I Ranked Every Immersion Source (What Actually Works)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Yo, what's up guys? It's me and as you saw by the title, today we're doing a tier list. Okay, okay, okay. Before you click off the video, like, "Bro, what the is this a tier list? Are you really starving for ideas that much?" Yeah, I know. But I get comments from people all the time being like, "Yo, Trenton, are you manga for listening to Japanese?"

[00:00:18]Yo, Trenton, is it good for immersion if I import bottled water from Japan and use it to water my house plants, which technically means I'm breathing in Japanese sourced oxygen? Okay, maybe that's a bit much. Anyways, I get comments constantly asking about the effectiveness of various types of immersion sources and their pros and cons. And honestly, a lot of this stuff changes depending on your goals and your levels. So, I figured, okay, I'll just go through all of them one by one, and I'll give them a shiny cool rank because, I don't know, it seems fun.

[00:00:44]Honestly, this is basically just another excuse for me to completely overanalyze something that doesn't actually need to be that complicated. Also, when the answer to pretty much everything is just immerse more, and you're like me and like to completely overanalyze everything, then stuff like this can be kind of fun. Also, yeah, I know I've talked about most of these in my other videos, but I figured it'd be nice to have a concentrated video where all of the information is just in one place, and it also gives me the chance to contrast different mediums more than I usually would. So, I've collected a bunch of immersion sources and put them in this tier list, and we're going to go through them one by one. So, we got S tier in the top and D tier at the bottom. And I was going to put F tier, but then I thought, well, if you're doing something in the language, then you're probably making at least some progress. Actually, scratch that. I just remembered the existence of learn Japanese words while you sleep. So maybe we'll make an F tier and just put that in there. Okay, perfect. Also, I just want to mention that even if I put something in like C tier and you're like, "Oh my god, how dare you put that in C tier, that's S tier, bro." Then like just remember that this is just my opinion and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter that much. It's all immersion and it's all good. Yeah, even though reading a book or watching an anime is going to be better for your immersion, I'm not going to be like, "Bro, how dare you spend 6 hours playing Animal Crossing in Japanese? Oh my god."

[00:01:51]So, just keep in mind that all immersion is good immersion, but not all immersion is necessarily equal. So, some immersion sources are just better than others. So, speaking of immersion, which is worse than others, and I'm going to upset a lot of people with this. So, let's just rip the band-aid off. I'm talking about music. So, I already know half of you left a dislike already, and you're thinking, "Bro, you can't just say music is bad for immersion. Like, that's insane. Like, music is the entire reason I started learning this language. How are you going to call it a bad immersion source?" Which, to be honest, is fair.

[00:02:20]Like honestly, Japanese music was one of the reasons I even started learning Japanese in the first place. So, it might sound kind of contradictory for me to say music isn't a good immersion source. The thing is that when we're talking about acquiring a language through input, we're talking about consuming thousands of hours of raw natural language. And music just isn't natural language. The entire reason that immersion works is that when you listen to thousands upon thousands of hours of actual just native speech, you start to pick up on patterns and start subconsciously understanding things and eventually you're like, "Wait a minute, this is actually kind of making sense."

[00:02:50]Music just isn't the type of language that your brain needs to start pattern recognizing and acquiring from getting mass input. Music isn't natural speech at all. It's an art form. So, you're not going to acquire the language by mass listening to music. Now, I'm not saying music is bad and that you should never listen to it. And honestly, it's a really good motivator, and I still listen to tons of Japanese music. But if you're trying to efficiently immerse in a way that's going to make you really fast progress, then you probably want to stick to less music and more just natural speech. Music can be good for learning vocabulary because if you learn the lyrics to songs and then listen to those songs over and over again, you're going to pick it up. But you shouldn't be thinking, "All right, time to immerse. I'm going to listen to some music." Because that's not really going to get you anywhere. Now, if you're going to listen to music anyway and you're just trying to keep English out, then definitely listen to music in your target language. Because honestly, music is still better than listening to stuff in your native language, just don't expect that it's going to do all the heavy lifting when you're immersing. And honestly, probably anything in this tier list is going to be better for immersion quality than music. So, again, I don't want to entirely hate on music because it does serve its purpose, but as far as immersion quality goes, it's going to have to go in Dtier. Again, apologies for making like literally all of you angry. Okay, so next I want to talk about anime. So, anime for some reason has this reputation for being something that you shouldn't use to learn Japanese, which to be honest is a really harmful myth to spread, especially because it's such a big reason why so many people start to learn Japanese in the first place. There's this idea thrown around that because anime Japanese is quote unquote unnatural that you, for some reason, shouldn't use it to learn Japanese at all, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Yeah, obviously anime Japanese is filled with little quirks in how the characters speak, and it would be funny if someone actually talked like that, but so what?

[00:04:26]The speech used in books, dramas, academic papers, the news, basically any sort of medium is not going to be the same as natural Japanese spoken in everyday life. Yet, no one is going around saying, "Nah, bro. Don't watch the news or read novels to learn Japanese. You'll sound too poetic or sound like a newscaster." Like, that's insane. You need to listen to a wide variety of different input sources and different speech styles if you want to build the meta skill of understanding what speech style is appropriate for what circumstance. And at the end of the day, no matter what content you're learning from, the language isn't really going to change that drastically.

[00:04:58]Honestly, the underlying language between almost every medium is going to be 80 to 90% the same. And depending on what you're watching or reading, there will be styling differences, but that's okay. The goal is to build an unconscious model of Japanese in your head because you've spent thousands of hours listening to the language. And ideally, that's done with various different immersion sources, but anime can be used to do a lot of the heavy lifting and account for a ton of hours.

[00:05:21]Almost every Japanese person grew up watching anime in the most formative years of their childhood when they were learning Japanese as their native language. Yet, language learners are often told not to watch anime as a means of study because it's quote unquote unnatural, which is honestly insane. If you use a lot of different sources from various mediums to learn Japanese, then you're easily going to be able to understand the differences between the speech used in those mediums. So, writing off anime is a bad learning resource because of some styling differences is a huge mistake if you're someone who likes anime. Anime is good because there's a ton of it. It's compelling and there are tons of genres and ranges of difficulty, so it offers something for basically everyone. If you spend a few thousand hours watching anime in Japanese without English subtitles, and you look up words here and there, you will become able to understand Japanese. Yeah, you shouldn't only watch anime to learn Japanese, but that could be said for almost every resource in this video. Basically, anime just has like infinite content, is really easy for anyone to ease into, exposes you to actual Japanese, and is entertaining. So, honestly, anime could go in S tier just because of how versatile it is, but I'm going to put it in A tier. Now, I know I just offended all the weebs, but hold on. When I think about the type of thing that should go in S tier, I'm thinking about the type of thing that is borderline essential if you're trying to do an immersion method from consuming content on the internet.

[00:06:34]Something that if you didn't have would be a huge disadvantage. And while I think anime is an absolutely goated resource, I wouldn't really say that watching anime is absolutely necessary in order to learn Japanese. If you don't like anime and you don't want to watch it, you can still learn Japanese super easily. So yeah, while there's basically infinite potential with anime, it's not actually necessary. So A tier. Okay, so next I have TV shows/documentaries, basically anything you'll find on a streaming service like Netflix.

[00:07:00]Honestly, there's not really much to say since most of the stuff I said about anime also falls into this category, but I figured anime should have its own ranking in the tier list. You can't really go wrong with just sitting down and watching a TV show in your target language. I mean, it's literally the poster child for immersion. It's always going to be productive for the sake of learning, especially if you're able to get hooked on it and spend a long time glued to the screen. Live action TV shows like dramas are basically going to give you the same benefit that anime does. But the language is probably going to be a little bit more realistic to what you'd actually hear out in real life, but again, not that that really matters that much. Documentaries are also really good, especially if you're looking to improve your comprehension in a really specific area. Like I had a really specific period learning Japanese where I watched a ton of nature documentaries on Netflix just to learn a bunch of words related to the environment and animals which was pretty fun. You could do this with something like crime documentaries or something too which I know a lot of people are into. The biggest gripes I have with using streaming services for immersion is that sometimes the content is just really hard to access, meaning that you need a VPN and even if you put the VPN on, sometimes it doesn't work and there's just a bunch of hurdles that you have to jump through. Or sometimes the dubs of shows end up just being really bad. Like, have you ever tried watching something that was dubbed into your target language just for it to be overlaid on top of the original English track, so you can't even focus on listening to the actual dub because you just hear two languages at once? Yeah, me too. And honestly, it's so annoying.

[00:08:17]I can imagine if you're learning the language of some small European country where everyone just watches stuff in English anyways, it's probably going to be pretty hard to find stuff made in or dubbed into that language. Honestly, us Japanese learners don't really appreciate how lucky we are to have anime. I guess I'll just throw this into A tier. Not really much to say. Okay, so keeping with video content, let's talk about YouTube. I mean, before I even get into it, let's just get it out of the way. It's S tier. Now, I know just saying YouTube as if it's all just like one giant encompassing type of content doesn't really make much sense. So, yeah, it really depends on the way you use YouTube that makes it a good resource or a bad resource. The good thing is that YouTube just has so much content that there's basically infinite amount of stuff you can watch. Now, you know how I talked about how you ideally need a wide variety of content that comes from multiple different sources and different domains and from different speaking styles? Well, YouTube can basically offer all of that in one place. This honestly just makes YouTube hands down the best language learning tool that you could possibly ask for.

[00:09:13]Now, I know I just went on a rant about how you shouldn't care that anime language isn't quote unquote natural, but I do think that getting a ton of natural exposure is really important, and YouTube does give you that. Unlike other mediums like anime, TV shows, or even something like the news, which often feel really contrived, YouTube is just full of completely natural speech spoken by people just talking into a camera. If you learn a language by constantly listening to this YouTuber speech, then you're going to be really honed in on the small little nuances in the way that people talk when they're just naturally talking to a camera.

[00:09:44]Stuff that people who learned from more contrived resources like anime aren't really going to be that well tuned into.

[00:09:49]I know so many of you who are watching this video right now are exactly like this, but I hear anecdotes all the time of people being like, "Yeah, I was like 13 and didn't speak English, but then I discovered YouTube and started watching PewDiePie or Markiplier and bam, in 2 years I spoke English and I didn't know why from like every European ever." I mean, I get so many comments from people being like, "Yeah, I'm not even learning Japanese. I just watch your videos for immersion." And honestly, W. So yeah, it's just really hard to beat YouTube. I mean, honestly, it's sort of unfair how OP it is. There are a lot of people who specifically say that Japanese YouTube is really boring and it just sucks. And I do agree to a certain extent, but I also just think that a lot of it is because the humor style is just so different that it's really hard to get into if you're not already used to it. I mean, coming from the quality of English YouTube, it's definitely a step down, but I still think you should try to get into it. Also, just really quick, you guys might know this guy named Joles in the community. He actually made this really cool tracking add-on for Chrome, which you can automatically track YouTube video watch time with. Right now, this only works for Japanese, but if you're interested in time tracking for YouTube, then I linked his video in the description. So, yeah, again, YouTube S tier, it's goed. Okay, so next, let's talk about video games.

[00:11:00]Also, I'm considering visual novels their own category, so don't think of them as video games for this. So, video games are tricky because it really depends on what type of game you're playing. If you're playing a story game that has tons of dialogue and you have to like run around the map and do quests and you talk to people and there's a ton of language input, then yeah, it can be a pretty good way to learn a language.

[00:11:17]But if it's like an FPS or something and there's just gunshot sounds and explosions, then like yeah, you're probably not going to learn that much.

[00:11:23]So, I have like a crippling addiction to Overwatch and does that count as immersion? Absolutely not. I guess if I was learning Korean, then the people yelling slurs in the voice chat might count, but who knows? But yeah, it all really depends on the type of game you're playing. I started playing Cyberpunk a few months ago in Japanese and that was really nice because it's really language dense and it's actually pretty difficult at some parts and pushed me to learn a lot of stuff that I didn't know before. I haven't played it much, but I know a lot of people are really into the Yakuza series and if you're learning Japanese, that's a great resource because it's set in Japan and it's originally made in Japanese. I don't think video games are going to push you all the way to the end. And honestly, they're probably not something you should rely on for most of your immersion. But if you're already someone who plays a lot of video games, then just switching it to your target language is a really easy way to just add a few more extra hours. So, to be honest, even if it's a pretty language dense video game, it's still probably not as dense as a book or a TV show or something like that. And so, for efficiency, it's not really the best, but it is still a really good way to get a lot of immersion. And the important thing here is just do stuff in Japanese that you would normally do. And so when we're talking about just replacing your normal habits with Japanese, then it's a really good way to add a few extra hours. Also, I know it's not technically video game immersion, but I'll say it here anyway. Something I did a lot of was playing a mindless video game, in my case, Minecraft, while listening to audiobooks, podcast, watching anime in the background, etc. Video games are good, but they're not going to give you the best bang for your buck as far as immersion goes. And so, I'm going to put it in B tier. If you like video games, then definitely play video games in your target language for immersion, but don't expect that it's going to carry you too much or bring you to the very end. All right, next we got sports. So, I say sports, but honestly, it could be any live event that has like an announcer or something. Stuff like ma jang or esports are still going to fall into this category, even though they're technically not sports. So, there's not really much to say here, so I'll keep it short. It's pretty similar to what I talked about with video games. If you already enjoy watching this sort of thing, then watching it in Japanese is a good way to replace what you're already doing, but it's not really going to give you that much benefit. The main thing is that the type of speech that commentators use when they're commentating over a game is pretty limited, and you're not really going to hear a wide variety of different speech styles in a lot of different vocabulary.

[00:13:30]It's also that the style is super specific to that niche, and you're not really going to see it anywhere else.

[00:13:34]So, if you like baseball or you like esports or you like ma jang or you like, I don't know, horse racing or something, then yeah, learn it in your target language and spend some time listening to it and picking up all of the vocabulary and the speaking styles that they use. But it's just so limited that it's not really going to carry you that far. It's like, yeah, there's value in learning it, but once you learn it once, then you sort of got it checked off and you're not really going to gain much more from it. Like for me specifically, I've watched a lot of Overwatch esports in Japanese. And at first it was pretty hard to understand. But once I got used to it, I was like, "Oh yeah, okay. I kind of get how this works." And now if I watch more of it, it's like, "Yeah, okay. I'm immersing." But I'm not really picking up anything new. And if I just did this forever, then I probably wouldn't really learn that much. So yeah, it's probably good to get a baseline understanding of what I call commentator speak. But I don't think it's something you need to necessarily go out of your way to listen to, especially if you have no interest in it. So, I'm going to put sports and C.

[00:14:26]And again, it's not bad to listen to.

[00:14:28]It's just that the stuff you're learning is pretty limited and there's not really that much overlap with other speaking styles. Okay. So, next is the news. So, the news is sort of tricky because on one hand, it's got a lot of words relevant to daily life. So, you're going to mostly be learning pretty high value words that are important to know. You can also use it just to know more about what's going on in the world. Although, at this point, I'm not even sure that's a good thing. But on the other hand, similarly to sports casters, the speaking style of newscasters is really niche and basically only used in the news. And especially if you're learning Japanese, the speaking style isn't really similar to the other stuff that you're going to hear everywhere else.

[00:15:10]>> Basically, the news offers a lot of value in terms of learning pretty important words and especially for vocabulary. I think it's really good and exposing yourself to relevant topics.

[00:15:18]But I don't really think you should be relying on it as your main immersion source. Now, don't get me wrong, you should definitely listen to the news a lot just so that you can become able to understand it well. You will genuinely learn useful stuff that's important and won't come up in most fiction sources, especially if you haven't immersed with content that has vocabulary related to like crime or something, but as far as exposing yourself to quote unquote normal Japanese, it's probably not going to do enough to take you all the way.

[00:15:41]The news is definitely a really solid source of immersion, and I'd recommend making a habit of having it on while getting ready in the morning or making dinner or something, but you shouldn't rely on it too much if you want to have a well- balanced set of immersion. If you just search news on YouTube in Japanese or whatever language you're learning, there's usually multiple live streams running 24/7 that play the most recent news. So, I'd recommend watching those or listening to those as passive immersion. I think news can go in Btier.

[00:16:05]It's a really good immersion source that you should utilize, but you can't really rely on it to take you all the way.

[00:16:09]Also, it's just kind of boring sometimes, not going to lie. So, yeah, listen to the news, but don't rely on it too much. Okay, so next I want to talk about social media. So, I know social media is like a kind of broad term and you're probably like, "What does that even mean?" So, to put it simply, it's basically just doom scrolling in your TL. So, if you're someone who doom scrolls Twitter, Instagram reels, Tik Tok, YouTube Shorts, like any of that, then if you just set it to your target language, that's a really good way to get immersion. Although, to be honest, I wouldn't recommend going on Japanese Twitter if I were you. So basically, all of these apps just have algorithms that just feed you content based on what it thinks you're going to watch. So if you're just doom scrolling in English, then yeah, this is a huge waste of time because it's specifically designed to keep you on there for as long as possible. But when you think about it as, oh wait, language learning is just an hours game, then this actually becomes a really good thing. So as far as is the immersion itself good? On one hand, yeah, it's got a really diverse range of content. You're going to get just people talking into the camera.

[00:17:01]You're going to get memes that only have text, so you're going to be forced to read. You're going to get stuff like interviews or funny clips from the news.

[00:17:07]You'll honestly probably see anything and everything. So, this might sound good, and it is, but it's also a double-edged sword. A large percentage of the videos that you're going to be given probably won't have language at all. And for those, you're just not learning anything. You're also going to get fed videos in English from time to time. And if you watch those, then the algorithm is going to know, oh, this person speaks English, and it's going to feed you more English videos. So, you do have to put in some mental effort of if a video that's not in your target language comes up, you got to swipe it away really fast or the algorithm is going to start thinking that you speak English. And in that case, now you're not getting any immersion at all and you're just being dragged back into your native language. This is why for whatever social media you want to do this for, I recommend making a fresh account and only watching stuff in your target language. So, yeah, doom scrolling in the TL is a really good way to get immersion. And especially if you're someone who already does it in your native language, then I definitely recommend switching over. It's definitely not the greatest source of immersion and as far as efficiency is concerned, then yeah, you're probably better off doing other things, but keeping with the theme of just switching your old habits into your target language, then social media is a really useful tool. Think of it less as something that you actively want to go out of your way to do and more of as just something that's like, uh, I don't want to immerse right now. Oh, wait, I can just doom scroll. I would fill your downtime with it when you have nothing better to do. But honestly, if you're trying to go out of your way to immerse, then I wouldn't really pick it as a top priority. I'm sort of torn between A and B because theoretically, if you wanted to, you probably could learn an entire language by just doom scrolling. But honestly, I don't really think the efficiency is quite there. And if you wanted to learn more formal words or business-like language, then you definitely wouldn't want to rely on social media. If you want to learn specifically how young people talk and learn a lot of slang in really casual language, then yes, watch a ton of stuff on social media. But I don't know, something just feels wrong about putting it in A tier. So, I'm going to put it in B. But honestly, my opinion could be changed. So, let me know what you think in the comments. Okay, so after editing that section and having to watch a bunch of YouTube shorts for background footage, yeah, I kind of want to put it in like F tier now. Oh my god, that was torture. Okay, so next I want to quickly talk about condensed audio. Condensed audio is something that a lot of people in the OG Ajac community were using, but I don't know if it's actually that popular nowadays. It's basically just an audio file of an anime or TV episode where you just have all of the dialogue that you can listen to. And it has all of the dead space where no one's talking cut out. So, as far as density goes, it's pretty good. It's really only good for passive listening. So, you put an earbud in while you're doing the dishes or walking the dog or something and you can get a lot of immersion hours in like that. And it's really good for repetition because you're most likely going to be listening to stuff that you've already watched. So, if I watch an anime and I understand about 60% of it, then I listen to the condensed audio because I already know the plot. I can sort of imagine the scenes in my head and then I can just get a bunch of listening repetition in. And every time I listen, I'm going to be pushing my cutting edge forward by a little bit.

[00:19:41]This is why I think it's a pretty good resource for specifically a people who really like anime and b people who are pretty new to the language. Now you guys know me, I'm an absolute shill for podcast and I'll talk about that in a second. But I think condensed audio specifically is good for people who want to build up an initial foundation of the language. Once you have a good foundation in the language and you can start to understand actual podcasts that are meant for native speakers, then I think that's definitely the way to go as far as passive listening is concerned.

[00:20:07]You're going to get way more benefit from it. But if you're at the point where you're still trying to figure out how the language even works and what's even happening, then using condensed audio of anime you've already seen is a really good way to build up your initial understanding. If you're learning Japanese, I'll put a link in the description where you can download some condensed anime and even a tool where you can learn how to make these for yourself. I'm going to put it in B tier because it is a really good immersion source and it gives you a lot of repetition for when you're new to the language. But honestly, once you're past a certain point, then I would recommend just switching to podcasts instead. So, I'm going to keep it in B tier. Okay, next. Just really quick, live streams.

[00:20:38]Again, same with YouTube. It really depends on what you're watching. So, if you're watching someone play a game and they're just kind of sitting there not talking, shooting the bad guys, then not really going to be that good immersion.

[00:20:48]But if you're watching someone who's talking a ton and giving you a lot of dense language exposure, then it's going to be a really good way to learn a language. Something cool about live streams that you don't really get with other immersion sources is that you can see the live interaction happening in real time. So, you can read the chat and probably pick up on a lot of internet slang and stuff like that. Also, it's really easy just to put on as a background immersion source when you're doing something else so that you can have something that's playing in the background, but you don't really have to listen to it. And because it's a live stream, they usually last like hours and hours and hours. If you just keep it on in the background, whenever you have a brief moment of time or something or you're bored, you can just tune in really easily and it's there. There's nothing really groundbreaking about watching streamers as an immersion source, but I know a lot of you guys probably like VTubers. So, if you want to watch Japanese VTubers to learn Japanese, then go right ahead. Honestly, aside from that kind of annoying voice that they do. Sorry, YouTuber fans. It's a really good way to get a lot of exposure to Japanese or other languages if you're learning them. So, yeah. Not really much more to say. I'll probably just throw it in a tier because you can't really go wrong with it. Okay, next I want to talk about children's shows. And you're probably like, "Children's shows? Really? Is that like an immersion source?" And I promise it is. Yes. A lot of people in the language learning community really recommend watching stuff like Peppa Pig in their target language, especially for beginners. Because of course when you're really new to a language, you can't really understand anything. So listening to really basic stuff will help you to be honest. While even though they are probably pretty good if you're talking about just comprehensibility, they're just kind of boring, you know? Now, I'm not trying to hate on all the people that are like, "Watch Peppa Pig or Blues Clues" in your target language because honestly, if you want to do it, then go for it and it probably will be beneficial. But honestly, like me, you guys are probably not very fond of the idea of sitting down and just watching Peppa Pig or something. Like it seems like the main thought process for this stuff is like, well, I don't like it at all, but because it's good for my immersion, I'm just going to sit and endure the pain. And to be honest, one of the most important things for actually benefiting from immersing is that you actually like the content and you want to pay attention to it. So, when it comes to immersing, it's more important that you actually like the thing rather than, is this the most comprehensible thing I could possibly listen to? Also, if you're at the point where you're still considering watching children's shows just because they're easy, then honestly, the stuff you're learning is so common that it's going to come up anywhere. So, by all means, if you're like the world's number one Peppa Pig fan, then sure, go for it. But I don't think you need to force yourself to watch children's shows. And honestly, they're kind of boring for most people.

[00:23:04]Anyways, my point is that you don't have to sacrifice your enjoyment for the sake of having the literal best optimized immersion quality ever. What's important is that you actually do stuff in your target language that you enjoy. So, Peppa Pig, I banish you to C tier. Hey guys, it's me from the future. Yeah, I'm sick. I just remembered the time that I found out Spongebob had a Japanese dub and I was like, "Oh, hell yeah. I'm going to go watch Spongebob in Japanese.

[00:23:25]That's going to be awesome. Just to find out that Plankton sounds like this.

[00:23:38]Like, is that not just cursed or what?

[00:23:41]Okay, so next let's talk about language learning apps. And you're probably like, is a language learning app even a source of immersion? And to be honest, I don't know, but I need something to put in Dtier. So yeah, it should be pretty obvious that language learning apps kind of suck. Like if you're actually on day one of learning the language and you have like literally zero idea of what's actually happening, then sure, you can use it to get like the most shallow of frameworks of, okay, this language roughly works like this. But even if you did like 6 hours of language learning apps every single day, it's not ever going to get you to the point where you start to unconsciously understand stuff and you actually just feel like a really deep understanding for how the language actually works. Again, like I always say, if you actually want to get good at a language, you can't treat it like a math problem and build sentences and stuff, and that's basically all language learning apps have you do. So, straight to Dtier. Okay, so let's finally talk about it. My favorite thing in this whole list, podcasts. So, maybe I personally have too much stock in podcast, and other people don't agree, but I honestly think podcasts are the single best resource that you could possibly use for language learning. So, why do I glaze podcasts so much? So, for one, they're like the most dense thing you're probably ever going to find. Two, it's the most natural form of the language possible. And languages spoken first and written second. So, if you build your foundation on something like podcast, then you're probably going to go on to sound really native like when you start to speak. Three, they're just really long and there's a ton of them out there. So, you don't really have to worry about running out of content.

[00:24:59]There's also that you can basically listen to them whenever and wherever you want. So, if you're someone who's super busy and you don't have time to sit down and like watch anime or read a book or something, then podcasts are the best thing you could possibly do with your time. Some of you are probably thinking, "Well, I understand like 0% of podcasts, so what's the point of listening to them?" Well, the good thing is that, especially for Japanese, there are a ton of podcasts that are made for learners.

[00:25:21]The speech used in these is a little bit slower and kind of dumbed down. But at the end of the day, it's still natural language. Just because they're made with learners in mind doesn't mean they're literally going to talk to you like a baby. Also, there's like a podcast for like everything. Want to learn about history? Bam, history podcast. Want to learn about biology? Bam, biology podcast. Honestly, podcasts are just like the most goatated immersion source in like every way. So, you already know I got to do it straight into S tier.

[00:25:44]Okay, so next we have audiobooks. So, straight off the bat, I'll just say audiobooks are really good. There's just one really big problem. You sort of already have to be pretty good at the language if you really want to utilize them to their full potential. If you're at the point where you can actually follow along with the story, then audiobooks are insanely good for immersion. But the problem is that just getting to that point takes a long time.

[00:26:03]If you saw my video about novels, you know that I talk a lot about normal books having a pretty high barrier to entry. But with normal books, you're able to pause and look things up super easily, which with audiobooks sort of becomes a little bit of a pain. If you want to listen to the audiobook at the same time that you're reading the novel, then that can be a good way to transition. But if you're doing that too much, then it can sort of become a crutch where you're listening and your reading ability rely on each other too much. If you're still at an intermediate level or so, then listening and reading at the same time is probably fine just to build up your fundamental knowledge of the language. But at some point, you're going to want to start doing them separately. Basically, audiobooks are really powerful, but mostly just for people who are already pretty good at the language, but they still need to kind of push their cutting edge forward.

[00:26:40]Audiobooks are perfect for people who feel like most of the stuff found in casual conversation or in daily life is pretty easy, but are still not satisfied with their level because there's still a lot of stuff that they don't understand.

[00:26:50]You're going to be exposed to a lot of literary wording, which you're not really going to find in other audio-based mediums. So, if you're trying to push your cutting edge higher and you're already at the point of understanding most daily conversation, audiobooks will definitely help you achieve that. Also, just an anecdote about my own experience with audiobooks.

[00:27:04]I found that while it's pretty easy to zone out immersion sometimes and get lost in your own head just to realize 5 minutes later that you actually weren't paying attention at all, which is something that I've struggled with a lot. This hasn't really been much of a problem when I listen to audiobooks.

[00:27:16]Probably because getting sucked into a story can be a lot more compelling than something like a normal conversation.

[00:27:20]Anyways, audiobooks are really good, but they only really start to be useful once you're starting to get pretty good at the language. So, I'm going to put them in A, but they could easily be up or down a tier depending on where you're at progress-wise. I would still say holistically that podcasts are still a step above because the speech is more authentic than audiobooks, but they do serve different purposes. Okay, so the remainder of these are written materials and we're going to start with novels.

[00:27:41]So, I already made a whole video going over novels and if you're interested, then definitely go watch that cuz I go in a lot more depth than I'm going to go into here. But just to get to the point, novels are busted. Now, I know I never shut up about how it's probably better to build your foundation with listening.

[00:27:53]But if all you care about is getting as technically good at Japanese as fast as possible, then just read a ton of novels and it will get you there. Reading is the biggest way to build your vocabulary. And if you just read a ton of novels, then you're probably pretty quickly going to get to the point where you're just like struggling to find new words. Novels specifically are great because they're stories, so they're really easy to get hooked on in the same way that you would binge an anime or something. The downfall with novels is that if you're still a beginner, then trying to read a novel probably sounds impossible. And to be honest, it kind of is. But if you can just get to the point where you can brute force your way through one novel, then the second novel is going to be exponentially easier, and the third novel is going to be exponentially easier than that. And by the time you're on your fourth and fifth novel, you're going to be pretty easily able to read through them pretty quickly. I mean, I shouldn't say easy because of course, there's still going to be lots of words you don't know, and you're going to see sentences that don't make any sense still, but as far as actually reading the novel and sort of understanding what's happening, once you got a few down already, it's going to get exponentially easier to continue.

[00:28:46]There's novels for like every genre, and you're basically going to cover all of your bases if you just read a lot of them because there's essentially infinite content. So, I'm going to put novels in S tier because as far as growing your reading ability goes, there's not really anything better.

[00:28:58]Okay. Well, there's a caveat to that and I'll talk about that now. Okay. So, I want to quickly talk about non-fiction.

[00:29:03]So, I talked about how novels are basically going to cover most of your bases. And that's true. But if you only read fiction content, you're probably going to struggle a little bit with non-fiction. Like, even if you're really, really, really good at Japanese, you can probably open up a Japanese Wikipedia article and find multiple words that you've never even seen before. So, I think you have to be careful. And if you only immerse with fiction content, then you might have a blind spot they have to purposefully go and try to fill. So, I know non-fiction is sort of this really wide category, but I'm mostly just talking about stuff like newspapers, academic papers, Wikipedia articles, and most of all, non-fiction books. I think in the immersion learning community, there's so many people that are only just immersing fiction. And to a certain extent, that's okay because when you don't really have a foundation, then just use anything you can to get Japanese exposure. But once you get more advanced, you're probably going to want to go and read some non-fiction stuff. You might think, "Oh, non-fiction stuff must be supernatural because it's made from real life sources." But that's not really the case. It's mostly a lot of really highle language and stuff that sounds really smart and you wouldn't really use that sort of language in real life. But for being able to understand important stuff like politics or economics or, you know, any of that sort of stuff, you probably can't really rely on fictional content to get you all the way. So, because non-fiction is usually pretty high level and fiction is just generally better for being more engaging and building up a foundation, I'm going to put non-fiction in a tier. If you immerse in non-fiction content, you're going to genuinely improve a lot. But for most people, sitting there trying to read Wikipedia articles is probably not that engaging.

[00:30:24]In general, until you're pretty advanced, you probably don't have to go out of your way to try to immerse with non-fiction stuff. Although, it's not necessarily bad if you do. So, if you want to, go for it. Okay, so next I have manga. If you're trying to learn how to read, but novels are still too difficult, then manga is a really good middle ground. There are a lot of difficult manga and so I'm not saying manga is easy, but in general it's more approachable and more digestible than just opening a book and seeing an entire page of just kanji that you have never even seen before. Most of the dialogue in manga is in little chunks and you have the art to give you context to what's happening. So, it's a lot more approachable than trying to read a giant text. Not going to lie, I've not read that much manga, but I know a lot of people that have and got really good results with it. Ultimately, for building a really highle reading ability, you're mostly going to want to read text content like novels. But manga is still good for easing into reading.

[00:31:08]As far as pushing yourself to the highest limits of reading, I don't really think manga is going to take you there. But manga is still a really good immersion source. And if you like reading manga, then definitely read it.

[00:31:17]I don't really have that strong of an opinion about manga. So it could go in A or even B maybe. But because I know a lot of you guys are probably going to get mad if I put it in B, let's put it in A. Okay, so next we have everyone's favorite visual novels. And by everyone's favorite, I mean that you either hate visual novels with a burning passion or you're unemployed and you play them for 16 hours a day. There's no in between. So, visual novels. Okay.

[00:31:36]Okay. It's a joke, I promise. So, visual novels are actually a really good resource. To be honest, everything I said about novels essentially applies to visual novels, too. So many people in the Japanese learning community have basically gone from zero to Japanese master by only playing visual novels for like 8 hours a day. So, there is precedent for people getting really good at Japanese by mostly playing visual novels. Also, there's like no limit to the different types of visual novels in the genres that Wait a minute. Oh, they're all set in high school. So anyways, if you're someone who likes visual novels and you can see yourself playing tons of them, then you just found probably your key to learning Japanese. Also, similar to manga, they can be a good stepping stone if you can't read actual novels yet, but you want something that's a little bit easier to digest. If you're someone who loves visual novels and you have a really strong focus on learning how to read, then visual novels are an S tier.

[00:32:22]But honestly, as far as pushing your practical reading ability forward, I feel like novels are just slightly a little bit better. So, I'm going to put visual novels an A. Being able to read a super long text without having any visual indication of what's happening is a really important skill to have. And so I think novels generally are going to build your practical reading ability more than visual novels will. But to be honest, that's just my intuition. And it's entirely possible that visual novels are just like as good as normal novels. Again, there are people that have gotten incredibly good at Japanese by mostly reading visual novels. So you can rely on them to make you basically fluent in Japanese. So anyways, here's the completed immersion tier list. I'm sure everybody is very happy looking at this and has literally zero objections to anything that I said in this video, but in the tiny tiny chance that maybe one of you disagrees with me, tell me how stupid I am. So again, what I want you to really take away from this video is that it's really important that you have a diverse set of immersion content and that you don't just immerse with only one thing. So I accidentally made another video that's over a half hour long, but oh well. These things take me so long to edit, so if you could leave a like, then I would really appreciate it.

[00:33:23]Also, tell me what your favorite immersion sources are. I'll leave a link to the template in the description if you guys want to make your own tier list. Anyways, that's it. I'll see you guys in my next video, which will be coming out in 2028.

[00:33:34]Okay, I hope that's not the case. Okay, goodbye.