I’ve been reading the Japanese Graded Readers books (level 3), and have so much trouble staying awake reading them. The books are interesting but no matter how tired I am before I start, it is so exhausting and I start falling asleep. Does anyone experience anything similar to this?
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It’s mentally taxing. You are conditioning your brain and that requires rest sometimes.
Yes. It’s mental saturation, I frequently get it when reading challenging levels of Japanese, or anything else that has a lot of new things to remember, especially when they have complex interconnections. It’s also a commonly raised question in forums like this one, you’re definitely not alone.
If you want to keep going, when your eyes start to droop, take a break for a minute, get up, stretch, have a sip of your water or whatever drink you have, and then go back and restart, backing up a paragraph or two because you probably missed most of that.
Micro-breaks to just think about the structure of a challenging sentence or the definition of a new word or whatever can also give you a chance to let things sink in and delay that drowsiness. Maybe practice writing a new kanji a few times to get it down, or take a second to add new words to a vocabulary list.
Taking a little nap isn’t that terrible either, honestly, it helps memory formation. Of course, this is only helpful if you are reading substantially more than you are napping. Two hours of reading and a twenty minute nap is fine, twenty minutes of reading and a two hour nap is … questionable. And a nap that long will also make it hard to sleep properly at night. If over-napping is a problem try a brightly lit setting, or keeping an alarm set, and avoid reading in bed or on a too comfortable sofa.
The issue should fade with time, the more Japanese you already know the less new information your brain is trying to absorb and it will eventually be no more tiring than reading in English.
Whenever I felt sleepy when reading Japanese, I didn’t fight it. I just took a power nap and my mind felt refreshed afterward and I would resume reading.
Google “power nap” for tips, but basically, it’s a short nap between 10 to 30 minutes. I used my phone’s alarm to wake me up. I found 25 minutes worked best for me, so I set the alarm for 30 minutes because it would take me up to 5 minutes to fall asleep.
Also imagine that reading Japanese is like working out and building up your muscles. You need to gradually build up stamina so you can read for longer periods of time.
Read every day, so your brain gets used to the act of reading Japanese. Try reading in small increments throughout the day, like 5-to-15-minute sessions. I’d read on my phone. Whenever I had a break, I’d read for a few minutes, like during a work break, standing in line at a store, eating lunch, during my commute, etc. Then when at home, I’d read on my computer or iPad or Kindle, and read for longer periods, maybe 30 minutes to a couple hours.
As long as you keep learning vocab and kanji, and also read every day (even if some days you can only read for five minutes), you’ll get better. It’ll be hard for many months and then it’ll gradually get easier as your brain gets more accustomed to seeing Japanese characters and you start recognizing familiar sentence patterns and phrases.
I barely could concentrate on reading for even 5 minutes in the beginning, but I kept reading every day, and eventually I could read for several hours straight with no problems. Once you get to a stage where you don’t have to rely only on learner material, you’ll be able to read things that interest you more.
When I was able to start reading horror and mystery stories, or visual novels with images and audio, I didn’t get sleepy and lose concentration as much because I was really into the story. I kept wanting to read to see what happens next. Same thing with manga too. If you find a good manga you like, you’ll want to keep reading as well.
This has happened a bit to me lately too… from studying at night. I have shifted to waking up earlier and reading first thing in the morning.
It’s also partly due to the content being hella boring with straight textbooks. It might help to spice things up with content that you actually enjoy like manga for example.