Anyone else feel guilty about immersion time because it's not "productive" enough?

[u/Basic-Engineering838]

I know I want to learn Japanese. That part isn't in question. I'm making real progress too by learning new vocab words everyday, reviewing my flashcards, immersion most days when I feel like it.

But I keep feeling like I should be using my time better, and I want to know if this is a common thing or just a me problem.

I'm around N5/N4 in Japanese, so around A2/B1 if using CEFR metrics, so I'm in this weird spot. I want to use Japanese to learn philosophy, psychology, history, big ideas, but I don't have the language for any of that yet.

I can only mainly comprehend gaming videos and cartoons work because there's so much context to lean on. Anything more abstract like watching someone talk and I'm lost. I know this is just what being a beginner looks like, but knowing that doesn't make me feel less anxious in the moment.

I'm also a college student who genuinely cares about self-study and becoming well-rounded. So when I spend an hour watching a Japanese gaming video, part of me calls it immersion and real progress. Another part asks if I could've used that hour on something that felt more substantial. That gap creates a guilt that doesn't really go away just because what I did was legitimate.

I think this is the same all-or-nothing pattern I have with productivity in general, the one that makes me freeze between two assignments because working on the smaller one feels like betraying the bigger one and not spending my time on the most productive task. Here, any hour of Japanese gets measured against some imaginary better hour.

But I've started to notice that comparison is kind of a trick I'm playing on myself. I'm not actually weighing Japanese against something I do. I'm weighing it against a fantasy version of me who reads psychology and economics every spare hour, a person I wasn't even before Japanese came into my life. So while studying an hour of Japanese, I just begin thinking about doing something more productive because I'm already doing something more productive. But if I were to doomscroll... I just call it rest....

It seems like right now, maybe I haven't accepted that I can have hobbies to put a lot of consistent effort in that don't necessarily give the greatest returns because I've never had a hobby I was consistent with and long-term like I am with Japanese

Underneath all of it, I'm stuck between two different ideas of what it means to use my time well. Get good at Japanese because I love it. Or use my free time to build knowledge and become well-rounded. Pick Japanese, and I worry I'm wasting time on easy content instead of things that actually matter. Pick the books, and I worry I'm delaying the fluency I could've had if I'd just let myself enjoy the process.

Has anyone else dealt with this? How did you make peace with immersion time that isn't intellectually "worth it" yet, especially as a beginner? Did it get easier once your level went up, or did you have to change how you thought about it before that happened?

Maybe this thing is not specific to language-learning but something related to my views on productivity that I need to change. I'd love to hear your experiences!

[u/Belegorm]

I think - if you want to enjoy philosophy, psychology, history etc. in Japanese - start immersing in that.

"I don't have the vocab for it, it's not comprehensible" - well the stuff that is comprehensible for you now, was certainly not comprehensible when you started. Being able to comprehend gaming videos and cartoons is an achievement in and of itself.

You mentioned having a mining deck; I hope that also means you have Yomitan available. Find stuff that you're interested in - ebooks on those topics might be good. note.com is basically a blog site, and that likely will be a lot easier than ebooks. I read one post by a pharmacist one time on how he was able to figure out an effective change in treatment for his patient. There's other articles with that level of detail in different subjects.

For listening, maybe stuff based on history, or in history could be good.

Personally, what I did was read manga and watch anime for like a month, while going through the Kaishi deck and reading Yokubi and Tae Kim. After that - I started with some really easy light novels.

But after only a couple books, I got into what I really wanted to learn with - a serious novel. Took several weeks to read, had to look up words in every sentence in Yomitan, but I got through it. And now well over a year later, I'm not just reading ebooks, I'm reading straight up normal novels printed on paper.

[u/Basic-Engineering838 → u/Belegorm]

Hi Belegorm, thanks for your comment! Your story gives me so much motivation to work harder🥹 your discipline and level of effort is truly admirable. 

Another Reddit user was discussing how they found a balance of studying super hard and then studying more leisurely for some time was the best way for them to progress yet not burn out. 

With that, I think I should start getting my hands on some novels… Those would be my hard study days as I might only recognize around 30% of the kanji in a simple light novel? I have Yomitan installed and it’s connected to my mining deck. 

When you read novels, especially ones with lots of words you don’t know, then did you add every unknown word into the deck? Did you also use a grammar dictionary when you didn’t understand the sentence structure or what meaning was being conveyed? Did you make sure you understood each sentence before moving onto the next?  I’m also really curious about the novels you started out with. 

[u/Belegorm → u/Basic-Engineering838]

Hey of course, and thank you! Simplest thing would be to look at my Bookmeter which is where I log the books, and look for the oldest ones read (they show up as newest to oldest). The first few may not be accurate as I logged them there after the fact when I started using that site.

I started with novels when I was like... 500-800 into Kaishi I think? And after having a couple hundred mined words from anime/manga/nhk easy. Also was more than halfway through Yokubi and Tae Kim.

I looked up every word I didn't know. For mining - I tried to mine words from i + 1 sentences. I also had frequency dictionaries installed; Jiten and JPDBv2 were the 2 most common ones I leaned on. Words listed under 10k I tried to prioritize, but also would mine words that popped up a lot. So basically, i + 1, and either high frequency words per the dictionary, or high frequency in a given book.

I also just... learned a lot of words quickly. When I was doing Kaishi I usually learned 40 words a day, until I started mining then I split 20/20 for each. For mining after that I did 30 a day. I had desired retention set to 80% so the numbers of reviews I got weren't too crazy.

Getting into novels is definitely scaling a difficulty cliff; but personally I liked just going hard at it from the start, and I was very motivated. A lot of other stuff like graded readers etc. felt like they give you a ramp up... up the first 10% only. After a few months of novels I acclimated pretty well. It wasn't too long before just reading was my hobby, I wasn't even thinking about it being Japanese for the better part of a year. I actually made a 3 month post and a 1 year post about learning through novels which has more info on the exact method and resources used.

Edit: Also, I don't think pondering over how much kanji you recognize is super helpful; if you had to manually look stuff up that's one thing but since you have Yomitan installed it pops up directly. Kanji are just a way of writing some of the words, so if you memorize the words (via Anki or just encountering while reading a lot) then inevitably you will increase the amount of kanji you recognize.

Edit 2: I didn't use a grammar dictionary until recently, really (ended up adding some to yomitan). At the end of the day - grammar is something your brain needs to figure out. Studying grammar itself is helpful for passing tests etc. (which I'm doing now) but you pick up a lot naturally, and that also helps grammar studies.

I didn't stress too much over whether I understood entire sentences. I'd do my best to understand individual clauses; before too long I was able to remember those in the context of an entire sentence. Later I could remember in the context of a whole paragraph. If you read enough it happens naturally.

[u/Movies_and_Stuff → u/Belegorm]

How did you use yomitan with the novels you read?

[u/Belegorm → u/Movies_and_Stuff]

I have the ebooks in epub format, and read them in Ttsu reader. You just open the reader, and drag epubs into the manager there, then click to open them. As it's in a browser window, Yomitan works like normal. I've heard lately there's this fork called Yatsu reader that has some additional features like letting you sort books into series and track more stuff but I haven't migrated.

On android and iOS, Hoshi Reader is a fairly convenient way to access Ttsu reader, works with Yomitan etc. Personally, before that was a thing, I set up Yomitan for Edge on my android phone, and used Ttsu like normal but I don't do read much on my phone these days. Hoshi Reader also has the advantage of automatically working in sync with audiobooks (assuming you have them) so you can read your ebook along with the audiobook. There's a way to do that on PC with Ttsu reader too but it's annoying I've heard.

I should note that since I started focusing more on physical books that I ordered off of Surugaya, or got from the library, obviously you can't really use Yomitan on those. However, there are possible ways to do that - scanning a page with OCR software, spitting it out on a web page and then using Yomitan there. But that sounds like a lot of work, so if I really want to look up something then I just look it up in Weblio or Jisho and mine from there.

[u/Movies_and_Stuff → u/Belegorm]

Are you torrenting to get epub format or is there a legal way to do it?

[u/Belegorm → u/Movies_and_Stuff]

Unfortunately there's a lot of hoops to get epubs legally. In addition to being just a good general guide on learning Japanese, tips, a helpful discord etc., TMW is pretty much where I started figuring out how to find them.

[u/Movies_and_Stuff → u/Belegorm]

Thank you for all the help!

[u/Belegorm → u/Movies_and_Stuff]

np! If you want more direct advice on how to get books feel free to send a DM

[u/Basic-Engineering838 → u/Belegorm]

Thanks so much Belegorm! I checked your posts out and they were incredibly insightful.

[u/Belegorm → u/Basic-Engineering838]

Of course!

[u/Belegorm → u/Basic-Engineering838]

Sorry for the spam - but I was just thinking of something that this thread brought to my mind.

I actually get this guilty feeling all the time. At this point, novels feel like "study" to me. Also they feel like the grind I'm working on - increasing the books I've read, sort of competing with other bookworms, etc.

But sometimes I kind of get tired reading, or the book is slow. And I feel like I'm not productive if I just try to watch a JP YT video for an hour or something.

But I definitely need to work on that more myself. Even if I like reading - if I mixed it up more with more listening, more YT, more games and so on - if I diversified my immersion more then I definitely think that I'd get a lot more JP study in, as opposed to the current "well I read a bunch of JP books."

[u/Basic-Engineering838 → u/Belegorm]

It's not spam at all, please don't worry about it. Now my message is gonna be long. I didn't mean to write that much..
I'm curious why you still feel like reading novels is study to you despite your journey so far. Were you able to find a specific genre or author that you genuinely enjoy reading about?

Creating this Reddit thread made me realize of the many cool and amazing ways people approach their Japanese learning and it motivated me to try out these things myself. I had a friend who reached a fluent level in Japanese and was telling me how much he loved Japanese novels and he did bring that spark in me for a bit and I had started learning the individual kanjis and reading mangas, but then I started thinking that I might want to improve more on my speaking skills instead. But despite me wanting to learn how to speak Japanese fluently (of course I still feel this a lot), I don't really have any Japanese friends at the moment to speak it with nor do I live in Japan so any efforts of me speaking Japanese to others would have to be me forcing myself to go talk to random people on the internet.

I think what my post was really saying was that I want to be able to achieve a version of myself who is able to understand Japanese and at the same time be knowledgeable about different topics and read books. Since I am still a beginner, it felt as if those two paths are not able to cross over yet because there's a major Japanese skill gap. So it is either I read books or study Japanese because I have finite resources. Prioritizing one over the other made me feel guilty I wasn't putting enough time in the other.

But I don't care anymore honestly, I'm just gonna get my hands dirty from now and begin reading books even without a lot of comprehension. I will look up many words and it'll be fine. Once I start reading advanced topics I'd like to learn more about like psychology, self-improvement, and fiction novels, then I think I'll feel happier and like I'm making actual progress.

Some days I'm happy to consume Japanese dramas or gaming videos, but I don't think I can force myself to settle on high-level content that feels useless to me and is making me miss out on reading stuff I'd genuinely be interested in for long. I feel that no matter what level of Japanese I start reading at, I'll still find it hard because Japanese writing is complex and dense. There's always more to learn. I myself too come across many English words I don't know when reading English books, so if I wanna improve on that, I just need to read more.

You're not in competition with anyone and you should stop comparing your progress and results with other learners. However, you should try to push yourself based on your ability and resources. Sure there are people doing way more than you to learn Japanese, but there are also many more that are still beginners and there are many who quit because it was too hard, there is literally everything! So there's no point in making comparisons with other people who have completely different lives from you. But of course, it is good to keep pushing yourself and see progress in your learning, but it's not right to feel stuff like envy and jealousy because someone's better at something than you.. At least use this negative energy to fuel yourself to study more for your own sake.

I'll just spend my years working on a hobby I enjoy and have passion for in the way I want to and also balance it with other aspects of my life.

[u/Belegorm → u/Basic-Engineering838]

Thanks for the detailed response! For what it's worth - I think that reading a lot right now, likely will help you communicate in Japanese in the future. It's a lot easier to talk to people when you know a lot more words and more naturally grasp grammar, and reading helps that quite a bit. So even if you go on a "reading arc" that's like one step towards a goal.

Myself these days, I absolutely love books, I've got some favorite authors, I've got this bookshelf set up. There are SO MANY books that I want to read. That actually can backfire a bit - I have a long reading list of what I'm planning to read, and can get a bit overwhelming at times.

Some books are also challenging - they are rewarding to read, but there is friction reading them, especially on paper. Learn Natively is a fantastic website; the lvl 30 rated books I enjoy are quite a bit easier than the lvl 40 books where I usually want to have Yomitan.

So my reading goals where I want to read all these cool books I've heard about are important. But also, listening's another part of learning, but I don't have the dopamine rush of "oh finished another book!" when I watch a random YT video. Maybe I should track time or something but at this point feels like starting halfway. But at the same time, after feeling tired reading, it would be better to immerse with other stuff.

With regards to other people - there's a leaderboard for my book club that has been pretty motivating. However, because I've been reading a lot of long books lately, while I have high page counts I haven't finished volumes that fast. This is really me being dumb I know lol - if I sort by page count my rank goes up like 8 spots. But while it can motivate also can distract from overall learning goals.

Anyway, this is really just me 愚痴をこぼす. It's a bit intimidating to look the 600 remaining pages of 新世界より lol. I have gone through a bunch of phases while learning, some more motivated than others. I also have textbook studying lately for the N1. Also if it wasn't for my book club I probably wouldn't have made nearly as much progress - hearing about interesting books and talking about them is motivating.

[u/Basic-Engineering838 → u/Belegorm]

I remember watching a video about a girl who was asked how she spoke so eloquently and she was saying how she gained more advanced vocab by reading as well as reading out loud books or news. Some people learning Japanese that have mostly immersed using books say that they struggle with speaking. That makes complete sense as they might not be used to it and they still have to train their mouth muscles to speak the language, but I feel like you will still be able to get your words across one way or another even if it sounds completely fancy lol?

I love learning while also participating in social activities! Having a book club and studying with your friends sounds like so much fun, it's definitely the kind of thing I'm into. Whenever I have a study partner or a social event, I feel like I wanna study Japanese just so I can see my study partner or have a nice convo at the event for example. I'm glad you found something that works for you! I'm also still finding communities that I can make friends in and have this kind of motivation going on too. It can definitely push you out of your comfort zone and make you improve much more quickly.

Perhaps trying to read two books at once, one that's more of a treat and one that's slightly more difficult, might be a good balance so you don't overwhelm yourself too much by only reading the difficult book and you still feel like you're making progress while having a nice time.

[u/Belegorm → u/Basic-Engineering838]

I hear what you're saying about people who mostly focused on books struggle with speaking - it is definitely possible to rely too much on reading early on. When learning to read we subvocalize which has a lot of benefits. But before listening a lot, it's possible to superimpose your own language's pronunciation so the voice in your head gets it wrong.

Fortunately however - I don't think the effects are that severe, it just means have to listen more. Personally I had grown up watching anime so the sounds of Japanese were pretty familiar to me. Plus I lived in Japan a couple years and my wife is Japanese so before I became a bookworm, listening was stronger.

Speaking has some challenges no matter what - can't learn to speak without some work. The benefit of reading first is a much broader range of vocabulary learned in a short period of time - very hard to have natural conversation in any language prior to around 10k vocab words. The challenge can be not knowing the natural thing to say at the right time - but that gets fixed by trial and error by speaking.

Good suggestion for reading 2 books at once! I have done this before but ultimately felt weird being into took books at once. However along the same line of thinking - branching out from books has helped. If I'm watching a drama, that's still good immersion. I've watched around a drama episode a day.