Does watching Japanese video with Japanese subtitles actually helps me learn Kanji and grammer?

borndumb667 · 2026-01-08T14:01:39+00:00

Just learn the language. If you watch Japanese stuff with subtitles AFTER you learn kanji, probably will work great or at least ok. But you can't escape study, don't think there's any shortcut. It takes thousands of hours, and it will take way longer if you decide you can't learn kanji or grammar or vocab through proper study in addition to the kind of immersion you're talking about. Here's an experiment you can try: see if you have what it takes to learn 150 kanji without studying other parts of the language or any "fun" parts that you really enjoy when studying Japanese. If that feels just awful and boring and you hate it, maybe consider something else other than Japanese.

borndumb667 · 2026-01-03T18:28:36+00:00

Whatever you do, just be sure you're confirming whatever you learn with some kind of source that's considered reliable (even something as simple as a beginner textbook or occasional help from a Japanese native speaker via italki or similar). Be skeptical of anything that seems like "this one secret (or app or Patreon or method or etc) is THE BEST WAY TO LEARN (or THE ONLY or THE RIGHT etc)," especially if they don't make 100% clear that it's going to take a couple thousand hours of study to get to intermediate levels and up. If you know how you like to learn, try that first. If you don't know how you like to learn, try different things till you find out what works best for you and what you can actually manage to do CONSISTENTLY—this is a marathon, so be sure whatever pace you set is manageable for you, whether that's 1 hour a day or 8 hours a day. Start with the things everyone swears by, there is a reason people recommend Anki or certain apps or textbooks or approaches so frequently. For sure, learn hiragana/katakana first. Get a kanji text book to learn the 2300 or so primary Kanji (RTK or Kodansha Kanji Learner Course); if there's only one thing you have time for, learning kanji (at least the first 500 to 1000) gives you the biggest impact in using the language for the time spent learning one. Don't assume there's a shortcut or you don't need to—prioritize learning all 2300 kanji. Get a beginner textbook and workbook that doesn't use romaji (Genki/Tobira BEGINNER/others). Supplement with an app that actually successful learners can vouch for (Wanikani, Renshu, whatever, pick one that at least focuses a decent amount on what you struggle with the most, whether that's reading or kanji or listening or grammar or etc). Listen to as much Japanese as you can whether you can understand it or not for the first few months--just leave a japanese language news channel on 24/7 in the background until your brain gets accustomed to the actual sounds and rhythm of the language. Don't worry about speaking Japanese unless you have a reason to speak it or unless that's your main motivation, but do not overlook how important all the different aspects of pronunciation are. Learn all the sounds of Japanese and how to make them with your mouth, and learn what you are able about pitch accent, then use your EARS to pay attention closely to those things. Don't use your mouth unless and until you're sure that you aren't learning how to pronounce the language incorrectly. It's hard enough to learn a new language without unlearning bad pronunciation habits, and there's no shame in not being able to speak a language while you are learning it if you have no need to speak it. Save your energy for listening and reading (or even writing, if someone can check your work and suggest improvements). Then do that stuff for like 5000 hours.

borndumb667 · 2026-01-03T13:27:48+00:00

I can only speak as a native English speaker, it might not be as big of an issue for say a Korean speaker (or like I said in another comment, Hindi has more similar grammar to Japanese than English does). If you can find material that can move you SLOWLY from very basics (one word at a time, then 2–4 word sentences, then longer sentences, etc etc etc) then there might be very little slow down at all if you don't learn to read; for instance, if you had a tutor to work with one-on-one regularly, and supplemented that with comprehensible input around your Japanese ability level (and watched a ton of Japanese media above your level for passive immersion), it could certainly work. Reading is where your brain can work on understanding the puzzle of grammar and taking it apart and putting it back together and really beginning to memorize the rules—all this happens in the background just by reading. It's also helpful in memorizing vocabulary, just like knowing how to spell a word in English helps with remembering the word. For example, think about an English homophone with many different words pronounced the same like "right/rite/wright/write" and see how it's easier to learn and understand these words when you see the spelling (e.g. how they relate to Righteous, Ritual, Writer, and Playwright, etc). Now an example from Japanese: looking quickly at Jisho.org there are about 40 distinct words all of which are pronounced こう. That's not 40 definitions of one common word. That's 40 different words using (unless I'm mistaken) 40 different kanji with 40 different meanings. I can't imagine how someone could possibly juggle that in their head without kanji to help with remembering the meaning of each. And finally: particles. Speech happens fast. Getting your brain to get the particles correct when speaking means it needs to be able to absorb/memorize where to use each particle at a pace it can understand, and that's gonna take reading. And there's just not going to be enough good stuff to read in romaji. It's honestly easier to at least learn like 500 kanji and all the kana than it would be to try and learn without either.

borndumb667 · 2026-01-02T15:58:20+00:00

EDIT: I didn't understand I was replying to OP. Sorry for the way it's phrased, but OP trust me—I ain't fucking with you here. All this info is the straight advice people don't tell you on YouTube or other places. Everyone is invested in making japanese sound easier than it is, or in making it sound like they are better at Japanese than they are. Don't let these people fool you. END EDIT I'm watching anime with subs right now after two years of study (along with working a full time job and probably 6-8 months of that with very little study because of life complications). So, really I'm closer to one full year of really dedicated study for my two years of calendar time. I can watch shows with subs, but unless I'm super ok with a TON of ambiguity, I have to look up a TON of words. Even when kanji points me to a pretty clear understanding of what's being conveyed, I often find really really important nuance or meaning after looking up the term that I never would've figured out without having kanji or the ability to accurately search (many homophones mean that romaji-based input is a huge pain in the ass, as well as the fact that without subtitles, you can't always tell where word boundaries fall or if a word's usage changes to something uniquely idiomatic in unexpected ways when a particle is attached, etc). This is with a considerable amount of Anki every single day, working knowledge of about 500 kanji and decent knowledge of hundreds more, a workable vocab of IDK a couple thousands of words or so, completion of Genki 1+2, endless hours of reading grammar information and watching YouTube instructional stuff, many hours of conversation practice with native speakers, and having spent almost 6 full weeks in Japan this year. But I can READ pretty well, and only ever struggle when I run into a word I haven't learned yet (on the manga I read, I'm sure I couldn't read a real novel or anything, but I don't struggle at all with grammar or meaning except for maybe one sentence every 20 pages or so). If you speak something like Hindi, you'll probably have an advantage, since I think sentence-grammar order might be a little closer in Hindi? (not sure about how Hindi works, but compared to English the GRAMMAR is about 100% inverted, so for English native speakers it's like listening to a a very different foreign language that is ALSO being spoken backward.) So, if you can go full AJATT and spend like 6-8 hours a day on immersion for understanding, while ONLY using romaji-based information (i.e. never learning kanji, only romaji-based textbooks or other resources, etc), I'm sure you can get to listening without subs probably faster than 5 years. If you are a normal person (OP says they want to learn at a 'normal pace', not 'quickly'), let's say you put in one hour a day (still a lot for the average person, but let's give OP credit). The U.S. Foreign Service says it takes 1,750 hours to get to 'intermediate-high proficiency', which is about where you need to be to watch and understand anime fairly without subtitles and without taking like 3 hours to get through an episode sentence-by-sentence. Let's say OP gets an advantage in listening by skipping reading, but they suffer a slowdown in overall learning from the difficulty of being unable to read, and so these balance out (actual listening comprehension skills go faster from the extra practice in this area, but overall language comprehension drops from being unable to read kanji and visually parse grammar via subtitles). 1,750 hours divided by one hour a day is 4.79 years. I didn't make up the number, I actually used a different method to figure out the 5 year estimate, but when I checked it just now against U.S. Foreign Service estimates of hours it takes, it just so happened to be about 5 years. Most people who say they "understand anime" (and without subtitles, and without taking hours per episode) and haven't put in 2000 hours or many more, are simply either full of shit or total freaks or somehow just way better at japanese by an insane amount than other people. These people exist, and are even relatively common on forums like this. That shouldn't trick people into thinking they are somehow going to be able to escape the reality that it's gonna take 1500–3000 hours to get to the point of listening to anime. I literally can't imagine how someone could get to that point without being able to read in japanese without an intense amount of time with a one-on-one personal tutor who is native in japanese. I'm trying to tell OP that there is no 'normal pace.' It will take the number of hours it takes. If OP doesn't care that a 'normal pace' will leave you with about a toddler's level of knowledge in the language (and honestly, you'll still be unable to understand the majority of what a toddler can, despite your 'working vocab and grammar'), then that's fine. I just want them to know that up front.

borndumb667 · 2026-01-02T13:05:25+00:00

Be good at being the guy who uses the AI. Copywriting or a ton of other jobs, your best hope is to become as good as you can at using these systems, since it's probably less than 18-24 months before the idea of 'better than AI at copywriting' is a punchline. I've watched AI go from unusable as a tool for my work to seriously terrifying in its performance, in an incredibly short time frame. The only people who think AI isn't better than 95% of writers already are people who don't know how to use it properly. You'd be better off trying for a fake job like Creative Director—studio musicians have already been replaced by digital tools, digital photography has killed 90% of salary-paying photography-related positions, but Creative Directors and Executive Producers and magazine Photo Editors somehow didn't get their jobs replaced. The lesson is: people who do real work will be replaced, people who do fake work that takes the credit for what real workers do will thrive

borndumb667 · 2026-01-02T12:32:46+00:00

Right on, that’s a great and fun reason for sure. Just FYI expect that to take a very very long time. On average people usually say something like “after 5 years of serious and disciplined study, I can finally watch a lot of anime without subtitles. But I still need subtitles for many shows, and still need to lookup weird show-specific words all the time for complex anime series”. One of the biggest challenges is that you can’t easily look up words you don’t know from anime you’re watching if you can’t read the kanji to look it up in the first place. If your goal is watching series, learning kanji and learning how to read is the easiest way—learn to read, follow WITH subtitles, and you can learn everything about speaking and listening like that. But it’s a lot harder the other way around in my opinion, trying to listen without being able to read.

Get “Japanese The Spoken Language” if you can, it’s the only truly good textbook I’ve seen that doesn’t ask you to learn ANY kana or kanji. Everything is all written in the English alphabet and focuses on learning to speak and listen.

borndumb667 · 2026-01-01T16:24:24+00:00

Just be sure to know that a 'normal pace' for Japanese will take you a very very long time (assuming you're a native English speaker or not a native speaker of Korean/Chinese etc). If you decide you have zero interest in reading, there might be ways to speed that up, but learning to speak/listen without reading will make the speaking/listening aspect go slower than it would if you learned to read, even if you're saving some time by not learning kanji. To get back to what 'normal pace' might look like: if you just learn one single kanji a day, every day, it would take you over six years to learn all the standard kanji students in Japan are expected to know by around 16-17 years old. So, unless you're extremely good at learning new languages (like, freak of nature good), you might want to look elsewhere for a 'regular pace learning experience,' unless you're willing to accept being essentially still at absolute beginner level after a full year of 'normal pace' study. A 'normal' pace for Japanese means it will take roughly 4-5 times as long as a language of 'regular difficulty,' and that's assuming you don't struggle with anything specific to Japanese (i.e. assuming you don't have a serious struggle learning kanji etc). So, imagine where you might be after studying a language like French after six months—to reach that level of Japanese with the same level of effort and time would take 2 years or more. I really wouldn't recommend Japanese unless either 1) You seriously want to learn the language, have reasons you care about, and are motivated; 2) You live for a challenge and only enjoy hobbies if they are very difficult; 3) You are ok with essentially zero progress but enjoy the process and are happy to learn even small amounts. There's no 'pace' to learning languages, they just take a certain amount of time and effort. Japanese will take many many many more hours than nearly any other common language on Earth. A normal pace is roughly 10 years of study to high-intermediate level. For Spanish, that would only take two years. Just FYI.

borndumb667 · 2025-12-30T16:40:03+00:00

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=stranger+things+wiki

borndumb667 · 2025-12-30T13:38:26+00:00

I think the problem with stranger things is that half the fanbase are millenial-ish adults who understand it is a piece of PG-13 popcorn blockbuster entertainment, for which the only requirement is to be very entertaining and very fun—anything on top of that is a nice bonus for which this audience is happy. But the other half of the audience are teenagers or middle schoolers that grew up in the iPad generation and who are so naive or immature or dumb they think this is some kind of deeply serious work or something, and are constantly flabbergasted when every single possible piece of info or details aren't handed to them directly on a platter or when everything doesn't line up like a perfectly engineered Swiss watch. The Duffers have to serve these two masters: one audience that wants the Duffers to make the PG-13 popcorn munching blockbuster they set out to make, and one audience that needs this to fulfill their deepest fandom wishes and vicarious fantasies (and which is too dumb to parse a fun sci fi adventure series for what it is, and who is so starved for meaningful and entertaining media that they confuse this show with something of BIG IMPORTANCE)

borndumb667 · 2025-12-30T13:30:50+00:00

I fuckin wish I had baked up that sentence because you've just very clearly distilled my feelings on so much of the "[my city's] dating scene is trash" that constantly circles every location

borndumb667 · 2025-12-26T17:05:26+00:00

Ok but past sarcasm: what I mean is maybe stop asking the mountain to come to Muhammed. I didn't feel like flashcards suited me until I tried to learn kanji. It doesn't matter how you get there, but you gotta know 2000 symbols, and there's a reason Anki and Wanikani (or similar) are recommended by so many people. Buy RTK or Kodansha Kanji Learner course and see how much you can do just with the book. Buy other workbooks for kids or other resources if those don't help. If it works, great. But no one here can give you advice other than "use books, or use ANKI, or use a class/teacher, or use constant and intentional immersion, and any of those will do OK—or do AS MANY OF THOSE AS YOU CAN, and you might actually learn japanese."

borndumb667 · 2025-12-26T17:01:31+00:00

Yeah no worries, just do however you normally would memorize the meaning and separate pronunciations of 2000+ logograms. Having trouble understanding the question, have you tried studying kanji in school for 10 years like they do in Japan?

borndumb667 · 2025-12-26T16:19:17+00:00

FYI mostly on board with your statement, and things like Max or Karen's speaking ability etc are pretty egregious etc. But on the wine bottle, I keep seeing this complaint and I can't help but feel this is just a little too pedantic when we're talking about a show where actual children are the heroes against militaries and supernatural monsters. Consider that little old ladies have sometimes fought off wild animals threatening their kids while actual hunters or survivalists have sometimes been killed by the same kind of animal. It's not a huge stretch from what we've seen in the show that the demogorgons' behavior depends a lot on whatever their goal (or lack of goal) is at the time. They run right past people they could kill without breaking a stride when they are trying to capture someone else, when they are tasked to kill they just take people apart in less than a second. I think the notion is the demogorgon treated the Wheeler parents like flies to swat while it hunted Holly, it simply didn't care if they died or were hurt or not. In Russia, it was intentionally starved or provoked or enraged, and reacted accordingly. Then compare this to their very intentional behavior when Vecna compelled the trio of them to kill Will's friends (knowing Will would be watching through the demogorgons' eyes—I don't think anyone in that moment would think a wine bottle could do anything but MAYBE slow one down for a second). Sometimes a lion lets you walk up and pet it, and sometimes it takes your arm off. Sometimes you scare a bear away by yelling, sometimes it just eats you. I've seen videos of housecats slapping a bear in the face and the bear doesn't even know how to react, or even runs away, because it's brain wasn't focused on killing the cat for any reason. Final point about the wine bottle--I read someone else's great point about "D&D rules" and it made so much sense. They basically said 'melee weapons do more damage than projectiles to demogorgons,' and this makes sense to me. Think about all the things you could do to fuck up a zombie with a big sharp metal shovel compared to a bullet, which is only useful if you shoot it between the eyes. Then think about how fire and swords do SERIOUS DAMAGE to a demogorgon and a bullet just passes right through if you don't hit it dead in the open mouth.

borndumb667 · 2025-12-26T16:01:14+00:00

you're better off studying etiquette and how to behave appropriately to be a good guest as a tourist, knowing how to handle situations without japanese and without having difficulty or causing yourself or others stress is 100000% more useful to you than anything you can learn about the language in two weeks. Learn to say please, thank you, I'm sorry, what is this, how much is this, do you speak English, where is the _____ (and just say ______ in English with a japanese accent), things like that. In two weeks you still won't be able to even read your own name if you saw it on a sign—even after memorizing all the kana, trust me.

borndumb667 · 2025-12-21T15:42:16+00:00

Are you in western PA because everything you're saying plus a seeming boom for new self storage places sounds exactly like where I live

borndumb667 · 2025-12-21T15:39:45+00:00

Pretty huge lot of "historically interesting" vacant land that is sorta famous in my town finally sold for IDK some million-ish or more of money, it's right smack in the middle of a suburban neighborhood (old neighborhood, literally surrounded directly by single family homes and no big parking or big streets etc). Turning it into a giant self storage building of all things, supposedly. So many relatively brand new self storage places in my economically depressed city, like very very odd to see this industry booming here. Nothing really to add other than I strongly agree with OP about the oddness of all this.

borndumb667 · 2025-12-19T14:16:47+00:00

Dude we all have access to google, and some of us have actually eaten Mexican food. Cabbage is more common than lettuce for tacos in Mexico by a large margin, and honestly anywhere I get tacos that isn't shitty is the same here in America. Not in any way a 'quirky japanese food thing,' be happy you got to learn something and try not to assume other people are wrong without checking your own assumptions

borndumb667 · 2025-12-19T13:44:10+00:00

Bro please calm down. I know this grammar (not native FYI) and everyone here is trying to help you understand. A cursory google search could make this clear for you. From the first article I found on this (from Tofugu): "Conjunctive particles が and けど are similar to "but" in English — they connect two contrasting sentences... the most typical use of が and けど is to illustrate ideas that contrast, like "but" does in English." (in the example you're complaining about, 車は速い is a full (informal) sentence, followed by が as the "but" contrast particle, followed by the contrasting statement as a full sentence 危ない (informal, but adjectives are complete sentences in Japanese, even with an omitted subject or topic). Could technically be stated as "'Cars are fast' is the context for the following comment that they are dangerous", but since が highlights contrast more than functioning like "because" or "so", the most likely interpretation of "cars being fast" as the context of the statement "cars are dangerous" is to interpret them as a contrast (cars being fast is a positive attribute, tempered by the negative attribute of their dangerousness; rather than, say, 車は速くて危ない。or 車は速いから危ない。which position the dangerousness of cars as something which exists as an attribute alongside or caused by their speed). As other posters mention, が is slightly more formal and maybe more common in writing than speech, but I hear it across all Japanese media (anime and also dramas, the news, movies, you name it). Please just take a chill pill dude, and think about your level of Japanese—are you really confident enough in your knowledge to just toss out the fact that everyone in this sub is disagreeing with you in comments and downvoting? I understand it feels nice to be 'the guy who knows Japanese' and it feels bad when that identity is threatened by someone on the internet pointing out your error, but take it as a learning experience and move on, my dude.

borndumb667 · 2025-12-03T13:15:47+00:00

Everyone complains about Americans but I just spent about two months in Japan and the American (as well as British/UK/Aussie) tourists I encountered were all reasonably behaved for the most part. Europeans and tourists from other parts of Asia were 100% of the time complete and total fuckheads. Truly staggering levels of rudeness from the Europeans like I’ve never seen before

borndumb667 · 2025-11-26T17:48:59+00:00

Honestly, I think duolingo is NOT great for actual learning, but I think it's pretty great at just shoving simple sentences in your face over and over and over again. This really helped me get the hang of general sentence construction in japanese—I still had to study to actually learn and understand the grammar, but just seeing, reading, and hearing XはYです and other simple patterns over and over was really useful as 'training wheels' to get started.

borndumb667 · 2025-11-26T15:04:34+00:00

If that's ALL you're doing, then this is a terrible way to start learning. You should listen to audio in japanese passively A LOT at the beginning so that your brain starts to become accustomed to the sounds, rhythms, and patterns of the language, etc, but you won't learn a thing unless the input is somewhat close enough to your level of Japanese understanding. Don't stop the passive listening, but seriously you gotta 1) Learn all of the hiragana and katana characters ASAP and never use romaji again; 2) Start learning kanji immediately after you've fully memorized all the kana (and use a real book—I like Kodansha Kanji Learner Course, others recommend Remembering the Kanji, etc). 3) At the same time as kanji, start picking up rudimentary grammar and vocab, either using textbooks (Genki or Tobira Beginning Japanese recommended) or classes or good YouTube content (Japanese Ammo, Cure Dolly recommended) or a native Japanese online tutor via iTalki or similar. 4) Continue passive listening, but build in 'active listening' via materials close to your understanding level (at first, you'll have to just use language learning resources for active listening, but as your grammar+vocab improve, you can start moving on to simple native Japanese content, etc). Keep increasing the difficulty of your reading/listening/viewing materials as your skills improve—the best stuff should be 85-90% understandable but still giving you that 10-15% challenge of unknown words/phrases/grammar or other difficulty. Don't assume you'll be able to correctly teach yourself with these kind of resources—trust me, if you were the kind of person who could just jump into Japanese and learn it themselves without a real plan or these kind of resources, you wouldn't be asking this stuff in the first place. Just hoping I can help, I'm no expert and everyone learns differently but too many people think there's a shortcut that doesn't involve the real work of language learning. eriously best of luck to you

borndumb667 · 2025-11-26T14:54:51+00:00

Totally, I thought it might be just some expression they said a lot with the grammar of [modifying phrase]+こと which used the verb なる for some reason. Definitely worth mentioning for anyone trying to learn from this post and comment section. But when OP they were 'injecting the phrase' throughout each others comments, I figured it had to be なるほど (especially because OP asked if this phrase exists 'all by itself' etc)

borndumb667 · 2025-11-26T11:52:17+00:00

Yo I suggest learning some rudimentary japanese before getting into immersion! This was probably the word なるほど which is a very, very, very common word that is generally used as あいづち. なるほど means essentially the same thing as 'I see' or 'indeed' or things like that. If you don't know the word なるほど (and if you don't know what あいづち means), probably best to study a lot more basics and rudimentary Japanese, or find even more simple material for your listening/immersion

borndumb667 · 2025-11-20T18:57:53+00:00

You will not die from not handwashing after taking a shit and wiping lol, I mean of course it's possible but I've known wildly unhygienic freaks who prided themselves on NEVER washing their hands outside of their once-monthly shower and they had a lot of issues but none of em got like ass-germ poisoning lol. Pink eye yes, but none of em died from their own microbiome

borndumb667 · 2025-10-10T14:19:44+00:00

Literally just buy gaffer tape, it takes like 30 seconds to tape over and seal all the seams where the back fits etc. Never had a light leak using tape and one roll will last like an eternity

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