My site has now moved to newer pastures you can find it here





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Another to start the day, Aya Matsuura has some great songs which I'm sure you can find more via youtube or itunes.



In other news moving to my new web host is almost sorted and I've selected a new theme that should hopefully look pretty nice.

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Following on with the trend here is another great J band I recently had the joy of being recommended by Squintox on Twitter.



Keep the recommendations coming

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Well on my quest to find more Japanese music to my liking I came across the above named band かりゆし58 think there excellent. I've included one of there songs below many more on You Tube, now just to get there album.

Anybody else have recommendations?

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Well not done one of these in a while a quick update on my current sentence stats.

The 1799 seen cards in this deck contain:
873 total unique kanji.
Old Jouyou: 843 of 1945 (43.3%).
New Jouyou: 16 of 191 (8.4%).
Jinmeiyou (reg): 7 of 645 (1.1%).
Jinmeiyou (var): 0 of 145 (0.0%).
7 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 80 of 80 (100.0%).
Grade 2: 160 of 160 (100.0%).
Grade 3: 165 of 200 (82.5%).
Grade 4: 126 of 200 (63.0%).
Grade 5: 89 of 185 (48.1%).
Grade 6: 71 of 181 (39.2%).
JuniorHS: 152 of 939 (16.2%).

Deck created: 7.5 months ago
Total number of cards: 1799
Total number of facts: 1799

Card Maturity
Mature cards: 1241 (69.0%)
Young cards: 558 (31.0%)
Unseen cards: 0 (0.0%)
Average interval: 81.5 days

Card State
Active cards: 1798 (99.9%)
Inactive cards: 0 (0.0%)
Suspended cards: 1 (0.1%)

Correct Answers
Mature cards: 90.4% (2074 of 2295)
Young cards: 87.3% (15622 of 17889)
First-seen cards: 91.5% (1744 of 1906)

Trying to fill all of the grades of the Jouyou list is proving to be difficult ^^

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Recently I've been trying to find way to increase my productivity when it comes to mining sentences or mining words that I'm yet able to read. It's not always the most productive way to go around reading random Japanese text from what ever the source may be and then collecting sentences for the bits you don't know, if your like me you prefer to actually read what you can then later come back and mine what you don't understand although in practice this isn't always the case, as we forget/misplace the source of the material.

This spurred me on to find some software to record what I was interested in and wanted to mine but that also takes up very little time and allows me to get on with what I'm doing at the same time, less distractions is always a good thing especially when learning a language.

The software that I found that had all the features I wanted and more was Evernote basically its a piece of software that allows you to take notes either by manually writing a note into the software or selecting what it is your wanting to remember and clicking save, the great thing about it is you can quickly tag notes with "Japanese" for example and then you can easily go back and find all the notes you've taken with Japanese as the tag. It also has a huge range of features which include.

- Syncing across many platforms including the IPhone
- can be used directly in your browser by just selecting text and clicking the little applet in your bookmarks bar
- will save anything from entire web pages and single text and it doesn't save as an image it saves exactly how the page would be so you can select text from within the software excellent when getting round to mining the sentences
- Can take screen shot's of whatever your viewing great for when reading a Manga offline

- and much more!

Below I've created a quick video on how I often use Evernote to collect sentences/vocab for later mining, what I didn't record was the screen capture facility that takes a snapshot of your entire screen as a note great for when working with PDF's etc.

For the full size video click here

One other great thing I forgot to mention is that if you have an IPhone with the Evernote software installed you can take a picture of a sign say a Japanese one while your walking about, which then automatically syncs with your notes on your laptop, so you can quickly collect notes of signs that your yet able to read.

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Just a quick update on the savings front which is mostly for my trip to Japan its been going pretty good I've made sure to put some of my money from my wage into a savings account each month although not as much as I would like. Once I've paid of my debts I vow to at least double the amount I save every month if I'm going to save enough for my year long trip to Japan then I really need to save more as at the current rate I'll have only just over half of what I need.

Progress - OK

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Well yesterday after not doing my RTK reviews for going on over a week I've decided to call it quits with reviewing RTK Kanji they were starting to bore me, I feel like I know less of the English meanings and how to write them from the English keyword than I did when I finished learning the kanji many months ago and as they say when you get bored of something in your target language its best to throw it out rather than sacrifice your interest. Not to mention it was taking up a lot of real world sentence mining and immersion time.

Now some people might say that this is a bad idea that I wont be able to write the kanji from memory and so on but I think a disagree yeah maybe if you said to me write the kanji for "table" for example I might not be able to write it off the top of my head but I sure can read it in Japanese if its in front of me.

For many weeks now my English to kanji recognition has been getting worse and I think its down to the fact that my Japanese ability is starting to take over I've lost interest on retaining the english to keyword recognition and prefer to know the Japanese readings even if it sacrifices some of my ability to write from memory.

Personally I'm going to be going completely for recognition I want to be able to read and understand Japanese before I can actually speak and write it and when I do finally go back to learning to write I'll probably give the movie method a try, as by then I will already know the readings for all the kanji that I will need to know it will just be a case of internalizing them into written practice.

I'm not saying that I regret doing RTK on the contrary I think without it I wouldn't learn the readings so easily it has given me the ability to recognize the difference between kanji and to not fear them just because there's a lot of them who cares if you need to know over 2000 when you think about it its not that large a number, I bet many of us know over 2000 pieces of information on our favourite hobby for example but we don't go crying about how much there is to learn and why? because we just enjoy it and don't worry about when we will master what ever it is, it just happens.

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Today I'm pleased to introduce a guest blogger Alex Elkholy who has wrote today's article, you can find more of his great articles at alexelkholy.com

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In my time learning Japanese, there has been one big hurdle that nobody seems to know how to effectively overcome. Because of this, there has been quite a bit of controversy to the proposed solutions. What I refer to is learning to listen to Japanese.

This is so hard to get good at because it takes lot of skill. Not only do you have to know the vocabulary, you have to know to listen for them. Often times strings of words will turn into a giant blur. While I'm still not past this stage, I'm getting slightly better and better. Today I finally realized my way to progress and getting better, and this experience is what I'm going to share. Not a bulletproof method, not a guarantee, but just my observations.

I believe there are three factors for successful learning to listen to Japanese. These are: interest, comfort/convenience, and familiarity. All are necessary to level the playing field, otherwise you will be fighting an uphill battle.

The first factor is interest. All things flow from this. If you are watching or listening to something just because it's in Japanese, and it's not something that would otherwise catch your interest, then you have a little bit of a problem. I've said it a million times, and I'll say it a million times more, you have to have interest in what you're doing. In my case, I've become obsessed with DragonBall. I found the entire Japanese DragonBall and have it ready to play at a moment's notice. I will put off other things to watch another episode, because I'm engrossed in this stupid kid's show.

The second factor is comfort/convenience. You must be comfortable when you watch, and it must be really convenient to turn it on. It doesn't help if you get headaches from leaning into your computer screen watching in the dark, or if you have to go through and setup everything just to begin watching. These both used to be big problems for me. I finally solved it by setting up a second monitor a few feet away from my working area to where I could just look up or lean back to start watching. It made a big difference. Also, if you have to tab between what you're watching and your dictionary, then consider something external so you don't have to interrupt the video.

The third factor is familiarity. It is tremendously helpful if you have some sort of familiarity with the content before hand. I used to watch DragonBall/Z all the time as a kid, so I know the story decently. Not enough to have the dialog memorized, but to know that there are seven Dragon Balls that can only be used once a year... Anyway, make sure if you're a beginner to use something you're familiar with. This makes a huge difference.

Now that we're all setup, another question is whether or not to lookup words. Some tell us to lookup everything, or we'll be wasting time. Others tell us to lookup absolutely nothing. I personally fall into the middle. I don't force myself to lookup everything, but I'll still look up words.

It's all about balance. If you decide to lookup absolutely nothing, you're probably going to end up with nothing to show for your time (unless you're able to invest 24/7 for a couple years straight of ONLY watching television in the target language). However, if you force yourself to lookup EVERY single word, you're going to end up totally ignoring the reason to watch something in the first place: entertainment. I have a specific anime series I really like, it's only 24 episodes long, but a year after I started watching it I still haven't completed it. Why? Because I felt like I needed to lookup every word in every sentence to get through a single episode. This has led to me putting it off. Don't fall into this trap.

My solution is a simple one: Listen as hard as you can and follow the story as best you can. When a word pops out at you, look it up. Don't make yourself decode every sentence for every word, only try to wait for words to come to you. In this way you'll still boost your listening skills considerably, but it won't become a chore to start.

This article wouldn't be complete without discussing passive listening. This concept was introduced to the community by Khatzumoto. The technique of passive listening is to have a 24 hour stream of Japanese to your ears. This has been met with controversy by those who don't particularly like to work to hard. However, those who praise and use the technique often find it as a testament to their resolve to master the language.

The controversy is often because we do not know if it gives us any benefit or not. The very definition of "passive" indicates that you will not be focusing or thinking about what you're hearing at all. In my opinion, passive listening can be very helpful as long as you approach it the correct way. Throughout the day, we have many unused moments, time in which we are not using our minds for anything useful. Passive listening can take those moments and force you to think about Japanese.

As I pause to reflect on what I write in this article, my mind wonders to the Japanese I have playing in the background, even if only for micro moments. Indeed, how can this technique be anything but helpful? Be warned, you must be selective in what you choose to passively listen to. Even more so than how you would be in choosing something to actively listen to.

I believe that I have covered everything important that pertains to listening to Japanese in this article. We went over successful conditions in which to begin listening, how to use the dictionary effectively while listening, and what role passive listening has in our learning. Go forth and listen happily.

This is a guest article from Alex Elkholy. You can find more of his writings on his new site. Alex Elkholy .com

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Next up is how I'm getting on with the weight training, since I started back in February I think it was, I've come a long way from being a skinny bean pole who could barely lift anything that could be considered to have a substantial weight, when I first started I was curling like 8kg and doing way too many different exercise per session 4 times a week I was basically running my self into the ground even with the small amount of weight I even had the complete wrong idea on how to do sets, basically after every set you should take about 60-90 second brake (good for Hypertrophy) for maximum testosterone production then go on to your next set after completing your sets for one exercise you jump to the next.

The big mistake we were doing is we did each set of an exercise concurrently, no rest, then we would rest for 60 seconds and start the next set of all exercises we were doing more harm than good basically wrecking havoc on our nervous system. Anyway the mistakes we made and the things we learned over the past 5 months or so can wait for a future post as there were more ^^

Any woo I gained a few pounds of muscle over the first few months of training averaging about 1 pound of weight each week which is about what your aiming for if your wanting to gain muscle and not fat this was helped by my increase of calorie and protein intake helped by the weight gainer protein shakes took some time to get used to the banana flavor but its grown on me.

Then typically when I was starting to see change in my physique I injured my right deltoid may have been caused by not warming up adequately or just from general wear and tear as weight lifting for hypertrophy puts a lot of strain on your body, this took about 3-4 weeks to get back to shape although I did no weights in that time I kept my weight/muscle by keeping my protein intake high and calories clean.

Then finally I could start again this time reading much more into what routines, exercises were best for me being a hard gainer, the basic idea for us hard gainers and beginner weight lifters alike is to do mostly compound exercises for the first month or so these include the bench press, deadlift, squats, military press etc on alternate days 3 times a week the idea is to build over all mass and increase strength rapidly then later when your bulked up you define the muscles by doing the non compounds e.g. bicep curls etc

One tip if its strength and size your after you need to constantly be increasing the weight you lift find your perfect weight that you can only manage around 6-8 reps per set with and each sessions try to add a little more weight from everything I've read over the months this is the best way to increase bulk and strength.

Anyway I keep getting off topic, with the change in exercises and new found knowledge on how to weight lift correctly for maximum results we again started to gain 1-2 pounds of weight each week and can now see a good change in my physique, I've added 9 pounds of weight from 8.5 stone to 9 stone which I've never weighed that much in my life always been either below 8 stone or just above.

Current stats below, this is over a month with the new routine (except the body weight which is from February)

Body weight: 8.5 stone to 9 stone
Deadlift: 132 pounds to 176 pounds
Bench Press: 100 pounds (not been doing long, but started not being able to even lift 100 pounds now I can do 3 sets of 6 reps)

Military press: 66 pounds to 77 pounds
Pendley Rows: 77 pounds to 90 pounds
Squats: 103 pounds to 123 pounds
Crunches: 3 sets of 15 with 10kg weight + 15 reps of leg raises on pull up bar
Pull Ups: 6 reps to 14 reps (working on lats not bicep pull ups to get that v shape)

Not huge weights by any means but for me its a great improvement, will keep posting updates over the coming months and maybe even some before and after pictures.

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Well over the coming days I plan to do post some updates on my progress with my goals that I listed a while ago, to recap these were.

Learn Japanese
To keep improving my Japanese and hopefully step it up a gear.

Weight Training

To improve my overall physique to basically not look like a beanpole.

Healthy Body and Mind
Generally to improve the way I live and eat always believe you should look after yourself as you only get one body no point when your 50 starting to eat healthy because your obese and can barely move from all the crap you've eat and drunk over the years same goes for the mind.

Savings
One thing that I've always had trouble with is saving now that I realise I've gotta save if I ever plan to live my dream of going to Japan for a year to enjoy myself and job hunt.

Other goals I planned to set were to expand my reality in general experience as many different things as I could and to also network more in and out of my career.

- Body and Mind -
For the first post I'm going to do a quick rundown on my body and mind goal, overall this is going pretty well most days I've kept with the eating healthy at least having some fruit and veg everyday, although I have had a bad habit of taking trips to KFC and the local Chinese a few times a week as they tend to be more convenient and a quick way of getting my required calorie/protein intake to keep adding more body weight this needs to be pretty high especially as I tend to be pretty active with 3 weight sessions a week and lots of cardio in between.

I've also started to take much more care on the way I look for years I had the same set of clothes and would only buy new clothes when they were worn thin but now if I see something I like (or my wife does) I'll go out my way to buy it, caring about the way you look doesn't just help change what people think about you it also makes you feel better and more confident.

On the mind front I think this has improved from before I'm generally feeling much happier and have a huge renewed interest in my Japanese language studies, web development and technology in general. Everyday I get closer to my trip to Japan even if it is years away planning for it now helps stop my interest waning and keep me motivated and happy.

Next up Weight Lifting

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Had on and off problems with the sites theme randomly not loading, now I think this is sorted or at least it's not happened to me in a while can anybody confirm everything is loading ok?

Also noticed an issue with the posting a comments page loading slowly, think I may know the cause of this anybody else experiencing the same issue?

Now that I'm on the topic I have plans to change the theme in the near future to a 3 column theme as this one is starting to feel a little cluttered, I'm also in the process of brushing up on my XHTML and CSS skills so I do plan to completely overhaul the site at some point in the future.

EDIT: Sorted the slow loading pages looks like the script for the hit counter was playing up

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Recently went out and bought myself a new desk as I was starting to get sick of using my bed as a desk not much room to get thing done, also I've had a 19" wide-screen monitor lying about doing nothing for the past god knows how long and thought it would be great to use this as a dual display with my Mac. Should make productivity much greater for my language studies and work.



After only a few hours of using this setup I think its excellent already finding it easier to sentence mine and keep up a Japanese environment, now I just need to get myself a 3rd monitor.

p.s. The rose isn't mine ;P

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Was just reading a post over at Nihongo day by day (雨と水) and remembered just how excellent SRS software is for not forgetting things that you've learned I could read most of the article bar a few vocab, that I'll be sentence mining by the way. Now for the last few weeks I've not really added much to my sentence deck and not had huge exposure either except the 5 hours of listening I got the other day but yet I still could read the majority of that article the only thing I had kept regular was my sentence reviews.

So even though I hadn't actively been using Japanese each day for a while I've not really forgotten anything and the bits I have forgotten get picked up much easier the second time.

So for all those that worry they are going to forget everything if they take a brake from there Japanese studies don't worry about it just be sure to keep up with your reviews and when your ready to get back to your Japanese you'll be almost were you left off.

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Well as some of you may know one of my largest goals in life is to live and work in Japan and no matter how hard this will be I intend to make it. So today I thought I would talk a little about what my plans are and how I intend to reach my goals of living and working in Japan.

Satellite image of Japan in May 2003. :The isl...


I have nothing really special don't have a degree, haven't got much money and don't work in company that has a Japan division. First of all I've had to look at the degree front contrary to popular belief you don't need a degree to obtain a working visa in Japan, 10 years of experience in a specific field will also allow you to obtain a visa, this has set the first part of my goal I want to set off for Japan when I'm 28 at this time I will have 10 years experience in IT which comes under the working visa 'Engineering'. Although there is no denying that a degree would make life much easier for finding a job and the worst case scenario becoming an English teach, which I will talk about possible plans for me to obtain a degree before I set off to Japan in a later post.

Japanese Visa


Next up is another large obstacle 'money' my plan is when I reach the ripe old age of 28 that I will have enough cash saved to live in Japan without work for up to a year on a working holiday visa this should allow me enough time to hopefully find a job. To do this I've worked out that I need around 10k preferably more to live comfortably for many months until I find work this has to take into account there will be 2 mouths to feed as my wife will be with me. I started saving for this earlier this year and if I keep going at the rate I am now I should at least reach my goal of 10k

2000 Yen banknote with Shureimon.


Other than these 2 main obstacles I just need to keep increasing my knowledge in many work related areas, my Japanese and people networking as any one of these can give you opportunities in life that you may otherwise never have.

As long as we all have dreams and ambitions we should realize that we can reach any of our goals in life if we try hard enough but we all need to think what can we be doing 'now!' not later but now as we all only have a finite amount of time.

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Recently watched Tekkonkinkreet with my wife and must say I really didn't expect it to be as great as it was from the onset I thought oh this isn't my sort of animation style and oh this is gonna be another one of those mindless anime's that's got no real story and is just fighting.

How wrong I was I quickly fell in love with the anime I even like the animation style it seems to suit the story, basically its about two friends called black and white both are homeless and live in an old rust bucket of a car, black has always protected white since he was young and they both protect a part of the city called Treasure town from any sort of outer influence whether its other town gangs or the Yakuza.

When the Yakuza start moving back into the area is when all the trouble starts and black and white need to do there best to defend there city, although after white gets injured and taken away from black is when the show becomes great black is now out for revenge and the story starts to become pretty dark and twisted, black starts to lose all form of humanity as he seeks revenge he falls more and more into the dark with white being the only one that has his "screws" as white likes to say.

The story becomes a battle of black trying to stay away from becoming purely evil and white trying to gain his own screws back to saves blacks.

The show has many interesting themes that we can all take away, we all have a dark side and we all must battle with ourselves at one time or another, and even the innocent have there twisted side as we see with white and having great friends/family can help us keep grounded.

To sum up an excellent anime highly recommended to any anime fan and none anime fan alike, a surprisingly deep, twisted at times anime, if you can get past the different style of animation I'm sure most of you will find a gem of a show.


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Noticed over at On How to Learn Japanese that there has recently been a sort of quiz over at revTK asking questions on how your faring with the AJATT method, so I thought I'd join in.


1. How many facts (production and recognition are only 1 fact) do you have in your SRS?

1534 seen facts, 0 unseen. All sentences and a few vocab, review RTK separately via revTK

2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

Probably half from smart.fm, some from various books e.g. UBJG, Japanese in MangaLand, some from various sources around the interweb

3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (eg production and then recognition)?

I do only recognition. Most of my cards are full Kanji bar the few expressions etc that are in hiragana only, in my answer field I have a quick translation, reading and audio if there is any

4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

Find it best to find multiple sentences using the word you'd like to learn helps a lot when learning difficult words also trying out the movie method recently

5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

I think its around 8 a day not got anki with me at the moment will check later, I can add anywhere from 100 new sentences to 0 for weeks (I know not good)

6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

Hard to say as it varies so much sometimes I get anywhere from 5-8 Hours other times I'm lucky if I get 1 hour going to try and change this soon so I'm at least getting 4-6 hours

7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

I can usually understand something out of everything I read.
Although I do have trouble with a lot of text from news, stories etc can read beginner material pretty well now though e.g. example articles written for JLPT lvl3-4 I can pretty much read the most of.
I can understand anywhere from 30% to 5% when watching anime, Jorama etc

8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

Pretty satisfied, although I do believe I could have done much better if I stopped having so many brakes from adding new material and immersion.

9. Are you satisfied with your level?

Not at all.

10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

Would like native like ability in reading, writing, speaking, and obviously understanding

11. How confident are you of getting there?

Extremely so

12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

Probably would try the Movie Method instead of RTK, try to add more of my sentences from real material and not pre-made ones which I still have an habit of collecting as they tend to be easier to add.

13. How long have you been studying?
almost a year with a few weeks of not adding new material in between, took 4 Months to complete RTK

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From Chester Zoo


From Chester Zoo


Well thought I would show a few photo's from a trip I made the other week and have a little talk about being content at were you are in life. I know most of us at one time or another have hit a wall of self improvement the point were life seems to be flying by and before you know it another year has passed and you still sat watching your favorite TV program wishing that you had gone ahead with that trip to China or put off learning that musical instrument that you always wanted to learn, and for what? the old I didn't have time or it can wait a week/month/year whatever the excuse may be.

From Chester Zoo


From Chester Zoo


Cum on do you really think that you have no time its pretty amazing the amount we can get done in a day if we put our mind to do we really need to watch a half baked show on TV that you have no real interest or the classic "I'm tired after work so dammit if I'm going to be doing anything" just a couple of examples of the many excuses most of us make at one time or another.

From Chester Zoo


I've been a victim of this many times after a long day at work I'll get home and say to myself "whoa tiring day I've earned a brake everything is going to have to wait" If you enjoy something is it really that much of a chore to do the things that you like whether its learning a new language, playing an instrument or planning that month trip to China just remind yourself what your aiming for and be sure to enjoy it.

From Chester Zoo


Now onto my point, what we don't realize is we start to become content with were we are, our daily routines even if we are not enjoying ourselves it can become very difficult for us to get up and do the stuff we have always wanted to, why? because its easier its easier to mope around doing the same routine day in day out being content can be one of the worst things for our productivity, I'm not saying being content is bad on the contrary if your very happy with were you are and have done everything you want to then your happily content which is great just don't get stuck in the trap, make sure you evaluate your contentedness every so often and decide if there is anything you should be doing now not tomorrow but now.

From Chester Zoo


You really don't want to look back in 20 years time and think wow there was so much I wanted to do but never did, time fly's' whether your happy with your contentedness or unhappy with it just going along with the flow

From Chester Zoo


From Chester Zoo

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Not posted in a while as I've been busy with work and catching up with some xbox games I know not the best use of my time :) and some Anime a better use of my Japanese environment time, although I've knocked my Japanese up a gear over the last week been doing much more iknow 100's of items, entering new sentences in anki including many example sentences for JLPT4-3 grammar and phrases.

Been listening to Utada Hikaru album Heart Station highly recommended by the way, any similar music anybody recommends?

Have plans for many more articles in the near future including how I've been getting on with my goals I set not too long ago and how to keep motivated.

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Not done one of these In a while so thought it was about time after hopefully a few worries that I had now out of the way I can get back to going full force on my Japanese and over the last few days have increased my pace 10 fold.

Finally completed all the sentences I mass imported from iknow core 6000 step 1 and have added a few more, also started working through iknow again as I still find that I retain information better when learned through iknow system.

To add to this I got a nice motivation boost by accident the other day I decided to have a look at my copy of Japanese from ZERO volume 1 which I used before I discovered the AJATT/sentence method of learning to my surprise I could understand almost everything in the book except a few words that I need to learn i.e. the horrid days of the month. I know its not a hugely difficult book but a few months ago when I last had a look many of the chapters had things I needed to learn and much more words to boot so to me it feels like a great achievement to see how far I've come.

It's looking back on old things that show you how far you have actually come otherwise you may never notice.

Anki Stats,

Deck created: 5.2 months ago
Total number of cards: 1484
Total number of facts: 1484

Card counts
Mature cards: 1050 (70.8%)
Young cards: 419 (28.2%)
Unseen cards: 15 (1.0%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 93.8% 993 of 1059
Young cards: 87.0% 11205 of 12875
First-seen cards: 89.7% 1411 of 1573

The 1469 seen cards in this deck contain:
771 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 744 of 1945 (38.3%).
Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
22 non-jouyou kanji.
Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 71 of 80 (88.8%).
Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
Grade 3: 147 of 200 (73.5%).
Grade 4: 114 of 200 (57.0%).
Grade 5: 78 of 185 (42.2%).
Grade 6: 65 of 181 (35.9%).
JuniorHS: 126 of 939 (13.4%).

Not much increase in the Jouyou but I'm guessing thats because of the re-use of Kanji in the core 6000 series.

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Recently when I started to learn Hangul I noticed how easy learning another languages characters/alphabet actually is, now a few years ago this would have been a different story before all the meta skills that I've picked up along the way while learning Japanese.

In little over a week I've learned how to read and write 한굴 and this is with missing days here and there, but if it wasn't for Anki and the huge amounts of shapes/variations I've seen while studying Kanji/Kana I doubt that I would have done it so fast with a 100% retention.

This all comes down to meta skills basically smaller skills that you pick up along the way to learning the main skill that your after e.g. Japanese I've picked up how and what an SRS is which basically helps me never forget material and using mnemonics to remember characters, all skills that will potentially stay with me for a life time and will keep on helping me in the future.

Also the other side to it is that in the process of learning another language other languages become easier to learn this comes down to the fact that your brain becomes more used to handling the data that you feed it i.e. this and this make up the structure of a sentences or this this and this make up this shape which forms a Kanji, basically your training your mind to get good at language learning. Thus why a lot of people who know a second language from when there very young find it much easier to learn more languages, they've processed so much information giving there brain more ways to just 'click' with the information that its given.

To sum up if you have the opportunity to learn new skills then dive in learn all the processes along the way, learn all the techniques to mastering the target skill that your after, as you can guarantee one day you will be glad you did if nothing else it will make you a more rounded individual.

Another great article explaining meta skills can be found here

또봐요

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Well seen as Blogger sucks for creating static pages and the blogger provided "about me" page is lacking, so the only other option is to create a normal post and then link to the post page via an about me button, which will do until I can be bothered to switch from blogger.

Summary

Hmm where do I start, my real name is Matthew or Matt which ever you prefer, its a long story were the name Tibul came from but have used it for many years on the interweb to the point were people think its my real name, I live in the UK although that's not were my future lies one of my greatest ambitions is to live and work in Japan.

Since my ambition to move to Japan started a few years ago its improved my lifestyle ten fold before my Japan dream I was content with byding my time playing online games and watching Anime all day long, after my day at 'the' dead end job, not all bad but i felt there was more for me.

Will do a post soon on my own experience with self motivation and improvement of oneself and how having ambitions, goals and determination will lead you somewhere doing nothing will lead you nowhere.


This Site

Started this site as originally a place to just record how I was doing with my Japanese studies, but since have realised how useful it can be to blog whats on your mind and is slowly growing into a place for me to blog about my other interests such as self motivation/improvement and everything Japanese.


Hobbies/Interests

Thought this would be best as a list since I have so many :)

  • Japan/Japanese subculture
  • Language learning
  • Self Improvement
  • Gaming
  • Technology
  • Photography (would like to do this more)
  • Fishing
  • Blogging
  • Weight Lifting
Career

Firm believer that if you never list your experience/skills that possible opportunities may never arise, worked in the IT industry for about 5 years now and have gained a wide variety of skills over that time.

Including:
  • Wide knowledge of hardware/software
  • Working Knowledge of Server software from Windows NT to Windows server 2008 and Linux Ubuntu Server
  • Working Knowledge of a wide variety of client OS including Windows, Mac and Linux
  • Networking technologies and application
  • Knowledge of setting up and deploying of small to large scale networks including inter/intra site communications
  • Backup Technologies
Computer

Recently got my first Mac in years and have been completely turned after many years of using windows machines and working with them every day, its great to have a breath of fresh air really cant see me ever going back to Windows you can see my review of my Macbook here

Find Me

Now for some links were you can find me, feel free to add me.

Twitter - Now one of my regular haunts
Lang-8 - Trying to write in my Journal more and help others were I can
xbox360 Tag - Tibul
smart.fm - Trying to do more iknow excellent learning resource and a great community

Will add more as and when :)

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Thought I would do a quick rundown of some language resources (mostly for Japanese) that have been useful to me and may be useful to you.

Reviewing the Kanji

Without this site I would probably have given up on learning Kanji a long time ago so i owe a lot to it, basically for those who don't know RevTK is an SRS (Spaced Repetition Software) for people who are using the Remembering the Kanji book and have learned some kanji but would like to not forget them what you need is an SRS like the one at RevTK or anki etc.

RevTK also has other great features such as the ability for users to share and make there own stories and a great forum to boot.

Anki

My Preferred SRS for learning and remembering sentences.

Smart.fm

Previously known as iknow an excellent learning resource for those who have just finished learning the Kanji and are moving onto learning sentences etc I usually use this to first learn the sentence/word then move it over to Anki to keep in long term memory.

Great example sentences with audio and visuals to help you learn and also a great community of people sharing content.

Lang-8

Only signed up to this one recently but really like the idea basically you write in your Journal with the language you are trying to learn and other users correct any mistakes you make and you can do the same for others seems excellent for improving your "putting together your own sentence skills" :D

Read The Kanji

Recently had somebody twitter me this, I've only had a quick go and it seems like a good way to help learn the reading for Kanji and also has example sentences for each, you can even use it as an SRS system for learning the different vocab from the JLPT's

If anybody else has recommendation that you feel should be included in the list please feel free to comment.

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Well I recently took it upon myself to add an extra language to my life, through Japanese I've become more and more interested in learning languages just love learning new stuff and having a deeper understanding about different languages and cultures really appeals to me.

For a while now I've been thinking to myself once I'm fluent in Japanese I'd like to start Korean but why wait that long when I can start now, Its not going to be on the same scale as Japanese I'll only work on Korean when I fancy a change from the Japanese, Japanese will always be my love.

The great thing I've already noticed with Korean is how simple there writing system is with not needing to know Kanji and only 24 characters in there alphabet no wonder they have one of the highest literacy rates on the planet.

After only 2 days I know the majority of 한굴Hangul there alphabet and find it easy to remember probably a direct cause of learning Japanese gave me the meta skill of remembering characters much easier (more on this another day)

Will talk more about Korean over the comings days as I finish learning the 한굴

Now for a quick Japanese stats update.

Deck created: 4.4 months ago
Total number of cards: 1464
Total number of facts: 1464

Card counts
Mature cards: 870 (59.43%)
Young cards: 404 (27.60%)
Unseen cards: 190 (12.98%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 95.7% (600 of 627)
Young cards: 86.7% (9725 of 11221)
First-seen cards: 88.4% (1218 of 1378)

The 1274 seen cards in this deck contain:
767 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 740 of 1945 (38.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
22 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 70 of 80 (87.5%).
Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
Grade 3: 147 of 200 (73.5%).
Grade 4: 112 of 200 (56.0%).
Grade 5: 77 of 185 (41.6%).
Grade 6: 65 of 181 (35.9%).
JuniorHS: 126 of 939 (13.4%).

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Well I finally bit the bullet and downloaded the plugin for smart.fm formally know as iknow.co.jp so that I can easily import sentences and not have to manually enter them which can be time consuming this also has the added bonus of it importing the audio aswell which is a great aid.

You can download from the Anki plugins page here once installed you can edit the card model to your liking I personally have mine set to recoginiton only as I do with all my cards then all you need to do is locate the list that you would like to import copy the url and choose to import smart.fm sentences from the menu then sit back and relax.

This has already saved me much time especially after a busy day and I just want to get down to learning new things and not have to enter for an hour first which should stop me being as lazy sometimes :)

Currently adding sentences from the core 6000 series as after a while of adding grammar sentences I've gone back to adding vocab especially after reading even more about vocab being everything from over at

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Well we all know the importance of backing up our decks who would like to lose there 1000+ cards? So thought I would do a quick rundown of ways to back up in anki.

Export

The first way is probably the simplest just the standard export "file - export" enter the deck you wish to backup select file and click export, choose the file format and the location to save to probably best to save to some external device just in case your machine goes kaput.

Also you can select if you want the backup to include scheduling info so you don't lose that precious spaced repetition

.
Sync & Save

Probably the best way (although you should do both for added peace of mind) is the syncing a copy to anki's server this has the added advantage to that you can either do your daily sentences reps online or have your deck shared across multiple machines.

Select settings, preferences and the sync & save tab under Autosaving I find it best to set all the options as ticked you can adjust your settings to your personal preferences if you have a temperamental machine its probably best to set these to save often.

You will need to create yourself a free account to able to sync once you've done this enter your username and password and set your syncing options i prefer to sync on both open and close ans this will update any online reps or reps I've done on other machines before i start.



Note: If you need to download your deck to a new anki setup go to the options for sync & save add your sync details and choose to sync on open this will automatically download your decks to your new installation.

Pretty simple but a reference for anybody that might need to know.

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Well thought its about time I did a stats update seen as its been a while been listening to a good amount of Japanese recently and adding trying to add as many sentences as I could even with such a busy last few weeks.

Not many new Kanji recently as have been adding a lot from Understanding Basic Japanese Grammer which lacks many new vocab.


Deck created: 3.8 months ago
Total number of cards: 1222

Card counts
Mature cards: 704 (57.61%)
Young cards: 498 (40.75%)
Unseen cards: 20 (1.64%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 95.6% (391 of 409)
Young cards: 86.0% (8725 of 10143)
First-seen cards: 87.7% (1144 of 1304)

The 1222 seen cards in this deck contain:
767 total unique kanji.
Jouyou: 740 of 1945 (38.0%).
Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
22 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:
Grade 1: 70 of 80 (87.5%).
Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
Grade 3: 147 of 200 (73.5%).
Grade 4: 112 of 200 (56.0%).
Grade 5: 77 of 185 (41.6%).
Grade 6: 65 of 181 (35.9%).
JuniorHS: 126 of 939 (13.4%).

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Well i often here people saying that its generally a bad idea to set yourself too many goals or resolutions whatever you want to call them, but in my opinion setting yourself many goals can actually be advantageous.

The general consensus on why setting more than a few goals for yourself at time is bad tends to be that you get over worked, burned out etc and end up completely giving up after only a short period of time, now if we look at two common examples of resolutions people set lets say smoking and losing weight pretty common as I'm sure you will agree people will often set these goals at the same time often at the new year, which they are both pretty big lifestyle changes giving up something that your body is so used to, thus why a lot of people find it difficult to complete both goals they would be better off setting only one and the other later. Obviously everybody varies and people with greater will power may be able to manage this.

Now onto why I think its a good idea to set many goals all at once say for example something like my own personal list I have keeping fit, learning a language and saving money to name but a few which many of these I set around the same time after hitting a stage of wanting to improve myself, so far I've managed to stick with these although I have dropped some along the way i.e. a while ago i set myself a goal to learn powershell scripting not hugely difficult but my interest waned and without even realizing it became a failed goal. There's also been a few others I set around the time of my self improvement phase which I've lost site of but all in all I've kept going strong.

To say I set myself around 10 goals or so of which I've only dropped around 3-4 of those over the last 5-6 months and the others are still going strong, I think I've done pretty well now if I had only set 1-2 goals which might have taken say 2-3 months to do for a short term goal with the possibility of one of those being dropped I don't think I would get as much self improvement in the time than I would with multiple goals so potentialy wasted time.

Choosing your goals

How to choose your goals for the best retention this can be down to each persons willpower and motivation but a general idea is to keep them varied maybe have 1-2 that could be called major lifestyle change like not having a daily trip to Burger King order everything large and instead having a salad, then perhaps set the rest of your goals as mini ones i.e. get an extra half hours sleep a night and/or setting yourself long term self improvement goals like learning a language, saving for a holiday or improving your image the ones that don't take a huge change to your life just adding something extra.

So to cap it off, the next time your in a self improvement phase dont just choose one thing you want to change or add to your life try making yourself a list of ways you'd like to improve, change or to just expand your reality you'll be supprised with how much you can actually stick with.

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Time for a quick review of my macbook now I've had it for a few days.

First up technical specifications

  • 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
  • 1066MHz frontside bus
  • 2GB (two 1GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB
  • NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory3
  • 160GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive4
  • Weight 4.5 pounds
  • thickness when closed 0.95"
Ports
  • MagSafe power port
  • Gigabit Ethernet port
  • Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
  • Mini DisplayPort
  • Audio line in
  • Audio line out
  • Kensington lock slot
Comms

Built-in AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking2 (based on IEEE 802.11n draft specification); IEEE 802.11a/b/g compatible

Built-in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)

Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)

Obviously there are much more options like SSD and faster CPU etc but I just went with the standard setup.

Design

One of the most striking parts about the Macbook is the design they look excellent PC laptop designers really need to start taking notice on how to make a laptop look nice so many standard laptops look so darn fugly.




Very sleek aluminum body with a pretty looking Apple logo in the centre the lid opens and closes using the thumbscoope which apparantly they spent a lot of time designing :/. It does have a nice feel the lid closes nicely into place without the need for latches etc



Even the under side looks very sleek though there are no vents it barely gets hot even now as I type I have it rested on my bed and its only lukewarm compared to my Sony Vaio which mayaswell be on fire.


The screen is of the glossy kind very clear and bright one of the really nice innovations to the mac that they really need to bring to the PC are the gestures for example using 4 fingers by flicking them to the top of the pad automatically hides all open windows so you can quickly get to your desktop and flick backing down again brings them up so you can see all your windows spread out as in the image at the end of the post more examples are the pinch to zoom in and out and twisting 2 fingers to turn images to name a few.




The keyboard is the kind I love, always go for them if I have the option, the ones on the macbook are great have a nice responsive feel and are a smooth soft texture.









On the side you have the connections which include the magsafe power connection, 10/100/1000GB Ethernet, 2 USB ports, monitor connection and input/output audio ports these are probably one of the few things that let the macbook down is its lack of ports a few more USB and a firewire connection would have been nice.

On the other side you have a standard 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Apparently when all the little dots light up on the side it means you need to replace your battery a little feature but nice non the less.

Summary: Overall excellent and this is coming from a guy that's always been a PC user and for many years actually hated mac's but now I must say I've been converted they've come a long way since the days when I really disliked them and have trumped PC's in many ways even things as simple as the power cord are designed really nice with lots of love and attention, you can tell they actually want people to enjoy there macs in every way possible who else gives you a cloth to clean your screen.

I really should review the OS but that's a review in itself so that can wait for another day but for now here are a few images of my desktop.


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Recently bought myself one of the new macbooks been wanting one for a while always preferred them there just so much nicer looking and great to use, grown bored of PC's over the years as I work with them everyday being a network technician, used to love customizing and building PC's but lost interest in that long ago, now that you can practically do everything you could on a PC there was nothing holding me back after only 2 days of use I've already fell in love with it not to mention that 2 friends have just bought one.

Highly recommended and for the gamers out there its simple to set them up to duel boot with windows if need be so the next time your on the look out for a new laptop give a mac a try you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Will post a more in depth review shortly with pictures etc

Any readers mac users?

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Well at the start of the year i set myself a few goals of achieving things or just improving myself in some way so were better to jot these down and see my progress over the year than on my blog so here go's.


Current set goals

1. Learn Japanese
This is probably my main goal for the foreseeable future something that I have now been doing since mid last year and wont stop until I'm fluent and my year trip to Japan in the not too distant future.

So far this is going strong once I have a few things sorted out I'll be powering this again like over Christmas.

2. Weight Training
Started this a few months ago and was making good gains increased how much I could lift and my body weight in a matter of months but after a shoulder injury this came to a halt but is now sorted so I'll be back on this with full throttle.

3. Healthy body and mind
This is allot down to changing my diet and go's hand in hand with the above I've never been the most healthiest eater but have been doing pretty good recently having 5 portions of fruit and veg a day at least 3 servings of fish each week (love fish) I feel much better after eating more healthy seem to have more energy and just better in general this seems to be having a positive effect on my Japanese study and weight training.

On the mind aspect I've been trying to think more positively although some things are going against this over the past week or so.

4. Savings
Something that I've been wanting to do for a while but always been held back by being in debt up to my eyeballs :) but recently have started saving ready for my year long stay in Japan.

Goals I plan to set

1. Expand my reality
You can read more about this on a great article over at glowingfaceman.com but basically the idea is to learn new things whether its a new language or how to make the perfect cup of tea lol you expand your reality by learning new things as until you actually know about them there not in your reality you become a much fuller strong person by learning new things.

2. Network More
Basically get to know more people whether its around the language learning community or work related expanding the network of people that you know gives you many more possibilities and potential opens up many more doors in your everyday life and career for reaching those long term goals.





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Thought I would start a series of recommended JDrama's for those on the look out for something new to watch my first recommendation has to be the GTO live action it was one of the first JDrama I watched and still by far my favourite a great lead character who fills Onizuka's shoes almost perfectly and same for the supporting cast, some excellent scenes that make you laugh and cry not to mention the great music.

So overall an excellent watch oh... make sure to watch the movie too :D

link below for preview as embeding is disabled for it :(

GTO

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Ever notice how when you read a lot in your native language your spelling and grammar tend to improve and every time you make a mistake and correct it you less frequently make that mistake again you've basically told your subconscious mind that this is correct and how it should be even without actively trying. Most of the time you don't even need to actively find and correct your mistakes as they will correct themselves the more you see them written correctly in context.

Well the exact same thing will happen in the language your learning if your like me and sometimes misspell a word or miss pronounce it reading and speaking a lot will correct these little niggling issues even if you don't understand the word your mind will process this in the background on how it should look and feel another great advantage to the sentence method so when you do eventually learn the words meaning there will be much less chance of getting it wrong. So read / listen as much as you can even if you understand very little an article over at alljapaneseallthetime.com explains it in more detail.

Also make sure you crave criticism I know people tend not to like being criticised especially when they are learning something new but its often the only way to quickly correct your mistakes being told what your mistakes are even if its just a simple spelling mistake or miss pronunciation as long as its constructive it can only help so don't fear criticism crave it!

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I wasn't sure were to start naturaly like a lot of people I looked for starter guides around the net and considered a Japanese course after much frustration and still no idea the best way to start I eventualy came across alljapaneseallthetime.com which really appealled to me and made a lot of sense especially when you relate it to how you actually learned your native language.

So I started not exactly as suggested as I learned all the Kana first using Remembering The Kana which for me was a great motivational boost if i could learn these 100 or so characters i could learn any 6 days later I had finished. Then onto the Kanji 4 months later after some struggle with myself taking brakes and procrastinating I had completed Remembering the Kanji with this came a realization that Japanese was possible to learn and that I could do it all I needed was to stick with it.

Now onto the sentences I've been going at them for 3 months or so now and have noticed great gains in my Japanese ability so far I can understand many simple sentences I can usually understand something out of most things I read and listen too and have moments of understanding all the time, although I'm a little dissapointed in myself as I have taken many brakes and slowed down always kept up with my reviews but still been slack unlike over christmas I powered through 100s of sentences in only 2 weeks I intend to get this moment back once my workload starts to calm down.

I'm hoping to gain a good amount of fluency by next year and I'm sure this is possible If i can just keep up a good pace and improve my immersion environment more the main battle is with myself I can be a terrible procrastinator at time although I've improved at this a lot in the past few months. I also have many more goals and resolutions I'm going to improve / stick with over the year which I will talk about in a future article.

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For the past couple of weeks or so I've been mostly concentrating on learning vocabulary and almost completely ignored actively learning grammar which has involved me mining many +1 materials with new vocab words this has lead to an obvious increase in my vocab knowledge which in turn i can understand more from shows and written works than i could a month or so ago.

Now a lot of people may say that oh well you can understand more vocab but do you actually know what it means when used in context well the answer the majority of the time is yes for one all my vocab has been learned in context and without any real effort. I've picked up a load of grammar without actively studying it in a long time for example the other day i had a quick look through Japanese In MangaLand and to my surprise i understood a lot of the grammar it was trying to explain and this was from later in the book that I've never read, more proof that you don't have to actively study the grammar to become fluent but I do agree that it can speed up the process although i wouldn't worry too much about it concentrate more on vocab in context.

Then when you have some spare time or fancy a change go find a good source for grammar I highly recommend Japanese in Mangaland for this as its easy to understand and the manga examples help lots especially for someone like me up untill a few months ago didn't even know the difference between an adjective and a verb in my own language :P

So to sum up don't worry too much about not knowing what the conjugation of this and that is or what the gerund form is you'll pick up a lot without even realising and if your thirst for knowledge increases and you want to know more 'then' go find some grammar explanations.

Anki stats update note: only issue with manually adding every sentences its taking forever to read 2000 lol really should have just imported all 2000 iknow sentences.

Deck created: 3.3 months ago
Total number of cards: 1115

Card counts
Mature cards: 560 (50.22%)
Young cards: 540 (48.43%)
Unseen cards: 15 (1.35%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 96.4% (244 of 253)
Young cards: 85.4% (7691 of 9005)
First-seen cards: 86.7% (1042 of 1202)

The 1100 seen cards in this deck contain:

  • 748 total unique kanji.
  • Jouyou: 722 of 1945 (37.1%).
  • Jinmeiyou: 5 of 287 (1.7%).
  • 21 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

  • Grade 1: 69 of 80 (86.3%).
  • Grade 2: 143 of 160 (89.4%).
  • Grade 3: 146 of 200 (73.0%).
  • Grade 4: 109 of 200 (54.5%).
  • Grade 5: 74 of 185 (40.0%).
  • Grade 6: 62 of 181 (34.3%).
  • JuniorHS: 119 of 939 (12.7%).

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