100 Days of Learning Japanese via the #MIApproach

Table of Contents

• Why am I learning Japanese?
• What is the Mass Immersion Approach (MIA)?
• Okay, but how did learning Japanese actually go?
  • Day 1: Kana
  • Day 8: RRTK and Start of Immersion
  • Day 44: JLPT N5 Tango Deck, Nukemarine’s Tae Kim deck
  • Day 66: Started my own sentence mining deck
  • Day 76: Deleted my RRTK deck
  • Day 80: Started to read Pixiv Fancomics
  • Day 89: Started to read NHK News Easy
• How about now?
• Stats
• Resources
  • Dictionaries
  • Manga/Comics
  • Listening: Anime
  • Listening: Not Anime
• Future Plans

Roughly a hundred days ago, I got sick of lazing around and realized that my life would be better spent selling my soul to our Lord and Savior, Hatsune Miku.

In other words, I decided to learn Japanese.

This is why and how.

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Why am I learning Japanese?

Some background on me. I’m a Filipina high school senior. Since I live in the Philippines, Japanese isn’t my first language-learning rodeo. I grew up knowing three languages: English, Tagalog, and Bisaya. I studied Mandarin as a school requirement, and I tried to learn French during a brief Francophile phase; needless to say, neither worked out.

I never expected to learn Japanese, even though I was (and am) constantly exposed to it. Like many Japanese learners, I grew up watching anime, initially dubbed in Tagalog on TV. When I turned ten, I found the original Japanese dub of my favorite shows with English subtitles. Naturally, I went on to have an intense weeb phase, singing Vocaloid songs and x3x3 desu-ing on YouTube comments. It took me three years before I decided to become a functional human being again. And even then, Japanese still took up a small portion of my life. Case in point: my favorite author of all time is Haruki Murakami.

I only considered learning Japanese after stumbling on Matt vs. Japan’s interview on Dogen’s channel via the YouTube algorithm. Before then, my view of language acquisition was much like everyone else’s. You grab a textbook and a teacher, and by some sort of alchemy, you’ll become fluent.

Matt’s interview, however, introduced me to another, more reasonable-sounding alchemy: immersion-based learning. Hearing him explain MIA or the Mass Immersion Approach reminded me of how I learned my third language, Bisaya. I didn’t acquire it through a Rossetta Stone course; I simply immersed myself actively in the language. A fancy term for eavesdropping.

I had absolutely no plans to learn a language this summer, but given the free time quarantine afforded me, I decided to push through. After all, Japanese media was inevitably going to be part of my life, whether or not I learned the language. So why not experience it fully? Not to mention the fact that I was planning to take International Relations in university, where I would be required to learn a foreign language anyway. Why not Japanese? Why not now?

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What is the Mass Immersion Approach?

On the off-chance that you don’t know what the Mass Immersion Approach (MIA) is, I’ll provide a short (and oversimplified) explanation.

MIA, as the name suggests, is an immersion-based approach to learning foreign languages, founded by two dudes named Matt and Yoga. The core idea of this approach is that in order to acquire a language, you must first build an intuition as to how it works.

That does not mean speaking your target language from day one, as the Benny Lewises of the world might suggest. Nor does it mean burying your head in textbooks that distill the language into a stale soup of drills.

Instead, it simply means consuming content in your target language. More specifically, MIA puts forward the idea that all you really need to do to understand a language is to (1) immerse yourself in content spoken/written in your target language right from the get-go; and (2) supplement your immersion with a flashcard system that makes use of spaced repetition to learn specific vocabulary and/or grammar points.

I won’t go into details because Matt and Yoga have already explained this in more concrete terms in their Japanese Quickstart Guide, which I urge you to read if you haven’t already because I will be using a lot of terms from there in later sections.

Suffice to say, by revolving your study around those two aforementioned principles, you will slowly build a visceral, unconscious understanding of the language. Once you reach this point, you will combine your immersion with hours of practicing output (speaking and writing), and through that, you will attain a high level of proficiency.

It’s practical, not glamorous. But it works crazy good.

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Okay, but how did learning Japanese actually go?

If you haven’t already, please check out the Japanese Quickstart Guide and the MIA website’s glossary. The following passages are written with the assumption that you have.

Day 1: Kana

Shortly after watching Matt’s interview, I binge-watched all of his videos. While doing so, I learned hiragana and katakana by writing them out by hand over and over again.

Day 8: RRTK and Start of Immersion

Eight days after Matt’s interview, I began going through the Recognition ‘Remembering the Kanji’ (RRTK) deck and immersing in Japanese.

Before I go on, I’ll preface this by saying that I’m a false beginner.

I never formally studied Japanese, but I exposed myself to it at a very young age. As a weeb, I memorized lines off of anime and Japanese songs, along with their English translations. Naturally, I picked up random phrases and vocabulary, like 「声」or 「いただきます」and even 「殺人事件」because I was obsessed with Detective Conan. I didn’t know the written equivalents of those words, but I could pick them out when I heard them.

This made the initial stages extremely comfortable.

I started watching two shows I had already seen with English subtitles: ナルト(Naruto) and 月刊少女野崎くん (Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun). I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it felt to parse the language out. Unlike in French, which I had tried learning a few years earlier, the sounds in Japanese were much easier to make out, and I had little problem looking words up on the dictionary. Through context, my previous experience with the shows, and the occasional dictionary look-up, I was able to vaguely follow what was going on. If I had to attach a percentage to my comprehension, it ranged from 1% to 30%. Of course, whenever I watched my favorite episodes, my comprehension went beyond that range. I only did 90 minutes of active immersion per day before slowly building it up to 3-3.5 hours after a few weeks.

My immersion was purely listening; I would only practice reading when I was watching a YouTube Let’s Play video and I felt like it. But those would only last 5-10 minutes at most, and I didn’t do them every day. I didn’t know how to read any kanji, I confused a lot of the hiragana, and katakana was pure torture.

I did not, and still do not do, any passive immersion. It’s simply way too distracting.

As for RRTK, I originally did 30 new cards per day.

There were a couple of reasons for this: (1) Overconfidence. I studied Chinese for several years at school, which made the first fifty or so kanji familiar to me; and (2) I wanted to finish RRTK in under a month because I wanted to get to learning grammar via Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide right away.

Naturally, I paid the price. My retention rate plummeted, and I was close to burning out. So on Day 23, I dialed my amount of new cards back to 0. The next day, I brought it back up to 10 cards and kept it there. I finished RRTK on Day 41.

Day 44: JLPT N5 and Nukemarine’s Tae Kim deck

I didn’t touch grammar at all while doing RRTK, so this was my first formal foray into it.

Every morning, I would put on a timer for 5-10 minutes to read a section out of Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide before going through Nukemarine’s Tae Kim deck, the JLPT N5 deck, and my RRTK reviews.

I did 15 new cards per day for Tae Kim, and another 15 new cards per day for N5. This was far less of a pain in my ass than RRTK because there was some overlap in terms of the sentences/vocabulary between the two decks.

I will say, though, that I am a whore for Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide and Nukemarine’s Tae Kim deck. I could genuinely feel myself progressing, not only in terms of understanding grammar but in listening ability as well. Nukemarine’s deck is audio-based, and the audio gradually gets faster as you learn more cards. It was a near-imperceptible change, and it feels incredibly satisfying when you notice it.

I also liked Tae Kim’s grammar explanations so much that I added them to the back of 20-30 of my N5 flashcards.

On Day 96, I finished the Tae Kim deck. However, I did not finish reading the Grammar Guide. Nukemarine’s deck stops at Lesson 4.11 of Essential Grammar, and I haven’t yet found the need to look at other sections.

My immersion diet basically remained the same during this time. All I did was rewatch shows.

I’m still going through the N5 deck.

Day 66: Started a sentence mining deck.

Yes, I began sentence mining before finishing Tae Kim’s and N5. I did not plan this.

I only did it because I was adding more variety to my immersion diet, watching, among other things, YouTube comedy videos. And if there’s one thing Japanese people like, it’s throwing sentences on screen for comedic effect.

I tried reading those sentences and began noticing that a lot of them were i+1, so I started taking screenshots when they came by. It came to a point that I had more than twenty in my phone gallery, and I was struggling to remember the meaning of the vocabulary I saw in those sentences. So I made a sentence mining deck.

 I only added cards sporadically for the first two weeks. When I started reading fancomics on Pixiv and articles on NHK News Easy, I began mining more regularly.

As of the moment, all my cards are text-based, though I do add audio clips to the back of my flashcards by grabbing an audio clip of the unknown vocabulary word from Forvo.

Day 76: Deleted my RRTK deck

I just hated it with every fiber of my soul.

Day 80: Started reading fancomics on Pixiv.

Absolutely game-changing. I read lots of Naruto fancomics on there. This was the first time I was consciously putting in reading immersion hours.

Most of the sentences I read were way above i+1, but I would come across the occasional i+2. When this happened, I would take one of the words that were above my level and plug it into this site, where you can search a word and come up with dozens of example sentences. I would grab an i+1 sentence from there and make a sentence card. With that, my i+2 sentence became i+1.

A downside (or upside, depending on your goals) to reading Pixiv fancomics, though, is that most comics are handwritten. That made the text frustratingly difficult to read.

Day 89: Started reading NHK News Easy.

I initially felt so discouraged reading those articles. The sentences were so long that I’d lose track of what I was reading in the middle of it, too caught up trying to read the furigana. But it got better as I read more, and I eventually reached a point where I could mine a few sentences per article (often, they were i+2 and I needed to break them down further. But still.)

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How about now?

It’s insane that I can understand Japanese, even though my ability is incredibly limited. It’s absolutely crazy-making. I’ve cried a lot during my first 100 days, not from exhaustion, but from the exhilaration of understanding. Well, that’s a gigantic lie. I cried a lot from anime. It’s just that the emotional moments felt really different this time. There’s something so satisfying about watching a great emotional moment in a show without English subtitles and understanding, however vaguely, what the characters are saying. Especially if you’re watching a show you had seen before. Even this early on in learning Japanese, you discover nuances in certain scenes that were lost in translation. You feel like you’ve gotten ‘closer’ to a show, in a way.

Compared to my experiences learning French and Chinese, learning Japanese via MIA is easily the most fun. Although it does initially feel like you’re drowning all the time, there does come a point where you become just a bit more buoyant. It’s possible, even under 100 days!

I will say, that even though I am on summer break, I still find it difficult to stay disciplined. I’m studying for the entrance exams at the moment, and I have a graphic design gig at the side. What I found worked the most was tying immersion to already established parts of my day. For example, I’m always going to eat lunch, so I also use that time to watch a YouTube video. One video ends up being two, and I find that I’ve immersed way past noontime. My Anki reps are also anchored to the first thing I do in a day: wake up. I can’t leave my bed unless I’ve done my reps.

Now, onto practical matters.

As of now, I’ve upped my new cards per day for the JLPT N5 deck to 20 new cards, in hopes of finishing it by the end of next week. I’m still collecting sentences from my reading immersion, but I’ve been too lazy to convert them to actual flashcards. I’m planning to do that once I’ve finally finished N5.

My comprehension still isn’t anything to show off, but it has definitely improved. In a typical slice-of-life show, my comprehension ranges from 20% to, maybe, 60%.

Stats

This is what I’ve got, as of Day 105. Here you go, nerds:

Tae Kim deck:

• Number of seen cards: 840/840
  • Mature: 670
  • Young: 167
  • Suspended/Buried: 3
• Retention rate: 95.06%

JLPT N5 deck:

• Number of seen cards: 1,008/1,147
  • Mature: 658
  • Young: 380
  • Suspended/Buried: 6
• Retention rate: 91.40%

Sentence Mining Deck:

• Number of seen cards: 202/202 (I have lots of cards in a document that I haven’t yet converted to sentence cards, though)
  • Mature: 74
  • Young: 128
  • Suspended/Buried: 0
• Retention rate: 87.61%

Active Immersion Hours

• Total Active Immersion Time: 18,605 minutes or 310.83 hours
  • Total Listening Time: 17,158 minutes or 285.96 hours
  • Total Reading Time: 1,436 minutes or 23.93 hours (note: this does not include times when I accidentally/sporadically read text that was on a video.)
  • Average Listening Time per day: 175.08 minutes or 2.92 hours
  • Average Reading Time per day: 62.43 minutes
  • Average Total Active Immersion Time per day: 189.85 minutes or 3.16 hours
• Average Anki Time per day: 38.7 minutes

Note: I don’t have stats for my RRTK deck because I deleted it.

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Resources

I track my amount of active reading immersion, active listening immersion, time spent on Anki, and number of sentences mined on a Notion spreadsheet.

To track my immersion time efficiently, I use Boosted. Whenever I’m about to immerse, I simply boot up the app and click ‘start.’ When I’m finished, I click ‘done.’ Boosted tallies up my total immersion time for the day, and I plug my numbers into Notion.

Anki automatically generates my time spent, so I simply lift my numbers off of that as well.

Dictionaries

I stick with the Yomichan Chrome plug-in and Jisho. I also use KanjiTomo, an OCR to look up words while reading manga.

Manga/Comics

I mostly read manga on desktop because it’s much easier to look up words. I usually go on BilingualManga, where I don’t need to use an OCR and I can easily see the English translation of a sentence by clicking ‘Enter.’

I also go on Pixiv and Pixiv Comic. If you love reading fanfiction, I highly suggest checking out the former.

I sometimes use nyaa.si to download manga, but it doesn’t always work out.

On my phone (Android), I use Manga Universe and Tachiyomi Reader to read manga. The collections on there are vast, but I struggle with making the words out because of the image quality. I haven’t found a mobile OCR to help me look up words as well, so I have to manually write the words out on Jisho.

Listening: Anime

Like everyone else, I use Netflix and animelon. This site also has an incredibly vast collection of anime that you can download and/or stream. If the anime you don’t want isn’t on there, you can directly contact the runners of the site, and they’ll hunt down the series for you.

Listening: Not Anime

YouTube, of course is a great resource.

Some favourite channels:

• 牛沢 : The YouTuber I watch the most! His voice is so nice to listen to, and he speaks very clearly. He’s also pretty funny, and doesn’t fall into the trap of sounding obnoxious or fake. I especially loved his Breath of the Wild, Yakuza, and White Door series.
• テラムジ : Two dudes who play games together, though they sometimes do things solo. I loved their Undertale and Ao Oni series.
• ぱんだ : A Japanese Sims 4 YouTuber who actually knows what she’s doing!
• towaco : Love his voice. He’s a bit more difficult to understand because he speaks Kansai-ben. Loved his Pokemon Shield series.
• MasuoGames : Very cheerful and really easy to understand. Liked his Animal Crossing series.
• Minimalist Takeru [lifestyle]: I’m just really into minimalism.
• あらたArata [lifestyle]: Top-notch production quality.
• Kana Oya [beauty/lifestyle]: Probably my favorite Japanese YouTuber as well, just under 牛沢。I just love her voice, and she’s much more down-to-earth than other beauty YouTubers.
• ナカモトフウフのOkinawa Life Vlog [lifestyle/vlog/couple]: Incredibly down-to-earth as well, and their production quality is amazing.

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Future Plans

None of these will likely happen as planned. But these are some of my hopes:

• Shifting my listening to reading immersion ratio. My listening ability is way far ahead of my reading ability. There are lots of words I can understand when said, but struggle to recognize when read. I’m going to be shifting my immersion diet from 2 hours of listening and 1 hour of reading to 1 hour of listening and 2 hours of reading.
• Morphman and sentence banks. Since I’m entering my senior year, I’m going to be swamped with college applications and extra-curricular activities. So I’m eyeing Morphman and anime sentence banks as an easier way to mine sentences.
• The monolingual transition? Hopeful that I can start within this year. Maybe December, but that might be overly optimistic.

If you’re interested in learning Japanese via the Mass Immersion Approach and you still have doubts, I really hope that you give it a try. It’s way more fun than traditional learning methods, though it does require some faith in the process. On the other hand, if you’re already learning via MIA, good luck on your studies!

Feel free to pop in with a question, if you have any! 🙂 I’ll be dropping in with another update post around the six-month mark