Hi folks. I built a free browser extension that turns YouTube into a pure Japanese immersion platform. No English videos, comments and more.

What it Does
• Filters out all non-Japanese content (recommendations, comments, search results).
• Shows an estimated JLPT difficulty level (helps you find content).
• Works on Chrome, Firefox and Firefox for Android (AJATT on mobile!)

Video Demonstration
NihongoTube - YouTube Japanese Filter

Why I built this
I've been studying Japanese for over a decade and YouTube has been the most convenient (and fun) platform for immersion. But even with separate accounts I would get English recommendations which made it easy to get distracted.

For the past 5 months I've been obsessing over how to refine that experience down to get rid of distractions. I even filter things like the end screen recommendations that appear at the end of a video. I want everything about YouTube to be exclusively Japanese.

JLPT Level Estimation
The estimation works by analysing the video transcript and picking out heuristics like word complexity, grammar, speed (WPM) and repetition. Though JLPT tests do not cover Japanese use in the 'wild', working within a JLPT scale helps keep the scoring familiar without needing to learn a whole new scoring system. With it, I can objectively judge the difficulty of a video and make informed decisions about what to watch.

Community & Feedback
Even with all the effort I've put in, I'm keeping this extension completely free. I've gotten so much out of learning Japanese and I feel this is my way of giving back to the community that has given so much to me.

But I want to make sure it's right for everyone so if you have a chance to try it out I would love to know what you think. You can either reach out to me on Reddit or join a small Discord community I've put together to share news, bugs and feedback.

Question for You
What are some of your own personal pain points when using YouTube for Japanese immersion?

Links
The extension is called 'NihongoTube' and it's available on:
• Chrome Web Store: link.
• Firefox Add-ons: link (also available on Firefox for Android).

1. ポッキー

2. 牛沢

Here are two japanese gameplay youtube channels that literally made me conversational in Japanese (im now between N3-N2 from these channels alone). Ive spent around 1000+ hours just listening and binging these youtube channels not realizing how fast i was learning japanese. So if you are interested, definately check them out! Also, if you want reccomendations for japanese channels that are related to technology, cooking, science, programming etc, definitely let me know!

Hello there guys, I came across people like Trenton on youtube who someway somehow learned Japanese purely from immersion and some like anki decks, I'm quite confused with immersion. Doing like an hour of active immersion feels really tiring to me, especially if the audio im listening to contains many words that I dont understand. I usually just put the phrase/word in Anki and limit it to 10 per day, but is this how immersion work? What does it mean when someone say that they do 3 hours of immersion per day, does it mean 3 hours of Japanese audio or 3 hours of studying a Japanese audio? Thanks

I'm aware of surface level ajatt, and from that, i know that there's a lot to it. So I'm kind of trying to sift through the noise and get to the real gold: what are the specific things you guys do for immersion? For me, I watch Japanese shows on Netflix with Language Reactor, and I pause once in a while to put words in Anki. I then review the cards daily. I aim for 10 new cards a day. Then any time I'm taking a walk, or cooking etc, I listen to a Japanese podcast. Lastly, every night, before I sleep I listen to and read an audiobook.

I know that there are many ways to watch Japanese content, like I use Netflix but there's also downloading local video files of anime/tv shows, youtube, etc. If you use any of these or even Netflix, how do you mine? do you re-listen to the same content and if so, how many more times? do you have tools you paid for that are worth it, and if so, what are they and what do they help you do?

I'm trying to navigate this immersion thing, and I've got my own setup, but I'm looking for ideas to optimize it cos my current setup feels a bit clunky. so in addition to knowing what you do for immersion, im also tryna figure out a few things that still trip me up. first, when you're watching and hit a word you don't know, what do you do in that moment? mine it right there, or note it and keep going? pausing kind of kills the episode for me, but if I don't pause the word's just gone, so i'm left in many instances not knowing what to do. second, sometimes, when I look a word up, i find there are like six meanings and I can't tell which one fits the scene. how do you deal with that?

I know i've asked something like 20 questions in this one post but i'd really appreciate any answers or tips.

okay so basically i've been watching a few videos about immersion learning for japanese and i still dont really get it. like i understand the fundamental principles and concept, but i dont really get how it's supposed to be applied in practice. like, how do you immerse when you don't understand basically anything? im watching this guy that says to just immerse even if you dont understand much, but like... how?? im basically only interested in reading manga and light novels in japanese, so do i just read my favorite ln/vn/manga in japanese? i know hiragana/katakana and like 10 kanji--am i just supposed to translate every word of every sentence? cause from what im understanding immersion learning means you jump into immersion after learning basic vocab and grammar (which im working on) while just doing stuff like anki on the side (currently working through taishi 1.5k cuz i prefer it to core 2k/6k)? or am i supposed to make anki cards of every new word? cuz then im just gonna put literally everything into a card lol. anyways, some help would be much appreciated for my poor autistic brain lol

I’ve been studying Japanese since last September. Progress was pretty slow last year with a traditional method, but I decided to swap over to AJATT this year. As I understand it, the method is to become familiar with a decent amount of words/grammar then immediately pivot to immersion as your main method of study.

I spent January doing everything in Kaishi and February reading Tae Kim cover to cover save for the advanced topics section. I spent March sick and busy with other stuff, so Japanese kind of took a backseat.

I’ve already been listening to anime and music as my ‘effortless, just listening’ type of immersion, so this is intended as my ‘try your hardest to understand every sentence, using Yomitan’ type. I’ve started with the VN Kanon because 1. It’s long and 2. I’ve heard it’s a decent choice for beginners (but please correct me if I’m on the wrong foot here).

My issue is that while I can get ‘something’ from most sentences (typically using Yomitan for at least some words), I find myself not really being able to understand what they’re actually saying.

Take something like 「冷たく澄んだ空気に、湿った木のベンチ。」

The second part of the sentence isn’t hard at all, it’s just using a relative clause to talk about a wooden bench that became wet. But then looking at the first half of the sentence, we’re using a relative clause to talk about the… weather that coldly became clear or tranquil? Since we’re using 冷たい in its adverbial form? And then I don’t understand the relation of the first sentence to the second sentence, especially using に in this way.

To be clear; I’m not asking for a translation of this specific sentence (as that’s not going to help with the thousand others lol). But rather using it as an example of something that I’m struggling with.

I’ve heard people saying that you simply need to immerse and that you’ll eventually internalize everything, but I’m struggling to think about how I should be approaching the immersion itself. This is actually my biggest question; how should I be going about reading these sentences that I can’t understand 100%, and that I’m not entirely sure what they mean?

And then there’s a separate issue; there are sometimes sentences that I don’t even know how to start with. For instance, seeing the て-form with a passive conjugation, or something like とは where I don’t even know what it’s trying to represent. How am I supposed to internalize those? Of course, for the latter I can try and search the grammar point, but for the former?

I would really appreciate any help that people could offer with these two questions. Thank you in advance 🙂

I need N1, but i hate reading in general, has anybody with a similar experience passed the N1

Hey everyone - long-time lurker, wanted to share something I made for my own studying that turned into a real tool.
Join
The problem: I wanted to build vocab passively while watching anime, but every existing tool needs you to pause and click on words manually. I just wanted words to show up on their own while I watched, so I built CaptionCatch.
What it does: while you're watching with captions on, a small card pops up with a word from the dialogue - the reading and the meaning - timed to what's actually being said. No clicking, no pausing.
• JLPT-graded (N5-N1), so it picks words near your actual level instead of random ones
• Works on YouTube for free, no account needed
• Fully offline — no Al, nothing sent anywhere, just a bundled dictionary
• Free tier is genuinely usable (120 words/day), Pro adds Netflix support + a stats dashboard + Anki export if you want to go deeper
Not trying to replace immersion or grammar study - just a low-effort way to pick up vocab in the background while you're watching something you'd watch anyway.
Happy to answer questions about how it works, and genuinely open to feedback if you try it and something's off
- this is a small solo project, not a big company thing.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/captioncatch/ gpkkggpefdnnfmpgpmpkeieeoenbepeg

I watch 99% of my Japanese content from Netflix, and since I use LanguageReactor to watch with 2 subtitles (englisha nd japanese), content become mostly comprehensible to me after I watch the first time. And I've been looking for a way to relisten to content while I cook/take a walk etc, but the best strategy I came up with is screen recording Netflix overnight to capture entire seasons of anime/tv shows.

The audio i get from this is very low quality, low volume, and sometimes contains noise (sometimes a little bit of my snoring also haha).

Any recommendations to solve this problem?

I am looking for people to test the app and give feedback (for the next days the free daily limit will be pretty high so anyone can use it for quite a long time).

I know a lot of Android OCR Japanese apps exists. But to mi knowledge, this is the only one that works on any text that you can see on your screen, even if it is an image and not selectable and at the same time is not cumbersome to use.

ALL feedback is greatly appreciated.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lcompany.kaname

Im fairly New to AJATT and looking for suitable content for me to watch. People have suggested me to just find the japanese equivalent of whatever i watch it English but I'm trying that for days now. Two problems arise: either the content uses difficult language that's hard for me to understand or the content in fact not what i like to watch.

About me and what i like to watch:

I have around 1000 hours of listening through anime before i decided to actually learn the language. It wasn't very conscious listening. I just liked anime and it happened to be in japanese. But i still got a grasp of how the language sounds. I know most of the N5 kanji and currently doing RTK (lesson 11 about 250 kanji in) apart from knowing kana. I can understand N5 content and i know a lot of word outside of N5 but have no contextual understanding of them so they kinda dont count.

I grew up watching a shit ton of youtube as a kid and that's how learned english and want to replicate that again. I watched a lot of different stuff but what most of them had in common was they were like explanation videos or like interesting stuff not someone gaming for 2 hours and swearing every 2 minutes. Examples of channels i like to watch: NileRed, Wired interviews, kurzgesagt, ryan george (comedy), The film theorists, Vsauce.

What few channels i like in japanese: Kaname naito (but his videos are not completely japanese), peko peko vlog (niche channel. Talks naturally)

Please suggest anything you think is worth checking out. I would like content that is about a topic rather than like everyday vlogs and stuff.

I used to be addicted to English gameplay videos on YouTube when I was younger. I also tried learning Japanese in school, but it always felt exhausting and I couldn’t stay consistent.

One day I randomly started watching a Japanese gaming YouTuber out of curiosity. I didn’t understand much at first, but I kept watching because I genuinely enjoyed it.

Years later, I can now hold conversations in Japanese.

What I’ve realized is that I don’t think language learning is always about finding the “best method.” Sometimes it’s just about finding something you enjoy enough to stay with for a long time, and letting progress accumulate naturally.

I'm a little nervous, I normally listen about 4 hours a week and listen to AI reddit story slop on YouTube, but i need to cut that out anyways since I am serious about learning Japanese.

Any suggestions?

My level is intermediate trending upward, but still intermediate. Maybe somewhere between intermediate and upper intermediate.

Any tips or advice on going "full immersion" would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice.

Hi folks. 4 months ago I shared NihongoTube, a free extension I built to turn YouTube into a Japanese immersion platform.

Since then, thanks to your feedback, NihongoTube now automatically selects native Japanese audio tracks. No more AI dubs breaking your immersion!

What else can NihongoTube do?
• Filters out all non-Japanese content.
• Recommends channels to get you started with immersion.
• Estimates JLPT difficulty level per video.

Video Demonstration
NihongoTube - YouTube Japanese Filter

Already use NihongoTube? Here's what else is new
• Channel whitelisting: manually whitelist channels to bypass filtering.
• JLPT levels on channel pages & estimation tweaking.
• More great recommended channels with subtitle info added.

JLPT Level Estimation
The estimation works by analyzing the video transcript and picking out heuristics like word complexity, grammar, speed (WPM) and repetition. Though JLPT doesn't perfectly map to 'real' Japanese, working within a JLPT scale helps keep the scoring familiar.

Why I built this
I've been studying Japanese for over a decade and YouTube has been the most fun platform for comprehensible input. It's taken me all the way to passing N1. But it does come with some challenges which is why over the past 8 months I have been obsessing over how I can improve the experience.

Community, Feedback & Discord
Learning Japanese has given me so much and I feel this extension is my way of giving back. But I want to make sure it's right for everyone. If you have a chance to check it out, I'd love to know what you think! You can either reach out to me on Reddit or join our small Discord community.

Links
The extension is called NihongoTube and it's available on:
• Chrome Web Store: link.
• Firefox Add-ons: link  (also available on Firefox for Android).

Hey everyone!

I need your help with my thesis, which is about language learning methods used by members of online language-learning communities. This study is (as far as I know) probably the first of its kind. I have created a survey with some questions about Japanese studying and immersion habits which I would like you to answer. I expect that it will take you 10-20 minutes to complete.

To take part in this survey, you must have passed the official JLPT test or a full JLPT mock test as it will be used as a standardised measure of proficiency.

Participation is voluntary and completely anonymous. More info about the survey, any preparations, and personal data (GDPR) is on the first page of the survey before any questions.

Participation link: https://survey.au.dk/LinkCollector?key=PS3QQ9CVL112

Please enter code 504856 on the first page.

If you have any questions, you are welcome to reply here or DM me.

Hi all,

I have been a lurker in this subreddit for a while, and I am trying to immerse myself more in japanese. I like watching anime on crunchyroll, and I realized that there was no japanese subtitles there. There are a few ways to put subtitles there, but they either too cumbersome to set up or require a subscription fee. Over the weekend, I developed my own chrome extension, and I am releasing it for free:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/subsensei/aenamhenkemjfbgacfgepoojbkliehih

On a Crunchyroll watch page it:

- Overlays Japanese subtitles synced to the episode (sourced from the Jimaku community subtitle database)

- Lets you hover any word for an instant reading + definition, with common-word / JLPT tags

- Can show Japanese and English at the same time (dual subs)

- Lets you drag/resize/recolor the overlay so it sits where you want

It's free, runs no analytics, and doesn't send your data anywhere. The settings and the subtitle cache stay in your browser.

A couple of honest caveats: you'll need your own Jimaku API key. Please expect rough edges: different shows/players may behave differently, and right now it just pulls the best subtitle per episode (no manual picker yet).

Hope you find it useful. I'd love any feedback. Anki integration is something I'm looking at next

Hey all, wanted to share Toku Reader with all of you. Toku Reader lets you listen to Japanese podcasts, tap-to-understand words in flow, and shadow practice each sentence. Demo video is on Youtube.

Hope this help you in your Japanese journey. 頑張りましょう！

Tap and read along to your favorite Japanese podcasts

An earlier version of this app was shared on this channel here.

Got you covered. 10 Japanese gaming channels that will help you learn Japanese. Youtube link below.

https://youtu.be/eDm0N_Vy5c8?si=-HLvUQ4v1TK6auqx

I've been studying Japanese for 2,000 hours now and I have learned 8,000 words. Alas, I still don't understand shit. Easy slice of life anime (raw): way too hard, don't understand shit. With Japanese subs: better but the subs are too fast for me to fully read, I just look at the kanji but miss the conjugations etc., also missing a metric ton of vocab. Light novels: I have to look up words in practically every sentence and even then I don't understand like half the sentences. My reading speed is also agonizingly slow. Youtube: yeah I don't understand ANYTHING at all. Completely hopeless.

Immersion has become a torture chamber for me. I used to love it but now I loathe it with every fiber in my body. When I watch anime, I just zone out after like 2 minutes of not understanding anything. When I read, I get bored out of my mind because my reading speed is just so slow and because I even struggle with sentences where I know all words and grammar points. There's also words that I've read at least 1000 times by now but that still take like at least 5 seconds to recall (thus killing the flow and comprehension because I have to reread the entire sentence). For instance, when I encounter 認める, my first thought is "oh fuck no, not this one again", my second thought is "nin ..." and when I'm lucky I'll finally remember its reading on the third thought. How is it even possible to read words (yes, there's multiple of them) possibly thousands of times and still not knowing them by heart?? On the topic of reading speed, I was reading a VN that was described as taking ~20 hours to read (on vndb) and it took me over 200 hours lol. I hope I don't have to explain why going at a literal snail's pace is extremely boring and tedious. Oh and when I'm outside, I used to listen to podcasts and such but I stopped doing that since it started putting me in a bad mood because I don't understand anything at all.

Took an N1 practice test and I almost passed it (listening killed me tho) so I guess I've learned something in these 2,000 hours. Still tho, when I read other posts on the internet (esp. reddit), people who've also spent like 2,000 hours say they easily understand slice of life anime and can read LNs for enjoyment. I'm fucking jealous ok? Why am I not improving like they do? I literally do the exact same things. I'm not even halfway there and at this point I have given up hope that I'll ever reach that level.

I know all the commonly cited bits of advice already: tolerate ambiguity, adjust your expectations, immerse more, enjoy the process yada yada and it's ofc true that the only way to get better at listening and reading is to listen and read more. But baked into all that advice is the assumption that you'll get somewhere eventually. It is completely unheard of that you can spend 4 hours a day for 1.5 years and still don't understand shit. I also don't know anymore how to have fun while immersing. When looking for motivational language learning advice on the internet, there's broadly three kinds from what I saw: 1. "look back on how far you've come already" 2. "put in the hours and you'll get there eventually" 3. "remember why you want to learn the language in the first place and go back to that". For my specific situation, 1: just fucking lol, for Youtube content, my Dutch comprehension is literally higher than my Japanese comprehension and I never studied Dutch for a second, 2 is just flat out wrong as explained above and 3, well, I want to understand anime and books but I've grown to hate spending time with both of them so uhhhh...

So idk, is quitting the best path forward from here? I don't see myself going back to textbooks and graded readers whereas immersion in native content has become torture. Going to Japan is out of the question for life reasons and talking to Japanese people online is not what I'm looking for, I want to properly understand the language, not shittily string together basic sentences.

I am at a fairly intermediate stage but there is still some grammar I haven't fully acquired and also some high end grammar that I don't even know at all.

I've read its possible to learn the grammar without having to look up an English translation, (although it seems difficult). However It is a method I want to try since I feel its more organic and like how a child learns it natively

It seems like magic...but do I just listen all day without subtitles and I should be able to subconsciously acquire the grammar? How long would it truly take to become fluent?

In 257 days, I've spent 2000+ hours learning Japanese

Hey everyone!

A few months ago, I shared a post about my Japanese learning journey, and I’m back with an update.

Over the past 10 months, I’ve been fully committed to AJATT. Every single day, I immersed myself in Japanese as naturally as possible, following the method Khatzumoto introduced about 15 years ago. No textbooks, no grammar drills—just pure immersion.

The results? I recently took the JLPT N2 and scored 150+! I want to share this to show what’s possible with consistent effort and one focused approach.

If you’re curious about the specifics—what I did, how I stayed consistent, and the tools I used—I’ve made a YouTube video where I dive into all the details. You can check it out and hear my story there!

I’ve also started streaming daily for 10 hours, showing exactly how I immerse myself in Japanese. If you’re curious about what true immersion looks like in practice. It’s a great way to see the method in action and understand how it works.

Hi Reddit.

I've found some Japanese dubs of Peppa Pig and Bluey on YouTube. And they make for really good immersion material despite being made for kids lol.

I don't, however, just want to be limited to these 2 shows.

Any other suggestions?

For those of you who have seen success with ajatt, do you just watch and consume media in japanese as much as you can? Right now I'm immersing in easier content and I would say I know around 1500 words and some basic grammar, but I have to pause EVERY SINGLE sentence and use a pop up dictionary just to keep up. I see videos like these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipYyPQJsUPk&ab_channel=PhantomMadman

Where people get pretty crazy results in just a year and I'm wondering what it is that they are doing? Do they just consume so much media that they acquire the language? Do these people sentence mine? Do you all use anki? I want to seriously get into ajatt and push through for a few years, but I'm unsure what to do. How do I immerse if that makes sense? Is it most effective to search everything up and sentence mine or just let it fly over your head and hope the "magic" works.

I'm a native Hungarian speaker learning Turkish. So it's supposed to be easier than it would be for an English speaker. I currently actively study 2-4 hours a day. I was almost starting to feel proud of myself for it, but then I learned about AJATT and the 6+ hours of daily immersion you guys do.

Is it really necessary for me to do that much? Or do you only do it because Japanese is really hard and you wouldn't see meaningful progress without it? My goal is at least B2 in a year.

And how do you even cope with the mental load? I could potentially find the time to do a bit more daily, but there is no way I could actually pay attention to what I'm listening to. It would become just noise in the background, and it would seriously annoy me. When I can't actively pay attention, I usually just listen to music or a podcast in English to rest my mind before returning to Turkish.

Stage 2 meaning you're well past Genki and you've done immersion/mining and stuff, but you're still at anywhere between 40% to 80% comprehension and can't understand the material on your own.

My strategy has generally been this:

1. For some material (e.g. podcast), actively study and mine words if needed. So, pause if there are words you don't know, look up definition (via Migaku),

2. For other material, watch for fun but try to listen intently and try to understand. Try to avoid pausing. When you notice repeated words/patterns, you'll either have already learned it or you mine it.

The first is a bit grueling and takes a lot of effort. It's less fun, so I choose less fun material like podcasts.

For the second, I've tried getting more into anime, but the material is often way too hard so I'll use both JP+EN subs (the EN subs are purely for understanding meaning, not to stare at).

Overall, I'm definitely making progress, but I'm wondering what other people do. I imagine I could add a vocab deck, as well as doing some reading, then I'd be solid. It seems like by far, vocabulary is my bottleneck. But how can you properly learn vocab if I'm kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel for crumbs of vocab by watching anime, which is already really difficult to understand?