I was extremely set on reading anything Japanese I didn’t care what it was. I went to the book store. And I would buy Japanese novels.

I randomly picked a novel, knowing nothing about it, came home and read it. It was 530 pages. I finished it in about 3 months. At first it was beyond intimidating, cuz you know….95% of the stuff in the novel is never taught in classes (I took 4 years of garbage Japanese classes….and it didn’t help…I never studied…I hated it..it was nonsense…and plus nothing we learned in class helped at all).

The novel was about a cop in Australia investigating a murder of a guy, and the suspects were these Aborigines. I was blown away. And I couldn’t wait to finish reading it.

And guess what…

Now?

I can read Japanese at BLAZING speed. I mean, probably near the speed of a native. I’m not sure. But before I would stop before every word and have to “think”…now I don’t even think anymore. It’s like reading my own freaking language.

Amazing.

You need Japanese stuff MADE FOR Japanese people. Not foreigners.

Watch 鉄骨　Or　振り返れば奴がいる　for some real Japanese drama.

Awesome post!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=scWtXh8tWI0

I watched this after doing the AJATT method for 4-5 months and even though I didn’t understand everything, I was blown away at the fact that I could understand most of it and enjoy something made by Japanese people in Japanese. Khatz usually will tell you to avoid material made for foreigners, but the fact that this series is almost entirely in Japanese makes it an exception I think.

Now to the post. The post of this article has come at such a perfect time as I was considering for a while asking about different kanji cards and layouts but you advice is so clearly brilliant, just try it out. Each of your posts seems to become more and more philosophical like Buddha/Buddhism that says don’t take my word for it or even believe me for that matter, just try it out and find out for yourself whether it is true.
This is possible one of the best pieces of advice ever with regards to language learning in my opinion. Currently I am taking GCSE(exams in england when your 16) Japanese and we are learning it in one year instead of two as extra subject for my A-levels. Now although you’ve said that classes suck, I actually have to disagree, but also agree. The reason I agree is that give you stuff to learn go over it a few times in class and then tell you to learn it without actually telling you how to learn. This goes for all subjects and the whole school system in general. The reason I disagree though for Japanese is because its FUN. Although its only two periods a week they are still really fun and interesting. I think that i find it fun BECAUSE its japanese though. Also the teaching is good in England and we have quite a few handouts each lesson. White handout is the lesson sheets with stuff from the lessons, with example sentences for everything plus so room for filling out own sentences; pink sheets for vocab, although its hard to learn from just vocab, but it does contain example sentences for about half of the items which is great. We also have yellow sheets for kanji with pronounciation, which is actually redundant thanks to RTK.

I know this is a long comment but i’ve just fascinated right now with the whole AJATT concept and philosophy of it. Also, I know this article is called ‘dont ask me for advice’, but, I would just like to ask a few small questions.
1) Do you know of any good native japanese listening material for upper beginner/lower intermediate level, so i will be able to understand at least half of it and build up to it. I am at a level past て　form so i’m not too sure how to describe what level i’m at but i would upper beginner.
2) Im currently applying to do Maths with Japanese at university at Manchester university, mainly just for the gap year in the third year, and they use textbooks like genki, minna no nihongo, dictionary of basic/intermediate/advanced grammer. My question is would it be possible or recommended to mine the textbooks when i’m at uni early on and finish them early, then, let sentences from native material come to me. Or would it be better to stay at the same pace as the class and then just get native material in spare time.

Sorry for the long post and questions. Hopefully you would be able to answer them.
Thanks in advance and cant wait till next post.

all together = simple.