an anon’s journey to japanese literacy
Certainly the general formula is sound: learn basics then do some form of immersion. VNs are a bit more fiddly than something like anime, because of the technical overhead for setting up an efficient workflow, but visuals + sounds providing context is more helpful for the reader than a pure text medium.
I’m not sure if these “I had success with method X, copy me and so can you” posts are actually inspiring or rather discouraging (e.g. I put in K hours and I’m still not as good as you so I must be …) But I think attempting almost any method is still worthwhile, and don’t be afraid to quit if you don’t enjoy it. The only advice I would give is to not follow a “pure” learn the kanji method, because knowing just kanji doesn’t do you any good, and it’s not fun either. As long as you’re learning vocab along with kanji practice (even Wanikani does this) then I think basically any do X then (try to) immerse is viable.
Also, this post is a bit more stat-heavy than most of these tend to be, so it’s kind of nice to look at from a “data is beautiful” perspective, anyway.
but visuals + sounds providing context is more helpful for the reader than a pure text medium.
I’d argue it has benefits and drawbacks. You’re being exposed to both parts of the language (listening and reading), but you’re not being forced to truly parse Japanese dialogue. It does far more for your reading ability than your listening ability. When the voiced sections come up, I tend to look away from the screen and try to parse the voiceover. That way, I get quality listening and reading practice in the same session. My listening skills are far behind my reading skills at the moment.
VNs are a bit more fiddly than something like anime, because of the technical overhead for setting up an efficient workflow
My VN workflow looks like my anime workflow with one more step. Extract the Japanese text out to my clipboard with Textractor or mpvacious, generate an Anki card with Yomichan, and then update the card with the image + audio. Mpvacious lets me update the image + audio with a keyboard shortcut, but I need to record the audio separately to copying the image for VNs with ames.
I’d argue that VNs can be more reliable, because there are a lot of anime without Japanese subtitles available, so you can’t automate Anki card creation. I don’t think the VN workflow is much more difficult to setup—Yomichan is definitely the most involved part of both workflows.
The only advice I would give is to not follow a “pure” learn the kanji method, because knowing just kanji doesn’t do you any good, and it’s not fun either.
I agree. The only ‘pure kanji’ method I know is RTK. For it to be any use, you need to immediately start reading a lot for those kanji to stick after cramming them for 3 months. Otherwise, you’ll just forget them, and it’ll have been a big waste of time. Obviously, the key to any learning method is to be consistent over a long period of time, but it’s especially true with RTK. You don’t learn any Japanese from RTK; it’s a priming method. Kanji are only useful in the context of words.
