Matt vs Japan: The Mass Immersion Approach

Welcome to the Actual Fluency Podcast, with Kris Broholm. This show will inspire, motivate, and teach you how to learn foreign languages the best way. On this show, you'll hear incredible stories from amazing language learners who've learned 5 to 10, even 30 plus languages, as well as industry experts who help shape modern language learning through innovation and research. As we dive into language learning methods, techniques, and apps, you'll quickly discover what works and what doesn't. This is the Actual Fluency Podcast, and this is Kris Broholm.

Well, um, Matt, welcome to the Actual Fluency Podcast. I'm really excited to have you today and hear your story. But do you want to go back to where you're from and how you first got into foreign language learning?

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Well, yeah, thanks for having me on. Great to be here. And let's see, I was never really interested in learning languages at all until I was a freshman in high school. Uh, in middle school, and by the way, I grew up in Portland, Oregon in the United States. And so, yeah, where I grew up, everyone had to take a foreign language in both middle school and high school. And so I was taking Spanish because that's the default because it's the easiest, so to speak. And I wasn't interested at all. I was an awful student. And so I, I used to be proud at how little I learned actually in middle school. I had a weird, like, pride about that. But, uh,

Just for the language subjects, or just in general?

No, just, I mean, in the language subject, I was like, yeah, I literally only learned two words this whole year or something like that. I was kind of a silly kid.

Wow, that's what a, that's a new one. I haven't heard that one before for getting into it. But I do remember Yu-Gi-Oh! though, uh, it's like, um, there was like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! was kind of coexisting for a while. Um, at least in Denmark where I'm from. People some people were doing one, some people were doing the other.

Yeah, I did. I had my phases of, of both for sure when I was a kid. But I mean, for me, I know a lot of people, they really like anime and through their love of anime, that kind of blossoms into an interest in Japanese and Japan. But for me, it was more just the anime happened to be the first place that I heard Japanese. And for whatever reason, the language itself just really pulled me in. And so

Yeah. But you'd seen the show in English without any Japanese at all, first.

Yeah, and I think it was something connecting to just realizing that a lot of the shows from my childhood, and Dragon Ball Z and Beyblade, as well, that they had all come from Japan.

Yeah.

And in hindsight, I think there was also a, a pretty big extent of just having this kind of Asian orientalism imagery given to me when I was a very young child, you know, like how it's kind of just presented in Western media. There's this view of Asia and it being all mysterious and romantic and exotic. And I think a lot of that imagery had kind of subliminally influenced me. And that was part of the reason why I I felt such a connection to it. Because later on, I kind of had to go through a period of disillusion where I realized Japan wasn't this mysterious place that I had an image of in my head.

Right. Well, we'll definitely get into that as well, um, a little bit later. But how did you find the Japanese lessons then after your sort of uh, realization there? Did you start enjoying school at that point, or or did you have to struggle as well?

Well, I mean, the Japanese classes I found super easy because no one in there really was that motivated. Everyone else mostly was just there because they had to be there and they liked anime, so they chose Japanese instead of Spanish.

Right.

But, uh, so I found it really easy. And actually, over summer break, I went to the local community college and took Japanese classes there. So by the time I was a sophomore, I was taking the third-year level Japanese classes. And then after that year, so I was mostly just doing the school study, like reading the textbook and doing the homework assignments. And I was also watching some anime here and there with English subtitles, but I picked up some from just doing stuff on my own.

Okay. Interesting. So what did you did you just do the typical touristy, uh, school trip, like seeing all the sights and staying together as group, or did you, because you're, uh, you kind of, I assume you're more interested than most of the students there. Did you have sort of any other, a different experience, or what did you meet anyone who kind of kept pushing you towards that end goal of, of being more serious in Japanese?

I mean, I did pretty much just do all the normal touristy stuff. Like, we were in, we went to Hiroshima for a day and saw some of the museums about the nuclear bomb and stuff, and we went to Kyoto and saw all the old kind of buildings and like the, uh, all the famous tourist attractions there. And we went to Tokyo and stuff. I think it it was just the scenery and just the atmosphere. Like Japan has a very distinct atmosphere that's totally different than the US. So, just being somewhere that was completely different, completely exotic. And the imagery was very similar to a lot of the anime. So there was kind of a sense of like, whoa, this is a real place. I didn't realize this actually existed. And, uh, of course, Japan is not anime by any stretch of the imagination. But the imagery, you know, it's it is very beautiful and very cool.

Yeah, I I think it's also amazing that your school happened, I've I've heard from quite a few US schools actually, they offer quite a lot of languages as well. But how amazing is it that you you had it at your disposal at that point, you could switch to. And then get the opportunity to travel there so so soon after, really, in a way. I I find that it's like all the pieces are lining up, you know?

Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely thankful for that. I think that's a super cool program that they have.

The pieces of the puzzle kind of coming together. Um, so taking it more seriously, what what were your thoughts going into that? Like, how could how's that how's that possible?

Yeah, well, around the same time, I found this blog called allJapaneseallthetime.com. And it was started by this guy, Katsumoto, who claimed to have reached fluency in Japanese in just 18 months, while going to college in the United States and having a part-time job, through spending as close to 24 hours a day as possible doing something in Japanese. And so it was a very heavy, heavily immersion-based method. And he also used a spaced repetition system to help reinforce what he was picking up from that immersion.

Yeah, I mean, there was there were loads of, uh, definitely loads of, of questions I have about that because that's kind of a, it's it's kind of a perennial topic this, um, comprehensible input and immersion and it comes up quite a lot. And and I know we we're going to get into that in a second, but so that's what you decided to implement in your day.

Yeah, well, things

So, so loads of immersion.

Yeah, well, of course, anyone who reads that blog is probably going to be pretty skeptical, just because of the claim that he got fluent in 18 months, because that sounds really unrealistic.

Right.

But there's a video that he uploaded of him speaking Japanese with one of his Japanese friends. And when I was in Japan, I showed that video to my host mom and asked her, how good is this guy? And she said that if she didn't look at the video and she didn't see that he was an African-American person, that she would have assumed it was just a Japanese person talking.

Wow.

And and I was totally blown away. I was like, oh, wow, this guy is the real deal. Now, in hindsight, I think she was exaggerating a little bit, because he's not actually perfect. And I like I'm at the level now where I can watch the video and I can find many imperfections. And also, that video was filmed five years after he started learning Japanese. So we can assume that he wasn't quite at that level after the at the end of the 18 months. So overall, I think there was quite a bit of exaggeration just for marketing purposes. But fundamentally, I think he he wasn't really lying. He the method is true, and I think he did reach a really impressive level in a relatively short amount of time.

Right. Yeah. And I think there's also something to be said, I I must say I'm not too familiar with, uh, with Japanese culture, so you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but my experience has been that they're quite kind as well, you know, they're not they wouldn't they wouldn't say, oh, he, you know, if you go to Germany, they'll say, oh, you used the wrong article, even though you said like, 500 words correctly. You know, they can be quite mean sometimes. But my experience with the uh, the let's say the eastern part of the world is like, you know, you say a few sentences and you get quite a lot of praise actually. So.

Oh, yeah, totally.

Maybe that's a a cultural thing.

Definitely in Japan. Japanese people regularly tell me that I'm better at Japanese than Japanese people, which is completely ridiculous and definitely not true.

Right.

So, yeah, it's something Yeah, it's it's actually pretty difficult because a lot of people let that go to their head and they think they're better than they are because Japanese people give them so much praise.

Yeah.

And, you know, you have to get to the level where you realize that you have to subtract like 30 points from whatever they're telling you you are to get the an accurate assessment. But,

Yeah, I've tried the same with Russian. I I send a a Russian instant message to someone when I was just starting out. And I'm sure there was like, five mistakes in like, a three-word sentence, and she was like, whoa, your Russian is amazing. I was like, I mean, I was that bad that I knew that was BS. But I I can definitely see if you if you get a little bit further, maybe you kind of take it to heart and that can maybe stop you from progressing or working as hard on it as you probably should to to reach your goal.

Yeah. It's it's definitely a double-edged sword. It's good for the confidence, but,

Yeah.

which is important, but.

Yeah. But it's just very nice people as well. You know, they don't want to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They don't want to put you down and give you all your mistakes like going to a spreadsheet or something.

Yeah, but but in hindsight, the fact that my host mom spoke so highly of of this guy, Katsumoto, was probably a good thing for me because it gave me this really deep-seated faith in his method.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have to believe that it's possible. But I think part of the problem is also that if he had said, you know, 18 months to learn Japanese, I mean, even if you were quite interested, that's that's a long time. I mean, it's not a long time to master a language. Don't get me wrong. I mean, obviously, that's a that's a huge achievement. But if you're, you know, if you're not really that much much into it, or you don't really need to learn the language, it's just sort of a nice little thing you would like to do, that's that's going to sound like a long time. And it's going to be really, it's not very marketable, I would say, you know, fluent in 18 months. I think fluent in three months sounds a little bit better, but, um,

That is true.

Yeah.

But the thing is, 18 months is just long enough to maybe be believable. Whereas fluent in three months, I think no one really believes that.

Right. Yeah, not anymore, anyway, it's been debated to death for sure.

It's too good to be true. But with 18 months,

And I mean, it is true, actually. Yeah. You're right. There's that side to it.

And I think the 18 months if you were learning a language from the same language family as your native language, that's pretty realistic, actually. If you're talking about learning Asian language as an English speaker, that's kind of unrealistic, but it's still just short or just long enough where you're like, maybe, who knows.

Yeah. And what I always tell people, if they say, oh, that's a really long time. I'm not sure I can commit that. I say, or they'll say something like, oh, um, you know, I I'll ask, how how much time has passed in in 18 months, you know? The time is going to pass anyway. It's not like you it's not like you pause time just because you didn't want to learn Japanese through the time. So it's like, are you interested or not? And I think it boils down to some people are are not as interested as they maybe they even think themselves. And obviously, we don't want to, this isn't it this is a podcast for for language learning encouragement. But you know, at the end of the day, you can't encourage the unencourageable in in a way.

Yeah, well, I I think part of the reason why 18 months at the time sounded like a pretty short period of time, is that I had this kind of naive view of language fluency where it was kind of an on-off switch. It was a yes or no. Where one day you're not fluent, and then the next day you are fluent, and that pretty much just means you've beat the game, you're a master, there's nothing left to accomplish.

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That was my view of it. And so I was kind of counting down in my head. Like, I remember about one year in, I bought all these really hard novels because I was like, well, only six months left before I'm fluent, and then I'll be able to read all these novels easy.

That's amazing. And spoiler alert then that that probably didn't quite happen that way.

It didn't happen. Well, to kind of go go more into the story, um, So, yeah, I I went came back from Japan and I immediately started trying to make my life as Japanese-ized as possible. And I was I would never watch English TV shows anymore, only Japanese TV shows. And I would listen to Japanese in the background all day. I had this other little MP3 player that I put just Japanese podcasts on, and I listened to it even while I slept, when I went to the bathroom, when I was talking to my family, I tried to just have these headphones in all the time. I was really crazy about it.

Yeah, that I think that's the, I think that's the counter-argument to immersion. It's not I don't think people are objecting to the fact that it works or not. It's just, I think it's really hard to force yourself to to sit down and watch something or listen to something when you understand very little of it. I mean, I I definitely struggle with that myself, where if I put on a a film in a language I'm not very good at, it's just, even if with the pictures, you you it just gets boring after a while.

Yeah, and I can totally relate to that, especially now, because in the past year I've been kind of dabbling with Mandarin. And my experience learning Mandarin has been very different than my experience with learning Japanese, because, yeah, when I was learning Japanese, I kind of had this, I was in this crazy, almost state of hypnosis where all I wanted was Japanese, and all I cared about was Japanese, and that was all I saw. So it was pretty easy for me, but I see that most people are not in that state. And I'm not in that state right now. So I've been, yeah, having to come up with more techniques of how to make the process more engaging. And we can kind of talk about that later.

Right.

And especially because the high school that I went to was very serious about studying English. And well, English in particular, but they were just very serious about studying. It was one of those schools where they're trying to prepare students to be able to get into a really prestigious college. And so, they didn't spend that much time just hanging out and having fun. They were very strict about studying, like study after school for many hours and just always stressed out about that.

Yeah, I mean that's um, I guess the uh, the the reverse experience than your first one.

Yeah.

In a way. Um, what would you have done differently? I guess it's easy to say afterwards, of course, but I would have thought if if you're kind of if you're interested in immersion, or is that that was your kind of aware of that learning method? I would assume you would just be like out there, you know, as much, hang out with as many people as possible and just engage in in as many conversations as possible. But you I mean, you were you were doing flashcards instead.

Yeah, well, I mean, in hindsight, if I could go back, I definitely would have put way less emphasis on trying to get better at Japanese and would have just enjoyed the experience.

Right.

I think I kind of forgot my initial intention, which was just to have the experience of being a Japanese high schooler. And so, like, I didn't join one of the after-school clubs, which is a really big part of Japanese culture, because, first of all, they didn't have the band that I wanted to join, which was like the rock band club. Uh, they only had like sports clubs, and then, uh, orchestra band club. And so, I was like, oh, I'm not interested in that. But in hindsight, I should have just joined anyway, not because I was interested in playing sports or whatever, but just for the opportunity to make friends with the Japanese students.

Yeah.

And I would have just, yeah, every weekend I should have went and did something with my host family or should have just went out and saw Japan instead of just staying at home doing flashcards. But when it comes to language learning in particular, what my kind of philosophy quickly became at the time was that getting good at reading was the fast fast track to fluency, because it was much easier to grow your vocabulary from reading, rather than spoken conversation. And once you did grow your grow your vocabulary through reading, catching your listening abilities up wasn't that hard. So it got to the point where I just felt like, well, the first thing I felt was, I need to know more words. I just don't have enough words. And for me, making Anki cards to memorize the words just seemed like the most efficient, most direct path. And I think there's a lot of truth to that, especially because I was making sentence cards, which are these flashcards that have a sentence on the front, a whole example sentence, and you have to just read and understand the example sentence, rather than just having an individual word where you're just trying to recall the English equivalent.

Yeah.

And so, I was getting really good results. And I just kind of, so I knew it was working, but it ended up becoming this weird thing where the best way to learn Japanese was to make flashcards and to read books. And even to just watch TV shows on my computer, because when I was watching on my computer, then I could use Japanese subtitles, so I could quickly look words up, and I could rewind three seconds if I wanted to. And most of all, I didn't have to participate in the conversation, because it felt like when I was having a conversation, I couldn't fully focus on what the other person was saying, because I was too busy thinking about what I was going to say next.

Right.

And so, it just felt like, because part of the all Japanese all the time philosophy was that you want to master understanding before really focusing on speaking, because,

Right.

it's kind of like, if you want to learn how to draw, you got to be able to see before you can draw. So, learning to understand and building your intuition is really the most basic skill. So, I was just feeling like, hey, I don't I still can hardly understand, so am I even worried about speaking? And the best way to understand is to be put in an environment where I can focus 100% of my attention on listening without having to speak myself.

Right. Is that is that the same, sorry, to interrupt, is that the same, you know, the philosophy of understanding more before you start speaking, is that similar to the kind of the silent period? I I don't know who came up with that actually.

Yeah, I I think I know Stephen Krashen talks about it. I'm not 100% sure he's the originator of it.

Right.

But, yeah, it's basically the same idea.

Right. It's like the reverse Benny Lewis theory, basically, where you don't speak at all, you you basically just soaking it all up and and increasing your understanding, which makes sense in a way, because the conversations you're going to have if you did the other way, are just so shallow and like rehearsed. Whereas if you take the time and go the other way around, you can you can really understand the responses, which is really the fundamental key to conversation, I guess. You know, you actually know what people are are saying back to you.

Oh, yeah, well, the other component is that's the obvious reason is that if you can't understand what the other person says, you can't have a conversation. Right? If you can ask for directions, great, but if you can't understand their response, how useful is that? That's the first reason.

Right.

So, you can study Japanese grammar and Japanese vocab and memor and then be able to say, I want to go to the bathroom and literally translate or say in English, I need to go to the bathroom. And then literally translate that into Japanese. And they might understand you, but it's going to sound awkward and unnatural.

Right. So, can you tell us do you have any practical steps of how that looks like, uh, let's say you were in in kind of the early-ish phases of of Japanese with with all you all all the knowledge you have now, well, except for the Japanese.

Yeah, well, I can tell you like using Mandarin, because in Mandarin I'm actually at the stage where I'm still relatively a beginner in the language. So,

Oh, perfect.

Right right now in Mandarin, I'm really focused on understanding. So what I mostly do is I watch, uh, dramas in Chinese. Sometimes I'll use no subtitles, sometimes I'll use Chinese subtitles, and I'll look up words in the subtitles, and I'll add things to Anki to to memorize words, and then I'll try to just listen as much as I can. And I'll understand more and more slowly. And there's certain phrases that I can understand every time because they come up a lot. Like, uh, one of the ones that pops into my head is like, I'm I'm sure my pronunciation is going to be awful, but they'll say like, 'Ni shuo de dui.' Which means like, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. Like, what you're saying is correct. And I hear that all the time in the shows I watch in Chinese. And once time I was just like, in the shower and that phrase just like popped into my head. And so, I felt like, oh, yeah, I could say this if I needed to because I've heard it so many times. I've acquired it. It's like, it's become part of me in a way.

Yeah.

And there's a a lot of phrases in Chinese that are like that, where if I just think the abstract thought that I want to express this idea, the Chinese just is there for me already to go. And I don't really need to conjugate anything or recall anything. It feels similar to speaking English. And so, even though I'm a complete beginner in Chinese, there's already a bunch of things that I feel that I've fully acquired and I could say. So I, and so like, the other day, I went and I was actually at a Japanese sushi restaurant, but I saw that the owners were Chinese. And so I spoke a little bit of broken Chinese to them. And some things I could say naturally, and other things I hadn't acquired, they weren't really part of me yet, so I was forced to do that thing where I think in English or think in Japanese, and then recall how to say that how to say those words in Chinese. And then kind of translate it into Chinese. And, first of all, it was very like, mentally taxing. And I'm sure they didn't, uh, and it was like uncomfortable and difficult to do. It was like slow. And also, I could tell that probably what I was saying was unnatural. Because I don't know the exact way that Chinese people express that idea.

Right.

So it was kind of clumsy. And they still understood me, so it worked. So in a way, it was a success. But I could feel that if I want to actually be able to speak Chinese like a Chinese person, that path of thinking in Chinese or sorry, thinking in other languages and translating into Chinese, that's not going to get me there. I have to be able to do everything the same way I can do those basic phrases like, yeah, what you're saying is correct, like that, just through consuming so much Chinese that it just kind of becomes a part of me.

Right. And that's the that's the typical thing that happens if you follow like a beginner's textbook or something like that, where you kind of build up these, you know, easy language, as it as it were, you know, these uh, you you dumb down the language, but then you know, so the beginner can understand it, but then nobody speaks that level of language. You know, you you know, beginner native speakers wouldn't trim their vocabulary down to the top 100 most used words, or 500 or whatever, they would just, they have their set phrases and they're the sayings.

Yeah, yeah, I think the natural process of speaking language largely isn't creative, because the way to say whatever you want to say is already set in stone. It's just a matter of, do you know it or not?

Yeah.

And of course, at some level, language is creative, like poetry is obviously creative, or if you're going to write a novel or if you're going to write a song. But it's kind of like what Picasso said, I think, like, you have to master all the rules before you can break them.

Right.

If you can't even speak like a boring native speaker, it's not the time to be getting creative.

Yeah, and those kind of fixed expressions really help ease up your mental kind of bandwidth for the things you don't know or the things you actually do need to think about. A good example, I remember from my German lessons, we would have these like, 'nach meiner Meinung', you know, in my opinion. It's like, I memorized that when I was like, in fifth grade, and then all you had to think about was what are you what's the end of the sentence? You know, because I already knew that fixed expression.

Yeah, yeah. And I I think a lot of language ultimately boils down to those kind of fixed expressions. Like every sentence is probably just one, two, or three fixed expressions morphed together in fixed ways. And so when you're fluent, your brain has it's it's all unconscious, but your brain has the algorithms of, okay, I've said these two words. What other few words can follow naturally from this? And there's not actually that many possibilities. You know, it's like these branching trees in your mind. And so, that's why we're able to speak our native language so easily and effortlessly without ever thinking about grammar or anything. And for me, when I actually got to the point where I could speak Japanese fluently, that's what it felt like. I never went through this intermediary period where I was thinking in English and translating or anything like that.

Absolutely.

Yeah, like there you go. That that has been my experience with speaking Japanese where I've you know, my input to output ratio will be nine to one. And I'll spend most of my time just inputting, not really speaking, but when I do have to speak, it's always there because I've loaded it up into my brain. And I'll always catch myself saying things that I had had never said before, that I felt like I couldn't even remember last time I'd heard it, but it was the perfect situation. My brain just feeds it to me. And so, yeah, still every time I'll speak if I go a little bit without speaking Japanese and then I'll and then I do get the opportunity to speak, I'll always be kind of impressed with myself like, wow, brain, you're you're pretty good.

Yeah, that's definitely the uh the goal and and dream of of many people to to get to that point where you can just kind of enjoy the content. But yeah, you've got massive diminishing returns on language, like you mentioned before, 500 words will make up, well, let's just say 80% for for ease of reference. Then the next 500 will probably only make up up about 5%. So it's like, the diminishing returns are insane, basically, in in language learning and.

Yeah, and you get to that point where you learn 500 words, it's like, 0.0000001%.

Yeah, like you say, you might not see them in a year, which is crazy to think about, but, but true. You know, it's Yeah. But native speakers still know them, right? Like, the name of the most common dinosaurs, the name of the most common flowers, all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And then you can also argue, like, just to finish off on on a point is even if you speak the language perfectly, you're not going to know all the cultural references. So you'll never really be perfect. Like, my friend, um, Anthony Lauder, who's also on the podcast, you might have you might have seen his, uh, presentation, um, Add One, the original Add One.

Yeah, yeah, I have seen that.

Um, he he said how he's been living in Prague for the last 15 years or so. So his Czech is absolutely perfect. Like, you couldn't fault him. He sounds perfectly native. Um, but he said he was at a party with a large Czech people around the table. And they they started talking about childhood cereal commercials. It's like, yeah, he could he knows the words of the conversation. He can definitely be part of it, but what are you going to say to that? Like, you can't you just going to have to sit there and listen. And you just feel like you're outside. And obviously, that's a very specific example, but there's a lot of cultural things and references and, uh, I guess conventions as well that you just won't know just from the language. So, yeah, totally. But my point on that would be that I think I think the 80 I think the 80/20 rule applies to that.

Absolutely.

So that

And you will learn it, maybe, like through proxy. Like, if you hear the the commercials from childhood, you will hear it. You might not have seen the commercial, but you've understood the reference.

Yeah, and that's the nice thing about YouTube is I have looked up old Japanese commercials that I saw referenced and now I know. So you only have to have one experience of having it referenced and not knowing to fix that. And over time, you get to the point where more and more of the references you do know. And then you even notice even in your native language, it's like, my parents mention stuff, I don't know what they're talking about. Like, my little brother will reference stuff, I don't know what he's talking about.

Right. Yeah, that's the thing as well. You can't you can't ignore the the fact that the problems that we have with our target languages definitely also exist in our own languages. And some native speakers might not know either. It's like, just because 90% of native speakers know have seen this, you know, serial commercial, doesn't mean that all of them did. You know, so our references. And then you have people misquoting references and it's like, you know, these classic examples like, fall intensive purposes. And, you know, all these things, it's pretty funny, uh, that that happens. And that happens across languages as well, which I think is funny. That people think they hear something, and then they kind of butcher the whole metaphor, which I think is is hilarious. Um, but I think that that's for another episode potentially. But, um, but yeah, um, so we mentioned, you mentioned, uh, YouTube and your site as well. Do you just want to remind people where they can where you're at?

Oh, yeah, sure. So I have a YouTube channel, Matt versus Japan, where I have I have videos on learning Japanese, but also just learning any language. And then there's our website, MassImmersionApproach.com, where we still don't have too much content up on there yet, but there is other content related to our ideas on language learning.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Matt, for coming on the show and sharing your Japanese journey and your immersion, I would I don't know what we'll call it theories, but definitely immersion, uh, experiences and and kind of methods. I I think it's it's an interesting topic that I haven't had on the podcast for a long time. So, so thank you for for coming on and and giving me some fresh ideas to the whole thing.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. It was fun.

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