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Jalup Group Challenge 5: Immersion Replacement — 28 Comments

  1. As I said I absolutely want to join this challenge!

    For now I need to keep up with my sleep though (getting at least 8 hours a night helps me a lot!). I’ll reply to this comment tomorrow with my challenge details!

    お休みなさい Jalupers!
    頑張ってよ、皆さん!

    • Level: Haven’t tested recently but I will guess around 25 since I’m well into stage 3 of Intermediate

      Time waster: Watching too much anime with subtitles. I’m not ready to let go of subtitles yet, but I would like to watch more without subtitles. My goal for this challenge will be to replace at least 1 episode daily (20 minutes)

      Replacement: Watching an episode of anime without subtitles or actively listening to the audio of previous episodes watched with subtitles. Whichever of those I feel like for that day.

      Reason for joining: I immerse too little! I want to do at least some immersion every day and I tend to respond very well to these challenges. I will do this!

      • I must admit I failed this challenge. The first half of April went along nicely. All days where I would sit down and watch subtitled anime I watched at least one episode without subtitles. So far so good. Then I got back into Sword Art Online II which I really wanted to understand, so I ended up watching only a few unsubbed episodes for the last part of April. Reading up a bit on SAO I found that it is based on a series of light novels. I’m definitely adding those to my reading list for later!

        I did immerse more than usual – so the challenge still helped me in the right direction, which is good.

  2. Level: I have not checked in a while, but somewhere between the mid-30s and 40, I think.
    Time waster to be banished: Anime with subtitles. I’m on an ipad, so blocking subtitles consists of taping a piece of paper to my screen. Subtitles move and change sizes based on what show I’m watching, so I usually end up not putting in the effort and use them in the end.
    Replacement immersion: Anime without subtitles, obviously.
    Why: I don’t do nearly enough immersion. I also should have gotten rid of subtitles a long time ago.

    …if watching anime with subtitles doesn’t count as a time waster, then another time waster of mine is spending time on the internet reading about Japanese, but not actually interacting with the language. My replacement for that would be reading manga instead, since there’s manga on my shelf that I haven’t read yet, and there’s stuff on comico which I haven’t gotten caught up on yet.

    • Super late reply but you should try watching anime on korean/vietnamese/Chinese subs so you can’t understand the subs even if you wanted to. Don’t do European, especially French since you are studying it. Maybe Russian?

      • Crunchyroll and Daisuki allow you to simply turn subtitles off entirely, which IMO is a lot cleaner and less distracting (at least if you’re using a PC or something like Chromecast).

        • Unfortunately, crunchyroll’s roku app doesn’t allow turning off subs. This is why I run a plex server and just put raws on it. I do watch stuff on crunchyroll if I don’t mind watching it on my laptop (and you are right, very simple to disable subs there except on some of their older stuff where the subs were hardcoded), but for stuff I’m really into, gotta watch it on the tv screen.

      • Thanks for the suggestion; I do do that sometimes! Not very often though because I’m pretty lazy haha. 英語以外字幕を探すのはちょっと面倒くさいからね。I have noticed, though, that there’s lots of stuff with Thai subtitles especially; I might try your suggestion more often! Subtitles can be annoying but a piece of paper is definitely way more annoying haha.

    • A couple days late in replying, but here’s how the month went. I kept up with ジョジョ and watched a decent amount of くろバス and ハイキュー!! without subtitles. I also watched the first Berserk movie, a random live action adaptation of some manga, and a few episodes of 亜人 without subtitles.

      However, I watched several episodes of 銀魂 with subtitles when my brother wanted to watch with me (しょうがないね), and ended up watching the 進撃の巨人 movie with subtitles on the plane home from Michigan after fifteen minutes of covering the subtitles with my finger and not comprehending anything. Not comprehending was mostly due to pure exhaustion, but I still ended up making the individual choice to watch it with subtitles. Too bad, too, as it was the last day of the challenge! I’d love to say that I aced this challenge, and really did for the vast majority of the month, but I hit a bump at the end, and can’t say that I really completed this challenge.

      • I think that’s enough to count. Watching with your non-Japanese-studying brother should count as a different activity, and one slip with subtitles for a plane isn’t enough to ruin all the work you put in during the month. So let’s count it as complete!

  3. Level: Mid 20s
    Time waster to be replaced: English Twitch channels
    Replacement: Japanese Twitch channels <3

    Well I have a 2 week head start on this challenge but I think it will help keep me on track.

    Recently I had a absolutely huge breakthrough. I've become obsessed with watching Japanese twitch channels (twich is a website where you can watch other people play video games), anyway this has become a huge obsession for me. I just can not stop. So last Friday I wake up, I turn on twitch and start my Anki reps and all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks…I'm not translating. I'm just understanding. I was floored. Now I've had this happen to me a few times in the past, I clearly remember the first time (I was laying down listening to a podcast and I felt my mind sort of 'flip' and I just stopped translating) but I was never able to consistently do it. Now it's like I can't turn it off, I hear Japanese and my mind banishes all my English thoughts and just 'feels' the Japanese language. This morning I was doing my Anki reps and the feeling was so strong it was almost like I was getting dizzy and having an out of body experience, that's how strong it hits me sometimes. In fact, when I got to some beginner sentences I was having trouble and getting angry because I knew as soon as I hit 'show answer' I would see English but my mind was like rebelling and didn't want to translate lol.

    All it took was 2 weeks of constantly listening to Japanese (not because it would improve my Japanese but because I honestly couldn't stop) and BAM, my mind doesn't want anything to do with English when it encounters Japanese <3

    Don't take my word for it, try it.

    Oh almost forgot, if anyone loves twitch, use this instead and only watch twitch from this list https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/ja (you'll still occasionally find English channels but not many, oh and not everyone talks when they game so just move onto another channel if the person isn’t talking and don’t forget to read the chat too <3).

    • Do you have any particular game/genre preferences? I know a bit about JP progamers/streamers and I’d be happy to make some recommendations if you’re interested =)

      Also, do you have a ニコニコ account yet? Twitch Japan only started to catch on pretty recently, so many JP streamers still use Nico as their platform of choice.

      • I don’t really have any game preferences, I don’t even game anymore so I watch anything. I did create a ニコニコ account last night, I think for now I’ll stick to Twitch though.

    • I had no problems completing this challenge.

      Basically all I had to do was change the language settings to Japanese and to remove any temptation I stopped following anyone who casted primarily in English, sorry Eloise <3

  4. Level: Upper 30s.

    Time waster to be replaced: English youtube videos.

    Replacement: Duh, Japanese youtube videos!

    I have a few youtubers (specifically let’s players) that I watch mostly at night when I’m trying to chill myself to sleep. This usually takes a couple hours though so I might as well fill that with Japanese let’s players/vloggers/literally anything japanese tbh. I’ve tried watching a few let’s players in the past, and I am subscribed to a few of them but there’s none that really have me looking forward to their videos. So I’m sure I’ll spend the first week browsing a variety of channels trying to find people I enjoy listening to. It’ll be hard avoiding my usuals, so I think I’ll make a Japanese-only youtube account for myself to start fresh. I honestly think I needed this sort of a challenge to actually get myself to do this, so thank you!

  5. Let’s do this!

    – Your level 20
    – What specific daily time-waster item are you going to replace? I really have only one daily time-waster that I can think of right now and that’s reading in bed. I usually just read an English book for 30-60 minutes before going to sleep.
    – What type of immersion are you going to put in its place? Japanese reading, probably a manga. I have some 名探偵コナン to finish.
    – Briefly explain why you are joining this challenge (ex. this can be as simple as “I want to kick some immersion ass.” I figure this is a good way to build a daily immersion habit. ;)

    Full post: https://difficultysettinghard.wordpress.com/2016/03/21/immersion-

  6. Level 23
    Watching English YouTube Videos
    There is a lot of Doraemon on Youtube subbed in Vietnamese which means without subtitles for me, haha. I hope to replace my youtube habit with anime starting with Doraemon first because it is on youtube and convenient to reach.
    I am joining this challenge because my immersion is really really lacking due to my mindset of “study more Japanese then immerse later.” Which will get me absolutely nowhere.

    • Little bit over halfway through the month and I ought to say, DANG! I AM IMMERSING SO MUCH!!! Before this challenge, I had 6 things on my immersion ipod, one was a movie split into 6 files so that is 11 files on my ipod. now I have 48 files. That is 37 episodes of anime I’ve watched so far. That is pretty amazing for me at least. ALso, I’ve watched 3 english youtube videos so far which means I am wrecking this challenge. Hoping to say bye bye forever to english youtube.

    • Month ends saturday. I watched 3 english youtube videos, all of them were jalup youtube videos so I think I didn’t break the challenge (please) Success if I do say so myself. Hope next month is a success too!

  7. Just what I was waiting for from the other post about immersion!!

    Level 37 (assuming 100 Anki sentences per level between 30 and 40)

    I am going to attempt to cut YouTube out of my day entirely and replace it with watching Japanese dramas, variety shows, and of course anime.

    I may make another YouTube account purely for Japanese videos, because I know if I try and watch anything on my current account I will fall right back into binge watching videos in English.

    I am joining because I want to start using my Japanese more, I started this month off really well doing a lot in Japanese, and everything was getting easier to understand as well because I was using it so much every day, then I started slipping back into wasting time on YouTube, so it’s time to cut it out completely!! (or at least try)

    • Its not quite the end of the month yet, but I won’t have internet for the last couple of days so I will go ahead and update now.

      While I didn’t cut out YouTube completely, I did cut my time on it a significant amount, and upped my time watching anime and Japanese game shows.

      And although I wasn’t able to fully break the habit of wasting time on YouTube, I was able to cut it down and not miss it, so I think I can keep my time on it down from now on to up my japanese time

  8. Oh Facebook. How you conquer my existence.

    I am going to log into my Japanese only Twitter on my phone and read tweets instead of endlessly scrolling down FB.

    Anybody have some JP twitter accounts to recommend? Funny, art and music are my things. Maybe even social issues and inspirational quotes. And any Japanese-Korean overlap is legit!

    Not sure how to get specific with this since I just hop onto FB sporadically throughout the day. I just wanna replace my impulse to press the icon with pressing the Twitter icon instead.

      • I will check it out either way! And I didn’t even fully fill this thing out.

        I’m on or around level 40. Been pretty inconsistent with leveling. I am doing this challenge mainly to get my brain used to scrolling through Japanese and taking the time to just read sentences so I can FINALLY have the stamina for novels.

  9. Level: Lower 20’s.

    Time waster to be replaced: English videos. I watch a mix of youtube and twitch on a daily basis.

    Replacement: Japanese videos (twitch streamers, youtube, drama, anime etc).

    I already listen to Japanese podcasts frequently, but wasting time watching videos in English is a habit I am determined to break! I think this challenge is really going to give me the boost I need.

    • I’m so glad I took part in this challenge!

      It was difficult at first to break the habit. Very difficult. The temptation to watch English videos and thoughts like “oh, just one video wont hurt” were especially common during the first week, but slowly faded with time. Sticking to it was hard, but has been totally worth it! Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed how much more time I have by cutting down English YouTube. Not only have I increased daily immersion, but I’ve been putting more time into Anki as well. I never realised how much time I was really wasting on YouTube. Overall its been a really eye-opening experience. I’d say my subscriptions list is 90% Japanese-language content now, which is a vast improvement from before.

      At the beginning of April I started by unsubscribing from the majority of my English-language channels (around 40 or so). I left a couple channels that I use for fitness, so I haven’t had a fully English-free YouTube experience. I then went through lists of popular Japanese YouTubers and subscribed to them. I used these channels to then branch off and find more channels.

      It was easy to find Let’s Plays, but it was hard to find appropriate channels for other genres. The main problem I came across was a lot of Japanese YouTubers not speaking in their videos at all and instead only having Japanese (and often English…) writing in the video. This was especially common for cooking-related channels such as bonobos25 and ABC Cooking Studio. Then I came across K’s Kitchen and all was good in the world (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

      • unsubscribing from the bulk of your english channel’s is awesome. I did the same a few months ago and it has had a huge impact on the amount of time I spend doing Japanese stuff. For some reason, english youtube videos never felt like cheating the way turning on english tv or netflix would, so I also would waste far too much time binge-watching english youtube.

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