Jalup Group Challenge 10: Slaying English Subtitles
Join the next group of people trying to accomplish a major Japanese goal, set a reasonable but challenging time frame, and reach for a grand win together.
Task
Drop English subtitles completely for a month
Initial Instructions
Leave a comment by October 1st and include:
1. Your level
2. Resources you will use
3. Game plan/strategy
Completion Instructions
Reply to your comment by October 31st and include:
1. Completion date
2. Completed or failed? How far did you get?
3. Your experience (issues, struggles, discoveries)
Current Challengers
Kevin ● The Japan Code ● Khuja ● David B ● Chase Kolozsy ● Eleutherna
● See past challenges, attempt any that you missed, and make your way into the Hall of Honor...
● Remember to update your progress on the September Group Challenge!
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
I was afraid this was coming. But I’m in, I think I can do this for a month.
1. 25ish.
2. Dramas and variety shows.
3. I never watch variety shows with subtitles but I am addicted to subtitled dramas. I should be able to drop them though.
1. ~10-15
2. Mostly variety shows and some anime too (I like to watch some seasonal anime but I might not watch many in october if they are all too hard for me to follow without subtitles :P)
3. I love watching variety shows, whether it be ダウンタウンのガキの使いやあらへんで or just random funny episodes of other shows that I find on the JapaneseGameShow subreddit. I will try to follow a few seasonal anime too, if they aren’t too hard to follow. I might try to watch one J-drama too, I’ve only ever watched one (without subtitles, at least!) so this would be a good occasion!
With the new job I havent watched a whole lot this month (1344 minutes) HOWEVER not a single time have I used subtitles, so I would say this was a win! Here’s a couple of things that I have watched:
Youtube:
random 本棚紹介 videos
random gaming videos
Fischer’s-フィッシャーズ-
兄者弟者
Variety Show:
Random episodes found on reddit
Couple episodes from ダウンタウンのガキの使いやあらへんで!!
Anime: barely anything but thought I’d mention anyways
食戟のソーマ 弍ノ皿
ばなにゃ
1. ~7
2. Anime on Crunchyroll website since I can turn them off there. As well as the stockpile of anime here at home. I have been watching two shows this season without subtitles, Hitori No Shita and Shokugeki no Soma. Shokugeki has been rough with all the jargon but it’s not horrible.
3. I have the website for Crunchyroll, plus Funimation. Since Funimation won’t let me turn off subs for the shows that haven’t been ported over yet, it will be sitting behind a new tab on my browser.
I’m in! I am just recovering from a burnout where my close-to-only contact with Japanese came from subbed anime, and I’m starting to get too comfortable with them. This is the perfect time to shake things up.
1. 20~25
2. I think J-dramas are a little bit easier to understand than the anime that I watch, with more realistic dialogue too. I’m loving the top 85 J-Dramas of all time list here on Jalup. But I like the short time commitment for an anime episode. I’ll probably switch between the two and if I’m feeling daring I’ll throw in a variety show here or there. I’ll have a clearer idea of how things go after some time I think.
3. I have a streaming site that I like to use. I shrink down Anki and use that to block the subtitles!
頑張ります！
Wow this month has really flown by. I know there are a few days left in October but I want to write an update about my success! I made it through all of October with no subtitles on anything that I watched. I finished Operation Love, and watched almost all of Durarara.
This challenge was a nice kickstart back into the the world of pure Japanese, and I have no intention of stopping here. It’s hard to understand so little, but I know that this is going to get me where I want to go so I’ll keep going down this road.
~10 – 15
Fluentu and Netflix.
On Fluentu I will just listen and practice pronunciation/shadow. On Netflix I will re-watch Anime without English subtitles. I will choose among: Naruto/Bleach/クロムクロ/Ajin/The Seven Deadly Sins/ Knights of Sidonia
I didn’t even think about it, because when I see a Japanese Man Yuta video I automatically watch it, but all of his videos feature subtitles! I didn’t snap, so I won’t be able to claim 100% success with this challenge, but I will try to avoid his videos in the near future. Ahh!
You can always hide the subtitles with a resized notepad!
そっか！ Thanks for the suggestion :’)
There are a couple more days to this challenge, but I want to comment on it now because I have cause for celebration! ^^ I finished the 1000 Jalup J-E sentences! Over the next two days I will also finish the first 1000 Kanji in Kanji Kingdom, so I hope that when I take the proficiency test here on Jalup I will be around level 20.
Now on to what this month without watching Japanese videos with subtitles reaped…
I tried watching J-Dramas, but they were hard to follow, if it wasn’t for familiar plot structures I would have been completely lost.
I actually ended up dramatically reducing the amount of anime I watched. I always watched an episode a night, but when I watched with subtitles, I would watch several anime episodes a day.
Despite this limited success, I used this challenge as a primer for purely J-J learning in that I eliminated any learning strategies apart from Jalup that involved English. Now, the only English in my studies will come from Beginner Deck reviews and the chain sentences from Kanji Kingdom, and some Kanji Radical deck I completed over the summer.
I used the free time from not watching so much subtitled anime to start collecting Japanese sentences and get the Anki Morphman plug-in working so that when I start studying the sentences, they are all +1.
Well, anyways, cheers!
Congrats on finishing Jalup Beginner!
It sounds like you were able to learn a few things from the Subtitle challenge, and that’s what really matters.
– level around 25
– mostly jdramas and animes
I’m curious, where do you find your variety shows? Can you watch them outside of Japan?
I’ve never watched any.
-Game plan: not sure…I started the J-drama: hotel concierge, so I’ll start by finishing that. I must admit that I don’t do enough passive nor active immersion.