My Yaruki （やる気）

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.

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

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?

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 ^^

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%).

Just thought I would post a quick anki stats update 15 sentences a day going strong so far accept yesterday had trouble adding any.

Finally over 1000 cards :D I'm currently at the point were i can understand the odd sentences and quite a lot of words in shows also I'm reguraly recognizing words even though I don't know what they mean so i just need to solidify these I can't wait to see my progress after the next 1000.

Deck created: 2.9 months ago
Total number of cards: 1001

Card counts
Mature cards: 450 (44.96%)
Young cards: 551 (55.04%)
Unseen cards: 0 (0.00%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 95.7% (132 of 138)
Young cards: 84.9% (6681 of 7868)
First-seen cards: 85.7% (945 of 1103)

The 1001 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 690 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 669 of 1945 (34.4%).
• Jinmeiyou: 4 of 287 (1.4%).
• 17 non-jouyou kanji.

Jouyou levels:

• Grade 1: 66 of 80 (82.5%).
• Grade 2: 136 of 160 (85.0%).
• Grade 3: 137 of 200 (68.5%).
• Grade 4: 103 of 200 (51.5%).
• Grade 5: 68 of 185 (36.8%).
• Grade 6: 55 of 181 (30.4%).
• JuniorHS: 104 of 939 (11.1%).

I've noticed something over the past month or so that if i think about it daily I don't feel like I'm making an improvement but when i think back to around this time last month my ability in Japanese has already grown vastly for example I know my vocabulary has grown hugely hundreds and hundreds of new words in less that a month which i put mostly down to the great learning tools over at iknow and anki for my long term retention and the more i learn the easier it becomes to learn new words they just seem to stick better.

My understanding of grammer has vastly improved also this is probably more down to seeing 100s of sentences in context than it is me studying them on sites like tae kim , although i must admit that Japanese in Mangaland has helped alot in my understanding of things that i couldn't get my head around with sentences alone, oh and by the way i highly recommend Japanese in Mangaland even over tae kim for learning grammer as IMO it's much easier to understand and the sentences with manga context makes it even more enjoyable a read, one of very few textbooks I'd recommend.

So basicaly make sure you keep it up everyday no matter how tired/depressed/busy etc you are as most of us know that half of the time we are just being lazy you've always got time to do atleast something in your target language even if its just a quick 10 min timebox in your favourite SRS that will be 10 mins worth of knowledge that you have retained unlike if you did nothing at all, even for example earlie this week i had the worst headache that i've had in years I still managed atleast my reviews probably wasn't on my best form but atleast it got them done i would hate to see the reviews if i had left them although i did collapse in bed after that with some headache tables :D

Well after doing Japanese 'properly' for almost 2 months now I finally see what other people were talking about that languages are not hard to learn I think there are 3 key ingredients to learning any language nothing to do with intelligence or being in the country of the language your trying to learn. It's more down to time spent, effort and motivation if your missing any of those you will not learn the language at any sort of reasonable pase even if your surrounded by the language and nobody speaks your native language you will still not obtaine any sort of fluency unless you put those 3 things into practice.

This can be proven easily by the amount of foreigners that live in Japan for many years and can hardly read 平仮名　and can barely say anything past こんにちは / お元気ですか　etc they are missing atleast 1 of those things, if they have no motivation/interest they will not try to learn so there mind will just class what they see/hear as useless information no matter how much they are exposed to it.

Time spent is obviouse you can have all the motivation and effort in the world but if you only spend 1-2 hours a week its going to be a long time before you notice any improvement, you can pretty much gaurantee the person that spends 3-4 hours a day doing there chosen language will be much further ahead than the person doing 1-2 hours a week, this is often why classes dont work as some students will only do the language when they are in class (maybe a few hours a week) and don't spend time studying in there own time.

Last but not least 'effort' if you don't put the effort in e.g. keeping up with reviews, maintaining a language environment basicaly doing anything in your target language your not going to see much if any results, there's no excuse for "oh i fancy a brake from Japanese it'll be ok till tomorrow" that one day can easily turn into 2 days, 2 week, months and so on, you need to keep it up no matter what even if you just do your daily SRS reps even if your tired just do something in your target language keep putting the effort in.

Since i put these 3 things into action my Japanese has improved leaps and bounds compared to the years before when trying to learn, usually down to not putting in the effort daily (always taking that one little brake...), now that i put in daily effort I'm seeing huge improvements in less than 2 months.

So basically がんばって　(do your best)

Stats update.

Deck created: 1.7 months ago
Total number of cards: 643

Card counts
Mature cards: 64 (9.95%)
Young cards: 579 (90.05%)
Unseen cards: 0 (0.00%)

Correct answers
Mature cards: 100.0% (3 of 3)
Young cards: 79.1% (3067 of 3879)
First-seen cards: 80.7% (601 of 745)

The 643 seen cards in this deck contain:

• 466 total unique kanji.
• Jouyou: 457 of 1945 (23.5%).
• Jinmeiyou: 2 of 287 (0.7%).
• 7 non-jouyou kanji.

Over the last few days i have been toying with iknow going through the first step of the core 2000 series i've been collecting the sentences while going through the vocab lessons, yes i know the english translation are'nt entirly accurate so i try to break them down myself using the grammer i've learned so far, although aslong as you don't take there english translation too literaly there should'nt be too much problem using these its better than using just vocab cards on there own atleast.

Anyway back on topic after almost finishing the first 200 words on iknow i've noticed a common theme that any words i learn via iknow then input an example sentence into my SRS (Anki) stick like glue where as if i just choose an example sentence from a book like UBJG with a perticular word i'm trying to learn it often takes me much longer than ones i've learned while going through iknow this seems to hold true with words i already new before iknow they stick even better now.

This works for many obvious reasons your giving yourself more connections to the word through hearing a native speaker and in context via a sentence then with adding it to an SRS the spaced repitition helps it stick for the long term your giving your mind much more to associate with the word than just in context within a sentence, it's the same as if you heard the word spoken in a show that your watching you can pretty much guarantee that word will stick better than one you have only entered as a sentence and never heard anywere this is why the AJATT method works so well it speeds up the long term retention process.

So from what i've seen so far iknow is a great way to quickly up your vocab knowledge although not so great for grammer which as always tae kim's site is the place to go but as many people have said not to worry too much about grammer as there is'nt that much to learn in comparison to all the vocab.

Over the next few months i'll aim to complete the first series of 2000 words and give an update on how i think its helped.

Will give an Anki stats update at the end of the week but as a quick note for myself I'm just about to reach 400 sentences with a few vocab cards thrown in.

Finally after over 4 months of studying RTK with a few brakes in between i have completed all 2042 of the commonly used Kanji, i'd like to say a big thanks to the revTK community without that site's SRS and the community there i would probably never have finished, now i just need to keep up my daily reviews as i still get over 100 to review each and expect this to stay the same for a while yet.

Now its finally onto adding sentances and improving my AJATT environment over the comming weeks/months/years i'll be keeping a record of my progress with the sentances and how i feel my Japanese has improved over time.

Currently I'm only at the point were i pick up the odd word etc when reading/watching something but hopefully this will soon change.

Will post soon with more updates.