A lot of people from foreign countries — including people of Japanese descent — come to Japan without a lick of Japanese. And stay that way. For years. Here’s why. I just made this list up based on personal observations, so it’s not complete or definitive. If you have any ideas, feel free to add…
Mental Tools
Boiling Water
by khatzumoto
Um…I guess I’m going to keep this short. I went on a really long walk today, through forests and leafy neighborhoods and narrow streets. Anyway, near the very end of the walk, it occurred to me that learning a language is like boiling water. When the water has boiled, you have reached fluency. Thereafter, you…
Propaganda: Run Your Mind Like a Benevolent Dictatorship
by khatzumoto
You know how people are always “keep an open mind”, “listen to other people’s ideas” and good stuff like that? Bollocks. Kind of. Here’s the deal. The information that comes into your life is already heavily cut and edited. If nothing else, the finite nature of your life makes it so. You will never see…
Chinese Project Notes 6: Extinguishing the Despair of the Serial Beginner + Audio Splicing
by khatzumoto
The Despair of the Serial Beginner So, I’m working on Chinese right now. All Chinese All The Time. Or, “Mostly Chinese Almost All the Time”. Something like that ;). You may be aware of how I’ve had an intermittent relationship with Chinese. Starting for a bit, only to stop. So sometimes I wonder: “what’s so…
Shaping: What The Immersion Environment Does For You
by khatzumoto
As you are aware, this site is called “All Japanese All The Time”, reflecting the fact that I shoehorned Japanese into every little crack and corner of my life in an effort to get fluent at it. I don’t know the full extent of the effect that this immersion project had, but I read a…
Stop Mystifying Japanese
by khatzumoto
People, I can’t freaking take it any more. Everywhere I go, left and right. “Japanese is the hardest language in the galaxy”. “Japanese people themselves cannot read Japanese”. “Japanese uses thousands of characters, TWO syllabaries and even Arabic numerals and Roman letters from time to time”. “Even the Vulcans had trouble with Japanese”. Double u.…