A baby has absolutely nothing to support itself, just a mind, eyes, and ears.
We have what babies have, and a sophisticated understanding of the world. There’s no need to force ourselves into a monolingual environment where don’t understand anything.

The only thing we need to learn from kids is their ability to zone in on something and have fun doing it. We need to stop worrying, and start enjoying learning.

[&gradually transition into monolingualism]

1) Learn the SKIP method for indexing kanji so you can look them up in a kanji dictionary
2) Install the Microsoft IME in windows and use the handwriting tool to “draw” the kanji with your mouse, then paste it into an online dictionary (e.g. www.gokanji.com/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/S=64/FG=r/dict?sDict=on&COMMON=1&&LI=1)

I found this website after trying every hair-brained thing that people suggested to me (because, ya know, thinking for yourself really sucks). Yeah, I found it but I still worked too hard at Japanese. I punished myself into doing Heisig 1 in about a month while immersing. When I completed that last card…The train stopped, or exploded, or something…anyway I HATED Japanese at that point and could not bring myself to do any no matter how hard I tried. I gave up learning Japanese to pursue a career in songwriting (I’m not kidding) for about 6 months, forgetting almost all of my kanji and much of everything else…After that side-quest I came back and decided to do the Japanese thing sanely (Cause I missed my baby and I was sorry ‘dat we fought)…and its been real smooth, easy, fun…until I had to go monolingual. I had the dictionaries and everything, but could not bring myself to learn without the taint of English on the back of my SRS cards.

I don’t know how many times I read the monolingual posts here and elsewhere in the interwebs, but I couldn’t understand how to do it. It didn’t work. I looked up words I knew-no good the definitions were gibberish (granted, gibberish that I recognized as writing O:) ). I tried to use the sentences from the QRG-no good. Even those were out of my league. I was getting all down on myself and considering quitting again or never going monolingual, when I had an interesting idea. I read through my dictionary, ignoring key words, until I got to a definition sentence that I aaallmost understood (one word missing).

Here is that first card:
Front:
よく晴れた空のような色。(I took this from the definition of the word blue)

Back:
青［あお］(the place where I got it-i knew this word so I figured it would help me out with the meaning of the sentence)

晴れ［はれ］。天気［てんき］がよいこと。(I google imaged this mother, but it didn’t help so I looked it up in my monoDICT and googled words from THAT definition until I understood this one.)

空［そら］。天［てん］(I knew this word so I put a synonym in instead of a mile long sentence)

色［いろ］。赤。青。(I like this definition straight from the dictionary-This simple brevity is one reason that I love Japanese)

This had me bouncing around the dictionary and I can honestly say its a thrill. I am having a blast knowing that I understand this card in Japanese. The advantage of starting with simple DEFINITIONS is that they come in sentence/phrase form and you don’t have the problem of looking at a word like 青 on the front of the card and saying: “yeah, blue-faiyke! that’s not the Japanese definition at all!” I made a rule for myself: If I can’t comprehend the sentence upon researching it in Japanese only, it is not what Khatzumoto calls “A low hanging fruit.”

I am very excited! When I get excited I do crazy things like tossing away all of my old sentence decks…This time I will not. I will let those J-E cards continue until I’m bored with them. Now that I have a monolingual deck, though, my criterion for deletion in my J-E has just gotten much, much stricter.

Moral of my story on this AJATT journey: As an individual I have to take responsibility for my learning. If I can see the goal as a mountain in the distance, it is nobody else’s fault that I don’t take the necessary steps toward the mountain. Maybe I walk with a limp, or don’t own a car, so I can’t get to the mountain the same way Khatzumoto did, but as a creative individual I will find my own way to that mountain even if I have to commit metaphorical grand theft auto to make it happen…Has this metaphor spun out? I think so.

Be Creative. Be you. Succeed on your own terms. WHOO.

Sanseido for iPhone/iPod touch. $16 USD. I’ll be using this <3 Now I don’t have to rely on the one on my computer =/

Q: 種から芽が出たばかりの植物：？
A: 苗（なえ）

Q: 水が浅くて泥が深く、自然にできた池：？
A: 沼（ぬま）

Q: き の かん や えだ の さき：？
A: 木の幹や枝の先：梢（こずえ）

Of course one can do it both kanji>reading and the other way around.

【使い分け】場合に応じて使い方・使う物などを区別すること。

yields two entries:

【使い分け】場合に応じて使い方
【使い分け】使う物などを区別すること

A nice side effect is you learn the word in question really well.