I personally found taking the higher levels of JLPT helpful to measure progress, but just using your knowledge to enjoy Japanese media that you would otherwise read/play in English will slowly make you more comfortable.
"America pisses me off"Usada Pekora
Getting Nihongo Jouzu
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I think this is due to the fact that language learning progress isn't a straight line, but rather messy. Just interacting with the language means moving forward, and some days it'll feel like you gained no progress and others it'll feel like you made a giant leap forward without having done anything different from any other day. As for how to measure it, I just try to see how much I can understand with harder materials. Raising the level of the stuff you watch is very satisfying. If you're can/want to, I also recommend entering in a japanese discord group or whatever and just talking a bit with the natives. Makes you feel pretty good. Otherwise, just mining for the day is really good enough.
The Difficulty Level Guide Of Everything Japanese - Japanese Level Up
Looking for something to read, watch, play, or listen to in Japanese? Here is the growing guide of everything reviewed and talked about on Jalup sorted by the difficulty of the Japanese level used within.
japaneselevelup.com
Not quite what I'm looking for though I am beginning to think that thing I am looking for doesn't really exist, but this is honestly helpful as it's a little hard to get anime/manga recommendations by grade level.The Difficulty Level Guide Of Everything Japanese - Japanese Level Up
Looking for something to read, watch, play, or listen to in Japanese? Here is the growing guide of everything reviewed and talked about on Jalup sorted by the difficulty of the Japanese level used within.
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Any good recommendations for anime to immerse with? I've already watched mitsoboshi park, is the order a rabbit, and demon slayer way too many times I need something new
I also have enjoyed aharen is indecipherable, and Hanamaru kindergarten
I also have enjoyed aharen is indecipherable, and Hanamaru kindergarten
The Difficulty Level Guide Of Everything Japanese - Japanese Level Up
Looking for something to read, watch, play, or listen to in Japanese? Here is the growing guide of everything reviewed and talked about on Jalup sorted by the difficulty of the Japanese level used within.
japaneselevelup.com
I did check through that list before I asked bro I'm not braindead nothing on it is really grabbing me I was hoping for some offbeat recommendationsThe Difficulty Level Guide Of Everything Japanese - Japanese Level Up
Looking for something to read, watch, play, or listen to in Japanese? Here is the growing guide of everything reviewed and talked about on Jalup sorted by the difficulty of the Japanese level used within.
You're not really giving us much to go on. What kind of anime are you looking for?
Katanagatari is pretty kino. Slayers? Konosuba? Drifters, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, or Dragonball? Yuru Camp is supposed to be good for beginners.
I like Cute girls doing cute things but I feel like I've burnt through most of the quality anime's in that genre. any show where characters speak slowly would help its part of why I enjoyed aharen is indecipherable. I rather enjoyed Jahi can't be defeated, and World Conquest Zvezda Plot. anything in that vain would be appreciated. Any sort of comically "evil" plot is fun.
Katanagatari sounds interesting I suppose I could give dragonball a try might as well see what the hype is about. I wouldn't mind any Shonen recommendations you might have. I rather enjoyed spooky kintaro horror for children wouldn't be a bad get either.
I hope this is narrowing things down and thank you for the help
Edit in the time since posting I remembered that chat gpt exist and while I am still taking any recommendations any would want to offer. I now have like twenty promising looking options
Edit Chat GPT was nice enough to state why each entry was appealing to beginners and why I might like It. I am not.
Barakamon
The Promised Neverland
Higurashi: When They Cry
Ghost Hunt
Another
Shiki
Interviews with Monster Girls
Cells at Work!
Attack on Titan
Urara Meirochou
Aria Series
Flying Witch
Tamayura Series
Sora no Woto
Pupipo!
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Natsume Yuujinchou
Hoozuki no Reitetsu
Mushishi
The Promised Neverland
Higurashi: When They Cry
Ghost Hunt
Another
Shiki
Interviews with Monster Girls
Cells at Work!
Attack on Titan
Urara Meirochou
Aria Series
Flying Witch
Tamayura Series
Sora no Woto
Pupipo!
Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day
Natsume Yuujinchou
Hoozuki no Reitetsu
Mushishi
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Lucky Star, Yuru Camp, Azumanga Daioh, Ninin ga Shinobuden, K-On!, Manabi Straight, and Bocchi the Rock are all good. I don't remember how quickly they speak, though.
Uhh... Excel Saga? I haven't watched Zannen Onna Kanbu Black General-san, but the manga is great. Those are the only two I can think of.
Definitely do. Katanagatari is only like 12-13 episodes, and there's a reason Dragonball is considered one of the greatest series of all time.
Since you haven't watched Dragonball, I'm just going to rec some of the best ones I know, just in case. Not all of them are shounen, but they're all great. You can just look them up and see if they seem interesting to you. I have no idea how advanced they are, though, because I watched most of these ages ago and I only started learning late last year. I haven't started with immersion myself, yet. I want to finish the beginner word schedule in Renshuu first. Only another two or three weeks.
Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter x Hunter, Gintama, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Slayers, Dot Hack Sign, Air Gear, Rurouni Kenshin, Beck, FLCL, Musekinin Kanchou Tylor, NHK ni Youkoso!, Read or Die (the movie, though the sequel anime is also pretty good), and Sakigake!! Cromartie Koukou.
There's probably others that I'm forgetting, but this should be plenty. Honestly, though, I'd check the Learn Japanese subreddit. Odds are a few dozen other people have asked for anime recs for immersion over the years.
Thanks for the recommendations. I have put most of them on my "to watch". list the ones that didn't make It are mostly shows I've already seen and already like.
It's never too early to start with immersion. The brain is better at holding onto information that it expects to use soon. I was sitting down to episodes of unsubbed spooky kintaro when I was learning kana I picked up a little vocabulary, it helped with my listening, and I rather enjoyed it too. I also kind of want to include the disclaimer that if you're not having fun it's not good immersion. It's not a job you can't fake interest and collect a check at the end of the day. Don't torture yourself because a man with a chinchilla pfp advised it.
You would think but redditors are the lowest form of life they seem to parrot the same recommendations ad nauseum like it's the required reading list for midterms, couple that with the fact that most people give up when they find out they have to learn kanji and it's generally pretty stagnant.
Kin-iro Mosaic
Non Non Biyori
Gabriel Dropout
Comic Girls
Hinako Note
Yuru Camp
Slow Start
Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu
Shinryaku! Ika Musume
I don't know if any of these shows are good for learning Japanese. Trying to learn Japanese by watching anime has never worked for me. I think I've probably picked up more Japanese unintentionally just by watching Hololive for the last few years than I ever learned from watching anime.
Eh. It's only three more weeks, and it's not like I'm pulling teeth by forcing myself to only study vocab, kanji, and grammar. It's honestly pretty fun, and I'm doing a pretty good job of remembering it.
Really? I mean, I was pretty intimidated at first, too, but kanji is super easy. Then again, I'm still on the easy/simple ones, so that might change in a few months.
Seconding these recs.
seconding these recs as well
SoL is just feel good shit and anime girls doing cute things and a good way to learn of course
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From what I understand there are two great filters and they tend to hit people around the same time the first is learning kanji which actually seems to be getting easier not harder, most kanji are made of other kanji and nothing is completely arbitrary the symbols were picked to tell you about the word. once you start to grasp the idiosyncrasy's learning comes easier, but finding out that the average Japanese person uses 2k+ in their day to day life is discouraging to say the least.
The other big filter tends to occur around the same time and it's when people go from learning grammar and vocabulary in a dry setting to immersion.
I have heard learning Japanese compared to learning to swimming quite a bit in that you can't really learn just by reading books you have to go swimming and most people when they start immersion in short simple terms they drown. you are going to be lost and confused no matter how much you've studied because you need the grammar and vocabulary to be second nature not merely something you can recall, and that can be a bit of a blow especially if you haven't braced for it. That said studying grammar and vocabulary is important and it does help, it's much easier to recall something than it is to figure it out.
if you take the following and wrap it in a nice bow of learning kanji through kanken which focuses on memorizing kanji radicals and the ideas associated with each radical in essence learning the aforementioned idiosyncrasy's before you learn trivial things like what the kanji actually mean in context. it's pretty easy to feel like your spinning your wheels going nowhere.
TL; DR
Japanese has an unexpected jump in the learning curve and not a small one at that and kanji being time consuming and depending on the method your using not being helpful in the moment does tend to lead to a lot of burn out in a particular spot.
I watched about half an episode of katanagatari last night I like it it's slightly above my level which actually means it's perfect thank you.
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Let me know what you think when you watch it.
Will follow suit with recommending basically any slow-talking anime that's not just SoL. I really don't enjoy the genre personally and after a bit also got bored with it. Try Mushi-shi, Kino no Tabi, Elaina or whatever in that vein, you might like them. They're actually difficult to understand but it's not a matter of language, which is really slow and usually pretty simple (and actually decently formal, so weirdly enough easier). Other than that, try everything that you would be watching regardless of studies, I think enjoyment is the most important part of the learning journey. Do try to stick to simpler genres for a bit, Gundam is gonna be a pain in the beginning if you're not ready, but also don't restrict yourself too much if you're getting bored.
If anybody cares, my pipeline has been Toradora -> Haruhi -> Kino no Tabi -> Mushoku Tensei -> Rance 03 right now. Oh and Bocchi The Rock -> K-On! -> Kamen Rider Geats -> A few japanese movies like All About Lily Chou Chou, Blue Spring etc for listening. Basically, watch whatever you want to watch. Don't shoot for the stars but don't be too intimidate either. In the beginning everything is gonna be difficult, you just have to enjoy it.
May I ask you how were you using anime in studies? Reading practice? Listening practice? Depending on the method it might explain why you didn't manage to use them effectively. Either way, any native material is good for studying japanese, as long as you're being exposed to the language actively a lot.
Luckily, kanji in of itself are just another form of code, they're as easy or as difficult as it's for someone to recall meaning from an arbitrary image assigned to it. It does require a lot of strain on memory though, especially for the large "kanji vocabulary" - though I think studying words directly is much more proficient, this is just general terms - the active use of the language requires.
Agreed completely, burnout is very real and immersion in the beginning is a nightmare since you will quite literally not be understanding anything at all. Oh and add the classical effect of understanding even less in the first few pages (it's been very much documented). Feeling like that just after having learned ~1.5 - 2k words is unbelivably disheartening. Beware of it, and if you can, push through it. I guarantee consuming japanese will always become easier.
Just so you know and also everyone else, this is what happens with any language being tackled as an adult. "Thing but in Japan" has turned this feature into some borderline mysticism that you have to abscond to when deciphering moon runes but make no mistake, jumping from say, Urdu to maastrichtian Dutch is going to be just as painful, and viceversa.
Personally I rather enjoy slice of life, but it's oddly high risk, high reward. enjoyment of SoL is almost entirely dependent on enjoyment of character and banter. I normally catch around 70% of an anime on my first watch through. That's just sitting and watching not taking anything apart, or re-watching anything. I might do that later I might not. Missing 30% of a shounen isn't too painful, I can still follow the plot and I can still enjoy the fight scenes. I'll probably watch the episode once and then watch it again pausing and reading over the subtitles and taking my time with it. I've had good fun and I'm in a good mood.
Missing 30% of a slice of life is painful because the show is in a certain sense entirely about the subtleties following the plot is one sense easier and in another sense much harder. bizarrely despite taking time to dig through, and figure out the bits I don't get, being more important It feels less rewarding, because it doesn't feel like a choice. I tend to enjoy the first six episodes of a slice of life and then things tend to feel like they are getting too complicated. Occasional the stars align and I'm only missing like 10% of what's happening and the show is good on top of that. That's the good shit.
Personally my lifehack for dealing with burnout has been to ask myself "How can I make this fun for myself" I'm learning Japanese more or less for the fun of it and it's perfectly fine to take the scenic route when things aren't working out. It's not a job I can't phone it in and reap the same benefits.
A large part of what made learning Japanese approachable was that the guide I started with explained how language learning is in many ways fundamentally the same regardless of which language you're learning. I tried learning Latin once it wasn't bad I just kind of got tired of it, it was fun in and of itself but it doesn't feel like there's any steps in between beginner and expert. There isn't any magic to either Japanese, Latin, or Finnish(which is about the same distance from English as Japanese).
The most "mystical" part of learning a foreign language is finding out that the assumptions made in your language aren't universal.
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