I started learning Japanese 2 years ago, and was picking things up at a good pace, but at some point I stopped making visible progress. Most of my studying is doing wanikani reviews (my kanji knowledge is at least pretty good). I also listen to Japanese music occasionally. I know the next steps should be to learn more grammar, (hell I’ve had grammar books for 1-2 years I haven’t fully gone through) and practice conversation and listening. I’ve been a little reluctant to start but I started watching Alice in Borderland with Japanese subtitles, and I’d like some recomendations for good content, but preferably not anime. I do like anime but I’ve heard the pronunciation is unrealistic and a lot of the vocab is super obscure. Also any advice on where to go from here is welcome.
Tl;dr: Looking for good content in Japanese, preferably not anime.
4 comments
You only get as much as you put in. How long do you study for? and also, if you think that a lot of the vocab in anime is “super obscure”, you haven’t been studying the language enough in the last 2 years.
Hmm, in my view reaching plateaus are quite normal when learning a language; just keep putting in consistent hard work and one day you’ll realize how far you’ve come. You said you have grammar books to work through, so why not go ahead and work through those too?
In terms of content, it depends what you’re interested in. If you’re interested in reading, maybe check out [https://learnnatively.com/](https://learnnatively.com/) and try to find your reading level. If you’re interested in drama, maybe try watching J-dramas without subtitles. Or maybe find some other movies that sound interesting, and ones that you can also understand.
And btw, anime isn’t necessarily *awful* as a resource, I think the more “real” the setting is, the more helpful content-wise it’ll be (so don’t watch something like dragon ball or one piece for immersion’s sake)
Don’t listen to people who say ‘this is bad, that is bad’…
For us fun learners… learn first, correct later. Don’t let nitpickers tell you how to learn
Let’s be blunt, rarely will we ever go to Japan if ever and even if we did it’s not like we are gonna speak it that much! Learn first, even if it’s a tad rude or whatever and then learn to fix it.
If the same thing was applied to Japanese people to learn English, I’d love it if they spoke slang English asking me street directions
Don’t count in years. Count in hours, especially hours *daily*. That’s how our brain works.