1500 hours done, let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of this journey.
My personal study rules
I only do immersion. No dictionary, no translations, no grammar, no anki, no textbooks, no course, no subtitles, no reading. I do not believe that this is a superior way or anything - I just see it as a personal experiment, because I did not think one can learn a language this way. But yeah, it seems that it is possible.
Current study structure
Multiple sessions spread over the day: Early morning, commute, lunch, commute, postwork, evening and night sessions. Most of them are active watching. If I commute or during a running session, I do podcasts. CIJ is still the most efficient resource for building up vocabulary and grammar structures. I try to avoid any type of passive immersion if possible. Also when I commute I choose easy podcasts like Teppei Beginner.
I try to spend around 60% with CIJ Beginner or CIJ Intermediate videos. Especially the whiteboard style videos or content like Pepper & Carrot are fantastic. It can be a bit tough to focus only on beginner videos, so I switch between CIJ and some external content for extra motivation. For example, 40-45 minutes of CIJ + 15-20 minutes of Bluey / Polar Bear / Squid Game etc.
I focus on 95-98% immersion. This means I focus on content where I already understand 95-98% of the spoken language and I can recognise new words and concepts.
Study structure per day:
- 50 - 65% CIJ beginner or intermediate
- 25 - 40% Disney+ and Netflix
- around 10% podcasts (mostly Teppei)
Target immersion range per day: 7.5 - 8.5 hours per day.
At the moment I reach 55+ immersion hours per week.
Additionally I added two crosstalk sessions per week:
- 1x 3 hour crosstalk session with a Japanese friend
- 1x 1 hour crosstalk session with a Japanese teacher
Next steps
My next goal are 2000 hours and if everything works out I will reach it in 60 days. I plan to start speaking after the 2000-hours milestone. From there on I will practice to speak daily with my girlfriend and with my language exchange partners.
I do not expect big results in the first output hours. I think that I will probably need a couple of 100s of output hours before it will feel natural.
Additionally I plan to start Cold Character Reading (see CIJ Guide if you don’t know it) to learn the kana. This won’t take a big chunk of my daily immersion time. At the moment I plan to “read” for 30 minutes per day (starting at 2000 hours). The main focus until 3000 hours still will be active listening / watching + speaking. CCR is just a side quest.
The Good
The method really works. I think that I finally went through the valley of despair as I discover every day new useful content outside of CIJ. I can understand CIJ Advanced videos, but they are not in the 95-98% range so I rather avoid them.
N4 and N3 content from learnnatively are usually easy to understand for me and I can enjoy them. Unfortunately, I still don’t like anime.
Here some of the things I like to watch at the moment. For instance those movies or series on netflix:
Asterix, Brainchild, Queen’s Gambit, Forrest Gump, Jumanji, Ponyo, Recess, Squid Game, Storybots, Totoro, Waffle and Mochi.
On Disney+ I usually watch Bluey, Ice Age and Win or Loose.
Additionally I like to watch Polar Bear Cafe.
The thing which changed most is the quality of my hearing. I can distinguish sounds much better than before, in any kind of situation. For instance, we went to a kakigori bar and “immersed” listening to the waiters speak to each other in Japanese with all the surrounding noise (kakigori shavers, loud music, other guests, cars). I think the thing which made the biggest difference was my focus on 98% CIJ beginner videos - after switching to them I felt the biggest comprehension push.
We asked waiters in Japanese restaurants to interact with us in Japanese only (we forced them to crosstalk - muahaha ) and it was easily understandable. Additionally, our friend and crosstalk partners said that she only adapts little to our level and has the impression that we really can understand her. All crosstalk interaction felt very natural to this point.
The bad
CIJ is a fantastic learning platform for the complete beginner to lower intermediate range. However, I see that we miss content which prepares us for upper intermediate content e.g. news (8 videos), science (2 videos) or politics (4 videos).
Which makes the problem worse is that those topics are only treated in the high intermediate or advanced category, so we are not prepared with beginner style whiteboard videos for this high difficulty content.
The ugly
I am currently experiencing my 5th (almost) burnout. This time I feel a strong multi day tiredness, nausea and restlessness. Fortunately, by now, I know the drill and I understand that I have to improve my relaxation and recovery to overcome this pre-burnout. My sleep quality is still okay, so I am not too worried.
However, it is the first time that my girlfriend goes through a pre-burnout as well.
Final words
I am deeply grateful that CIJ exists which enabled me to learn the basics of Japanese within such a short time. So I want to send hugs to Ben & Yuki and all the CIJ team members!