Immersion

Japanese
#1

Man, this is a hard one.

Hey all! In this new journey of me looking to take Japanese more seriously and studying (Mainly Wani Kani + Bunpro), I’ve been thinking a lot about Immersion. I do gaming, anime, and a bit of reading from time to time but mainly gaming. At the moment, I’m playing things like Octopath Traveler 0, Pokopia and Xenoblade Chronicles X.

The thing is that I have this itch that I should be trying to play these games in Japanese to add some extra immersion into my studies but I’m really on the fence of it. I tried playing Pokemon Let’s Go in Japanese and it was fun but obviously I’m attracted to the other games at the moment due to well, interest in those games.

How do you deal with this? I don’t really know how to deal with this. Should I just wing it and look for the words I don’t understand? Is it too soon? Or is it okay to do it from the start since I’m a week and a half into my “serious” studying.

Thank you all!

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#2

I get this urge a lot too, to be honest. I find it kind of depends on my energy levels, in a way. If I have tons of motivation and energy available to devote to my studies, I can power through a session of gaming in Japanese with something more difficult, looking up words along the way and adding some of these to my custom flashcard decks. But most of the time, I don’t have quite so much energy.

In such cases, I’ll generally classify my games (or other media) by level, separating material that would be really hard for immersion from the material that would be easier. By this, I mean material that I would be able to spend roughly 70 to 90% of my time just enjoying it rather than checking my dictionary. I feel like this is a good balance where I’m still getting practice and seeing a few new words, but I’m not getting overwhelmed or burned out. The ideal ratio can vary from person to person and day to day, so definitely experiment!

Another thing that can help is to look up info on the material you want to use. It’s possible someone out there has made a vocabulary list you could use to check your knowledge or even study in advance, or they may have videos explaining the most important parts or guiding you through the beginning smoothly. This can save you a lot of time and headaches, especially in my experience I find the vocab in tutorials can be a nightmare at first while the rest of a game may be much easier in comparison lol

Hope any of the above helps. For what it’s worth, Pokopia is a nice immersion game in my opinion (that’s how I’ve been playing it), and there are resources out there such as from Game Gengo which may help to get started if you’re interested. :slight_smile: Happy studying/immersing!

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#3

Thanks!

It’s interesting because I was considering burnout or feeling overwhelmed. That’s why I thought about dividing it too. Like maybe buying DQI-II-III to play on my PC with a OCR and have other games in English as I do to just relax.

Thank you for the tips!!

#4

There’s an entire channel dedicated to immersion through video gaming.
It includes guided immersions (one with pokemon let’s go vocab !), as well as ranking material etc.

There are also several channels playing Minecraft or doing content around gaming culture.

Personally, i just play what i feel like playing rather than “this is easy”.
I’ve always rolled this way.
Many people online say to play a game you already know.
I don’t find it a necessary step.
You can play a new game entirely. At first, focus on the gameplay, not story, not words.
What can you do, what does X or Y does.
I recommend similar games (I like RPGs personally) to ensure you’re exposed to the same vocabulary again and again, while you also reduce the mental charge by having similar mechanics.
Also, light to no story.
With time, you will grasp words, then sentences. You can play more and more complex games, story based ones etc.

If you’re really worried, you can play games Game Gengo made guided immersion for, or/and make custom decks (they made four as of now).

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#5

I got a 3DS just to play every pokemon game in japanese. Im still at the start just remembering words that i already know from bunpro’s srs

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#6

Thank you for the tips! I’ll be definitely checking out Game Gengo more since I already bumped into his channel ant it seemed really interesting. I already play games in Japanese audio / English subs since ever but I want to immerse even more with Japanese text. DQ1-2-3 remake sound like a great game to do that, actually.

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#7

Nice, as a follow DQ player, i suggest doing 3-1-2 for chronological order.
Happy gaming, mate :]

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#8

I played XI and loved it. I really wanna do those DQ games in that order as you suggest with an OCR to look up words. Super thanks, and happy gaming too :slight_smile:

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#9

Honestly, I have an issue where I have real big troubles around focusing on learning Japanese when playing games to immerse.

I thought it related to competency but no matter how good I get (so far!), it doesn’t really go away that easily. I think it’s due to the fact I lean towards having the most fun I can when I play games, and immersion, like it or not, is uncomfortable til it gets natural. So, it’s not really a matter of how easy it is, it just kinda is always harder than my other languages so I tend to just want to start playing the game again in said languages =(

I think it’s probably up to how willing you are both in your own style of learning and also in your own energy in any given day of study, as others pointed out. To me, I don’t like it much because I don’t find much energy to use these games. It sounds like you do have the energy from your Pokemon example, so you could start once it becomes feasible.

A note though, a week and a half is pretty early. I tried gaming about 100 days into my journey and I am studying at a hectic pace for a hobby, still was very difficult.

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#10

Super thanks for the input!

I’m sure you are progressing and I totally understand that. Maybe you could like play the game comfortably and then replay it in japanese, maybe? Best of luck to you in your gaming and japanese studies!!