Comments on: Calm Down and Hurry Up

By: What Can the French Revolution and Austrian Economics Teach You About Learning Japanese? | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 13:37:28 +0000

[…] CM is a good idea per se, but that the kind of phlegmatic, gradualist, one-step-at-a-time, “slow down, we’re in a hurry” mindset that produces CM is. And so CM is just a surface manifestation of a deeper good […]

By: Laurence Bourke

Laurence Bourke — Wed, 21 May 2014 09:04:26 +0000

Truly an inspiring read, even for really positive upbeat peopel like me, i was recently getting donw about my progress, but after reading this i just want to be patient and keep going and trust that my hard work will naturally result in the goal. Thanks khatz, so inpsiring beyond words,

By: Kimchi

Kimchi — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:31:30 +0000

Aa, reading this I suddenly got worried I wouldn’t get any reading done since I only have access by computor to anything japanese(excuding the local library that has it’s fair collection, which is über sweet). . .or so I though but
I went and almost bought a book (that I actually have trouble affording) before I realized it. You know, I have a friend that bought me a shounen jump when she went overseas!Aand found another! Lucky me. I’ll just read them over and over until I can understand everything in them!
Thumbs up for making due!!

By: Suisei

Suisei — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:46:48 +0000

Sadly, I’m in the beginning stage and just went to get farther into knowing japanese. I do make myself do reps but I tend to not enjoy it but force myself too. I want to hurry up as much as I can with kanji but don’t want to burn myself out. I’m just stressed on learning japanese as quick as possible..:/

By: Natsu

Natsu — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 02:08:32 +0000

XD Hahahahaaaaa~! This is fantastic! Truly one of the best I’ve read. Most of what I’ve read so far is motivational, and I’ll tell you what, you’ve helped me a LOT. And a lot of other people, too, I’m sure. You make learning japanese sound hard, but easy. Long, but short. You make hard-work sound like fun! (Or is that last part just my opinion?) It’s just one big thing o’ oxymorons! XD Fantastic.

This one specifically, was quite amazing, and fills me with enough emotion to want to start laughing right here and now. So I shall. This is certainly one of my FAVORITE websites. Haha, you’re awesome! ^^

By: Magdalena

Magdalena — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:30:41 +0000

This is one of my favorites. Direct and motivational. I read it in my moments of weakness. Great job!

By: Dr Talon

Dr Talon — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:26:46 +0000

Another thing too, if you begin to feel tired in your studies just drop down and do 100 push up’s 😀 always works!

By: Dr Talon

Dr Talon — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:34:24 +0000

Hey guys, something I find really helpful and motivating when going through the kanji is watching japanese movies. Going through Heizig’s book I’m sure you’ll notice that his book is divided up into chapters. About every 10 chapters I honestly take a break and watch a movie because going at kanji every day, ALL day is hard work.

Watching the movie (Japanese movies people, and NO ENGLISH SUBTITLES!!) try and concentrate on the way the Japanese convey their emotions using body language and the way the characters react to one another given a specific environment.

I’m an anime guy and intensely love the stuff and I can tell you that I’ve done the math on how much anime I’ve actually watched (own personal curiousity I guess) and you would have to sit in front of your computer for 9 months straight (no eating, sleeping, no getting up to go to the bathroom, no going to school, work, NOTHING except watch anime) and from this experience I can tell you that no anime series will get you better aquainted with emotion or meaning for that matter, than a good Japanese movie.

Taking a break and watching any Japanese movie will calm you down and put your mind back into saying “Ok, I need to go back into a serious “Kanji Intake” mode.” My favourite Japanese films are Sukida (guess what emotion this movie concentrates on lol, it’s not dirty or anything), The World Sinks except for Japan, and All About Lily. All are awesome movies. Buy them, download them, get them somehow and they might just help you get back into your Japanese mindset.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:57:05 +0000

Yeah, you can never really go wrong with input, in that there’s no such thing as “too much”… I don’t think so, anyway. The output just takes care of itself.

I’ll try those songs!

By: Sunny Ray Fullbright

Sunny Ray Fullbright — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:10:08 +0000

Oh katsumoto… I actually have a question now… In your own opinion, what do you think the percentence rate (ratio?) of how the input level should be compared to your output level. I talked to some friends of mine and they think “INPUT 75% OUTPUT 25%”…. I disagree… Because in my opinion, I think it should be “INPUT 90% OUTPUT 10%”….. Maybe I am the only one who thinks that but, I read your post on how imput always outdo output and in my own opinion, I think I use about 10-20% of words and phrases I know. I don’t attend to bring the impression that I mentaly try to limit myself in anyway but, to me, there are definantly japanese phrases that I can pull good meaning of, but I don’t think I can ever think in such a way at the monment. Recently, I listen to Crystal kay… the Songs, “Motherland” and “Butterfly’s Garden” are shurely my top favorite at the time and I can understand Motherland perfectly. “Thanks to SRS’ing” and singing it too. I understand Butterfly’s Garden but, have you listened to that song? Call me very dumb but, there is no possible way for me to set my mind to pull greater meaning of that song yet. But to tell the honest truth, I only started SRS’ing for that song yesterday, And I heared Motherland before I known some japanese.. I guess I shouldn’t complain about everything to you but… What do you think about this thought and comment? If you happen to have spare will you please listen to the 2 songs I told you about? Oh and please don’t forget to tell me your opinions about me and my friends thoughts and about my questions. I say thank you in advance.

By: Sunny Ray Fullbright

Sunny Ray Fullbright — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:44:38 +0000

カツモトさん、始めまして。もちろん、アメリカ人で、Sunny Ray (I know…. please
don’t make fun of my name, it’s sad but it’s actually my name.) と言いま
す。どうぞよろしくおねがいします。 Currently, I am in the process of learning
sentences now. (I don’t want to bother you with my religion but, I thank
God that I found your website.) I followed your steps and examples and to
be honest, I really do understand why you choose to do such things in that
order. Ofcourse, Step 1 is completely perfect for any beginner to get fired-up
about learning (what ever that reason for learning would be. I can’t lie,
I was learning because I had a crush on a japanese lady, and trust me, in
the words of a texan…, “Japanese seemed impossible to learn until I found
your website.” And on top of that, before I followed your examples, I could
not understand where to start.) Every book in the library I went to that
was japanese learning book was not good at all. I mean, You must understand,
right? First thing you mainly see is sentences in romaji and a bunch of
sentences and translations. But, with the native set of kanji, it’s so easy
to pick up a word and a meaning of the word in a sentence. Okay… I could
type about phase 2 all day but… I won’t (For your sake^^). My current phase, sentence establishing phase, I am actually picking up about 30 sentences easily everyday, and I think it really helped!! I mean, before I knew anything about japanese, I only saw the japanese girl that I liked as a just pretty face, but now I am starting to understand her true feelings and mind. It’s so strange how I misjudged her. I used to think she was just the cute and strict (aka never going to get her in a mollion years chick) type. Now, me and her are together, and I think it’s so good because in a way, she is somewhat of a mother to my young japanese mind. (Maybe you can totally disagree on this one, but I hope you don’t)

Okay (as if I didn’t write enough)

I just want to say a big “本当にどうもありがとうございます！”

By: Nivaldo

Nivaldo — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:46:46 +0000

Wow! Re-reading this post I felt compelled to comment. I think it is the best post ever. It gives new forces when someone is already down. The feeling of looking at a whole page of text and being able to read only 7 or 8 words out of 50 or 60 is just discouraging. If this post were participating in some kind of contest, it would be the 一番. Keep up the VERY GOOD WORK!

By: Kleio da Muse

Kleio da Muse — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:23:32 +0000

Woah, I am so glad to have found my way here. Totally digging your site. It’s funtastic! Like your style – your way with words. Oh yea, I found my way here thru Vox.com. Someone put a link to your site there.

I’ve been trying to pick up some basic Japanese on my own for more than half a year already. Just for the fun of it. Progress is slow. But it’s ok. As long as I enjoy the process it’s all that matters. It’s much like a hobby to me.

I could now understand those frequently used words and phrases and am able to guess my way thru. Due to time constraint and lack of time to revise my hiragana… I kept forgetting em. Darn. Till I swore I am not giving up on it. Not even when I am old and wrinkled would I ever give up. I have all the time in the world as long as I am alive and kicking.

Oh, by the way, just some backgrounds on moi.. I am Chinese and hails from Malaysia. A tropical country surrounded by sea. Or I shud say I am a Chinese who does not read or write Chinese. Even struggles with my own name. It’s that pathetic. That’s why people laughed at me when I proclaim that I am going to learn Japanese. The irony.

Adios for now. Shall be bookmarking you for my periodical reading. I don’t get to surf much nowadays. Sigh.

By: Nivaldo

Nivaldo — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:11:39 +0000

Well, maybe I expressed myself wrongly. What I was trying to say is that my sound environment is not running 18-24 hours a day(usually only 1-2 hours a day). That is why I was asking for some alternatives but after reading your other articles and because of some recent matters the sound environment will wait only some more days. So, sorry for bothering you about it.
Curiousity: Are you liking the way you’re commenting(at fridays)?
Well, though not being terrible it is somewhat not good(at least for me), I mean, it keeps me anxious about the reply(especially an important one). The feeling is much like that of waiting for the next episode of Naruto Shippuuden(ONLY next WEEK).
Anyway, thanks for the GREAT help.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:54:31 +0000

Modish: “I was wondering if anyone knows of a free DVD audio ripper? ”

Yup – I spent lots of cash on costly mp3/mp4/avi/etc. converters, but recently found this:

www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

It’s free, and it’s freakin’ great – the GUI is not quite as nice as some of my paid-for tools, but it’s sooo good that I haven’t used any of my paid for tools since I found it. It can do pretty much any audio or video conversion.

One thing that Super can do that I was unable to get Xilisoft/other to do is make a **good** quality mp3 file from the video (avi) J-Dramas that you can download from D-Addicts. Xilisoft/other seem to be able to make great mp3s from DVDs, but the quality of mp3s from avi was not good.

So, I’d advise you to get ‘Super’….

Mark

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:17:09 +0000

@JDog
>Is this some sort of reference to that brain simulation thing you’ve talked about before?
Yeah.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:15:18 +0000

@Nivaldo
Sorry, I still don’t get what’s wrong with the sound environment? It sounds like you have it under control, with 18-24 hours a day…

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:13:55 +0000

@Mark
Thanks for that idea. Yeah, that’s something we could do, and just have people post comments on it.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:13:11 +0000

@Cush
Just chill and watch stuff. Don’t worry about comprehension for now. Get used to the sounds, rhythm, cadences. A language is like a song in that sense.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 02:12:10 +0000

＠Yun
I can’t really make a comparison because the nature and scope of my Japanese project is different from the Chinese one. I went into Japanese with all guns firing and I was going to learn it no matter how long it took me and, essentially no matter the cost. I haven’t given the Chinese project the same level of commitment yet. But I’m warming up 🙂