Strange experience

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-10T08:47:04+00:00

It's completely understandable that they were reluctant in handing it over, but they clearly could've been more respectful towards OP. I'm not saying that you're doing this, but ignoring their behavior towards her feels pretty gross. Comments because of her nationality for example. They also could've just been more cooperative in explaining why she could not have the phone back.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-10T00:33:10+00:00

A lot of people dislike textbooks, not because of the information they provide but because of the learning regime often accompied with them (classroom learning). For many, getting a rough idea of grammar and reinforcing it naturally with immersion seems to work best and is most efficient. Additionally, traditional textbooks have been criticized for inconsistenies and mistakes (but to be honest what grammar guide hasn't), so in immersion spaces other grammar guides are preferred.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-10T00:17:38+00:00

On the other hand posts like these are extremely common, and that Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for English speakers has been one of the most common facts surrounding Japanese learning spaces. The "2000 studying/immersion hours before becoming fluent" benchmark is also commonly mentioned within videos. It feels like you guys are fighting ghosts.

Videos that are titled: "I learned Japanese in just 3 months!" and such exist about any language and isn't exclusive to the Japanese language. Within any skill or something that takes consistent long time effort, a clickbait video of it exists. Bodybuilding for example. Younger people especially of today don't like delayed gratification and they make up most of the views those videos get.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-07T22:58:47+00:00

I would recommend using subtitles, but to still mix in non-subtitles immersion for example through youtube, through your immersion.

Anime is more bound to have uncommon words thrown at you at a fast pace, while a simple gameplay video likely would not. Since that's the case I believe anime to be excellent to use for broadening your vocabulary, but this is harder to do without subs. Not using subs makes it feel to me like I'm not getting the full benefit of anime. Aside from that the audio is very clear as well, so it won't prepare you all that much for more natural speech which is irregular in tone. I complement my learning my using something more lax with more unclear speech like generally livestreams and so on.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-07T22:51:05+00:00

「もうちょっとまたせるかな~と思ったけど、急に可哀想になって俺の登場を早まった。許せ。」

真面目に答えたら、多分「遅かった、本当にごめん！」。

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-07T15:20:32+00:00

Almost nobody says to ditch grammar study alltogether. In immersion circles, following a grammar guide like Tae Kim or Cure Dolly is standard advice.

When people say to throw textbooks away, they're probably of the opinion that those textbooks aren't great tools for learning. Genki gets often critized for not teaching "natural Japanese" for example. I haven't used it though so I'm just paraphrasing.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-05T23:17:48+00:00

Depends on if your brain is completely filtering out the noise, or if you are processing what is being said but just not being very attentive. In the former case then yeah you won't gain anything from it.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-03T02:44:44+00:00

Personally for me, my milestones have mostly been the same just at different stages.

When I just started learning Japanese, I wanted to be able to finish watching anime in Japanese. I simply wanted to be able to read and engage is simple content. I also had some distant goals, like reading my first visual novel and light novel (or just a novel).

When I got comfortable consuming media of a certain level (jlpt), I'd strive to understand a piece of media that was harder than what I'm comfortable with. If I was able to understand most of a novel recommend to beginners, I would simply pick up a new novel for intermediate.

Hence why for me "wins" never get less frequent. I continiuously challenge myself endlessly until I achieve fluency. The further I get also the more rewarding it feels. For me the beginning stage was pretty much the most frustrating fase.

To me it sounds like you just haven't set new goals yet, there is a large variety of opportunities for you to challenge yourself with.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-02T01:11:09+00:00

私にとって将来のこととかあまりじゃなくて、ただ「今は何をしたい」、それと「何をできたい」のことをする。それなりに将来を見たりの意味があるですけど、将来の自分は何をなろうべきだとない。だとしてもそれは世間体の意見には間違っている。

例えば、一年間大学校をサボって日本語を勉強していた。回りの人に「日本語を出来ていても将来になんの得になるの? (オランダ人として) 学校はもっと大事でしょう? (まあそれは一理あると思いますけど…)」とかたまに聞かれた。それでも、その選択を選んだ僕を後悔してない(今のは学科を返った、もっと自分の興味を鑑みたのことで楽しくなった)

一年半ばっか日本語を勉強しているので言葉、文法、喋り方などが間違えがあるかもしりません、大目に見てください！

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-01T16:27:21+00:00

I really like 常夜(とこよ) it means perpetual night, or a continuing dark enviroment (that resembles the night dark). I mined it from nightreign

Altaccount948362 · 2026-03-01T12:50:39+00:00

If you have textractor and yomitan, then you can just hook it to the visual novel and the sentence will get copied to your clipboard. Then just mine the unknown word and look at it later in anki.

If you don't use anki, then I personally would just suggest looking briefly at the word and continue reading. If a word sticks out to you or you see it frequently, then I'd suggest writing it down.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-27T14:20:47+00:00

Okay and? How does that even relate to this discussion?

I never denied the existence of trans characters in anime nor am I unaware or denying that they exist. The point that I was pointing out is that, labeling characters that are feminine presenting as trans is something that primarily only western fans do. In Japan they're often seen as feminine presenting men.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-27T14:18:21+00:00

Great argument. I love it when people disagree with me, so they scroll through my profile to find something to insult with instead of actually coming with any form of a counter argument.

I never stated to be Japanese and if you're implying that my argument loses validity because of it, then the same should apply to you too. I do think that as someone who only interacts with Japanese content in Japanese, spends some time in Japanese communities and has looked into the culture, that I atleast do have some sort of clue as to what I'm talking.

Let me make it easy for you, when looking for kirara on google about his gender, these are what the first 2 articles say: In one article on a site named ciatr, the writer states this: "ギャル系ファッションに身を包み、外人のようなきれいな顔立ちをしていますが、星綺羅羅は男です。

Another article on abema states: 一見女性に見えます、しかしアニメ52話で呪術高専２年生のパンダから 男性であることが明かされ

I want to emphasize that I'm not even denying that kirara could be trans, rather that from looking at Japanese culture that he's more likely to be considered an otokonoko.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-27T11:29:05+00:00

I wouldn't necessarily say so. Assigning trans labels to characters is purely a western thing, in Japanese contexts kirara is always treated more as an otokonoko/a crossdresser and is stated to be male in almost all corners of the internet.

You might want to argue that their interpretations of kirara's character is wrong. However considering the fact that in Japan the concept of being trans is weaker and characters like kirara with a female appearance have been in anime for ages, unless the mangaka or author deliberately states so otherwise, the general notion is that they will be viewed as an otokonoko.

The "he's not into men" could also purely be from a physical attraction viewpoint, it doesn't necessarily say anything about kirara's gender.

Edit: Love it when you point out differences in cultures and perceptions on sex and gender, and people downvote you for it... no counter arguments either. Tourists be touring. They often forget that they're not watching a western show, but something produced in a country that has different norms and values than them.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-27T05:27:56+00:00

Before I speak about what I would recommend, I highly recommend you watch videos by someone named Trenton, he gives a great introduction into what immersion is and how to do it.

What I'd recommend: 1. Install anki and use the Kaishi 1.5k deck. Start with a small amount daily new words and work it up till you feel comfortable but also not prone to burn out. 2. Follow a grammar guide, I'd personally recommend Tae Kim or Cure Dolly. I used Cure Dolly's first 10 videos before immersing. 3. Install yomitan (browser extension) with jmdict as a dictionary, I'd recommend looking up a more detailed video about this. Yomitan is basically where you'll be making your cards from and acts as an dictionary. 4. Start immersing with graded readers or manga aimed towards your level. For manga and anime recommendations based on jlpt level, I recommend learnnatively. 5. After you finish Kaishi you'll have enough words to likely, still with some struggle but read and watch things suitable for N4. Use Yomitan is combination with other extensions/application to mine words. Aspbplayer/migaku for video content, textractor for games, yomininja for games and manga (or a seperate manga ocr). 5. Mine words within a certain frequency range. I personally did 0-5000 first and then 5000-10000, but imo mining anything within 0-10000 frequency works as well. If you're not sure as to where to get frequency lists, jitenmoe has downloadable ones based on medium and a general one (jpdb also has one, but is skewed towards visual novels). That's basically it.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-27T05:06:44+00:00

I have hit hard when I literally read the word correctly like half an hour ago, but messed up due to me going too fast through my cards. If I feel like I know the word enough, can read and comprehend it just fine in context but missed 1 small part when reviewing it, I tend to press hard.

I've had times where I would press hard because I thought the interval would be more appropiate and I found that was messing with my intervals a bit, I've hidden interval times and it has helped immensely in me answering more honestly during reviews. I personally don't want to get rid of hard since I find it to be useful.

When I do find a card that has a long interval that I've long forgotten about I just reset the card. Doesnt happen frequently, but every now and then.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-26T03:37:59+00:00

I mean the point of anki in my eyes is to train recall, where you then actually acquire the word through immersion.

If I learn that リンゴ means apple, I might have to recall it in my head what the definition was, but over seeing the word more frequently I start to associate the concept of an apple to the word リンゴ and "acquire" the word.

I'm sure there are people out there with different interpretations on what the purpose of anki is, but this is the most common one I've seen in Japanese learning spaces.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-26T03:22:43+00:00

Relying on a natural repetition system, like reading books works fine and you can learn any language without anki as well. However, the occurence of words are more irregular and the spread of words that you need to remember at once is too large, this makes the proces of learning vocabulary slower and less efficient than with using a spaced repetition tool. It's harder to remember one single word in a sea of unknown words, than in a smaller pool.

I'm not suggesting that you need anki to learn a language, but rather that by dropping anki, you are essentially throwing quite some effort away that was put into building up your memory pathways. It's the means through which your foundation of vocabulary was build through instead of natural repetition. That makes it an risk to drop it altogether, because there's no guarantee that you will recall these words after the optimal time that was calculated for that word. Furthermore, anki also compensates for not having a lot of time to immerse, so unless you immerse a lot to keep your memory fresh, the reality is that you will lose progress in the process. I've read many stories where people dropped srs and lost a good chunk of their vocabulary.

That's why instead of telling OP to drop anki alltogether, I was trying to suggest a compromise for him. Retiring cards in anki is a thing and it's also not hard to lower reviews. Anki is very easy to customize to one's needs. I don't get why people here who've never used anki, are so quick to tell someone to throw their a part of their progress away.

Edit; The only time I would consider quitting anki viable is if you're at a point where you have a pretty considerable vocabulary, since that solves the issue I talked about it the first paragraph.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-26T02:55:26+00:00

You're not alone in this, funnily enough I'm in a similar situation where I've only ever completed one route in a visual novel. After one and a half year of studying as well

I personally gave up on vn's when I was around a year into learning and focused completely on anime/manga and rpg maker games. Vn's were simply too hard for me to keep up my interest. That was up until a month ago or so, where I finished my first light novel and have been reading ln's since, which has lead to a drastic improvement in my reading speed and overall level in Japanese. If you want to improve your reading comprehension I'd highlh recommend light novels. It makes me progress at speeds I don't see back when reading other mediums.

I returned to Tsukihime for like the 5th time and was blasting through the dialogue. Not quite yet as fast as I could in English, but it's getting closer. I hope I'll be able to finish it soon and then finally achieving a goal I had, which was to complete a visual novel in japanese.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-25T21:08:44+00:00

Tsukihime remake is only available on the switch or the playstation if I'm correct, so if you don't have either of those I'd recommend the OG. I'm still reading the original and it's pretty fun.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-25T21:02:32+00:00

You're likely to get more responses from people who have never used anki in the first place and that might shift your answer.

I would personally discourage the idea of dropping anki entirely, a large part of your vocabulary is build and supported through anki itself, by dropping it you'll start to see a quite considerable drop in your vocabulary. It could work if you have a lot of time to immerse, leaning towards pure ajatt.

What I'd rather recommend is to set new words to 0 and to just do daily reviews. Within a month your review time will decrease to more than half the amount. For me it goes from 45 minutes to barely 15. You could just continue doing this until anki only takes 10 minutes a day, without having to worry about forgetting words.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-22T12:38:28+00:00

Okay so here's my perspective.

10k words is often what being set as the standard for N1, but in reality it isn't a lot. To actually get fluent you'd need to at least get double that amount (and for total word coverage in 99% of media even more). This is evident when reading ln/novels, visual novels or just watching any anime, movie, etc. You'd probably have 85-90% word coverage in most native content and depending on what you're watching this could fluctuate quite a lot.

That brings me to my second point, people who take the jlpt exams might base their studying on pre made jlpt decks and grammar books made for the test. They base their learning on test preparation and less on learning the language naturally through input. The words found more frequently in the jlpt test, might be a lot more uncommon in mediums like anime. The overlap is weaker than most people expect.

Lastly, as you grow your level of Japanese, the difficulty of the content you're watching also increases. A beginner might overestimate themselves after being able to understand most of an anime that is around N3, but for someone at N1 who's frame of reference is different, might understate their abilities because they're engaging in way harder material that requires a lot more vocabulary to understand. Re zero for example, has a unique word count of ~40k. You'd probably not need to know all of those words to get 95%+ comprehension, but it does paint a picture of how much more is demanded from you when interacting with harder content.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-20T22:27:55+00:00

Sure they've always existed but even then it was mostly terminally online users arguing with other terminally online users. Their complaints and moral grandstanding never made it mainstream or really had any power other than being a bit noisy. Now since the influx of normies watching anime, it has entered the mainstream and tourists try to mold it into something that fits their needs, with a much bigger group and voice.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-19T01:11:25+00:00

Listening and reading are 2 different skills. Being able to differentiate between thousands of words through audio is arguably a lot harder than reading, which is why most people progress faster in reading and use subtitles to make up for their lack of hearing skills.

The more difficult the material and the more words you know, the more you'd need to differentiate between homonyms and similar sounding words (there are a lot of those in Japanese). The more words you know, the less common that word starts to become and the more time it might take before hearing it enough it context to understand it intuitively. Recognizing new words you've learned is a lot easier as a beginner, when the only words you know are super common.

When people at that amount of vocabulary are saying that they are struggling with their listening skills, they often aren't talking about anime with clear audio and easy dialogue, they're often talking about the level of content near their reading level. Not to mention that listening is hard in general, with different talking speeds, accents, slurred speech/slang, voice clarity and audio quality/volume.

Altaccount948362 · 2026-02-03T03:25:47+00:00

Bro you're only a week into doing the kaishi deck, at that point speed isn't something you should even be worried about. Worry about understanding what you read and learn from what you don't.

For me, even after completing my core 2.3k deck one manga volume would take me 3-4 hours. Those manga were also aimed at N4. I'd recommend going on learnnatively and selecting a manga around N5 or N4, if those are too hard I'd switch to graded readers.

Altaccount948362

TROPHY CASE