How To Create An Immersive Japanese Language Environment At Home

Doing Immersion is going to be the best way to help improve your Japanese language skills and while some people might tell you that the most effective way to do is by moving to Japan …you can still do it effectively at home.

It can be easy to just watch some Japanese shows …but what if you want more than this. I will go through some ways you can try and make your whole experience more Japanese, so let’s get into it. 

Change All Your Settings To Japanese

We will start with an easy one …but I also don’t think this is fully necessary at the start.  This is of course changing all the settings of your phone and computer into Japanese.

The real issue with doing this too soon is that you will not be able to understand anything on your phone if you need to go into the settings. The argument is that you can still work out what to do …which really means the language is pointless as you are not paying attention to it anyway.

So, maybe this isn’t the best way to make things more immersive, but I do think at some point you should do this. You will reach a point where you can understand quite a lot and you will feel comfortable changing the settings, so just wait until then to do it.      

Join Social Media With New Accounts

I would suggest that you start new social media accounts and use these for only Japanese. Only follow Japanese accounts, only post in Japanese and basically …just be as Japanese as you can on these accounts.

I am sure some you are doing this on your current accounts and while this can be fine, I think a fresh start is going to be better as the algorithms are going to quickly assume you are Japanese and it will just keep feeding you more and more, making things even more immersive.

This is also going to allow you to connect more easily with other Japanese people, and while your current friends are great …you need to interact with more Japanese people.

Having random bits of English in there just kind of spoil the immersion, so just start a fresh account.  

 (You can read more about – Can You Learn A Language From Social Media?)

Start A New Youtube Account

I’m not sure if youtube counts and as social media, so I will just give it its own section.

Starting a new youtube account is even more important, as you really want to take advantage of that algorithm.

You want to only watch Japanese things and very quickly you will be recommended more and more things in Japanese. This is going to make finding material to immerse in even easier as it’s literally going to be served to you.

If you want to watch English things, keep that for your current account, as the second you watch a video in English, it will mess the algorithm up and your immersion experience will not the same.

Start Streaming Anime

Anime is a very easy way to immerse in Japanese both for the culture and the language. You are going to have to use a different site to youtube to really get access to a lot of it. There are some free ones, but also paid for and I think I might have to cover that in a different article as there are a lot of options.

Anyway anime can get some hate from some people, but it is great and is no different to any other type of show or movie …it’s just animated and it is a fantastic way to do a lot of immersion.

 (You can read more about – Is Anime Bad For Learning Japanese?)

Use Language Exchanges To Meet Japanese People

To get the real feel of being immersive, you need friends, which means you need to use language exchanges.

These are sites and apps where you can easily meet Japanese people and talk to them.

The only downside is that you do kind of need to help them with their English studies …so it’s not a total immersion …but you do get to speak Japanese to a real Japanese person, so that’s cool.

 (You can read more about – Japanese Language Exchanges You Can Use To Help You Learn)

Make Friends and Use Line

Once you make friends on language exchanges, you can start using Line. This is just the Japanese version of whatsapp.

You don’t need to use this, but if you do want to move off the language exchanges, it can be cool to use this app and feel a little more Japanese. It can also be a good way to keep everything Japanese, then use whatsapp for your English speaking friends.

Buy Japanese Books

There is something very different about having a book in your hand. I think it is because you are physically holding something, but either way it can make things seems more immersive. You can shut off from the world and just focus on your book. 

Buying Japanese books, or manga, isn’t the easiest …but it’s not impossible. Basically you have to buy them online and have them shipped to you and the reality is that is not the cheapest, but if you can afford it, it is nice treat.     

Online Books Are Also Okay

If actual books are too pricey, or difficult to get hold of, you can still read a lot online. There are plenty of manga and light novels available for free, as well as paid options and while they are maybe not as fun as the paperback editions they still allow you to immerse in Japanese and they will get the job done.

Play Games On Japanese Servers

I’ve already mentioned changing the language of your electronics to Japanese and this can work for your game consoles too, but ideally you want to play games on Japanese servers

This is going to allow you to play with Japanese people and if you are playing the games with voice chat, you are going to end up talking to Japanese people and generally interacting and immersing with them, which is going to be a totally difference experience to playing the game using English.

Use The Japanese Internet

If you want things to be more Japanese, then you need to use the Japanese internet. This isn’t really much different to the internet you use now …it’s just in Japanese.

This would mean searching for things in search using Japanese, so the results are all going to be Japanese websites.

Some are going to be the same, such as wiki, but they will all be in Japanese. This can be a little difficult to adjust to, as English is so easily found online but it can be done. 

Use A VPN

Using a VPN is going to help the situation and will make using the Japanese internet easier. A VPN is going to fool the internet into thinking you are somewhere else, so you can pretend you are in Tokyo from your own home.  

This is going to push you more Japanese search results, but as it thinks you are there …you are also going to start getting adverts that are usually targeted for this area. Adverts are annoying, but they are less annoying when they are in Japanese and can be used as form of immersion.

Getting random interruptions of English can really break your concentration, so at least with a VPN everything remains in Japanese.

Try And Think In Japanese

A good way to spend more time with Japanese is to simply try and think in Japanese. This sounds stupid, but it’s not and even if you are not that good yet, you can still do this.

You are going to be with yourself all day long and you will end up thinking to yourself, and you may as well try and do this in Japanese.

This may be as simple as saying a few works and describing to yourself what you are doing, or actually having full conversations with yourself. You can do this in your head or out loud and really all you are doing is practicing the words you already know.

If you don’t know how to say something, that’s fine you can look it up, or just move on. Either way you are going to get used to trying to produce the language on your own and the more you do this, the easier it gets.    

(You can read more about – How To Think In Japanese)

Write Things Down In Japanese

A similar thing to thinking in Japanese is to write, this can also be as simple as writing your shopping list down or actually taking the time to journal and write some actual full thoughts and sentences.

This will not be easy as most of us don’t practice writing, but you can practice typing on your phone or computer, so you can still write, without having to actually “write”.

Have Japanese Food And Drink

Moving away from the language, you can try and make your life Japanese in other ways. This is going to be most easily achieved by eating and drinking Japanese food.

Most supermarkets have an Asian isle and at the very least you should be able to get ramen and sushi no matter where you are. I know this is only a small thing, but it can help make your immersion feel more Japanese and you can also pair with this thinking in Japanese.

You can sit there and sip your Japanese green tea while you describe its taste in Japanese, all from the comfort of your own home.   

Japanese Everything

Really this whole thing can be summed up as saying …try and make anything and everything you can Japanese.

If you have heard of things like AJATT (all Japanese, all the time) then this is really the same. The core advice is simply to absorb as much Japanese as possible and really that means changing as much of life as possible into Japanese so that this can happen easily.

Trying to cram immersion in to your life is hard, but if you make your life Japanese …the immersion happens automatically.

Conclusion

As you can see, making your immersion environment at home is easily done, nothing here is too extreme and are all things you can easily do and hopefully you can sit for a few hours and really feel like you are more in Tokyo than your own home.

Immersion really is key to having success with Japanese, so hopefully now you can do more of it and start seeing the results.

(If you are looking to learn Japanese, you can follow my plan – Learn Japanese – The Plan For A Complete Beginner)