Hi guys im new to japanesr and learned about immersion learnijg,should i statt immersing after how many kanjis?10000? 2? Also, how many pages or editions of Genki should i have before immersing,ty alit 😀
Perhaps you should work on perfecting one language before you move on to another.
immerse after genki II or after quartet at the latest
you can toy with easy stuff after genki I such as crystal hunters, though
>When its a good time to start immersing
午前11時45分
Edit: Seriously though, you should start reading as soon as possible. I recommend getting a basic understanding of sentence structure (grammar) and about 800-1000 common words before you start reading.
I’m pretty new to this sub, but it seems by “immersing” everyone just means watching and listening to a lot of stuff? When we talked about “immersion” when I started out it meant living in the target language environment 24/7. Like a child. If immersion juat means a lot of passive watching and listening, of course, as much exposure as possible is never a bad thing, but you’ll get a LOT more bang for your buck (ie time) studying and being active (production) in the language, especially as an adult beginner. It’s work.
I am not sure exactly what you mean by “immersing”, but I mean start watching (and listening) to Japanese speech from day 1. Watch anime or Japanese movies / series. That will help you get an idea for what the language sounds like.
Honestly? Probably AFTER finishing ALL of Genki. So BOTH I and II.
The reason is simple: you can hear and see your target language consistently… but it means jack if you can’t comprehend any of it. Completing all of Genki will give you the absolute minimum needed to understand the most basic of daily Japanese- and even them, there’s still going to be TONS of things you won’t know.
(My actual honest opinion? Unless you’re willing to look up words every five minutes or less, you have to be close to N3 for immersion to start really helping. And there’ an argument to be made that N1 is when you TRULY start understanding normal japanese)
I recommend reading through [this site](https://tatsumoto-ren.github.io/) – has quite a lot on immersion and recommend solutions to your questions.
don’t try to fixate on some sort of quantitative plan like this, there’s no optimal number of words, and “immersion” is not a black and white concept where you are either immersing or not immersing. also, no matter what plan you set, it’s going to change over time. it’s far more important to re-assess yourself and your goals constantly
follow genki
also supplement with vocab
also feel free to engage in any native material you like at any time, just don’t frustrate yourself if it’s too high level
also, number of kanji is irrelevant. kanji are just letters, don’t fixate on kanji characters, just learn the words and how to spell them
I started immersing after I got 1000 vocab words done in anki. It didn’t make any sense at first but after 6 months of doing it, a lot of it did. If you want to do it, do it. Nothing is going to make you good at the language but consuming it, so the sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.
You can start immersing in some eaaaasssyyy stuff right now like comprehensive Japanese. Then slowly level up the difficulty as you get better to harder manga/anime/shows
There are two extremes to how you can use immersion learning.
You can focus on trying to enjoy the content, not focusing on the language. This is immediately helpful and continues to be helpful through the entire process. You can and should start now.
You can focus on using input as a kind of textbook replacement. This starts to beat textbooks by the end of Genki II if not earlier. For this method it’s best to get mixed content – written and spoken – and combine reading with dictionaries and flashcard tools, etc.
If you want to skip textbooks like I did because they’re boring and probably smell funny, you should cram about 1k to 2k vocabulary words and read a cheaty cliffnotes-style grammar.
The first kind of input, though, is *always* helpful because its what makes the language start to come alive. Vocabulary and grammar will stick better, you start to understand things without thinking about them, eventually you’ll be able to hear why your accent sucks, etc.
Even if you’re in a traditional school environment and you have to go through Genki, making time in your day to watch one or two raw episodes of *One Piece* that you don’t understand? Sounds like a waste but you’ll have a big advantage over students who merely do the homework.
Asap
it is never to early to start immersing with [Benjiro-san](https://www.youtube.com/@BenjiroJapanese). He has done some great work, that makes immersion very approachable. there are some videos for total beginners to intermediate. Only downside is that the audio quality is a bit scuffed sometimes
Learn the hiragana and katakana and then just start reading and listening. Look up comprehensible input
As soon as possible. Learning vocab and kanji when you aren’t getting exposed to them in actual language is like trying to learn to swim by reading books about it while never going near the water.
This certainly does not mean that study is useless, on the contrary, it is really helpful (especially when you don’t already have language ability built up to make the immersion comprehensible enough to learn efficiently). However, I will emphasize that immersion is the *only* way to acquire the language, everything else you do is a supplement to make it more efficient. Taking a ton of steroids does nothing (apart from negative side-effects I suppose) if you don’t workout. Doing immersion will give context, meaning (it is rewarding, at least for me to begin to understand or notice new things), and a way to get the things you study actually click in your brain (analogous to the saying ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’).
The only additional factor that I would consider is choosing a way to immerse that doesn’t leave you frustrated. This is largely dependent on your interest in the content you are immersing in, the difficulty of said content, your general motivation, and how tolerant you are to not understanding. Personally I really enjoy learning, and am pretty tolerant to just throwing myself into difficult or unknown things, so when I started I didn’t really bother with trying to find beginner content and jumped straight into native-aimed content. I didn’t understand a lot, but I didn’t get frustrated because I was excited with all the new things I was learning. This won’t work for everyone. If you get tired of dealing with the immense quantity of things you don’t know, you should start you should try to find the simplest content that you are interested in. There are simplified things like graded readers and simplified news ([NEWS WEB EASY](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/) there are some apps for this as well). There is also easier native content (mostly easy anime and manga for younger people (but not babies because that stuff it probably too boring); you can find this yourself, there are lists and recommendations everywhere). The best time to start is now.
#### Tangent on the Nuanced Reality of the Importance of Comprehensibility Some other people here are saying that immersion input means nothing if you can’t understand it, and that is technically true, but in reality this is less of a problem than it sounds like.
I say this because, unless you try to jump straight into listening to [manzai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzai), classical poetry recitation like the [Hyakunin Isshu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogura_Hyakunin_Isshu), lectures, or radio shows; or decide to read technical content (legal proceedings, scientific literature, manuals), classic literature (Heike Monogatari, Natsume Souseki etc.), or other difficult books, there is a you *will* be able to understand because the most basic things (basic common words, basic grammar) is used basically everywhere: you can still get a lot out of just recognizing the things that you are learning as you go.
You will learn the most when it at the perfect level for you, but you will learn much faster if you immerse a lot in sub-optimally comprehensible input, than if you waste your time and energy trying to only use ‘perfect-difficulty-level’ material or worse not immerse because you think you are not ready.
#### On Kanji Kanji are certainly important, but the practice of ‘learning’ kanji should be done moderately (and in line with your actual goals). Consider that, it *much* is easier to learn kanji when you already know a lot of Japanese. Japanese children, for example are already generally fluent by the time they actually start studying them. Of course, you need some knowledge of them to read, The approach that I recommend the most is studying them mainly through learning vocabulary rather than in isolation. Some basic familiarization (learning to recognize many of the common ones) is very helpful, but don’t get distracted with it early on. Learn what you ***need*** to and if you want to say learn to write or you feel like you need more kanji knowledge to understand advanced content, you can always come back. Kanji learning as a beginner is a tool to help you understand immersion, so make sure whatever study you’re doing keeps that in mind.
15 comments
Perhaps you should work on perfecting one language before you move on to another.
immerse after genki II or after quartet at the latest
you can toy with easy stuff after genki I such as crystal hunters, though
>When its a good time to start immersing
午前11時45分
Edit: Seriously though, you should start reading as soon as possible. I recommend getting a basic understanding of sentence structure (grammar) and about 800-1000 common words before you start reading.
I’m pretty new to this sub, but it seems by “immersing” everyone just means watching and listening to a lot of stuff? When we talked about “immersion” when I started out it meant living in the target language environment 24/7. Like a child. If immersion juat means a lot of passive watching and listening, of course, as much exposure as possible is never a bad thing, but you’ll get a LOT more bang for your buck (ie time) studying and being active (production) in the language, especially as an adult beginner. It’s work.
I am not sure exactly what you mean by “immersing”, but I mean start watching (and listening) to Japanese speech from day 1. Watch anime or Japanese movies / series. That will help you get an idea for what the language sounds like.
Honestly? Probably AFTER finishing ALL of Genki. So BOTH I and II.
The reason is simple: you can hear and see your target language consistently… but it means jack if you can’t comprehend any of it. Completing all of Genki will give you the absolute minimum needed to understand the most basic of daily Japanese- and even them, there’s still going to be TONS of things you won’t know.
(My actual honest opinion? Unless you’re willing to look up words every five minutes or less, you have to be close to N3 for immersion to start really helping. And there’ an argument to be made that N1 is when you TRULY start understanding normal japanese)
I recommend reading through [this site](https://tatsumoto-ren.github.io/) – has quite a lot on immersion and recommend solutions to your questions.
don’t try to fixate on some sort of quantitative plan like this, there’s no optimal number of words, and “immersion” is not a black and white concept where you are either immersing or not immersing. also, no matter what plan you set, it’s going to change over time. it’s far more important to re-assess yourself and your goals constantly
follow genki
also supplement with vocab
also feel free to engage in any native material you like at any time, just don’t frustrate yourself if it’s too high level
also, number of kanji is irrelevant. kanji are just letters, don’t fixate on kanji characters, just learn the words and how to spell them
I started immersing after I got 1000 vocab words done in anki. It didn’t make any sense at first but after 6 months of doing it, a lot of it did. If you want to do it, do it. Nothing is going to make you good at the language but consuming it, so the sooner you start, the better off you’ll be.
You can start immersing in some eaaaasssyyy stuff right now like comprehensive Japanese. Then slowly level up the difficulty as you get better to harder manga/anime/shows
There are two extremes to how you can use immersion learning.
You can focus on trying to enjoy the content, not focusing on the language. This is immediately helpful and continues to be helpful through the entire process. You can and should start now.
You can focus on using input as a kind of textbook replacement. This starts to beat textbooks by the end of Genki II if not earlier. For this method it’s best to get mixed content – written and spoken – and combine reading with dictionaries and flashcard tools, etc.
If you want to skip textbooks like I did because they’re boring and probably smell funny, you should cram about 1k to 2k vocabulary words and read a cheaty cliffnotes-style grammar.
The first kind of input, though, is *always* helpful because its what makes the language start to come alive. Vocabulary and grammar will stick better, you start to understand things without thinking about them, eventually you’ll be able to hear why your accent sucks, etc.
Even if you’re in a traditional school environment and you have to go through Genki, making time in your day to watch one or two raw episodes of *One Piece* that you don’t understand? Sounds like a waste but you’ll have a big advantage over students who merely do the homework.
Asap
it is never to early to start immersing with [Benjiro-san](https://www.youtube.com/@BenjiroJapanese). He has done some great work, that makes immersion very approachable. there are some videos for total beginners to intermediate. Only downside is that the audio quality is a bit scuffed sometimes
Learn the hiragana and katakana and then just start reading and listening. Look up comprehensible input
As soon as possible. Learning vocab and kanji when you aren’t getting exposed to them in actual language is like trying to learn to swim by reading books about it while never going near the water.
This certainly does not mean that study is useless, on the contrary, it is really helpful (especially when you don’t already have language ability built up to make the immersion comprehensible enough to learn efficiently). However, I will emphasize that immersion is the *only* way to acquire the language, everything else you do is a supplement to make it more efficient. Taking a ton of steroids does nothing (apart from negative side-effects I suppose) if you don’t workout. Doing immersion will give context, meaning (it is rewarding, at least for me to begin to understand or notice new things), and a way to get the things you study actually click in your brain (analogous to the saying ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’).
The only additional factor that I would consider is choosing a way to immerse that doesn’t leave you frustrated. This is largely dependent on your interest in the content you are immersing in, the difficulty of said content, your general motivation, and how tolerant you are to not understanding. Personally I really enjoy learning, and am pretty tolerant to just throwing myself into difficult or unknown things, so when I started I didn’t really bother with trying to find beginner content and jumped straight into native-aimed content. I didn’t understand a lot, but I didn’t get frustrated because I was excited with all the new things I was learning. This won’t work for everyone. If you get tired of dealing with the immense quantity of things you don’t know, you should start you should try to find the simplest content that you are interested in. There are simplified things like graded readers and simplified news ([NEWS WEB EASY](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/easy/) there are some apps for this as well). There is also easier native content (mostly easy anime and manga for younger people (but not babies because that stuff it probably too boring); you can find this yourself, there are lists and recommendations everywhere). The best time to start is now.
#### Tangent on the Nuanced Reality of the Importance of Comprehensibility
Some other people here are saying that immersion input means nothing if you can’t understand it, and that is technically true, but in reality this is less of a problem than it sounds like.
I say this because, unless you try to jump straight into listening to [manzai](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzai), classical poetry recitation like the [Hyakunin Isshu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogura_Hyakunin_Isshu), lectures, or radio shows; or decide to read technical content (legal proceedings, scientific literature, manuals), classic literature (Heike Monogatari, Natsume Souseki etc.), or other difficult books, there is a you *will* be able to understand because the most basic things (basic common words, basic grammar) is used basically everywhere: you can still get a lot out of just recognizing the things that you are learning as you go.
You will learn the most when it at the perfect level for you, but you will learn much faster if you immerse a lot in sub-optimally comprehensible input, than if you waste your time and energy trying to only use ‘perfect-difficulty-level’ material or worse not immerse because you think you are not ready.
#### On Kanji
Kanji are certainly important, but the practice of ‘learning’ kanji should be done moderately (and in line with your actual goals). Consider that, it *much* is easier to learn kanji when you already know a lot of Japanese. Japanese children, for example are already generally fluent by the time they actually start studying them. Of course, you need some knowledge of them to read, The approach that I recommend the most is studying them mainly through learning vocabulary rather than in isolation. Some basic familiarization (learning to recognize many of the common ones) is very helpful, but don’t get distracted with it early on. Learn what you ***need*** to and if you want to say learn to write or you feel like you need more kanji knowledge to understand advanced content, you can always come back. Kanji learning as a beginner is a tool to help you understand immersion, so make sure whatever study you’re doing keeps that in mind.