Comments on: Action is Easy. Decision is Hard.

By: ajatt

ajatt — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 07:01:26 +0000

That knot you’re feeling in your stomach? That’s no action pain, that’s decision pain. t.co/GIXjexlcL5

By: The First World Problem is Choice, Or: Which Language Should I Learn? | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 01:07:08 +0000

[…] If you can read this, you are a member of the global elite: you have electricity, running water, literacy in an economically powerful languages and all that that entails. And so basically all your problems are first world problems. […]

By: Cut Through Indecision: Let Go and Let Samurai | Samurai Mind Online

Cut Through Indecision: Let Go and Let Samurai | Samurai Mind Online — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 02:57:43 +0000

[…] his article, Action is Easy. Decision is Hard Khatzumoto puts it more bluntly: So stop being such a queen and just pick whatever. Decide. Either […]

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 14:44:46 +0000

It’s actually a really efficient system and has created a self supporting elaborate webwork of vocabulary. A quick example:

意味 [いみ] -> 好意 [こうい] -> 意図 [いと]
趣味 [しゅみ] 好転 [こうてん]-> 自転車 [じてんしゃ]-> 自動車 [じどうしゃ]
運転 [うんてん] 自分 [じぶん] -> 部分 [ぶぶん]-> 部品 [ぶひん]

I think you get the picture. 😀

By: Rout

Rout — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:07:16 +0000

That’s actually an interesting idea. Some kanji readings (like 業 – ぎょう) get stuck in my head naturally as I keep encountering the kanji in many words, but I guess using MCDs like that could speed the process up.

I will give this method a try.

By: Romuś

Romuś — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:29:19 +0000

Your life is easy. It's not like you were born with no limbs　http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snDQe3tWwRQ

By: ライトニング

ライトニング — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:19:31 +0000

I don’t know how long you’ve done this, but from my personal experience, even If you can’t recall the reading right away, the kanji should give you a pretty good guess. For example, Let’s say you forgot how to say 福島第一原子力発電所
Luckily, that chain of kanji are all simple kanji. And if you’ve been doing it for long enough, you can easily guess the reading based off of previous patterns. Like the 福 in 福島 is read fuku in this sense, just like it is in 幸福, 島 stays the same. 第一, probably is impossible to forget。　原子力発電所. The first 3, 原 is commonly read as gen when it’s with other kanji, like in 原発,　原因 and 原油. 子 can be read as shi when it’s with other kanji, like in 遺伝子 or 子孫。　Usually when 力 is with other kanji it’s read as ryoku or riki, as in 実力（じつりょく)　or 大力（だいりき), but from my experience, ryoku is more common. 発 is hatsu here, just like in 発祥(The つ gets changed to っ but they are considered the same) or in 発明。電 is usually read as でん when it’s with other kanji, and 所 with other kanji is commonly read しょ or じょ

So you could just try something like that for times when you forget

By: Jan

Jan — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 14:47:51 +0000

MCD’s have helped me a lot with this. Here is what I do:

Card 1:
Front:
[…]業人口 (my focus here is on 失業)

Back:
失 [しつ]

失業 [しつぎょう]- unemployment

しつぎょう　じんこう

Card 2:
Front:
失[…]人口 (Again my focus is on 失業)

Back:
業 [ぎょう]

失業 [しつぎょう]- unemployment

しつぎょう　じんこう

This way I have a sentence or long kanji compound to help me learn the word, I also see the word twice (one for each kanji reading) and I pass the card only when I can guess the kanji and the reading (in context) correctly. I’m not trying to learn all readings of the kanji, just the reading in this particular context. The great thing about this is sometimes you’ll run into new compounds with the same kanji and they may or may not have the same reading.

Card 3:
Front:
[…]業に行きましょう。(Focus here is on 授業)

Back:
授 [じゅ]

授業 [じゅぎょう]- class

Card 4:
Front:
授[…]に行きましょう。(Focus here is on 授業)

Back:
業 [ぎょう]

授業 [じゅぎょう]- class

Notice how 業 [ぎょう] shows up here as well. Not only is the reading of this character reinforced with this new kanji compound, but you’ll notice that most of the time this is how it’s pronounced in other compounds as well. Learning a new word later like 卒業 [そつぎょう] will be that much easier. What matters here is that you’re learning the pronunciation in context and not just learning the on and kun (which is “bad” for what we want to do).

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 09:42:01 +0000

No one tells you have learn ONLY isolated kanjies, but I use this step as the first one. Learn interested kanji first. Surely it is not going to go in SRS at once: I prepare physical cards, then for about a week 3 times a day I review them and try to remember, only after that they go to SRS, when I’m sure a remember them strong enough to not fail on 2nd-3rd review. Along all that, you can pick some words and sentences with that kanji (I don’t bother having all ons\kuns covered here) to have a context, but nowadays I tend to rather pick words from context as a zero step – the source for step 1 ‘picking kanji’.
The main point I would mention – you have to take a bit pain to get kanji sit in your had. But the level of that pain can depend. Review 3 times a day for one week before entering them in SRS seem not much pain and takes not much time (3-4 kanji a day won’t make a learning list large, it takes 5 minutes for me to review or even less in most cases). After that week I’m sure I’ll not completely forget more that 10% of them.
That’s how it works for me.

By: Strawberry Vibe

Strawberry Vibe — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:18:53 +0000

I second マルク’s MCD idea. I run into the same problem where I will know one aspect of a kanji (be it the reading, meaning, or writing) and another aspect will be lost. I’ve found MCD’s really help.

By: endoKarb

endoKarb — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:31:41 +0000

Learning should happen in context. In particular kanji readings are learnt by reading stuff in japanese (with furigana or with a dictionary by your side).
Learning doesn’t happen in the SRS (well, not mainly). You should add to your deck only sentences and expressions you are already comfortable with. The SRS is chiefly there to make sure you don’t forget stuff you already know.

By: Rout

Rout — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:26:17 +0000

Well, what seems to be discouraged is learning individual kanji and their on- and kun- readings without any context. Most people seem to be recommending learning vocab words together with sentences that contain examples of how to use the word and that’s what I’ve been trying to do for well over 1000 cards now. I’m feeling my method could use some improvements, though. I tend to remember the readings of kanji that pop up often, or ones that just get stuck in my head for some reason (分、対、気, for example). But for the new words, containing kanji whose readings I don’t know yet, or kanji that aren’t as common, remembering them at first is a pain in the ass.

So if I were to go about learning kanji readings, how would I do it?

By: Tony

Tony — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:09:35 +0000

This discouraged learning kanji in isolation makes new words pop out painlessly after few reviews when you know already these kanjies (even if you can’t 100% recall each kanji itself). They are those clues that can trigger word pop out if you can’t recall it right away. I don’t understand why people think that remember many thousands of words is ok, while 2-3 thousands of kanjies not? You will just have more relations in your head, and relations is one of the main things, that matter I suppose. E.g. for me 教育 has more than 2 relations in my head (read and translation), I remember each kanji separately, and because of this I can recall some words they are used too, thus making more relations on each new word. And what you are trying (am I wrong) to is the same isolation learning, but not single kanji, but a bunch of them at once, which is much harder.

By: マルク

マルク — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:26:31 +0000

I’m not to sentences/MCDs yet, so I could be saying something irrelevant, but what if you made a copy of the card that had furigana or the reading in parentheses? And then once that reading is remembered/understood/easily read without a shadow of a doubt, just delete that card and continue using the one that shows kanji only.

By doing that, you’d get exposed to the card twice as often and when you see the one without furigana, you’ll at least have a somewhat good memory of what it is.

By: Rout

Rout — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:32:34 +0000

I have an off-topic question to fellow Japanese learners. It’s related to learning vocab. I seem to have a problem memorizing the, well, vocab itself. For example, my card in Anki will have 教育 at the front (well, I don’t don’t do cards with isolated vocab words, but you get what I mean), and looking at it while reviewing I will remember that the word means “education”, but I won’t remember that it’s read きょういく. So I will end up failing the card over and over again and needless to say it gets really frustrating.

Since learning the readings of individual kanji in isolation seems to be generally discouraged, I’ve been wondering if there is a way to make the process easier, so that it doesn’t feel like banging my head against a wall.

By: フレヂィ

フレヂィ — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:44:05 +0000

うん、最も投稿の一つ！

By: Raphael

Raphael — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 17:30:27 +0000

相変わらず、すごい記事を書いてくれたね！いや、今度は非常に素晴らしい！

By: Jack Cotton-Brown

Jack Cotton-Brown — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 08:50:52 +0000

I find that we all have enough resources, we just aren’t being resourceful enough. I thought I didn’t have enough screens in my room 6 months ago, so I bought another. Turns out I didn’t use it very much. I didn’t really need it, I could have done without it.

On the note of making decisions, I’ve really started enjoying snap decisions. They are extra exciting when the decisions are weighted pretty heavily. Something like dropping a course/taking an extra course at uni or deciding to go on exchange. Big decisions, fun decisions. Life’s too short to take seriously, and all the problems we have with making decisions are just pre-cognitions of what we think the outcome will be like. We never really know. Ever had a friend tell you some stories about where they grew up, and later you get to visit their home/town, and it’s NOTHING like you thought it was? That’s the kind of stuff we do all the time when making decisions. We make the decision in our head, build our little temporary test world up where that decision has been made, and then gauge an emotional response as to how we feel about it. All the while trying to evaluate all of our options and build/test them out in our head. If I ever find myself doing this now, I timebox the choice and pick the one that my head seems to want most. If you do it fast enough, you may even have time left to make a different decision.

If a decision is rather scary to make, either decide right now when you will take action on it, post-pone taking action on it, or act straight away. e.g. kissing a girl on a first date. Mistakes will be made, tear may be shed, but learning will be had, and that’s the biggest gain in the end.

By: blackbrich

blackbrich — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 04:25:36 +0000

Sounds like first world problems.

By: フレヂィ

フレヂィ — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:33:12 +0000

Let me shed some light on it, actually…I won’t even bother! Because most people will never really understand that this “What’s that you say? Not rich? You have a computer, an Internet connection and you can read the English language. Trust me: you’re rich.” is so true…

In any case, great article.