It’s not that the content I’m watching is boring, there is no doubt that I would definitely enjoy it if I could understand everything completely, but I’m just not at that level yet. Do I just keep proceeding and immerse as much as I can until this feeling of boredom disappears?
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I would suggest choosing material that you can understand better. Even if that means graded readers or even textbooks. I know there are approaches that focus on massive immersion. And maybe that works. But it’s certainly not the *only* way that works. Textbooks, classes, tutors, graded readers are all options.
immersion is not watching/reading gibberish and waiting for something magically to happen, you will have to actively learn with it, mine sentence cards, repeat certain sentences, look words up, etc.(especally if youre a beginner).
This wont change that fast, it takes years to casually immerse in stuff without thinking, so if you dont enjoy the process right now, i have bad news for you.
Maybe go and grind more grammar/vocabs and most importantly, easier content until you get more familiar so you have more fun immersing.
* pick something interesting and engaging instead of focusing purely on educational materials
* try something you already know but in Japanese (e.g. watching a series, playing a game); you already have a rough idea of what people are saying so you can focus purely on analyzing the language used, and figuring out what the words mean
* try material that is easier than what you’re used to (it feels less draining to do)
You will feel less “bored” as you learn more and the amount of effort you have to put in to understand diminishes.
Tips:
* **Pick easier material.** Check out [JPDB](https://jpdb.io/live-action-difficulty-list) to see lists of media ranked by difficulty. Try to find the sweet spot between understanding and interest. I had to spend quite a bit of time watching Pokemon-level stuff in Spanish while I built up my vocabulary through reading and stuff.
* **Find a show with eye-catching design.** Demon Slayer was the first show I binge watched in Japanese and it was a fun ride, despite not understanding everything..
* **Watch something you’ve seen before** in English or other languages. Time to revisit those childhood classics!
* **The horror genre is pretty easy to understand.** The characters are always saying the same things.
* **Use JP subtitles**, at least in the beginning to improve comprehension.
* **Pay attention to body language.** Live-action shows with a bit of physical comedy can be engaging at lower levels. The show “Iine Hikaru Genji-kun” is pretty funny.
* **Just do it ✓** Self-discipline is needed to get those hours in. Commit to a reasonable daily or weekly goal and you can try tracking your time with an app like Toggl or Lingo Journal. Improving the listening skill is a numbers game.
You just answered your own question. You need to study more, practice more. You may ask what do I study? A: Grammar. What do I practice? A: Reading and comprehension.
You can’t see a professional skater do the sickest tricks you’ve seen, wanting to do the same without practice and effort.
Playing Japanese RPG’s helped me. The variety between trying to understand dialogue boxes and doing a lot of fighting kept me from getting bored too quickly so I could work at it longer. Took a long time before I understood enough to feel confident though. Probably better advice from other people is to pick something simpler.
It depends on your level, when i first started i used the Migaku Mpv tool to watch Anime and display jpn/eng subtitles at the same time, but keep the eng one hidden until you mouse over.
Then you read the line in japanese try to understand it, look up every word with yomichan, and if you are unsure or are stuck look at the english. Some sentences will be too hard, so don’t try to understand everything, understand what you can, and when you can’t look at the eng subtitles. That way you still understand 100% of the show, but are still learning what you can from it.
This is also the perfect setup to sentence mine with anki.
If you’re using a tool where the translation is easily accessible (double subtitle netflix, vn with click to swap language), my advice is to cheat & just do a full translate on important sentences that are too difficult, and focus on mining/looking up ones that are closer to your level. This allowed me to consume content I was interested in w/o burning out, while still getting lots of active immersion in.
If you’re watching native content that’s above your level, there will be sentences you understand fully, some that are way above your level, and some that you’re missing just a few pieces of, a key word or grammar. Those last types are great for immersion study.
Allowing myself to just read the translations for ones where breaking down the sentence would take a lot of time/effort, and focusing on the ones where I could learn something new closer to my level, I upped the amount of immersion I could do w/o getting fatigued/bored. Just make sure you are challenging yourself to translate often enough, and find the balance that works for you.