So today I'm going to be giving you my take on how to do AJET style immersion when it comes to listening.

So I like to break listening down into three different categories.

We have active listening, partially active listening, and then passive listening.

So active listening is when you're sitting down, you're listening to Japanese, and you're giving it your 100% undivided attention, trying your hardest to understand it the best you can.

Then we have partially active listening, which is when you're listening, but you're also doing something at the same time.

Like maybe you're cooking or cleaning or walking somewhere or going to the bathroom and you are listening and you're following along and you still are paying attention, but you're doing something at the same time.

Your attention is divided and it's not the same quality of attention as when you're doing active listening.

Then we have passive listening, which is when you have audio playing in the background, but you're not listening to it at all.

You're pretty much actively ignoring it, trying to do something else like reading a book or sleep.

Now, it's kind of common sense that you're going to get the most bang for your buck per minute from the active listening compared to the other forms of listening, just because the more you're engaged with something, the more you're going to get out of it.

But it's extremely crucial to not get lazy and to not think lightly of the partially active listening, because although you don't get quite as much of a bang for your to do the kind of listening throughout the day that it really starts to add up.

You know, like you can do it all the time.

You can do it in the shower, as you're getting ready, as you're either in the car or, you know, on the bus.

Whenever you go to the bathroom, it's just there's so many times where you're not going to be able to sit down and actively listen, but you can do this partially active listening and it really starts to add up.

And so I would say that it's extremely crucial that you get serious about this.

Now, a lot of people are kind of skeptical when it comes to passive listening.

Like, if it's only on the background, if you're not listening to it, is it really doing anything for you?

Is it actually going to help you?

And this is a tricky subject.

You know, I don't have any definite answers, but I'll tell you my current thoughts.

There is the benefit of filling tiny, tiny cracks, because let's say that you're reading a book in Japanese and you have Japanese news playing in the background at a low volume.

And so when you're reading the book, yeah, you're actively ignoring it.

And so, of course, you're not going to be able to train your listening and reading at the same time.

Yeah.

It's like if you're focusing on the reading, you're not even listening.

But say you stop to look up a word.

And so there's like a few seconds where you're not reading because you're reaching for your phone or you're typing in the word as you look it up.

Those seconds could get filled with the Japanese that you have playing on in the background.

And so there's a lot of times of the day where you have little, little, little tiny cracks.

And if you just get in the habit of having Japanese on in the background all the time, it fills the cracks over a long span of time.

This could add up.

And I think this is similar to the listening while you sleep.

Should you listen when you sleep?

Is it actually beneficial?

I mean, it's obviously questionable whether you can actually listen to language while you're in deep sleep, but there's a short period of time between when you close your eyes to fall asleep until you actually fall asleep that you can listen.

And there might be a period when you first wake up where you haven't jumped out of bed yet.

Or even if you do jump out of bed, you know, it's like as you're getting ready to go in the shower or getting ready, the Japanese is playing from the second that you wake up.

And so you're getting that many more moments of listening.

And there is definitely something to it from that point of view, but there's some people who just get easily distracted when things are in the background or they just can't fall asleep while there's audio playing in the background.

So if you're that type of person, I would say, don't worry about it.

Don't bother because it's going to harm you more than it's going to help you.

Like I said, it can help you because it fills those cracks, but that's a kind of really minuscule kind of benefit.

And if you're not being able to focus on the book that you're reading, if you're not able to fall asleep or you wake up in the middle of the night, and so it's hurting your quality of sleep, then definitely just forget it.

Because being able to pay attention when you need to pay attention and being able to have good quality of sleep is by far what's most crucial.

And I also just want to put it out there that I'm open to the idea that this completely passive listening might do you more benefit than simply filling the little cracks.

Because when you're sleeping, if you hear a loud noise, you'll wake up, right?

And so this is kind of proof that part of your mind is still listening to sound from the outside and filtering it and deciding, okay, is this sound worthy of waking up the person or not?

And if you think about it, right?

Like if your mind was completely not listening to sounds from the outside, you wouldn't be able to wake up just from hearing a loud sound.

And in a similar regard, when you're at a party and there is lots of people talking and there's a loud music playing and it's extremely noisy, when you're talking to someone, your mind kind of filters out all the other noise in the room and allows you to focus only on the voice of the person who you're talking to.

But if someone across the room called your name, you would probably notice that and turn your head.

It's a pretty common phenomenon.

And so when you think about what's actually must be going on here, part of your mind was listening to all the sound in the room and then filtering out what wasn't important so that you would be able to focus on the other person's speech.

But the fact that you were able to notice the moment that someone said your name shows that that part of your mind was listening to all the sound in the room the whole time.

And then it decided that one piece of all that noise was important enough to conversation and have you notice.

So this just goes to show you that a part of your mind is listening all the time even when you aren't.

And I think there might be a possibility that if you have Japanese on in the background all the time, especially if you already got the gears turning from doing the active listening and you got the gears turning even more from doing lots of the partially active listening, then maybe this passive listening would just keep the gears turning a little bit more just because that part of your mind is listening all the time and it's already engaged with the task of understanding Japanese.

Just to explain what I mean when I say that the gears are turning, you know that phenomenon where maybe you're trying to solve a problem and you just can't think of a good answer and you go to sleep and wake up and suddenly you know exactly what to do.

Or you're having a conversation and there's this word that's just on the tip of your tongue where you just can't think of what it is.

Then later when you're doing something completely different, suddenly the word pops into your head and you're like, oh yeah that's what it was.

So this just kind of shows you that similar to the listening, even if you're not engaged with consciously, your unconscious mind is still working on problems that are relevant to you all the time underneath the surface.

And so if learning Japanese is relevant to you, you spend hours each day listening to Japanese, trying to understand it, not understanding it, then that's kind of like a problem that your mind is going to try to solve, right?

And so that's what I mean when I say the gears are turning is your mind has taken understanding Japanese as a problem to solve and I think that opens up the doors to allow the partially active and the passive listening to really make the process move on a little quicker.

As for me personally, I started out doing that kind of massive passive listening, but once I started to actually understand the Japanese, it became just too distracting and I wouldn't be able to fall asleep if I was listening.

I wouldn't be able to focus on what I was reading if I was listening, so I ended up mostly dropping it.

But I know that both Katsumoto and Brit vs Japan did this and got great results, so I'm pretty open to the idea that there's something to it.

So just to summarize, you've got your active listening and your passive listening, and out of these three, active listening is by far the most important because without this, probably the gears won't be turning and you won't really make any progress with your listening skills.

But once you do have that active listening, then at least the partially active listening can really speed up your gains and really make a big difference.

So I would definitely put emphasis on trying to combine these two because they really have this kind of synergistic effect with each other.

And when it comes to the passive listening, I would say it's definitely better than nothing, but if you can't, no big deal.

So one other thing I want to talk about is music.

So Katsumoto recommended that you should definitely listen to music a lot in the language.

He really made it sound as if listening to music was just as useful as listening to podcasts or the news or the audio from anime, and I don't think this is true at all.

I think listening to music in the language is more similar to how Katsumoto said he used to eat cake with chopsticks.

Just kind of gets you in the mindset of, I'm Japanese, I'm part of Japanese culture, and there is a lot of benefit that comes from that.

It is really important to kind of have an affinity with the language to really, you know, get into the mindset of that you're almost like a spy making your way into the other culture.

But let's be real, listening to music is not nearly as beneficial as listening to actual spoken audio in the language.

The way that people sing and rap in Japanese is nothing like the way that people actually speak.

Not to mention that most of the time when you're not even really paying that close attention to the lyrics, you're kind of just jamming out.

So my conclusion when it comes to music is, just like the passive listening, it's definitely better than nothing.

If you're going to choose between either listening to an English podcast or a Japanese song, I would definitely choose the Japanese song.

And it's great to listen to Japanese music every once in a while because you get that cultural affinity aspect I was talking about before, but if you want to make maximum gains, then you got to listen to actual spoken Japanese.

Now let's talk about some of the more technical details when it comes to how to actually do this listening.

So when it comes to the partially active listening and a lot of the passive listening, I highly recommend getting a separate MP3 player that's not your phone.

I've been using this 6th generation iPod Nano for like five years now and it works great, especially because it's small like an iPod Shuffle and it has the clips like the iPod Shuffle, but it also has a touchscreen so you can actually change the settings and go on and stuff.

But it doesn't have to be an iPod.

You could probably get this pretty cheap on eBay, but there's probably ones that are way cheaper that works just as well.

Now the main reason that you want to use a separate MP3 player like this is that it makes listening extremely effortless.

Now what I do is every day as soon as I get out of the shower and put my clothes on, I grab my iPod, I stick my headphones in, I start it playing, and then I go like this.

I stick it into my shirt, leave these headphones dangling out like this, I put the iPod in my pocket and I leave it playing all day.

I never pause it.

And whenever I have a moment, I just take a headphone and I pop it in and I listen even if it's only for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and I never pause it.

And so it makes listening extremely effortless.

All you have to do is take your hand, grab the headphone, and put it in.

That's it.

There's no taking your phone out, like messing with the settings, getting to the music app, waiting for it to load, sticking it in.

Plus it's just annoying to have your headphones plugged into this big device when it's in your pocket.

It'll get pulled around.

If someone calls you, the audio is going to stop playing and you're going to have to reset it later.

Plus also if it's much more tempting to listen to things that aren't your Japanese immersion, to listen to more music, to listen to something in English.

The easier something is, the more likely it is you're going to do it.

So it's very important to make this listening as easy as humanly possible, and I am convinced that this is the way to do it.

Now when it comes to the sheerly passive listening, another possible strategy is getting a separate computer just for listening and having the Japanese TV running like 24 hours a day and never pausing it.

The key is to never pause because that's what makes it so effortless.

You have to go and turn it on every time.

It's a lot more likely that you're going to start skipping out on it.

Now last, I want to talk about what you should actually be listening to.

Now the only real guideline is by natives for natives.

As long as it's real Japanese, anything is fine.

But there's a couple things you want to take into account.

So obviously the closer it is to your level, the more you're going to benefit from it.

If it's just so hard that it's complete gibberish, that's not as useful.

Also when it comes to the partially active listening and the passive listening, it's much more useful to listen to that you've already actively listened to in the past.

And this is because even if you're not paying that much attention because you know you're doing something else like cooking or cleaning, since you've already listened to it once, you already know what's going on in the show.

And so even if you miss a few minutes or you put it in right in the middle of a show, you'll know exactly what's going on.

And there's also the benefit of if you're listening to the audio from a show that you've watched, just from listening to the audio, you can kind of see the show in your mind's eye and it's almost like you're watching the show a second time.

And so I find it actually extremely entertaining to listen to shows that you've already seen once before.

And this is extra beneficial if you're a beginner who can't understand that much yet, because that way, even if you don't understand very much of the Japanese, just from the sound effects and stuff, you'll be able to tell what scene it is in the show.

And so you can still have a basic gist of what's going on, even if you can't understand the actual Japanese.

Plus also in general, repetition is beneficial for language learning.

And the more chances you get to understand something, the more likely it is that you'll actually learn something.

Now, of course, too much repetition is bad because if you listen to the same thing too many times, you're kind of just going to get super bored of it and you're going to start zoning out and not really paying attention.