Ever notice how we like to do things that are easy, and we don’t like to do things that are hard?

For example, maybe you aren’t really into this episode of “Is the Food Delicious or Not?” but the remote is out of arm’s reach, and you’re pretty comfortably settled onto the couch, and you have an adorable cat lying on top of you. Guess what you’ll end up watching.

Well, there’s good news for us lazy slobs. MCDs are insanely easy to make.

Surusu can create up to 512 MCDs in a single click.

Not a Surusu user? AJATT+ member tokyostyle created a plugin for Anki that automatically generates MCDs. As if this didn’t get him enough awesome points, he constantly checks feedback and suggestions from the users who post their comments in the thread and updates/tweaks the plugin accordingly.

Copy/pasted for non-AJATT+ members:

 Main Project: code.google.com/p/mcdsupport/

Development: github.com/tarix/mcdsupport

Installation

1. Click File -> Download -> Shared Plugin …

2. Search for “MCD Support for Anki”

3. Select “MCD Support for Anki v1.2”

4. Click OK

5. Restart Anki

 

Deck Preparation

1. Open your Sentences or MCD deck.

2. Click Settings -> Deck Properties …

3. Click the “Add” button

4. Select “Add: Japanese MCD” and click OK

5. Close the Deck Properties window

 

Adding MCD Cards

1. Open your Sentences / MCD deck

2. Click Tools -> Add MCD Cards OR Press F9

3. Paste the passage you want to learn into the “Text” box

4. Add any notes you want on the back of the card to the “Notes” box

5. Add the words, kanji, kana, etc. you want clozed in the Clozes box

6. Make sure all of your clozes have spaces between them!

7. Add any tags you want these cards to have

8. Click the Add button

 

* If all goes well you will soon see a small status line telling you how many cards were just added.

Try it out and leave some feedback for tokyostyle on the forum.

So now you have no excuse to not try MCDs. Make some and post your thoughts/insights/revelations in the comments!

MCDs aren’t just for kanji and vocab.

Kalek:

I learned a lot [of syntax] by making MCDs of the examples in Tae Kim’s guide and some in All About Particles.  I also made MCDs of particles when reading whenever one was used in a way I wasn’t expecting. … With your native English, I bet you didn’t ever explicitly learn the difference between “the” and “a”, but you always get them right when speaking, correct? Enough input, especially using MCDs, force you into good, native-like habits.

[link]

So, in summary, should you try MCDs? Sure, why not? As Kalek advises us:

My suggestion: MCDs. But, if you still aren’t sure, do both [sentences and MCDs].  See what you like better.  Find out what’s more fun and what makes you learn better.  Then, dump one (or at least stop adding cards to it), and keep the other.

[link]

Do you have anything to lose from experimenting?

Why are MCDs so effective?

My hunch (and limited experience) is that MCDs convert into output faster and more accurately than the “original glazed” sentence cards because we’re doing a deeper form of practice.

[link]

Both vanilla sentences and MCDs familiarize you with the language and expose you to vocab and syntax, but the key difference is that sentences are passive whereas MCDs are active.

This active form of practice leads to easier, faster, and more natural output.

I find that I use MCDs simply for writing.  … I already knew what it meant from the Kanji and also from my sentence deck.  I knew what it meant but I couldn’t write it. …

中華料理…I can write that on command thanks to MCDs.

[link]

I personally don’t use MCDs exclusively.

I love my vanilla sentence deck, and I still add to it daily. But I’ve found that MCDs are amazing for helping me memorize 四字熟語. Before experimenting with MCDs, I had a few 四字熟語 in my sentence deck, but I could only recognize and read them. I couldn’t write them out from memory.

Now that I’ve gotten into MCDs, I can write those suckers one right after the other without breaking a sweat.

Here’s an example of how I would use MCDs to learn 合縁奇縁:

Front:

親同士がすすめた結婚で、お互いに不安だらけのスタートでしたが、まさにXXXXX縁奇縁、たいした喧嘩もせずに、いつのまにか50年になりました。

Back:

合
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

合縁奇縁　あいえんきえん

Front:

親同士がすすめた結婚で、お互いに不安だらけのスタートでしたが、まさに合XXXXX奇縁、たいした喧嘩もせずに、いつのまにか50年になりました。

Back:

縁
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

合縁奇縁　あいえんきえん

Front:

親同士がすすめた結婚で、お互いに不安だらけのスタートでしたが、まさに合縁XXXXX縁、たいした喧嘩もせずに、いつのまにか50年になりました。

Back:

奇
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

合縁奇縁　あいえんきえん

Front:

親同士がすすめた結婚で、お互いに不安だらけのスタートでしたが、まさに合縁奇XXXXX、たいした喧嘩もせずに、いつのまにか50年になりました。

Back:

縁
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

合縁奇縁　あいえんきえん

I would also add a vanilla sentence card with no cloze deletions just for learning the readings.

Based on what I’ve read at the AJATT+ forums, some users love MCDs and have completely scrapped the sentence method. Some have tried MCDs and found that sentences were a better match. Others, like myself, are experimenting with a combination of both. Some write out their MCD answers, others don’t ¹: I know that Khatz is lazy, so he can’t be bothered. See what works best for you.

The magic of MCDs comes from using super super simple cards to learn complex things.

The simplicity can’t be stressed enough.

Back in my misled ganbaru days of learning Japanese, I used to make cards for writing kanji compounds that looked like this:

FRONT:

りょうり

cooking

BACK:

料理

That doesn’t look so bad, does it? But it is. It’s a bad, bad card. Bad. This ↑ is not how to learn. Not effectively.

Never quiz yourself on two kanji at once. Unless you’re simultaneously writing with a pencil in your left hand and your right hand, you will never write two kanji at one time. No matter what you’re writing, whether it’s 元気 or 財団法人自治体国際化協会, you’re going to write it one kanji at a time.

After struggling with MCDs in the beginning, forum sempai 安藤 sees the light:

Once they finally clicked for me, it was like a new world opening up. … I honestly couldn’t see myself finally learning terms like 注意欠陥・多動性障害 or 朝鮮民主主義人民共和国 with the “traditional” sentence card format, but, as should be obvious from the fact that I totally just typed those out from memory, I can learn them super-easily now since instead of having one card with a nine kanji term I’ve gotta remember, I’ve got nine cards with one kanji to remember. 1/9th of the difficulty!

[link]

MCDs = Making hard stuff easy. Making you rock at [foreign language of choice].

Previously I wrote a brief introduction to MCDs, a card format popular at AJATT+.

Why use MCDs? Instead of answering that myself, I’ll just quote some forum sempais:

ダンちゃん:

Individual MCD cards have a lot more character for me. …This seems to make it easier to remember the words linked to them. …I love how much easier it is to make them. Copy, paste, cloze, repeat several times for same material … It also pressures you towards choosing authentic content over example sentences provided by dictionaries.

[link]

Drewskie:

It’s so much more fun to grab whole posts and paragraphs… Taking things whole preserves a lot of the material’s character and context, which makes reading the cards a lot more fun, which of course makes doing reps a lot more fun.

[link]

stevie:

I’ve found MCDs are a LOT less painless (and seem to have a much better retention rate) than sentence cards where I was finding it pretty much impossible, or at least very little fun, to do I+1 given how many words and character readings I don’t know in Mandarin.

[link]

ダンちゃん:

Having a part hidden that I have to guess seems to make things more fun. I guess because I can show off to myself by ‘winning’ the game.

[link]

Drewskie

 Having eliminated all barriers to 2ch, I’m finding that exploring different boards and making MCDs out of posts and conversations is probably the most fun I’ve had while sentence mining.

 [link]

dtcamero

 Personally I think the cleverness of the MCD is in adding compelling context to sentence cards. Otherwise they get boring and boredom is the enemy…

[link]

RevenantKioku

The strange thing was MCDs made me feel less badder about failing them and more gooder about getting them right.

[link]

stevie

It’s just amazing how fast I can go from grabbing a news article on more or less anything … and in some cases go from under 50% understanding to 100%.  …  MCDs make this easy, fast, fun, and with an instant payoff in terms of understanding.

[link]

In summary: using sources you are interested in and combining lots of context with simple cloze deletions, MCDs help you learn more, make reading easier, and improve recall and output.

We love to rattle on about MCDs  on the forum. We’ve been at it ever since Khatzumoto introduced them to AJATT+ here. What is it about MCDs that causes so much discussion?

In a nutshell:

They’re simple.

They’re powerful.

There’s nothing like that “is it really OK to have so many cards this easy?” simplicity combined with that “holy cow I can now write a bunch of kanji compounds like a native” effectiveness.

But let me backup – what is an MCD anyway?

Apparently it stands for Massive-Context Cloze-Deletion Card.

I didn’t know that until I looked it up just now. Am I qualified to write this post? Most assuredly not. I’m a latecomer to the MCD craze, and I admit to being a bit confused about what the heck they are and how to make them.

So I made this forum post: “Show me your MCDs!” asking AJATT+ members to copy and paste their MCDs.

Here’s one アッシュ posted:

Front:

第二に、頭が柔軟であり新しいことの############収 が著しいこの時期にこそ外国語である英語のリスニングやスピーキングなどを学習する必要があるからだ。幼いうちは、年齢を重ねてからでは身につけることが 困難な部分さえ補うことができる。これに関しては、英語の学習を中学から始めて、留学などの特別な経験を経ていないほとんどの人が実感しているはずだ。

Back:

吸
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
きゅう‐しゅう〔キフシウ〕【吸収】
［名］(スル)
２ 外から内に取り入れて自分のものにすること。「知識を―する」「大資本に―される」

第二に、頭が柔軟であり新しいことの吸収が著しいこの時期にこそ外国語である英語のリスニ ングやスピーキングなどを学習する必要があるからだ。幼いうちは、年齢を重ねてからでは身につけることが困難な部分さえ補うことができる。これに関して は、英語の学習を中学から始めて、留学などの特別な経験を経ていないほとんどの人が実感しているはずだ。

As you can see, there’s a lot there. That’s the “Massive Context” part.

The ############ is the “Cloze-Deletion” part. It’s hiding just one kanji: 吸.

You see the card, you produce 吸, and you give yourself a passing grade. The extra stuff is just to give you context for the missing kanji. It reminds you where you found this chunk of text and how the kanji being tested is used. It’s not there to be read – just glanced at until you recall the answer. You might not even have to use it at all, but it’s there.

So there’s a first taste of MCDs for you. This example is for more advanced players, and there are ways of making things even easier for total noobs. Anyway, more on that later…

Hi, it’s rigabamboo with another AJATT+ gem I found in the forums.

Has following AJATT principles changed your life in any way? Besides, y’know, the obvious – becoming awesome at Japanese.

Clearly an AJATTer.

ダンちゃん, for example, apparently has abs now!

I have a little excel spreadsheet on my desktop, and I keep track of my reps. I started off low, real low, and every day I just do one or two reps of pushups, situps, etc. than the day before. Or, same number, but slightly harder version. It’s not about being hard core, but being consistent. For me, tracking what you do is one feeling of building a sense of accomplishment. It also shows you when you haven’t been doing anything, so you can conveniently ‘forget’ without feeling guilty.

It feels like I have put in next to no effort, because at any single moment all I’ve done is lots of quick wins (drop to the floor, do a bunch, record, go back to whatever I was doing before).

Essentially, ダンちゃん applied the principles of AJATT to exercise. And now has abs to show for it.

That’s not all, though! Let’s hear from some others.

ファイズー先輩:

I now sleep on a ふとん on the floor, and my back feels great because of it.  I’m getting more than 4 hours of sleep now, and THAT feels great.  I’m taking walks for exercise.  My girlfriend and I are gearing up to start eating only Japanese style meals for health sake (we bought this book that discusses it: www.amazon.com/Japanese…..0385339976 ).  I’ve already lost about 6lbs just by eating rice in the morning for a week instead of skipping breakfast or having a granola bar (even though we made them ourselves!)

Carl Hüffmeier:

Since I started 7 month ago I somehow manged to change my diet, workout every day and generally get my stuff straight. Most importantly I learned to have FUN and abolish my perfectionism.

Drewskie先輩:

My GPA went up for the first time. It’s been steadily falling since I started college, and in the two semesters since I started AJATT, it’s gone up steadily. It’s funny, you’d think all the extra time/effort on Japanese would have the opposite effect. I suppose it’s all in the self management.

真弥先輩:

The past few months have been the first time in a while that I actually feel excited about school/learning for its own sake. It’s summer break right now and yet I’m reading books about how to study better. I now have plans to go to grad school, and I’m determined to become a diplomat after I graduate. I feel more determined to do my best.

スティーブ:

I’ve definitely become a better student since I’ve started AJATT. Before I would never get work done because I would just keep pushing it back until it was too late. But from reading through Khatz’s posts on AJATT I’ve learned how easy it is to do something. I now time box to get things started, and usually go past the set time to finish it. …

Much like everyone has said, AJATT has made me want to succeed, WANT to do something with my life. Goals I would’ve never imagined myself having before this. I’ve been reading PD books and other things on how to succeed and get things done, and it feels great to do good for once. … I also have developed abs and started working out, haha. I’ve actually gained weight and am a healthy weight for once.

Okay, now this sounds like some kind of AJATT commercial. *Ahem* anyway –

AJATT is more than learning a language. It’s about structuring your goals – whether they be study, exercise, cleaning, reading, whatever – into fun, effortless chunks. Chunks that you do over and over. It’s a concept so simple and yet so powerful that it’s bound to improve your life in other ways.

Original post.

This is how I've been learning Japanese. What about it?

Hey, it’s part something-or-other of the Best of AJATT+ Forum series.

Today’s post comes from アンソニー, who comes to us with a confession. He learned Japanese the wrong way.

Through out the last three years of my Japanese project I…

watched 100 episodes of One Piece subbed in English,
spent way too much time thinking and worrying, and not enough doing,
spent too much time studying Japanese per day,
spent too little time studying Japanese per day,
saw the glass as half empty and thought pessimistically,
did things in Japanese that were too boring,
attended a Japanese class in college,
ditched Japanese class in college,
occasionally listened to English music or watched a movie in English,
spoke English to my Japanese friends,
allowed them to speak English to me,
I even read an entire manga series in English once,
DUDE, I’m not kidding, I read the entire series of Death Note in English, while doing All Japanese All the Time,
gave up studying Japanese,
spent to much time reading English,
probably read more English than Japanese the past few years,
tried to speak Japanese before I was ready (without enough input first),
held myself back from speaking by making the excuse “I’m not ready yet”,
contradicted myself countless times,
took AJATT.com too seriously,
did things in English when I knew darn well I could have done them in Japanese,
am writing this post when I SHOULD be doing my reps,
and used a bilingual dictionary (and still use sometimes).

That’s quite a list.

But アンソニー isn’t coming to beg forgiveness. He has an epiphany to share.

Despite the many mistakes and ‘wrong’ attitudes of learning Japanese I used, I can now…

hang out with my Japanese friends and function pretty well using only Japanese,
use only Japanese with my girlfriend,
watch anime, movies, television in Japanese with no English subs, and understand anywhere between 60 – 90 % of the dialogue, depending on the material,
use a monolingual dictionary, no prob,
I don’t use English subs anymore!

my girlfriend, who was born and raised in Japan, sometimes asks me how to write a word in Kanji,
easily use a Japanese operating system on my computer (I’ve been using one since day one of this project),
read and produce 2268 kanjis from memory,
read manga and comprehend enough to follow the plot without a dictionary,
sometimes read complicated wiki entries and science articles in Japanese, with the occasional aid of Rikaichan,
listen to children’s podcasts like Fantajikan, and follow the story around 80% upon first hearing,
understand adult level comedy podcasts, like Junk Podcasts and get the gist of what they’re talking about,
I just watched 茶の味, no subs, and followed it and the dialogue pretty easy,
I learned a ship ton of time management skills, goal attainment attitudes, and mindsets to increase productivity,

I can sing many Japanese songs word for word,
I have around 5000 MCDS and sentence cards in my srs, not including my RTK deck,
I just recently went to Japan on vacation, first time ever setting foot in the country, and I was able to use only Japanese with virtually every interaction while I was there!
When my Japanese friend asks me if I know what チンカス　means in attempt to mess with me, I’m all “yeah, what about it?” with a straight face,
I can shadow native speakers on podcasts effortlessly,
I’ve improved in many other ways I’m not thinking of right now.

Had アンソニー held himself to a standard of perfection, he would have given up.

But his goal is not to learn Japanese perfectly. His goal is to learn Japanese.

And to do that, he knows he needs to move forward. If he finds that he’s stopped moving, he doesn’t say to himself, “gee, I’m not very good at moving forward. I should just stop trying to move.” Instead… he just starts moving again. And again. And again. All his sprints and spurts add up, bringing him to the awesomeness he is today.

Or, as アンソニー puts it:

Stuff just works out with acceptance and time.

Indeed.

Are you learning Japanese the wrong way? Don’t sweat it. Just keep moving.

Original post.

Time for another installment of the best of the AJATT+ forum!

TripleJ started a topic about deleting cards.

So let’s talk about deleting cards.

I know we’ve said it a bunch of times, but it bears repeating. When your SRS deck starts to become more of a chore than a game, bad cards are most likely your problem.

Drewskie sums it up nicely:

As soon as I get that “uh…ew” feeling, it’s gone so fast I don’t even get time to second-guess. I have never been tempted to undo a deletion. If it’s iffy, it should be out.

•   that “uh…ew” feeling

We all know this feeling. It’s that card that we “should” do. It’s that word that we “should” learn. But it’s not fun. Every time it comes up, you sigh to yourself. You force yourself through it.

STOP! STOP THAT!

Don’t learn a card because you “should.” Learn it because you want to! Learn it because you just can’t stop yourself from putting it in your SRS. Learn it because whenever it comes up, you’re going to smile to yourself because you like that card so much.

Is this your SRS deck?

But just because a card is fun doesn’t mean it’s not a candidate for deletion. Some cards start out fun and interesting, but we forget the context or we just don’t care about them anymore. Then they start to get that “uh… ew” feeling. Don’t be shy about deleting those. Just because you liked it at one time doesn’t mean you need to saddle yourself with it forever.

• I have never been tempted to undo a deletion.

Same here. Sometimes I’ve been on the fence about deleting a card. But when I choose to delete it, I’ve never regretted it. I’ve never said to myself, Gee, I wish I could have that card back with the kanji compound I kept reading wrong again and again. Those were the good ole days! … Hahahahaha no. Every time I’ve deleted a card, I’ve felt free and invigorated, like I’ve finally thrown off a heavy burden. Like Drewskie, I’ve never looked back.

• If it’s iffy, it should be out.

Indeed. When you find yourself unsure about whether a card is a candidate for deletion, just go ahead and delete it. You know which cards are good cards and which are iffy cards. Trust your judgment and wipe out those iffy ones as you come across them.

These three tips from Drewskie are the key to keeping your SRS fun. It shouldn’t feel like studying. It should feel like a video game.

Original post here.

Rigabamboo here with the best of the AJATT+ forum.

Do you like DDR?

Yes?

Okay, great. I have good news for you.

You’re going to play DDR. I’m going to help you be really good at DDR.

Here, get on the machine.

Let's play!

You can even pick the song. And the difficulty. It doesn’t matter. Just pick something.

Okay, good. Now you’re playing DDR. You’re having fun, right? Because you like DDR?

Now… don’t stop for five hours.

You want to get good at this, right? Well, to do that you should play a lot. More effort = more betterness, right? I can see you’re in pain. That’s good. Just push through that pain.

What’s that? You’re tired? Too bad. This is  important. You should play DDR.

What? You don’t like DDR anymore? You’re quitting? You don’t want to play DDR ever again?

I think I’ve lost track of what I was trying to say, so let’s just hear from AJATT+ member アンソニー:

I freaking love DDR. I love dancing to the music in DDR, much like I love the content of my srs. If I were to force myself to without variation, play DDR for 5 hours every day, I would grow to hate DDR, despite the fact that the content of the game is really fun. I would also be physically exhausted, and unable to have fun playing DDR under those conditions, just as having high daily expectations of srsing everyday would mentally exhaust me, even though the contents of my srs deck is fun.

Oh, right! Thanks アンソニー. Learning Japanese should be like playing DDR, or whatever your addiction of choice is. If you force yourself to do it, for hours and hours, you’re going to hate it. But if you do it whenever you feel like it, and you quit when you want to, you’ll not only love life more, but you’ll see more improvement. Because you’ll keep going back to the game.

Trying too hard = pain = burn out = no improvement.

Treating Japanese like your favorite video game = fun = keep doing it = becoming awesome.

Always keep the Japanese going (I wish there was a catchy way to say that… like AKTJG or something… hmm, maybe it’ll come to me later), but don’t always be exerting effort. Don’t make your SRS own your whole day, or even more than an hour. Don’t do the same stuff. Give yourself variety.

Just, please…. don’t make video games a chore.

Original post here.

Rigabamboo here with another post from what I consider to be the best of the AJATT+ forum.

Let's play!

Do you like 塊魂 (Katamari Damacy)? AJATT+ user Kalek does, and he has an epiphany that sentence mining should be like playing Katamari.

Well, I realized that learning Japanese is like playing an especially long level in Katamari.  You begin with picking up small sentences that come into your path that are easy to pick up, and if something is too big or hard, you ignore it for now.  But, as time goes on, without even noticing, you’ll be picking up larger words, phrases, and even paragraphs/articles/etc.

When you have a small katamari the size of an apple, and you try to pick up something big like a dog, it’s going to ruin your balance. This is just like trying to put a sentence or MCD that’s completely over your head into your SRS. Every time that card comes up, you’re going to be miserable. You’re going to lose your momentum, just like having a horribly lop-sided katamari. Luckily, with the SRS, there’s a simple solution. Keep items that are at or below your level. Lose ones that just exist to flummox you.

Okay, so here’s my favorite part:

However, we (especially including me) may feel the need to pick up all the little things before moving on to the bigger items, but it really is unnecessary, time consuming, and boring.  What this game made me realize is that as my Japanese ability gets better, the little things will take care of themselves, probably without me even noticing them (just like I wouldn’t notice picking up a thumbtack off the ground when my Katamari is the size of a person, or a building, or even land masses).

YES! Exactly. Imagine you were playing Katamari, but instead of only rolling up items directly in your path that enticed you and going for the fast win, you forced yourself to constantly stop your momentum pick up EVERY. SINGLE. ITEM. around you. You have a katamari the size of a house, but you still trudge over to every little thumbtack. Just thinking about how dull that sounds makes me want to never play video games again.

And yet that’s what many try to do in their quest for Japanese perfectionism. We want to roll up every kanji, every vocab that we see in our immersion environment, even if it’s mind-numbingly dull, because we think we “should.” Forget the perfectionism. Forget what you “should” learn.  Just grab the items that are directly in your path and look fun.

You’re listening to, watching, or reading Japanese – you’ve got the katamari rolling. Don’t constantly stop it to pick up every little thing. Just keep rolling and occasionally grab something simple and fun. But the main part is, keep rolling the katamari. Stuff will cling to it naturally. Just… please… don’t make video games a chore.

Original post here.

Rigabamboo here with the Best of AJATT+ Forum.

"I will make you awesome at Japanese." -pile of dubbed media

My favorite part about the forums is the sharing of free Internet resources. Buying Hollywood movies dubbed in Japanese is an expensive hobby, so I was thrilled when AJATT+ user Lavita posted this extensive list of Japanese dubbed shows available on NicoNico, and then other users commented with even more links! Now we have Disney movies, Seinfeld, Simpsons, action movies, comedy movies, etc etc… And one user even comments with a link to free Japanese MMORPGS, as if you weren’t doing enough goofing off in Japanese already.

Note: unlike Youtube, NicoNico requires you to make an account, but it’s free! Also, user comments fly across the screen while you watch. At first I wanted to find a way to turn this feature off, but after giving it a try I realized I loved it! It was like watching the movie with a bunch of Japanese people at the same time and listening to [reading] their reactions.

Let’s watch Dawn of the Dead! This is one I couldn’t even find dubbed on DVD.

Here’s the original post with lots of movies and TV shows!

Where's your timer?

I have another AJATT+ post to share with you.

Are you time boxing?

Have you read Khatz’s timeboxing “trilogy”?

If you haven’t read it — or tried timeboxing for realz yet — perhaps you’ve wondered if it actually works?

ファイズーhas tried it, and is alarmed at the results:

I haven’t read any timeboxing books or anything like that, just caught the gist of it from Khatz’s posts.  Every time I try it I get freaked out because it works so well.  It feels unnatural.  Like… life isn’t supposed to work like this.  Wasted time has always been a part of me!

Here’s a link to the original post where our favorite sempais chime in with their thoughts about timeboxing:

TripleJ:

I’m getting more and more into timeboxing. I just did a altenating set of 15min SRS, 15 off, 15 SRS, 15 off, 15 SRS and it was super easy. Before I was doing 30 minute sets but this seems better, shorter sets might be even better.

ファイズー:

What I’ve found most helpful is doing “just 5 minutes” on those tasks that I never want to start in a million years.  I’m always thinking, “This task is going to take foreeeever, it’s annoying, and I don’t even want to look at it today.”  But I usually can submit to doing something distasteful for 5 minutes… and when I do I realize the task isn’t as bad as I thought and within that 5 minutes I’ll get some ideas about how to move forward.

あんど:

I absolutely adore timeboxing. Some stuff I do would never get done without it. I’ve often found that, for myself, the shorter the timebox, the better …

Finally, the very lovely rigabamboo:

I work more efficiently because I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something in each box. … I also have more productivity because each time I switch to a new task is like taking a pseudo-break. So I’m constantly working, but it feels like I’m giving myself a break when I switch to another task for a brief, refreshing 4 minute period.

Timeboxing is scary stuff.

Frighteningly efficient.

Try it in time for Halloween.

ぞくぞくするぞ!

Rigabamboo here with part two of the Best of AJATT+ forum series.

Once again, I find myself introducing a post by ダンちゃん. In fact, I’m just going to steal his words:

Think about how cool it would be to know all the big names that Japanese people know.

Pretty darn cool, right?

This forum post contains several pages (currently 9 and still going strong) of big names in Japan. Celebrities, historical figures, whatever – people that the average Japanese person has heard of, from Natsume Soseki to Jinnai Tomonori. Each one has an English explanation and then several related Japanese links. Check it out –  skim through it, watch some video links, and read parts that catch your eye. Know a Japanese person that hasn’t been posted about? Add your own post!

Here’s one of my favorites. Soooo cuuuuuute. 　可愛くて死にそぉぉぉ　！

森迫永依  もりさこえい　　（１９９７－）

The youngest person on this list so far, 森迫泳依 was born in 97, and has been on TV since age 4. I know her from the 2006 ちびまる子ちゃんスペシャル, which was orignally filmed in celebration of 15 years of ちびまる子 anime production (excellent show! desperately taped it on VHS when I was in Japan on holiday. The jokes are quite snappy). While it was supposed to be broadcast in ’05, they had trouble finding the right cast, but through perseverence they came up with an amazing bunch. 森迫 herself was cast as まる子 out of 500 applicants. Not only very cute, but an excellent actor. She really makes the show (the other casting is also impeccable though.　高橋克実 is great as the father, and モト冬樹 as the grandfather is a blast).  For those of you who don’t know about ちびまる子, it kind of ranks up there with サザエさん as a long running manga that crossed over to anime which is aimed at a family audience. Every kid has seen it at some point. The setting is 1980s 昭和時代, and is actually based somewhat around the writers own childhood.

 

ちびまる子ちゃんスペシャル – looks like its on the tube! get it while it’s there!

www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

 

おどるポンポコリン　－　アニメの主題歌

www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

 

ちびまる子ちゃん　－　オフィシャルサイト

chibimaru.tv/

 

日本郵便 CM 「書く人」 森迫永依篇

www.youtube.com/watch?v…..MbFjPnWODQ

 

Ｗｉｋｉ

森迫永依

ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%…..8%E4%BE%9D

ちびまる子ちゃん

ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%…..B%E3%81%93

Original post here.

Rigabamboo here! I moderate the AJATT+ forums, so some of you may recognize me as that weirdo who checks for OL2Ls and spams the forums with posts about obscure 漢字 that nobody needs to know, ever.

This is the first post in a new series in which I share what I consider to be the best of the AJATT+ forum. Enjoy!

"I will make you awesome at Japanese." -Sun Tsu

勝兵は先ず勝ちて而る後に戦いを求め、敗兵は先ず戦いて而る後に勝ちを求む。
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

Beloved AJATT+ member ダンちゃん shares his revelations about language learning from his Monbusho interview. You know any post with a Sun Tsu quote is going to be awesome.

How does ダンちゃん relate Sun Tsu to his Monbusho interview? In his words:

While this was an important interview for me, at no point did I try to ‘win’, either with specific preparation in the months, weeks and days leading up, nor with particular focused effort during. All I did was turn up, and show something of myself which was already there anyway.

Get it? Cramming doesn’t work. Cramming is like going to war and then trying to win. Do it that way and you’ll probably end up on the wrong side of a spear. Instead… just set yourself up to win all the time. FORGET about winning. FORGET about the war. The war itself actually becomes inconsequential. Of course you’ll win, just like you have been up to now. Don’t sweat it. Just keep setting yourself up to win and rest assured that it’ll happen.

Read the original post here.