Immersion / Input

Hi everyone, Im moving in with a friend of mine for 2 months in tokyo at the start of next year and want to get as much immersion / Japanese input + output as possible before then. How does everyone go about immersion / surrounding themselfs in the Japanese language.
Thank you!

Congrats, that’s an exciting move!

My method was to take something I love doing and switching that over to Japanese.

For example, I watched a lot of video game stuff on youtube. Turns out, there’s a plethora of that exact content on youtube, and finding it was just a search away. Podcasts, streamers, vtubers, IGN Japan - there’s already a lifetime supply of content that interests me available.

I made playlists that are always on in the background while I work, dedicate my lunch break to focusing on the language more intently, and pretty much keep them playing all the time.

From there, I downloaded all my favorite videos and put them on my phone so I can listen to them on the go, when driving, etc.

I just love games in general (it’s also one of my main reasons I started learning japanese) and if you do too and have a switch, you coincidentally have one of the best consoles for language learning! Just switch the system language to ę—„ęœ¬čŖž and BAM - You’re all set!

If our interests aren’t aligned there, sorry for nerding out! My short response is to find content that interests you, that you love and want to consume, and constantly have it going at all times.

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What is your current level?

Im N4.5-ish, only started bunpro today though

I cant belive ive never thought of changing my game language to japanese :sob:
Thank you so much

In that case, you can pretty much immerse with anything. I like watching anime (especially high school romances since the language is quite easy) and dramas (Terrace House is very popular in learning communities for good reason). Also, since games were already mentioned I’ll just add one thing… visual novels are amazing for immersion. A lot of them give you the option to switch between English and Japanese subtitles, and you can usually replay the audio as much as you’d like.

LanguageReactor’s first month is free. Since you only have two months, you could spend one month making Anki cards from Netflix. Don’t forget to export to anki Before the month is up!

There’s other ways to make anki cards from anime. But this app was the easiest for me.

And one month doing Something else
I like looking up recipies in Japanese.

I started reading easy manga first and later switched to easy anime without subtitles.

My recommendation would be to focus on fun. Are there any manga, anime or such you’d really like to use? you can check on https://learnnatively.com/ how difficult they might be.

Do you have any manga reccomendations (easy manga)? I’ll give the website a try. Thank you!

Many read yotsubato! or chis sweet home as a first manga. Both come with bookclubs on wanikani (i think yotsuba also has a bookclub here on bunpro) where you can ask for help if you get stuck or you can use it as a read along, which can be really helpful. Personally I loved ā€œgal to dinoā€ more.

The best manga for you is one you would like to read in your native language and not just one for language learning. All of the above manga are slice of life with really not that much happening, they have good vibes and can be quite funny. you might prefer other genres, though.

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tysm!!!

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Karakai jyouzu no takagi san
you can also watch the anime and use language reactor to create anki cards as mentioned by Noxsora.
something that was not mentioned though are podcast, I find it super useful as this can introduce you to more topics than regular dramas/ manga (like food, daily habits, thing that you will actually talk about in real conversation with japanese)

My podcast recommendation for N4/N5: Bite size japanese podcast (most easy to understand) + Japanese super immersion (this one is great because it’s mainly conversation, so that you can ā€˜mimic’ in the future how japanese people actually converse)

I find that immersion from anime is okayyyyy but I’ve noticed that people who only immerse through anime kinda speak with anime voice when they try to converse in japanese?
I have a weekly event in Paris where I meet a lot of japanese learner enthousiaste and anime learners kinda sound odd (no offense it’s good to learn from one way or another but if your goal is to speak japanese and mimic what you hear, then podcast is the way to go)