heisig method in review

So as of today, I have gone through the whole RTK1 book! It took a lot of diligence to meet the deadline I set (to finish before Christmas) but it feels good now that the book is complete (although I know my study of kanji as a whole is far from complete). It's a strange feeling that I consider myself intermediate in writing/reading but still beginner in speaking. Hopefully it was the right choice to make for my circumstance. I am hoping that the spoken will be more intuitively learned by living in the country and being able to immerse myself much easier.

And now to make some more critiques on the method.

I agree that the Heisig method is one of the best out there for people who want to be fluent one day, or at least gain a HIGH comprehension of the written language but is not a good tool for those who just want the basics. Also, using "imaginative memory" has reduced my mixing up of similar kanji substantially (one of my greatest stumbling points in the past).

One of the most important things you should think about if you are considering starting this method is if you will be able to finish it. You do not need to do it at the pace that I did (actually I do not recommend that to anyone, I'm probably just a little too OCD for my own good). As I've said before, keeping interest levels and spirits high is probably more important than anything else in learning a language. Otherwise stated by Tim Ferriss:

"if sprinting uphill with bowling balls in each hand were the most effective way to lose body fat, how long would the average person adhere to such a program?"

The main reason that completion of the program is so important is that there are a lot of essential, high-use kanji that appear right at the end of the book. For example the kanji for "station" is kanji 1984 of 2042 on the list. So if you looking for practical use just using this book then covering all of them is key.

That being said, even if you don't finish the book a great advantage is just learning how to learn kanji. I should think getting through part one of the book should be sufficient for this and then you should read the prefaces to the rest of the lessons as there are good points scattered amongst them. That way even if you never learn something like "station" you can just pick it up later. Then you can use the heisig method to 1) memorize it and 2) help you with kanji similar to station you learn afterward, whether it be through intentional study or just immersion/exposure.

So not finishing will leave some important gaps, but you should have the tools needed to fill in the gaps later. And since I always seem to find a way to make diagram-metaphors here is one. The different methods of learning Japanese are like two ways of building a wall:
focusing on more important words is like building the wall by hand and no mortar; it will give you a full foundation which will be of the most use to you, but it is a harder and more tedious process. You will forget/mix up kanji and have to relearn them more often. As one blog I read stated "80% fluency can come from 250 kanji" (no comment on the accuracy of this statement from me).

unfinished heisig is leaves important gaps, but gives you tools and the bricks that are laid with mortar stay better (won't be mixed-up or need to be re-learned)

The only other comment about heisig is regarding the use of false "primitives". most of the time primitives aren't kanji, which is fine. They are just a tool. but there are two primitives that they just dump at the very end and tell you they are kanji. They are:

kanji 2033 屯 = barraks (which is already earthworm in my mind)
kanji 2034 且 = moreover (which is already been shelves in my mind)

I don't know why they couldn't just introduce both at the same time like they did with kanji 1909 番- turn but the primitive is dice. Still 1 guess 2 kanji to complain about out of 2042 is not bad at all.

Lastly for anyone that is interested in seeing my review schedule over the last while

I'm not very good at updates

sorry I have been neglecting this so much. I guess my mindset is if I have time to write blogs, I'd rather use it to study. As of now I've been very regimented on myself and have been trying to keep to 50 kanji per day and I've completely stopped doing smart.fm after item 600. It's been hard, and somewhat unpleasant at times. So I wouldn't recommend the load to anyone unless they're trying to meet some deadline or know they have the ability to keep their spirits high as it is very important to not hit a frustration wall that can turn a short break into a long break into losing sight of the goal altogether.

as of today I can write and identify at least one meaning of 1250 kanji! It's pretty cool that I know most of the kanji in stuff I see now. still a couple of steps away from actually understanding what is written, but a good start nonetheless. Keeping at my current pace I should be able to finish the RTK1 list in 16 days when I only have 32 before I leave!

For people who are interested I've been using anki which gives some nice graphs showing my progress. you can see things like fri/sat that have been skipped for more fun activities and Sundays where I have done extra cramming to make up for it. enjoy! note that I almost never click easy and that sometimes I'll leave anki open and forget about it, so a few of the review times as much greater than they actually were.

Update and Praise for Heisig’s RTK

So thanks to a much slower weekend then usual I’ve had lots of time to catch up and review putting my smart.fm studied count up to 600! Now that I’m done the first 3 steps I’m going to wait a bit before I move on to make sure that I get these items firmly set in my mind they’re not feeling too concretely set in my memory yet. This will also give me time to decide whether or not I’ll move on to just pronunciation in smart.fm after this.

As promised I will also elaborate on some of the impressions that Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji” (RTK) book has made on me and explain how they have changed my ways of thinking about my study.

So some quotes from the introduction:

“In a word it is hard to imagine a less efficient way of learning the reading and writing of the kanji than to study them simultaneously. And yet this is the method that all Japanese textbooks and courses follow. The bias is too deeply ingrained to be rooted out by anything but experience to the contrary.”

“I do not myself know of any teacher of Japanese who has attempted to use this book in a classroom setting. My suspicion is that they would soon abandon the idea. The book is based on the idea that the writing of the kanji can be also based on the idea that the pace of study is different from one individual to another, and for each individual, from one week to the next. Organizing study to the routines of group instruction runs counter to those ideas.”(this quote is seriously making me reconsider whether I want to take language classes while in Japan or not)

“The idea of “mastering” the kanji comes from overexposure to schooling, the notion that a language is a cluster of skills that can be divided and completed. No language can do this…” (this is a fault in thinking I make too often in life. I do it with sports, academics, hobb0ies. Although I think is is a flaw of logic, it can do wonders to provide motivation to meet a goal

“The best order for learning the kanji is by no means the best order for remembering them.” (that is the key aspect of smart.fm vs RTK1. one gives you more useful things right away, but at a cost of more work to remember them. RTK has me needing less reviews than smart.fm)

“Using kanji as primitives allow one to review known characters at the same time as learning new ones.”

“The meaning and writing, the two hardest part of kanji, separated from everything else.” (this seems to make sense to me)

The book also gives a great analogy about memorizing a kaleidoscope. If you just look for a long time and try to remember the image you are using visual memory, but the next time you pick one up and look you encounter a problem. Since it always looks so similar either you replace the previous image in memory or the two get mixed up. The solution the book offers is to use imaginative memory and make a story. you then don't remember the image but the story.

for example given this image:

you could imagine two wizards (one with a hat pointing up, the other with it pointing down) under a sun gazing into a crystal ball with rays coming out...

Now i bet you can remember this part of the image weeks after reading this (please leave comments if this is true).

"You shouldn't ask yourself why you forget some kanji, but instead ask why you remember the others and apply that technique to the others."

"If you are confusing one kanji with another… Take a careful look at the two stories. Perhaps you have made one or the other of them so vivid that it has attracted extraneous elements to itself that make the two kanji-images fuse into one. Or again, it may be that you did not pay sufficient attention to the advice about clarifying a single connotation for the key word."

Reply to my Jamaican feedback

This is a reply to the post jamaicanlearningjapanese made for me. Since I seem to making rather long posts I’m going to try do this point form

- bad episodes at the banks/ post offices/ illegible mail/ no conversations/ police paranoia? Hearing all that both terrifies and excites me at the same time. It’s going to be interesting time for sure.

- As stated in my previous post, I withdraw a lot of my claims about your methods. I now know the difference between Heisig and AJATT. I was making comments about AJATT not having pronunciation or use but it was really Heisig I was talking about. Also you WERE getting pronunciation and use through AJATT. You separated the writing and speaking using two methods. Now that I’ve had some more experience, I fully believe this to be the smartest way. I will likely do a similar system myself. I am thinking of switching to kanji only through RTK and keep going on smart.fm only using the romanji pronunciation only.

- Great point with the linguistic jargon like “dangling modifiers”. For any of our readers, be weary if any method you are using focuses on these.

- You make a good point. The fact that you are in Japan and I in Canada is no minor difference. AJATT makes a less sense for me here and now, I might consider jumping into it once I am over there.

- I cannot take in ONLY Japanese media as well. I’ll try and think of some things to send you that I have found and liked if you’ll do the same. (although I get the vibe our music tastes may vary a bit)

- It’s funny you mention the realization of 10,000 considering that’s how the Japanese count (ie: forty ten-thousand NOT four-hundred thousand). I was just remarking that it seemed odd to me since I felt that suki should have been one of the first things to learn due to its high use, but I now realize that view is short-sighted and is in fact the harder way in the end.

- Interesting to hear you say about needing to look up words you know. It makes a lot of sense now that I have seen that kanji, even on their own, have different meanings and pronunciations than the one keyword you learn (ie: I have been told 生has 22 pronunciations and almost as many meanings). Again this was due to ignorance on my part due to lack of experience, and nothings a better teacher than experience.

- Kotoba is one of many apps making me seriously consider getting an iPhone when I am out there.

- I agree with your statement. No matter what method you use, learning Japanese is not easy. (But as I’m sure we both agree it is not impossible. Anyone can do it if they want to)

- With my homer comment I wasn’t making an argument in favour of rote memorization, only that the story seemed unnecessarily abstract. However I’ve realized two things now.

1) The more abstract, the more you remember it (like you've said).

2)It’s only too abstract to me since we are different people, with different backgrounds and different ways of thinking. I was making stories just as abstract without realizing it. The difference was that I wasn’t doing it deliberately or systematically like you were (and I would pay for this later). This became clear to me when I was studying the world “world”界 and I had a mental image of atlas holding the world on his back. I also thought using the same object in many stories would make things confusing, but instead I have found it helps you review old kanji the same time you learn new ones! If anything my un-systematic use of objects and stories is more at risk of getting confused with each other. Although you still need to make sure you don’t start using inner objects as the meaning of a kanji, it can be overcome by focus. (ie: 真truth has me thinking of a guy using a needle as a tool, threatening to stab it in an eye unless the truth is told. I need to blow the importance of truth up in my mind to make sure I keep the right meaning. It takes longer but works great for me)

- my initial argument was “why bother learning poignant or rend? Instead focus on more useful words.” But now I realize how learning a few obscure words is well worth the little time and effort considering how much they help with the other useful kanji you learn later on in the Heisig method.

- The brain is a wonderful thing. Having worked a lot in computers and tech I’ve gained a better appreciation for how much more amazing it is then most people even realize.

- 15 year olds unable to read the newspaper sounds surprising. But Heisig makes some similar points about the inefficencies in the Japanese school system which I’ll bring up next post.

hmmm... Still seems pretty long. oh well

Long overdue update

So there have been some developments since my last post.

First, I'm now up to 535 items studied and 242 of them mastered for anyone following me on smart.fm! (and I've also done ~200 kanji in Heisig's RTK...but more on that below!)

Although this is pretty good progress, it’s hard to say if it is good enough to meet my goal by my initial deadline. I only say that because I have noticed a slow down of my pace on these new items and expect it to get even slower in the future. One reason being that the difficulty was a major step up in part 3 compared to parts 1 and 2. I guess this is why there are 33,334 users on level 1 and only 4,660 users on level 3. (and only 982 seemed to have made it to the end of the core 2000). Another reason being that I’ve started doing Heisig as well which cuts into my time.

Much more interesting news is the new discoveries/realizations I've made after reading the feedback given to me and through my struggles with these newer, harder words. I have some lengthy comments to make on the feedback but I’ll save those for my next post to keep this one shorter.

The feedback helped me realize that I my previous critiques were made with insufficient knowledge of what the AJATT method (and some others discussed) were about. In hindsight now I have come to realize that my critique was about the Heisig method, not AJATT. My opinions were directed at the concept of only learning single kanji and had nothing to do with the immersion aspect that AJATT preaches about. So feel free to go back to my previous post and replace AJATT with Heisig.

With that stated I will say that I think the AJATT method (basically increasing your Japanese input through heavy immersion) is a good idea, but it should still be done intelligently. The immersion should be at a level where you can pick out some items from of the media. If too much of it is beyond comprehension and goes over your head, the method becomes inefficient. The common argument is that kids learn their first language through immersion. However they watch kid shows where they don’t understand most of what’s going on, but they do get some. I don’t think kids would learn a language through immersion if they just watched documentaries. The immersion needs to be at/near the right level for you.

Another thing I will say is that my method and Heisig method should be reversed on my hill diagram from before. I will explain why below:

At the same time as I was starting to look into the other methods I began step 3 on smart.fm and experienced a lot of problems. One of the reasons for this was that I was didn’t consciously realize that a lot of the words in the previous lessons I had already either seen or heard so I only had to learn the other parts that I didn’t know. Having that little foot in the door took a great load off my mind and is what let me fly through the first two steps. When all of a sudden I had not seen any single kanji in a multiple kanji word and had no idea how to pronounce any part of it, each item became much harder for the mind to digest, like eating a hamburger in one bite. (hence why my method is the uphill battle).

I found I was forgetting these kanji more often than the previous lessons and that's when I realized my way just wouldn’t work. It would be so much easier to learn one kanji at a time, increasing difficulty instead of starting with ones that I can’t even make out the details at size 12 font (ie: 建設 construction, 機能 function, 状態 state/appearance)

So I read the preface/introduction of Heisig and a few other books from a website full of resources and RTK made a lot of sense! It even talked about the Japanese school system teaching in order of usefulness and how it is actually a bad technique for memorization. At this point I realized I really need to define WHY I’m learning the language. WHAT I want to use it for. HOW LONG I plan to study the language. Etc. It also helped me realize there is a difference in what is the best method to LEARN kanji and the best method to NOT FORGET kanji. Heisig also made a very good point about the difference of visual memory and imaginative memory which I will discuss more in my next post.

Although now I think the Heisig method is the SMARTEST way to learn the language, a lot of the words are obscure and will likely not get used often. Hence it is a longer but easier/smarter process to focus only on kanji meanings then switch gears later to application and pronunciation. (this is why it should have the gentle curvy path).

I would only do Heisig now if my goal was only to “one day learn the language” but I realize that a big part of my goal/desire is to be able to make friends and function in Japan as close to my arrival date as possible. And that starts in 2 months! Committing to Heisig, although the smarter way to go, will not give me the skills I need in time to use them so I’ve decided to do a hybrid system now. I alternate multiple times throughout the day on which method I study. So I feel better about my studies and have already noticed some benefits, but it is slowing me down so we'll see if I can still make that goal of 1000 items by Jan. Wish me luck!

My Goal

Okay now that the prologue is done, onto the good stuff. Currently I have 396 items studied in my smart.fm profile and 65 mastered (my user is pnogas for those who wish to follow)

I get really excited when I hear the core 2000 description: "Mastering these 2,000 items and sentences will give you enough to feel comfortable in most everyday situations"

And even more so with the core 6000 description: "Once you have completed this series, you’ll have a solid command of spoken Japanese, and you should be able to follow the majority of what you read in newspapers."

So as of this instant I am setting the goal of having 1000 items mastered (not just studied) by my flight to Japan around Jan 5th. Please hold me to it!

A Biased Critque of Two Methods

Since I support you visiting jamaicanlearningjapanese I also think it is important that I comment on the differences in our methods. Again I am no expert and am only giving a naive personal opinion which could very well be incorrect. I am also by no means trying to put down the AJATT method. Each method's effectiveness will depend on the student's personality and goals.

From what I have read it seems that our Jamaican friend is learning the whole 2,045 jooyoo Kanji. And if I am correct, he is focusing on their meaning and how to write them only. This would not include their pronunciation or their use in sentences. It appears that those aspects are to come after learning the whole 2045. I can see the benefit in this method and suspect that our two methods will have similar results to the following picture. (I'm sure this is painful for Marcus to look at as he works with graphic design)To me the AJATT seems difficult and brings your focus away from the actual comprehension of the langauage (ie: speaking, reading full sentences and knowing in which context to use words). This became apparent when he posted sentences he would figure out which I found were fairly simple. Granted this post was early in his journey but he claimed to know 330 kanji before this which is more than I probably know right now. Also the pictures he posts of the Kanji he knows proves he is MUCH more knowledgeable than I am in that department. I think what happens with the AJATT is that after you hit a certain critical point and get to a certain number of kanji it will just snowball. You'll know almost all the kanji you see and you won't have to waste time looking up the kanji you don't know. You can make connections using your own logic.

Now on the other hand I think that the smart.fm method is always toward the goal at the cost of being slower (hence my grey beard and cane). In smart.fm:
1) some kanji are repeated to cover the different context (見ける, 見る, 見出す)
2) some are repeated to cover changes made by combining them (many+ minute/part = probably 多分. I don't know if I could have made this connection if I knew each Kanji on their own.)
3) some of the words taught are made of only hiragana/katakana.
So the kanji progress is slower but you will continually be gaining REAL understanding which should be more motivating to the me. As I have previously posted , I think motivation one of the hardest and most important things in learning a language.

It seems that AJATT is more for people with an iron will who want to learn the language ASAP. I find it funny because I would think that following the fastest method is probably not a concern for people with an iron will.

One problem I can see with my method is the ability to fall into a comfort zone. I could very well hit a point where I can have conversations and do basic readings so I won't feel motivated to learn more. I could just look up the odd word I didn't know. Why should I learn words I will hardly ever see? By delaying the gratification of being able to use your knowledge you feel that you need to keep studying and you push harder. You end up with a larger word bank from which to draw before you switch gears and start applying / using your knowledge for conversation and sentences.

The last thing I would like to talk about is how jamaicanlearningjapanese talks about stories using things like Homer to help learn the kanji. In my opinion one should be very careful with these stories as they can use a lot more brain power to think up but provide only a little more retention. Also if you're not careful making your stories they could hold you back (ie: if two are too similar and you mix them up). It reminds me of a site I found with stories for hiragana. I found some of the hiragana stories so unnatural that I would expect they would hinder me more than they would help. (would appreciate other people's comments on this)

So far I've noticed when I think of the kanji what I have been doing is visualizing the picture that comes with the sentence in smart.fm. Sometimes I think of the stroke patterns as well. The best is when I can link kanji to kanji. my favourite is that eating (食)and drinking (飲) are good (良) for me.

Tools I Have Used

So given my history (see previous post) here are some of my thoughts on what I've done up to now and what I plan to do in the future.

Teaching myself kanji with just paper and a print off was hard and ineffective. Later I would find little nuances in my kanji writing which I thought were harmless at the time but turned out to change the meaning of the kanji I was writing. This method also wasn't fun/rewarding which made it hard to stay motivated.

I used Kanji Gold for a bit, but something about it just didn't work for me. I think it was that some of the grade levels seemed to have too much kanji. I also seem to remember wasting time going over stuff I already knew well and not going over the kanji I didn't know often enough. I tried making my own, smaller lists of kanji but I kept having technical issues (apparently it's easy but I never figured it out).This was enough of a chore to discourage me.

I also think this program had an overload of information. Kanji Gold would give:
1)several example uses of kanji in phrases with hiragana or other kanji
2)the on and kun readings
3)radicals of other kanji found inside the one you were studying, etc ...
Although these are certainly useful things to know down the road, I think I spent too much time worrying about them and not actually learning the kanji themselves.

Next I made my own c++ program which worked in a similar manner to flash cards. Now this was good because I had complete control. I could change aspects of the software as I deemed them more or less useful/efficient through trial and error. However the biggest problem by far was getting the kanji into the device. I know it sounds just lazy but even copying images and text from external sources like websites seemed like A LOT of work for me (I probably just built the file I/O poorly). Needless to say this method of studying lasted almost no time at all.

Another important thing to note is that both of these programs weren't pretty. It sounds unimportant but if you're planning on spending hour after hour using and looking at this thing, it better be appealing. Now that I've tried some of the more successful things out there I can say that looking nice does give me an added amount of motivation to use a program.

About this time is I took a university course. As stated in my other post, it was great but didn't help with kanji. I think I would need to take 2 more courses until they even started on kanji and that just was never an option with my curriculum and lifestyle. Still I think it's important to state here how effective classes/courses were for me because I know many self-taught gurus like to downplay their value.

Next I came across http://nihongoperapera.com/ which supported using Mnemosyne which was a step up but it didn't come with kanji/sentence sets that were at my level. I tried making my own and downloading ones by other people (the site talks about benefits of both). Yet both methods became work and there would be careless mistakes that I or other people would sometimes make in the lists. This method also wouldn't let you work on the writing or pronunciation of Kanji.

Anyways, about a year after that I was about to work in Spain and needed to work on my Spanish. A friend hyped up the Rosetta Stone software claiming that it helped her a ton. I tried it and absolutely loved it! I clearly remember the intro video talking all about the "dynamic immersion" method they used and showed me how I could learn things like red, eat and plurals in Spanish before I even started the first lesson of the program! Soon my Spanish felt like it was quickly catching up to my Japanese. I wondered if this was because the language itself was just easier to learn. (Even today I concluded that there is SOME truth to this; especially with regards to the writing). Overall I decided this was not true. Japanese has pretty simple grammar structure and particle use compared to Spanish and English. (ie: "I am going to the store" is written"store to go" in Japanese). Also Japanese doesn't have the masculine feminine stuff I get so annoyed with with the romantic/latin based languages.

Another thing I have pondered was if part of the reason for this difference in progress was that I had all this old baggage from past experiences in Japanese where Spanish had me starting from a blank slate. Since I already knew some Japanese I kept getting put in places were things would seem either too easy and not interest me or too hard and would discourage me. I'll call it the Goldilocks problem.

However as I backpacked Europe before starting my job in Spain I tried to continue learning Spanish without my laptop. I had downloaded 3 different audio courses/programs on my iPod but the one that stuck out was Michel Thomas. He helped show me what the flaw was in the Rosetta Stone method I had advocated up to that point. The problem was that the the Rosetta Stone program didn't challenge your thinking enough. You never knew EXACTLY what you were saying. You always knew generally what was going on, but never specifics. Rosetta stone also wasn't super strict at watching your pronunciation where my iPod had me hearing Michel Thomas being super picky with the pronunciation of these other students that learn with you on the audio tracks.

The last thing that the Michel Thomas audios said that stuck was something along the lines "If you can control the verbs, you can control the language". He covered the modal verbs (would, should, could, can...) heavily, and showed how they were very useful for practical everyday situations. I would have to agree. It's easy to describe a noun to someone who has no idea what you are talking about (pointing or drawing can usually work) while concepts like "would", "should", "can" are much harder to get across.

I came back from my job in Spain (and their world cup win!) and still used Rosetta Stone as it was the best I had for Japanese. Another flaw I became aware of was that the Rosetta Stone gave equal attention to all parts of the lessons. Again I found myself spending more time than I wanted on the stuff I knew and less time than I wanted on the stuff I didn't.

I wanted something more. Something that focused more on writing, kanji and a deeper understanding of HOW TO USE the words I was learning but that still taught speaking, pronunciation and that had a fun and appealing aspect to it. Then luckily one day I came across a video that got me really hyped up about a website called smart.fm. I started using it and loved it even more than the Rosetta Stone. Just like in the Michele Thomas method, more emphasis is put on verbs or adjectives and less on nouns. Another exciting factor for me was the claims of scientists that were involved in the development of the program. This gave it a whole new level of credibility for me which I think has two benefits. First that this stuff probably was more effective than the other things out there but secondly that I think it gave me a placebo effect. Whether or not it actually was more effective I believed that it was and did not second guess committing to this method. I think that's a vital lesson: Your chances of succeeding in any method of learning are dependent on how much you believe you can succeed using that method.

However, smart.fm does still have it's laws. Although it tells you how to pronounce words, there's no way for it to check your pronunciation. It also conjugates verbs without explaining how/why to you. It's a lot easier to say one word at a time than to speak complete sentence with a smooth flow like the Rosetta Stone requires you to do. Lastly sometimes smart.fm is missing the stroke order of Kanji.

This reminds me of another thing that I learned from smart.fm: the importance of stroke order. Before I would ignore what sites told me and do what I felt was natural, but for some reason I decided I would follow the recommendations this time. I found several important things:

1) it made my Kanji neater. one example is the Kanji for exit or out (出). Before I would write this with 3 strokes. 1 vertical and 2-three sides of a box. however I noticed that my partial boxes would tend to become round, especially when I rushed. Changing to the proper 5 stoke method helped keep the lines straighter. Things like this would happen with MANY other kanji as well.
2) it helped prevent the nuances that would change a kanji's meaning. One example is the Kanji for husband (夫) and heaven(天). What would happen if you drew the vertical line in heaven after the horizontal ones and accidentally started a tiny bit above the top line? I'm sure most people would still know what you wrote but I find that the stroke orders are great at reducing ambiguities like this.
3) Sometimes I can remember a kanji by it's strokes. This is especially true if they are very different from what I would naturally choose like in Illness (病).

Anyways with all I have learned I have concluded: Rosetta stone and Smart.fm are the best things out there I have seen. Rosetta Stone is the best for learning pronunciation and is one of the best for learning USEFUL vocabulary. It focuses on high use words but at a cost of the depth of learning. It is better for nouns and I would recommend it to someone looking at VISITING Japan. Smart.fm however should be preferred if you are serious about learning the language and plan to go more in depth. It's ability to spend more time on the things you don't know is a benefit and it has a great design and fun games. However if you want to get the most out of it you really need to coach yourself. It doesn't force you to say words or check pronunciation or write. If you test yourself diligently and use smart.fm to check for answers you will be on a better path to fluency.

My current method has me spending about 85% of my time on smart.fm. I still use Rosetta Stone occasionally to make sure I can make my sentences flow and not sound like individual words. I also used it to pick up more nouns. It's also important as a means of taking a break. Despite how much I love smart.fm I will on rare occasions get bored of it. As my previous failures have shown, motivation is important and if you aren't careful about dealing with slight boredom and frustration it can build up and you will pay for it in the end. Keep the learning fun and enjoyable!

Some other tools I use are the Yamasa Online Kanji Dictionary when smart.fm is missing stroke orders and Tim's Takamatsu if I need to look up a verb conjugation or other rule used in the smart.fm example sentences. Google fills in any holes that are left.

My History with the Japanese Language

So first a little about me. (Warning this is long).

I was first introduced to Japanese when I joined Karate in grade 8. I wanted to join after seeing some movie I downloaded off Napster. My friend convinced me to join his dojo (the style was called "go ju ryu" which is VERY different then the wushu in the video). I didn't realize before I joined but some of the class was taught in Japanese. So through 5 years and a black belt I knew how to SAY many words such as: punch, kick, back, eyes, middle, block... basically parts of the body and fighting verbs. however I had no idea how to write or read these words in Japanese.

Also around grade 8-9 with the newly discovered power of internet and downloading in at my hands I started an anime watching phase. This has died down substantially since then but I still will watch some on rare occasions. (You can bash it all you want but there are a lot with good plots/character development and I still think the GOOD animes (there are a lot of bad) are better than most of the garbage on North American TV, but I digress...) From this I picked out simple phrases that were repeated a lot like baka, urusai, aishiteru... but since I was reading English subtitles I didn't really pick up anything. However I do think this improved my tone/accent/pacing.

Anyways I was looking forward to training in Okinawa (where our head dojo is located) as some of the other people in the dojo had done in the past but it never happened due to some rough finances faced by the dojo. (At least we flew Ei'ichi Miyazato in and I got to train under him twice). About grade 11 or so I got interested enough to do some self study for a year. I learned about the country and taught myself hiragana, katakana and a few Kanji. I printed off grade 1 and 2 Jōyō from http://www.kanjisite.com/index.html and would just train myself occasionally before I went to sleep by writing on paper, and seeing if I remembered by referring to my print off. I got through about halfway through grade 1 and a few grade 2. Of these, I barely remember any now...

Next university came. I went to University of Waterloo (one of the top tech schools in Canada) for Electrical Engineering and needless to say that, in addition my own fun and general student mischief, ate up a lot of my time. I remember telling my roommate in first year how I would learn how to say one random word a day from an English-Japanese dictionary I had. It didn't last long and the the only words I remember from this today are shoe(kutsu) and red(akai). At different stages I've dabbled several things such as kanji gold, mnemosyne, something I coded myself in c++. (more on those next post)

Still something inside me drove me to want to go to Japan. I'm one of those people would feel like I failed if I did not go. I would feel like I had given up on an important childhood goal (in hindsight this would not have been true at all. I think I could have just as easily made a goal for some European country at this point and been just as happy but it's hard to fight your own nature). So to hold myself to this goal I looked into doing an exchange. I figured it was also probably good to have some Japanese on the resume if I was going to get a career related to electrical engineering. I took a first year course at university and looked into doing an exchange to get an "international studies" option on my degree. As part of this I took Japan 101R. I found this course amazing! I learned a lot of nouns, verbs, polite words and my comprehension and speaking skyrocketed. However it was all done in romanji/hiragana so my writing did not improve at all.

Three other things happened to me around this time:
1) I found out that I would have to take classes in full Japanese if I were to do an exchange there. I was finding the coursework hard enough in English so this petrified me.
2) my "international studies" option was forcing me to take all these courses I didn't get anything out of (cultural anthropology, philosophy of the western world,...). Don't get me wrong, there were some courses I liked (macroeconomics) but most of them were only offered during the same time as my inflexible engineering classes. Therefore I would probably have to keep taking courses I didn't really like if I stayed in this option.
3) I found out that I would have to take some useless course about "what I learned overseas" or something like that when I returned.

At this point I decided that all of this was not worth it for some extra words on a piece of paper. I would drop this minor and take international studies and language courses if I could fit them in my schedule. (This turned out to be zero). If not, I would take other courses I actually liked. Even tough I really wanted to take the next level of Japanese and was even willing to take it as an extra course on top of my already full course load, its classes were always during my lab time.

Yet, I still couldn't let go of that desire to visit Japan. I figured with the amount of time and effort I had put in already, I wouldn't be satisfied with a 1-2 week vacation there. I would have to go after graduation, on my own terms. I knew I would never commit seriously enough to gain a decent level of proficiency/fluency unless I lived in the country.

Well I've now graduated (whaoo!) and through the 9 or so years I've been on this journey I've been able to visit 14 countries in Europe (2 of which I have been able to work for a month) and I have seen about 13 states in USA. Through theses years I have also discovered that my calling in life is to teach, likely at a university level. So I doubt I will end up staying in Japan, but we'll just have to wait and see. I'm sure that my passion for education and science is what is motivating me to do this blog. Basically this is one big experiment with me as the guinea pig.

I hope it gives you greater insight to me, my current level of Japanese, and how I got there. I have just recently gotten a job teaching English to children aged 6-10 years old for a year starting in January. I still have a few weeks before I know where I will be placed. I got back into studying Japanese starting in late September 2010 with my intensity ranging from medium to high since then.

Introduction - Please Read This First!

The start of what should hopefully be an epic and successful journey...

This blog has two purposes:
1) To track my progress in learning the Japanese Language and give me something to remember the journey by
2) To hopefully become a good resource for anyone else who is either about to study the language themselves or has begun already and needs tips/inspiration/ideas.

First and foremost I want to 100% admit I am stealing this idea from http://jamaicanlearningjapanese.wordpress.com. I stumbled upon his blog after doing some searches on google and youtube about life in Japan before I headed over to work. (I'll tell you more details about that in a later post). I was planning to make a blog with my stories in Japan but I liked how he separated his into two blogs; one focusing on language and the other about the rest of his life. This separates the useful information for fellow language learners who are not interested in creeping/living vicariously though other people's personal lives.

Anyways, I found his site really helpful and inspiring. I recommend that you read it in addition to mine if you are seriously considering starting to learn the Japanese language (or any other language for that matter). I'm sure that each of our techniques will prove to have their own advantages and disadvantages and will also vary in effectiveness based on your personality and history. I make no claims that my methods are better than his (although I hope that will turn out to be the case). So read at least these two blogs before you decide how you will study the language.

As my sensei once said: "practice doesn't make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect". If you study things a wrong or inefficient way you can waste a lot of time or even learn bad habits that can be next to impossible to shake. I can't stress the importance of this enough - Do your research before you start.

I will have a separate blog talking about work, play and other aspects of life in japan made more for friends or people who know me well. I probably won't start that until the week I leave for Japan so for now this is it.