Japanese Progress Update - 1 Year | Refold/Immersion Learning

[@mori-rena]

I use this video for English immersion 😊😊

[@DrSticktrick]

5 hours of reading every day? That is bonkers. Congratulations on your achievements, with this type of motivation you'll reach your goals for sure. I'm just starting out with learning japanese, I hope I'll be where you are at now in one year although I'll try to focus more on listening rather than reading. But we'll see what will happen. The main goal is just to stick with it.

[@hulloh]

Like you said, the most important thing is just to stay consistent and you will eventually reach your goals. Good luck with your Japanese too, even though I heavily focused on reading, I think listening is the way to go tbh (with some reading mixed in as well) especially when starting out.

[@shizuka_yuu]

With 6 hours of learning a day you outrunned me in less than a year. Great job man🎉

[@kioalne]

Time flies so fast... I remember watching your sixth month update video, a month after its release, when I was in my first month of doing the japanese immersion method.

[@hulloh]

Definitely does go by so quickly, I didn't even expect to reach this point and there's still so much more to go. Won't be long before you'll be at your 1 year too!

[@pendatangbaru1167]

How is it going so far?

[@miguelangelsanchezpla3181]

Amazing dude. Before you realise it you're gonna be understanding everything. I've been immersing for 4 years, nowhere near your level of consistency, even stopping anki and immersion altogether and deleting my anki decks and I'm pretty much comfortable in every setting at this point. You're gonna get there really soon if you keep this up.

[@titan146]

This is super interesting cuz i feel like a mirror of you, i have spent the most of my time listening rather than reading but I'm trying to level that out a lot more now. So seeing your stats in reading is inspiring!

[@sacrinarose]

Love how short and to the point the video is. Good luck with your learning!

[@Matheus-ct1xl]

New video! I'm so glad to see you again! ❤️ I'm an English learner, and your channel is so good for immersion.

[@yuesjourney]

I respect the grind 🤝It's interesting to see the different approaches possible to learning Japanese (or any language). You inspire me to read more! Thanks for the video, I'll definitely be looking out for your future updates, keep it up!

[@hulloh]

For sure, everyone has their own way of learning and it can definitely differ a lot but the goal is (mostly) the same in the end! Also, nice 6 month update btw, your speaking has improved so much already, I'm interested to see how it will be at the 9 - 12 month marks.

[@yuesjourney]

@ that’s true! And thank you!!

[@aurelioamsterdam7581]

your videos keep me motivated in my own journey, thanks pal

[@yuenatv]

your break down is really clear! sounds like great progress :))

[@grate77]

Please do more videos! You’re my Motivation for learning Japanese

[@zohlus6728]

I'm coming up to the end of my first year as well. 6000 anki cards is a hell of a lot, well done. I'm just over 4000 myself I've been doing mostly listening, I watch or listen to JP KZbinrs for ~5 hours a day. Haven't really touched reading other than subtitles, but I've been wanting to try reading. I might start with Too Many Losing Heroines 日本語練習を頑張ろう！

[@hulloh]

Impressive stuff, 4000 cards in Anki and no doubt you know more words than that just from picking it up from listening. Do you listen to podcasts much or is it mostly just casual KZbin videos? Too many losing heroines seems like a great choice to start reading with too, might be a little tough at first but I'm sure you'll get used to it quick enough. Good luck with your progress!

[@zohlus6728]

@@hulloh When I'm purely listening (at college with an earbud in/second monitor while I'm playing games) I like to listen to Yuyu's Nihongo Podcast. He speaks well and keeps his dialogue at a fairly moderate level (~N3 or so). For active watching I usually watch Hololive vtubers. I find gameplay videos to be good input material since the people playing tend to narrate their own in-game actions, and it's easy to get addicted to watching vtubers (at least for me) which helps with consistency What program do you use to read light novels? Is there a website that hosts them?

[@thrift272]

been watching since the 6 month video, keep it up

[@Thisisjustatest12]

I just recently started learning Japanese. Currently learning Hiragana and Katakana. 😊

[@brrrt1-1]

がんばってください (Do your best.)

[@glaakee]

Keep up the good work. 👍

[@avveti500]

Lets gooo hes back

[@Haillan15]

you're only 3 months ahead of me but your hours of input is insane. I'm only at 770 hours of active immersion not including passive or anki. Best of luck reaching your goals!

[@ZachAddison93]

ONE YEAR. Let’s go.

[@Oinkiepiggy]

I'm doing anywhere from 2-8 a day. Just started 3 days ago and I know hiragana and katakana.

[@Miksu__]

Good job man. When you hit 10k+ vocab you'll be unstoppable for sure

[@backster4744]

Good Luck man, I'm currently at 9,800 nearing 10k in anki, I still feel like I'm just getting started if I'm being honest haha, keep it up!

[@hulloh]

Grats on 10k soon, pretty big milestone. I feel you on that, I've even seen people with 20k+ cards saying their vocab still holds them back lol feels like I've only just scratched surface with 6k!

[@zerosick]

I've been doing kaishi 1.5k deck for around 4 months now and I still havent started learning grammar... I think I should do both at the same time now.

[@Nighteye88]

I neglected reading in the beginning so its haunting me now. I put way too much time into listening. Lol.... I'm trying to play catch up with my reading being 8 years into learning. I'm impressed with the amount of time you put into reading. I think it'll pay off but I would definitely put in more time listening try to balance it out if you can. 頑張ってね。

[@dinninfreeman2014]

if you want to really accelerate your vocab try using mind palaces to memorize vocab words (give it at least 90 days to build the systems, mind palaces, one and two letter image/character lists, and to really get moving with the techniques) It has been a game changer for my language learning efforts

[@Wlaker]

Sick video, I have been mainly doing vocab these last couple months and run both the Core2k/6k at 10 new a day and Kaishi1.5k at 20 new a day. Only 300 more to go till im done with kaishi and I feel im at a point now where I really need to just immerse more.

[@hulloh]

Sounds like you've got a really good base amount of vocab with 30 cards a day, so immersing more seems like a good choice!

[@nefernaly7583]

Finally >:)

[@PinkDolphin343]

I think you are doing great progress being self taught,I started as well a year ago i think that if you buy some books you are gonna be easily level n3 by next year mark, with the amount of immersion you have had I think the only thing you are missing is proper grammar and you should be good to go I say this cause i did the same you are doing now, but with english, and once i started to learn proper English grammar, i advanced through it so fkn fast Keep it up man! btw how old are you?

[@Dermester27]

As much I love japanese and learning it I just can't imagine spending and making such a hard effort. I have 8 months learning it and sometimes I take week breaks cause I dont want to overwhelm me. Japanese makes me so comfortable and happy and Im at my best moment actually learning it. You are an inspiration after seeing this. RESPECT MAN. Last thing. Do you recommend me to increase my anki cards per day? I increased three months ago to 30 cause I ended being too confident but I got humbled and I ended dropping it for months due getting tired. Recently I came back to anki but I lowered to 10, its really worth the effort to upgrade the limit sacrificing the mood?

[@hulloh]

Most people recommend somewhere between 5 - 15 cards a day so 10 seems good, maybe you could try 15 for a short while and see how it goes but if not 10 is more than fine.

[@hzi88]

10 new cards per day is good if this means you do it every day. The big point is doing things daily so japanese is always in your mind. Also you need to see the words outside Anki in some way. Anki should be the basis so you generally know a word but you need to encounter it elsewhere or even better use it to really memorize it. I sometimes chat someone a new word I learned and just this process of typing it into my phone and sending it often makes me remember it way better than I ever could with Anki.

[@Itamii1337]

自分で何かを勉強するのは難しいんですね。それで大学の日本学に入学して先月1年間になりました

[@paragondissonance]

Welcome back! Happy to see an update! I was curious if since last time you've attempted to start steins;gate at all or still holding off on it? Between the last update and now a friend of mine pushed me to at least read a chapter of VN I was holding off on and it went smoother than I thought (still went quite slowly), And I want to pass it forward and just give ya a little shove to try it out with steins if you hadn't already! Especially now that you sound pretty confident in your reading ability. I was also curious of your reading process itself, is it just throwing yomitan at words you don't know and just seeing if you can comprehend the sentence after and moving on if ya don't? Also grats on starting to use a monolingual dictionary more! My favorite is definetly 例解学習国語辞典 第十一版 from marv's collection of em since the defentions are pretty simple and has nice example sentences. Looking forward to your future updates broski

[@hulloh]

Thanks for reminding me about steins;gate, I had forgotten about it but seeing how it went for you, I'll definitely give it a try after I'm finished with Classroom of the elite. For reading, like you said, most of the time I'll check unknown words as I go and see if I can make sense of the sentence like, if not I'll move on. After I've mined 25 cards for the day, usually during the last hour or so I'll read without stopping much for look-ups, I miss more but it is slightly more enjoyable this way for me. I'll also check out the dictionary you've been using, I've mostly stuck with 旺文社国語辞典 第十一版 since it was quite beginner friendly but I think I'm comfortable enough to use a more "standard" dictionary now, thanks for the recommendation and I'm glad things are going well for you!

[@Shenepoy]

I've been learning for couple of months but stagnated after 300 words/cards, when I was in japan I understood 30% of what was saying and had someway of communicating but when learning I feel like I know nothing 🙃

[@CooldownCentral]

crazy dude. my 1 year is in january i hope i am anywhere near these stats lol, (though i do know a lot of vocab)

[@Pasclesrm]

Damn. I'm on month 2 and I only know like 500 words. I need to up my game

[@Pampayan]

Ok let's be real : Wake up 7, breakfast/sport/kid... work at 9 to 18h. Then homework for kids/cooking/eating it's 20h30. somme house work, put kid to sleep. Ok 21h now I have 2h left to make what I want : spending time with my wife, learn japanese ... I can put at max of the max 1h in japanese a day. I see 5+ hours a day here . Im so fucked with your immersion sfuff 😆

[@fataniheart]

😢

[@ArshSidhu-c9n]

i am doing listening more. i listen to begginer podcast add words and listen to it on repeat and then do the same again . i am not interseted in reading . i put earphone in my ear all day and listen to it on reeat. i don't know if i am improvig but i hope i am .

[@Ocklepod]

9:20 what is this anime, and why does it have a jabberwocky and possibly the japanese translation of the novel "Through the Looking-Glass"??

[@hulloh]

I'm impressed you recognized it! It's from Penguin Highway, it's a fun watch if you're looking for something that's not too serious.

[@astryx4437]

Have you considered using movies or dramas for listening immersion? I used to think that they just weren't for me, and that there wasn't much variety, but after trying a few, my eyes opened, and now they make up about 90% of my listening immersion. I usually find the Japanese spoken much more stimulating compared to anime, too. Good job btw, great progress!

[@hulloh]

Thanks for the suggestion, I haven't tried any dramas yet, couldn't really find anything that seemed interesting enough. I have watched some movies though and enjoyed them but struggled a bit with no subs but that was a couple months ago so maybe I should give it another go soon, do you have any recommendations?

[@astryx4437]

I might be a bit weird because I find harder content more engaging and easier to focus on. But I can recommend a few titles that span different difficulty levels and genres. Some simpler dramas I enjoyed are Todome no Kiss, Switched, A Girl and Three Sweethearts, Anata no Ban Desu, Hanazakari no Kimitachi e. For slightly more challenging ones, I really liked especially Quartet, Strangers from Hell, Orange Days, 1 Litre of Tears. For movies, I could go on forever, but some easier ones that I love include Departures, Shoplifters, or Monster (or anything by Kore-eda, really), If Cats Disappeared from the World, House, Your Eyes Tell, The Taste of Tea. For more difficult ones, Confessions, The Happiness of the Katakuris, Tampopo, anything by Shunji Iwai. Regardless of whether this was helpful or not, good luck with your Japanese journey's progression!

[@vielgerman]

Currently doing 5 cards on anki a day which currently takes 28 minuts for me (time decreasing each day). I tried once increase the new card count but then i got unmotivated and skipped anki for like 2 months so im quite hesitant inscreasing my new card count. Also im pretty much in the beginning so i dont know the kanjis yet so new words are slightly hard to learn atm but its getting better.

[@hzi88]

I am at 10 cards and there are days where I need over an hour and days where I need 30 minutes. I often watch podcasts with subtitles on on youtube and try to look out for words I should now, mostly by recognizing a kanji I think I should know, if I encounter one I look it up and also listen to the part where it is said again. The hardest cards in Anki for me are the the words which are just not used in the content I consume currently, so I got no other connection other than Anki. But even with 5 cards a day that is like 2k done in a bit over a year, which is already good vocab. What also can help is to have a kanji deck. I got one I do a bit but not super serious. I generally just want to learn that different kanji mean and maybe learn the most common pronunciation, but as said I do not take it serious, so I skip days on it and mainly to it when I got the motivation and time. Also set it up that it takes like 15 minutes at max.

[@dexelprep]

How often do you look up words when you immerse? Every word you don't know? Or some time interval?

[@hulloh]

The first hour or two I usually look up every word to try and hit 25 cards mined, but after that it varies, sometimes I look up nothing for 30+ minutes or I'll look up every so often Not sure if it's the best method but it works for me so can't complain

[@OtakuLolicon]

I wish I was in your state so I could read the linguistical masterpiece that is the monogatari series. Read Nisioisn's Magnus Opus now! If you do then please make a video about it or just reply to me telling me about your experience.

[@hulloh]

That's actually my main goal right now to read the series, definitely wouldn't be able to fully enjoy it with my current level so probably in the next 6 - 12 months I'll try and most likely still struggle lol. I'll talk about it in my last video, don't really have any goals after finishing that series (apart from visit Japan once again) so will chill on Japanese after finishing it.

[@OtakuLolicon]

@hulloh Nice! Will be tuning into your future vids then. After the monogatari series the only thing left is to get a cute Japanese wife lol

[@CloudXDP]

I really need to rethink my methods... Ive been doing this nearly two years and I've not felt close to this progress 😅

[@GaliosUA]

It's mostly about time, not methods. I doubt you were reading for 4+ hours every day on top of 1+ hours of anime. These are crazy numbers that few can afford to allocate.

[@CloudXDP]

@GaliosUA oh absolutely, I am not doing anywhere near as much immersion learning to be honest.

[@anthonytruong1460]

what website did you use for the light novels or did u purchase them physically ?

[@hulloh]

Anna's Archive has a lot of novel epubs available and I use ttsu reader to read them in browser so I can use Yomitan.

[@DarktrekOfficial]

End goal: Get a Japanese girlfriend and talk with her only in Japanese

[@hanco6362]

なぜ惡の華を選んだんですか？(笑) あれは漫画が名作ですよ！！ あとCLANNADをオススメします。

[@hulloh]

I read the manga 8 - 9 years ago and enjoyed it so wanted to see what the anime was like, I liked the music lol I'll try watching Clannad too!

[@plasmamuffin1320]

What anime are you showing in the video? Also, how long did this take you to edit? It looks like it must have taken a while.

[@hulloh]

Penguin Highway, Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, Too many losing Heroines and Atri were the anime in the video Didn't do as much editing this video since it takes too long for me so it ended up taking half the time as usual

[@ZortaZert]

How did you track how many hours you spent on different stuff? Manually or with some tool?

[@hulloh]

Mostly just manually using a spreadsheet, but for reading times and speed (characters/hr) I started using the built-in timer in ttsu reader since it's more accurate for books.

[@nefernaly7583]

How many reviews do you usually do with 25 new cards? I do 15 new cards a day and it usually takes around 120-160 reviews which i do in 30-40 minutes. I want to also switch to 25 new cards but I'm not sure how much worse it'll be compared to 15

[@hulloh]

It usually takes around 40 - 50 minutes most days, would definitely recommend it though if you can handle more Anki.

[@nefernaly7583]

@hulloh but do you now the approximate number of reviews you do in most days? Did it increase a lot from when you were doing 15? I'm asking cause I review pretty slowly so I don't think it'll take me 40-50 minutes like it takes you

[@hulloh]

@@nefernaly7583 It's around 320 reviews a day which is almost double what it used to be so definitely a big increase.

[@rengga7021]

Where I can watch anime with Japanese subs?

[@artifice6144]

How to you get light novels in Japanese? I struggle to get them in the states.

[@hulloh]

Probably the best place is from Anna's Archive, should be the first result on Google. TheMoeWay also has a sharing channel on their discord which sometimes has books not available elsewhere.

[@minami_janai]

When you first started reading, were you mining the vocab words you didn't know or did you just look up the words you didn't know while reading and then continue to go on until you learned those words over time?

[@hulloh]

A bit of both, I would mine words if they were under 10k frequency and I would skip the less common ones. Now it's the opposite, I'll mostly just skip higher frequency words since I'll see them so often I should learn them without Anki, and now I mine more uncommon words.

[@fsilvamartins]

Where do you find manga to read? Do you buy physical books?

[@hulloh]

TheMoeWay resource list has a section on manga and where to download from, would recommend checking that out.

[@fsilvamartins]

@ thanks!! I'll check It out!

[@i8pinedazhiro567]

do you have plans of taking jlpt?

[@hulloh]

Not right now, maybe after another 6-12 months though. I would only want to take N1 and I would 100% fail right now and I have no use for it currently so it seems kind of pointless for me at the moment.

[@i8pinedazhiro567]

@hulloh ooh goodluck goodluck

[@rXqasmudaRbjcFo7yJ]

You glossed over how you learned grammar. Just tae kim and straight into flash cards and reading? Im kinda doing the same route, my goal is just to consume japanese media. Not to communicate since i have no plans on making jp friends or vacation there.

[@hulloh]

Yeah pretty much just a quick read of Tae Kim's and reading. Honestly though, I wish I spent a bit more time on "studying" grammar especially at the beginning. I definitely didn't put enough effort in and even though it worked out, my grammar is still terrible compared to someone who actively studied it. Since consuming media is your main goal though, it's probably fine since you're not trying to pass JLPT or converse.

[@rXqasmudaRbjcFo7yJ]

@hulloh At what point in grammar lessons did you stop actively studying? I'm currently halfway n4 lessons, but I'm still just reading graded readers, and i find them too easy, but when I tried doraemon manga, i just gave up after a few hours because the amount of look up i did was frustrating me.

[@hulloh]

@@rXqasmudaRbjcFo7yJ It was so long ago I don't really remember, I think I just briefly read through everything and then didn't touch it again. When you're starting off there will be a lot of look-ups but it does get easier the more you stick with it. Maybe you could check out Mokuro and Yomitan for look-ups when reading manga, without that I probably wouldn't have read any manga at all since it's so tedious having to manually type it into Jisho.

[@avixka7751]

Are you currently a student ? I found myself unable to commit so many hours per day after work and stuff. I've started learning japanese in april, but I still can't really read or listen. I'm on tadoku, but I struggle with the level 2 books I feel like I'm actively avoiding open anki, and it's been like a few weeks since I've used it, it's just too boring. My anki currently has 20 new words per day and it takes me like a 1 hour 15 minutes to go through everything including the reviews.

[@hulloh]

I work from home so I have no commute and can also read during downtime at work so that helps free up a lot of time, otherwise I doubt I'd even get 2+ hours. Maybe you could try reducing the time spent on Anki and see if it becomes more tolerable, should free up more time for getting input too. Also, Refold has some good videos on the topic of learning without Anki on their channel if you're interested.

[@hzi88]

Remember that hearing/reading words outside Anki is generally way more valuable than repeating them in Anki. So once you have a basic level and found content you generally can understand bits of I would try to do more immersion and look out for words you should know from Anki and look them up if you forgot them and listen to the part where they are said again. Go for reading and listening (preferably with Japanese subtitles, youtube auto generated are also decent)

[@fataniheart]

Hi. What is the name of the anime with a blue hair girl? Thanks!

[@hulloh]

Too many losing heroines, would recommend it's pretty funny.

[@fataniheart]

@hulloh Thanks 🩵

[@vfisha]

how are you able to track your hours, please link any resources like that, i'm begging

[@hulloh]

I used a spreadsheet and manually tracked it, but also if you're reading novels you could use ttsu reader which has a built-in time tracker that's really helpful. Ryan No Koto released a video recently that talks about tracking time and he mentions methods he used so I'd recommend checking out that for sure.

[@Markus.D.K]

You could use Toggl Track, for example. The free version includes everything you need.

[@AcesX13]

Whats the name of the anime at 2:30 ? Seems familiar but never seen the actual name

[@hulloh]

ATRI -My Dear Moments-, think it's based on a VN, not sure if I'd recommend it though lol had some funny moments but overall not great

[@AcesX13]

@@hulloh Thank you!

[@Joshua-f7e8k]

Where do you find japanese manga to use to input into anki?

[@JustKyzuuh]

If you use mokuro, you can OCR manga (this turns the image text into selectable text) and then you can mine it like normal using yomitan/anki connect. You can use sharex or whatever other program for grabbing screencaps to add to your cards.

[@Joshua-f7e8k]

@JustKyzuuh I understand this. I mean where do I find manga that is in Japanese online?

[@hulloh]

If you want to read it online then RawOtaku has some series, never used the site so can't say how good it is but it looks like a clone of any English manga site (which usually also have raw too) but in Japanese. If you want to download them, check out TheMoeWay resources manga section, it has many links where you can find it although the quality varies quite a lot.

[@real-issizi]

How many words did you learned daily? 1k in 2 months is pearty fast

[@hulloh]

The past few months it's been 25 per day, but before that it varied between 10 - 20.

[@WarriorX16]

You take 25 new cards a day and Anki only takes you 45 minutes? How? I use FSRS with 15 new a day which gives about 225 reviews a day since I set target retention to 0.85 and it takes around an hour and 15 minutes to and hour and a half to review and learn 15 new if I fully concentrate

[@hulloh]

How long do you take per card? For today I did 329 in 49 minutes with 8.9 seconds per card and my retention is usually around 80-85%, compared to some people (5s per card) this is really slow as well but I'm fine with it so it doesn't bother me anymore. I don't stress about Anki as much now, it's mostly just to make me aware that a word exists and then I'll hopefully learn it after seeing it in immersion a number of times.

[@WarriorX16]

@hulloh idk how to check specific days’ history but I took a screenshot coincidentally yesterday and my stats were: Studied 331 cards in 1.53 hours today (16.68s/card) Again count: 92 (27.79%) Learn: 51, Review: 224, Relearn: 56, Filtered: 0 No mature cards were studied today. To be fair I do it during lunch at work while talking to people and I did it last night while also talking with people so maybe this one is a bit of an outlier.

[@GaliosUA]

@@WarriorX16 16.68s/card is too slow. When I did Anki my time per card was ~7 seconds and it was similar to many others I've asked. The usual range was around 6 to 8 seconds.

[@WarriorX16]

@ maybe it’s just cuz I do it throughout the day whenever, which is oftentimes while doing something else. Just hard to find a time to sit down and do it distraction free

[@hzi88]

What helps is if you encounter words outside of your anki (or any other SRS). So the more things besides anki you do the faster your anki session will be. My speed is kinda like yours. I get the meaning of a word down quite fast but I struggle with remembering how it is written in hiragana. I use an audio set so I often also can tell you what it is if I hear it but could not write or say it myself if I would see it somewhere. So I repeat until I get everything down although maybe being able to hear and understand it would already be enough for immersion learning.

[@IriaChannel]

lol what a waste of time

[@JustKyzuuh]

Less of a waste than going around leaving dickhead comments on KZbin videos 🤔