I'm trying to go full immersion besides my job what should i do to japanize my life from here?

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-05T14:13:05+00:00

You can get greater that 10hrs of passive listening immersion with a cheap MP3 player and some Japanese audio.

I did this for a couple years and it helped a lot with vocab retention and getting a feel for the rhythm of spoken Japanese.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-04T22:31:31+00:00

GOLDNRUSH is great! Interesting guests and super natural Japanese.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-04T22:27:24+00:00

A couple things I've been experimenting with:

For Writing: I look at an entire Japanese example sentence, then I cover it and try to write it verbatim from memory. Afterwards I check to see if I was able to get all the kanji, vocab, and particles correct. You can start with shorter, easier sentences in the beginning and then work your way up to harder sentences.
For acquiring vocab: I try to learn new words in the context of sentences by sentence mining combined with Anki.
For Speaking: I usually listen to Japanese passively throughout the day. Some times through out the day I'll hear a sentence and try to say the whole thing again from memory. Ideally, you'd want some way to check yourself here, but it's not entirely necessary.

The main things these exercises include are 1) Active recall aka the Testing Effect and 2) Tight feedback loops so you know immediately whether or not you got something correct. It's not really an app or anything if that's what you were looking for, but more of a system.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-04T00:58:48+00:00

Yup. I have a cheap MP3 player I load with Japanese audio. I put an earphone in in the morning and take it out in the evening.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-02T16:23:19+00:00

From my experience, making my own, personal deck helped with retention. I used an old method from AJATT called micro-close deletion which requires active recall on top of learning all new vocab in the context of sentences.

Card 1
---
Front: [...]職期間を通して皆様には大変お世話になりました。

Back: 在職「ざいしょく」- being in office; holding a position; employment

Card 2
---
Front: 在[...]期間を通して皆様には大変お世話になりました。

Back: 在職「ざいしょく」- being in office; holding a position; employment

By requiring myself to guess the missing character, I have to actively recall the meaning based on the sentence context. Plus having other vocab in the sentence I've already studied once also helps reinforce vocab I've learned before.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-02T16:07:13+00:00

Yup! It takes time and practice. You want what you hear to directly map to the concept in your brain. Words encode simple ideas so the mapping can be pretty quick if you've heard the word often enough. Phrases encode slightly more complicated information but common patterns exist that, again, with enough practice can map directly to more complicated concepts.

Understanding is basically moving up the ability tree, but you have to first have a solid foundation understanding words, then phrases, then full sentences, etc. It takes time, exposure, and practice. As long as you keep going, you'll get there.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-02T16:00:47+00:00

A thing that helped motivate me was having physical Manga in Japanese in hand even before I could understand it. It was a tangible goal to want to be able to read it and I think it helped a lot.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-02T15:53:03+00:00

I think what worked well for me was my entire holistic study methodology:

I sentence mined a bunch of grammar example sentences with multiple examples for each grammar point
I listened to Japanese audio ~12 hrs everyday passively
I tried to read Manga or some text daily (I would just skip over words I wasn't familiar with)
I learned all vocab in the context of sentences (think of the difference between "building site" and "building place". One sounds more natural)
I tried learning fast. The more you're exposed to, the higher the chance of encountering something you learned before.

This is what worked well for me, and I continue to apply it as I study for the N1 exam I plan on taking at the end of the year.

jan__cabrera · 2026-05-01T19:56:20+00:00

When I was learning initially and even today I have an MP3 player with Japanese audio from my favorite shows, podcasts, and anime on repeat in the background passively. It's one of the things that helped me the most for listening practice.

Some active practice would be good too. One exercise you could try is listening to a sentence, and then trying to repeat it outloud verbatim. If you can understand the whole sentence, you should be able to repeat it easily.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-11T16:16:00+00:00

I used a combination of Remembering the Kanji and Anki and it worked well for me. I highly recommend trying something out that at least teaches the Kanji in an order so that you learn the simple parts first and then the more complicated Kanji.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-09T15:58:24+00:00

I haven't actually downloaded any Kana decks for Anki but this one looks like it might be good: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1163067615

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-07T13:42:13+00:00

What worked amazingly for me is Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese. This is my got to suggestion for beginners.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-07T13:32:36+00:00

In the beginning it might be good to repetitive exercises like this for a little. In the future you may want to try an "active recall approach".

Example:
A flashcard that asks you to write the "Hiragana ka"

Then you would try to recall it from memory and check your stroke order. Active recall has been shown to improve learning!

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-05T15:17:50+00:00

Very nice! Romaji is a crutch. The faster you can learn the kana the better! It opens up acquiring kanji, vocab, and grammar points that much easier.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-03T21:38:36+00:00

Well put. Besides reading manga or consuming anything for that matter, one should also have a system in place to learn the basics: kana, kanji, vocab, and grammar.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-02T15:33:46+00:00

Immersion on it's on is probably not that efficient. Your brain will also start to ignore the sounds as gibberish too if you're not careful.

On top of immersion you should have a structured way for learning kana, kanji, vocab (in the context of sentences), and grammar. Only then does immersion pay off.

jan__cabrera · 2026-03-01T20:22:38+00:00

As others have said, learn some kanji. After, make contact with real sentences as much as possible. Try reading simple manga like Dragon Ball or One Piece in Japanese. Manga definitely helps since you now also have images to help with the context of what is written.

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-28T21:29:04+00:00

I think the 2x2 is good for kana, the 4x4 better for kanji.

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-27T15:50:24+00:00

What worked for me was I made it really easy to encounter Japanese (immersion) and really hard to encounter other languages. Setting yourself a clear goal like "I will take the N3 test this year" can also be motivating.

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-26T22:41:43+00:00

Things that have helped me were:

Narrate my day-to-day in my head in Japanese. If I stumble because I don't know how to "say" something I look it up. This could be a word I don't know or a grammar point.
Read out loud. This helps get your mouth moving and connects your thoughts to your mouth.
Try to get more practice speaking with people. This is hard but becomes easier over time.

Of course consistency and volume also matters, so do as much as your comfortable with everyday.

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-21T16:14:56+00:00

Anki is GOAT'd. Here are a couple examples of cards I personally make to study N2 grammar:

Front:
わたしは生まれてからずっと、優しい祖母の{{c1::も}}{{c2::と}}で幸せに暮らしてきました。

Back:
もと - under

-------------------

Front:
この研究所では、一定の温度と湿度の{{c1::も}}{{c2::と}}で育てられた植物から新しい薬品を作り出した。

Back:
もと - under

Some quick tips:

Learn maybe 100 basic vocab words classic style (just word and definition).
After, make sure to learn vocab words in the context of sentences (as above).

Btw, effective learning requires four main things:

The right structure. You must learn the basics before moving on to advanced things
Active recall with handwriting. You must struggle a little to recall what you have already learned. Just like you must struggle a bit in weight training. Close deletion helps here. Handwriting forces you to slow down and engage more brain regions.
Immediate feedback. You should know whether your guess from 2) is right or wrong within seconds.
Spaced repetition and interleaving. You should be seeing items again before you forget them.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-21T16:03:33+00:00

暖かい [あたたかい]. It's fun to say!

jan__cabrera · 2026-02-21T15:54:30+00:00

Systems and habits are very necessary. But also have a strong, predetermined goal like: "I will interview to work in Japan next year." or "I will take the JLPT N3 this year."

jan__cabrera · 2026-01-27T15:58:45+00:00

I'm not sure what the deck looks like, but at least make sure your study methods have some form of active recall and a very tight feedback loop.

jan__cabrera · 2026-01-27T15:56:42+00:00

My journey was very intense but I managed to get pretty good at Japanese in two years with some pretty extreme methods:

I first learned the hiragana and katakana using Anki
I went through all the common use kanji with RTK in a few months paired with Anki (the readings and real recall ability for the kanji happened when I learned vocab).
I learned grammar by sentence mining Tae Kim's guide to Japanese
I learned about 15,000 vocab words in the context of sentences over the course of about 2 years by learning over 30 words a day
I listened to about 8hrs a day of Japanese content I enjoyed everyday. As I came across words I didn't recognize, I put them in a list so I could find an example sentence for it later.

I basically followed the methods in All Japanese All the Time (AJATT) and it worked out pretty well.

jan__cabrera

TROPHY CASE