How to get motivated for immersion in advanced japanese?

Japanese
#1

Greetings fellow learners.

I wanted to ask what everyone is using to expose themselves to advanced japanese, and how you can keep yourself motivated to keep doing it. Myself I like to just type in “ニュース” on YouTube and that will get me livestreams of current news sources. But I have to say, world stage news would be one thing but I am not particularly invested in the petty crime sections or the 50 yen increase in donburi prices that infes surface on these news shows as well.

With “advanced” I mean formal settings of japanese riddled with those great 漢語 words that I have seen, read and written everywhere but that blend together in my head when I hear them (しゅうちょう, ちょうしゅう, ちゅうちゅう, etc…). The problem is that these somewhat will never come up unless you are working in japan or have some other setting where people are required to treat you with keigo or the other way around.

As a bonus question if that is too easy to answer. What does everyone use as a checking mechanism to make sure they actually parsed the content correctly, and did not mishear anything? :slight_smile:

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#2

What am I using to expose myself to advanced Japanese? Bunpro reading mode and a sprinkle of cramming listening, which I should do more.

The sentences cover a range of genres from news to fiction and are short enough that you can check comfortably. I would suspect that if you complete all N2/N1 vocab cards and can translate them well to Japanese your proficiency in comprehension will jump up significantly. I certainly feel my reading has been boosted quite a bit since I’ve replaced my previous SRS with full time Bunpro reading. Fun factors may vary, but it’s rewarding.

Apologies if this isn’t quite the answer you’re after, but it’s helping me a lot.

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#3

You’ll get a good feeling for having understood correctly in native content because you’ll feel less confused. It’s hard to “check” against native content without a very analytical process.

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#4

Get a novel you’re interested in and read it. If you get one that you like, you won’t even notice that you’re reading Japanese after awhile.

#5

A lot of books and manga deal with more complex topics. I’d try looking for specific ones that deals with topics were you want to expand your vocab or grammar on. For example some fantasy settings use a lot of keigo.

If you have a specific thing you want to have, for example “lots of keigo” or “lots of abstract/philosophical words” I would suggest asking in the Seeking recommendations Thread on natively. They are usually pretty spot on and knowledgable. They also have some book recommendation threads and lists for specific dialects and stuff.