize the benefits that it brings.

The improvement that I see is through the materials that I use because I've been using the same materials throughout my study program, and understanding is becoming more evident as time goes on. I have 2 1/2 years left for college and have no doubt in my mind that I should be fluent before I graduate, pack up, and head to the J-land.

Home: Anki, justin.tv almost all day
Gym: Ankimini on the treadmill
Car: Japanese music and pod-casts
Work: Anikimini on any free time I get (not much)
Wife:Japanese

I still do visit a lot of gaming English websites and listen to English music as well... i still prefer English music over Japanese music at the moment

Wow, another overwhelming response from this great forum. I've made a lot of notes about methods and materials recommended here. I forgot to mention the Characterize plugin for Firefox--I try not to browse any English site without it! (and am working on trying not to browse any English site, period

KREVA Wrote:Well, I'd say that most of my improvement has just been through constant exposure over time. When I first started out learning Japanese, listening was so hard because I would focus so hard on what was being said just to have nearly 99% of it go right over my head. It was so frustrating, yet I persisted with the train of thought that the more I listened to it, the more I would start to understand. As time went on, listening got easier, and I didn't do much for this to happen besides having audio playing in my environment close to all my waking hours.

I'm wondering whether you actually focus on understanding what's being said the whole time. I mean if you're multitasking, for example: doing homework while listening to TV, do you let the TV on without focusing on the words, or do you still focus on it?

Also, how long does it take for you to start being comfortable with listening?

delenir Wrote:I'm very curious about what fellow Japanese learners are doing to create a Japanese immersion environment at home, etc; especially those in the beginner/early intermediate stage.

IMHO beginner/intermediate is too early to use immersion effectively. From my experience as a non-native English speaker (who learned most of her higher-level English through immersion in a non-English-speaking country, like you're trying with Japanese), I'd say you want to be at a mid-advanced level and then start picking up (easy) literature in Japanese for immersion. Also start using Japanese forums online.

I'm somewhere between intermediate and advanced in Japanese and I don't feel I could try serious immersion right now without wasting a lot of time and causing a lot of mental pain to myself. (And I'm set on becoming fluent in Japanese like I'm in English, mind you, but still I don't think this is a reasonable stage for me to do immersion.) Then again of course, if immersion is fun for you, ignore my advice by all means!

Happy New Year!