Immersion is physically and mentally exhausting. How do you refresh yourself to keep going?

20 comments

1. Immerse with something easier if you are finding it too taxing. Ideally you should already understand 90% of whatever you are reading or listening to. You will learn and remember new words from context.

2. I used to take caffeine and magnesium pills, wash my head with cold water when I get tired, take a quick nap and keep going.

3. Do something easier at the same time and switch between them

4. I think just move on if you don’t understand something. You will get it eventually because you will see the same thing over and over the more you read.

5. In the start of course yoy will need to look up every sentence. Thats what it means to be a beginner. No matter how easy the content is you will probably look up almost every sentence when starting out. I recommend not trying to progress in the story so much, but just take one sentence at a time.

   And watch CURE DOLLY on youtube her entire playlist japanese from scratch. Seriously. Later in the playlists she breaks down sentences and teaches how you do it, but you need to know her ways first. watch the whole playlist

6. If you are finding it exhausting, you are working on stuff that is too difficult for you. Be sure you are picking up the common vocab at least if you want to stick it out.

   Most entire books use effectively a set of a couple thousand distinct words (although I filter out rare words when I do that counting). If you make sure you retain the words you run across, if you did this with anime say, you’d know almost all the words (all but 20 in fact) after watching a few hundred eps. However, those would be a struggle to get through. I waited until ~N2 level to switch to native immersion for a reason.

7. If you need to look something up every sentence you’re at a level where book learning and flashcards is going to help more than immersion

8. I am at a higher level (going for N2) and I tried an RPG, and in the end (well long before the RPG end), I had to change it to English. RPGs can vary, but may be more on the difficult side. You may want to first try simpler books, manga, and anime.

9. I just play the game. I understand maybe 20% of what I’m reading, but I’m having fun! My only rule is to try and read every sentence. Even if I don’t understand anything, my reading speed has increased dramatically since I started playing video games.

   To me it’s also quite fun to try and understand what I’m supposed to do. When things click and I’m able to actually understand something it’s an incredible feeling. I have at least 90-120 words that I’ve never looked up, but I just “get the meaning”. It might not seem much to many but I’m super proud of it.

   Just enjoy the journey. Unless you plan to work and live in Japan, all of this it’s just an hobby that should be fun.

   Edit: another incredible feeling is when I do encounter later on a word/kanji during my “formal study time” and it finally clicks into my head what a sentence actually meant. That’s like a core memory and I never ever forget kanjis that click in this way

10. I try to make a post about this (but not enough karma..) I spend week researching games with furigana. And then … I took my phone 😄

    I try to read. Sometimes it’s 80% sometimes it’s more like 20%. Then I take a photo, camera has text recognition. If you long press the sentence you can translate it. First play the voice, then read translation. If I pick some cool new word I would save it for later. If not, hey I’m still getting used to language.

    Usually in one game you can pick up repeating words pretty quickly. Save to learn later. So by the end of the game you wouldn’t need it so much. Plus translation is effortless. So you can translate words, sentences or page. I’m still amazed that I completed game in Japanese 😄 Have fun!

11. To be fair, I think what’s important is how much you can learn per day, more than how much you can immerse. Immersion is now when you already have the basics piece of what makes a Japanese sentence. Understanding by the context is also not necessarly a given, depending on what you consume. And consuming baby shows might not be super fun neither.

    If you need to look up things a lot, it’s fine, but then take things where it’s really easy to look up things. NHK Easy articles are very good for that : [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10014593621000/k10014593621000.html](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/k10014593621000/k10014593621000.html)

    Sure, you can force through it and still have fun, but the big big question should not be how much time but how you do you actually learn, when you do study time.

    If playing exhaust you, and you don’t learn that much from it, maybe it’s best to not do it too much. See if more lke a way to measure your progress. I play Pokemon like that. Each time I play it, I see I understand more and more. But I don’t base my learning on playing Pokemon. Would be great if just playing a videogame in your target langage will make you understand complex grammar sentences, but just like kids we also have to actively learn, more than just passively immerse. As kids, your parents play the comprehensible input translators. But as an adult you won’t have that luxury, so mindful learning beat passive activities when it comes to eactually learn.

12. Try Wagotab, it’s a beginners game where you learn Japanese.

    Or look at Game Genki YouTube channel amd check out his furigana game tier list and pick one on the A scale.

13. I get exhausted too. I take a short break or I immerse with easy content. So for me DBZ anime is easy so I’ll watch some episodes just to keep immersing. Like I’ll read easy manga for me Sailor Moon is easy and I never read the manga so I’m currently reading this as my down time immersion. Also, graded readers I’ll read easier stories this way I’m still training my Japanese brain but not sending myself through a wall of disappointment.

    What works for me is my main focus are things that are comprehensible. I’ll have things slightly harder to listen to or read just to challenge myself and when I hit the wall of “I’ll never learn this language I’m done” I revert to the easy stuff to help keep me motivated

    Also Chat GPT is also great it’s not like goggle translate it is really good at helping you learn. If you come across any sentence, grammar or vocab you’re struggling with put it in chat gpt. Have it explain to you and try to memorize it. Chat GPT helped me to immerse better. Also, if it’s vocab have Chat GPT create a story in Japanese that you can read. Post all new vocab that you have learned. Chat GPT can make up any genre you want and it can continue to show the vocab over and over in context. This way you’re still immersing and you see the vocab in context. Just make sure you tell Chat Gpt to include Furigana.

    This is the prompt I use
    “Create a never ending story in Japanese. The purpose is to learn N2-N1 grammar and the 6000 most used vocab in everyday speech. The story should be about a young ninja in a ninja village. At the end of the chapter show the vocab and the meaning. At the end of week quiz me on the vocab. If I pass you introduce new vocab. If I fail you repeat the same vocab”

    You can change the story parameters as you wish. This helped me with immersion reading and I retained a lot more vocab then I did with Anki. I have severe Anki burnout.

14. Oh i thought it was just me! The anki and duolingo i really enjoy and have no problems picking up multiple times every day. But the reading stories and listening practice are reaaaally draining.

    I work a tech job whole day so in by itself quite mentally exhausting so i find it really challenging to do the immersion part. It’s quite frustrating.

15. Honestly, shorter sessions.

    Play for 15~30 minutes. Less if you’re still feeling exhausted.

    You wouldn’t run a marathon without training shorter distances first, or you’re going to regret it. This is an extreme metaphor, but “how far you can go” mentally is going to depend on what you’ve done before. Break it up into smaller chunks of time, and maybe go for an hour once in a while later, and once you get to the point where that hour of playing is easy, then you can start ramping up the time.

16. One hour is pretty good, I reckon! Then just go about your day, rest, and come back when you’re not tired. One hour a day seems sufficient.

    Personally, once my brain gets tired from the activity, I will stop and come back to it the next day. Doing it consistently helps, and I find I get less tired over time.

17. I learn the alphabet, key phrases, listen to JapanesePod101 on Spotty and watch some Japanese drama every day. Listening to people speak real conversation is essential. I plan to book in to my local Japanese language school next year

18. I relate to this question a lot, because when I first delegated my games as “for Japanese practice” the only effect was significantly lowering my game time LOL

    Honestly, variation is the best way I avoided burning out, especially early on when one game would take an extreme amount of time to play through. I’d bounce around between different games, manga, textbook reading, youtube videos covering grammar, flashcards, etc. Having multiple sources of immersion with varying difficulty helps too, so when I’m burned out I can swap to something easy and relax but still feel productive. I use Toggl to track my time and give myself a quota, and that helps me push through when I’m feeling lazy to get my hours in. Taking scheduled breaks every couple minutes could make it less exhausting to play through (Pomodoro method for example).

    Probably not the answer you want, but honestly I’d recommend a second game you can play in English to relax. One hour of intense immersion like that a day is plenty. There are diminishing returns on pushing through the pain, and worst case scenario you end up tuning out giant chunks of the game because you’re sick of look-ups, or just giving up on playing it entirely (projecting, because I’ve done that exact thing). Take it easy on yourself. Immersion is exponential; you gotta grind hard for less time early on, and as you get better you’ll find it easier and easier to immerse for long periods of time. It took a long time for “playing games to learn” and “playing games to relax” merged into a single activity, and I still have difficult days.

19. I make sure to take good breaks. People nowadays take breaks on their phone while sitting on the same seat they’re studying/working on.

    I personally know that I like to take breaks by just walking to another room, doing some random other stuff, putting some music on for a while, take a shower, calling a lazy friend.

    It can be super basic and simple. I feel like as long as it has absolutely nothing to do with the studying/working vibe (sitting at your desk in front of your computer) it should be working.

    I’m not saying you’ll have maxed energy and motivation each time, but it sure helps more.

    Also, if it’s really that much exhausting, it probably means you’re consuming something above your listening comprehension level and that’s not going to bring you anywhere if you don’t understand anything. Consume media from which you understand at least 75% without looking up I would say, that’s what I do personally.

20. I go do some sort of household chore, or go find my cat to bother him. Then come back.