Think of it this way: When you learned your first language, you knew hundreds, maybe thousands of words before the concept of reading was introduced to you. When someone finally sat down and started teaching you how to read, the first thing they did was teach you the alphabet. THEN they started teaching you how the alphabet worked to form words. Remembering the Kanji can be considered a book about the alphabet, and actually learning how to read is taken care of when you start looking up words for sentence cards.

I remember that when I was 4 years old I used to watch almost everyday a Betamax tape called “Sports Goofy”, which was a compilation of several Goofy cartoons involving hockey, baseball, golf and other sports. It was (of course) in English, and I couldn’t understand anything that the narrator or the Goofies (yes, more than one Goofy!) said because… my native language is Spanish! And despite of that I would watch the tape endless times just to see (OBSERVE!) the Goofies running, getting mad, laughing, crying, hurting each other very badly and just doing overall craziness and havoc. Seeing Goofy trying to make a “put” in golf, biting his fingernails in despair and failing miserably was pure hilarity gold! xD

Fast-forward 18 years in the future, I watched all the cartoons from the tape in YouTube… and it was extremely satisfying to finally be able to understand what the heck were saying the narrator and the Goofies. The first line of “How to play golf” is… simply priceless :3
I would place a link here, but… no English videos for you AJATTers!! xD

And you know what? YOU AJATTers (I don’t include myself yet because I put my AJATT journey on hold in favor of improving my English listening :[ ) can get this same feeling. As Khatz says, observe and return to childhood. And just keep freaking doing it, one day of immersion at a time…

BTW, what’s your “holy grail” in Japanese guys? What’s that piece of media in Japanese that you really want to be able to understand? For me, in English, it was “Sports Goofy” and the instruction manual of “Diddy Kong Racing”… I know, weird xD

I’ve noticed that sometimes when I type in english subconsciously I leave out some things that english uses but japanese doesn’t, and I think the immersion is having something to do with it. Don’t get me wrong, If it’s true, i sure am glad, except for 1 thing. I am only just starting highschool, so I have many english classes ahead, So that will be a draw back, no?

I noticed that I leave out “you” a lot, Which japanese doesn’t really use in the sense such as

“so will format your hard drive and install linux on it right away”

I noticed today (posted yesterday) that I forgot a you, and i also noticed it happens a lot, a little too often.

Also

“we can all get together and join open source community, program drivers so we can get our video cards to work correctly on linux, then create an open source environment that will emulate windows so can use all windows programs.”

Pretty basic errors, all with things that japanese doesn’t use like english, such as the or it

“join open source community” -> “join the open source community”

missing the

“emulate windows so can use…” -> “emulate windows so it can use..”

missing it

Also sometimes i mix up the R in english with a らりるれろ sound

such as “read” is pronounced like リーd

I wonder if immersion has to do with it, i think it’s pretty cool 😀

Now, all that said, most of the time, I’d rather watch something where I can’t understand as much that has a lot of interesting stuff going on than something really easy to understand that is incredibly boring because its for preschoolers. But, you know, your mileage may vary. Also, I will mention that just because you can’t understand the language being used doesn’t mean you cant understand enough to follow the story just from watching closely what’s going on. In fact, you’ll get far more out of your watching if you’ll quit listening so closely to the language, and just try to sit and guess at what’s going on. Turn it into a mystery. Why are these characters behaving this way? Doing these things? Make up your own story in your head, then go back later when you understand more and see how close your guesses were. I often watch RAW anime with my young son, and that’s exactly what he does. He never complains that its boring, or gets frustrated at not understanding. He just enjoys watching a cool cartoon, and turns it into an interactive activity, and more often than not, his guesses at what is happening are quite correct.
This isn’t a male or female thing, its just a different way of watching something, that we adults, whose minds have become lazy and uncreative, have forgotten how to do. It takes getting used to, is all.

I’ve Only been doing sentences for around 4 months　Now, so obviously my knowledge is still very lacking, but it is still high enough to enjoy stuff.　Even before i started sentences, I would pop in my 16 Gig USB full of unsubbed anime

(or I blurred them out in camtasia, just took a blur tool over the bottom 1/6 of the screen and set it to be there for the whole video）

And watch them, even though i really had no idea of what happened, I still had a great time.　Now i’ve watched them so much that i can understand maybe ７５-８５％　Of them, and other random animes　That i didn’t watch so much or new are maybe ３０％－４０％

I just watched ガンツ(映画版）、　And could understand enough to somewhat get the idea　（～４０％？）。　「お前らはFAX出て来た人間だ」　。。。That was from the manga but whatever :P　Or the　「あと８０点で終わり」　Or whatever.　But At the times when i didn’t understand, i just watched.　And had a great time.

I remember when I was probably 5-6, I would play video games even though I didn’t understand half of the words used, and you know what？　I Still understood what to do,And still had a good time. So that means full comprehension is not needed for enjoyment.　I would just recommend some 😛

It seems pretty pathetic to me, but every time i didn’t understand a word i would run to my parents working out in the yard and spell it out, and hope they would explain.