What Is SilverSpoon?
↑ Go here if you’ve forgotten what all SilverSpoon is 😛
Sign Up Now — Only 7 Places Available
There are only 7 places available in this round. More places will become available later, but at higher prices. So come get yours while the getting’s good!
You could learn Japanese without AJATT SilverSpoon. But you haven’t so far, have you? Maybe it’s time you gave it a try 😉 . Come. Chillax. Be spoonfeed. You deserve it. 85 weeks from now, you’ll be fluent.
Monthly: Less than $2.10 / day
That’s A Bit Pricey, Dontcha Think?
Compared to what? Compared to spending the next 10 years wishing you knew Japanese and buying stuff that you never use and starting and stopping and failing and hating yourself?
Compared to what? Compared to buying a return air ticket to Japan, renting an apartment in downtown Tokyo and then shelling out $8000~$24,000 in tuition alone to attend a “Japanese Language School“, where you get the privilege of being in a class with 15 Chinese kids, 5 Koreans and a hot Russian chick who perennially looks like she’s on the brink of suicide…all of whom proceed to destroy you at kanji and make you feel like a total noob?
Not to mention being led by an uptight, condescending teacher who can barely conceal the fact that she thinks that you’re a stupid gaijin who’ll never really get it, and has a rigid schoolmarm mentality whereby she refuses to let you talk like a real Japanese person of your age and personality (deep breath). Compared to that?
Compared to what? Compared to trying stuff that doesn’t deliver results, that will happily leave you illiterate, that doesn’t have a date for completion, and that doesn’t have the guts to offer you a full, total, fo-shizzle refund if you’re not transformed into a person of language skills so awesome that your ethnic origin is occasionally called into question?
Compared to what?
Let’s learn Japanese for real this time, man. No more bait and switch by schools. Get the accountability you deserve. Get the results you deserve.
Let’s do it.
Fo’ Shizzle Fluency Guarantee
Guaranteed fluency: if you’re not fluent in Japanese at the end of 595 days of faithfully executing the simple, easy, quick, straightforward sprint missions fed to you daily by AJATT SilverSpoon, you can have a full refund. No questions asked.
In fact, if you just decide partway through that you just don’t like it, you can have your money back. That’s how sure I am this works. That’s how freakin’ cool I am. Just an empty email to < refund at ajatt dot com > , with the following subject: “I want a refund, but I still love you. I care about you. I promise I’ll be back again.” will suffice.
Succeed or get your money back. Fluency or your money back. The days of messing around are over. The people who take your money to help you learn should take responsibility for the results. I mean, I’m almost perfect. But even I’m not all the way there. Things happen. If and when they do, you don’t have to pay for that imperfection.
Working definition of fluency:
- Reading: Can read a randomly selected general interest (e.g. newspaper) article aloud.
- Listening/Speaking: Can listen to a randomly selected 60~90-second audio clip from prime-time television and repeat the dialogue.
- Express ideas directly or via circumlocution
- Writing: Can accurately transcribe a randomly selected audio 60~90-second spoken exchange from prime-time television or radio.
Compared to what? Compared to learning by having fun, on your own, as was the purpose of this site before you got distracted by the possibility of easy money.
Khatz freely telling you what do is completely different from telling you what to do, for money?
You do realize this site is still free right? It’s not like he has suddenly closed AJATT down and said *PAY NOW*. This is a service for those who have the money and *want* to be apart of it. You don’t like the service? Don’t join/use it.
I’ll admit, this service isn’t for most people. But there are some of us who are helped from it, regardless of if it is FOR YOU or not. And what’s wrong with being paid for doing work for others? Everyone that is apart of AJATT SS is essentially paying for Khatz to do a certain amount of work for us and post 595 articles over the course of the whole program.
Also, I’ve already created friends (such as @sutekiiii) through the program. I can honestly say, so far the money is worth it for me.
Hell, AJATT SS is no different than just AJATT anyway except for the fact he is Spoon Feeding (hand holding) us the entire way.
I don’t mean to sound harsh though.. if I do, すみません！ >_<;
I knew a hater would inevitably hate on this program as soon as I read the original post. I also knew what the nature of the hate would be and that said hater’s hate would have stemmed from the hater’s complete misunderstanding of the program.
Really, though, if this is “easy money”, you go ahead and put together a program wherein you provide 595 items of unique learning material and advice spread over the course of 595 days with the perfect learning-curve to guarantee fluency by the end of the 595 days, along with a 100% refund if you don’t reach fluency, and sell it for less than Khatz. Go on.
If you think $1 per day is “easy money” for what would be at least 30 mins work then you probably haven’t ever worked full time in your life.
There’s not a lot Khatz can really add to regular AJATT- it’s “done”. Yet despite that he still provides motivational updates and little nuggets of information.
SS is an extra service you can choose to participate in or not at your leisure. And yes, it is nice for Khatz to be able to get something back for the work he’s done. But it’s hardly “easy” money. It’s a service at a quite reasonable cost- easily comparable to a text book or course.
aside from all of the above, what’s actually wrong with making money doing what you enjoy anyway? I just dunno what (a small subset of) people are getting all upons for. What’s the point?
As someone has already said the free site and all the advice that’s ever been on it is still there… even if Khatz DID take it down, that’s his right. I don’t see it happening, but if it did then that’s the way the cookie crumbles, hey. The fact this is so in-demand makes it pretty obvious that even with all the awesome info on AJATT, people are still having trouble finding the way, and more just don’t even try (I’m sure it’s something like 90% of people that read self-help/go to seminars never act on the advice or implement it into their lives in anyway… 90% is probably a bit conservative).
This site is still about precisely the same stuff as it was a few weeks ago… and a few years ago. Chill out dude 🙂
And yeah reading the other comments… ‘easy money’… well I’ve got a feeling Khatz has had a good deal of fun putting this together, but man who DOESN’T want to get paid for what they enjoy doing. If this thing actually works – it’s one heck of a claim – it’ll really be amazing and should (I dunno if it WILL, but it should) have huge implications for language learning. If it DOESN’T work, the paying customers get a full refund at the end.
So I mean… seriously, I don’t see what the beef is here.
I hear you, man. There seems to be this mentality that a person can’t make money by *gasp* doing something they love. It’s like they think it’s somehow immoral and all righteous, “holier-than-thou” people work shitty office jobs.
I’m not sure if its exclusively an American attitude, but it does seem like there’s a sort of hostility towards people that don’t work the typical 9 to 5 grind. I remember when I worked at a grocery store, a co-worker of mine said that he didn’t feel sorry for rich celebrities if they got into horrible accidents or killed. I’m beginning to think it stems from the whole “average Joe” mentality that is seen as all right over here, but I digress.
Yeah, just had to rant about that. It’s a gigantic pet peeve of mine because I don’t want to be another office stooge.
Pathetic comment.
Distracted by easy money? Your mentality of entitlement is precisely what’s wrong with the world.
Khatz has already provided you with enough valuable information for free. Yet you still shit on the hand that feeds you. Show some appreciation little kid.
Why is the Daily Silver Spoon Subscription available but the monthly is sold out?
I would so sign up for this, but sadly I’m a 16 year old girl whose parents won’t let her get a job 🙁 Oh well, reading this blog is enough motivation for me to keep learning the language so as long as Khatz doesn’t take away regular AJATT, I’m all good.
It doesn’t really help now since it’s sold out (this is more for if there ends up being another round), but maybe try talking to your parents about paying for this now, and then use credit by examination or placement tests to skip foreign language classes in college later? As e_dub_kendo pointed out below, a year and a half of college classes is way more than this, and you’d learn way less too.
If your parents aren’t into that, like you said, the free area of the blog is great, so you’ll definitely reach Japanese fluency one way or another :). Just remember to have fun with Japanese.
Hm… I wanna sign up for the monthly one, but it says it’s sold out. :C:C:C
The daily and full subscriptions aren’t, though… Can you fix this, Khatz?
Meh, I bought the daily one just to reserve my place until the monthly link is fixed/updated.
GOD DAMMIT IT’S ALREADY FULL. D:
Dang it! Sold it in less than 12 hours >.<
Oh and haters, if you aren't in that income bracket where you can do some frivolous spending on cuddling/hand-holding, don't worry the site is still free.
Already sold out?.. ;A;
-sigh- The one night I fall asleep early and fail to check this site for any updates.. Spots open up. Dang…
Khatz makes a lot of noise about not liking people, not being nice, etc. But if the man didn’t honestly care about helping people achieve fluency in Japanese, he’d never have put so many YEARS of his life into building up this site and the products it offers. I’ve tried my hand at simply blogging. Despite having a fairly time-rich life, putting together original and interesting content on a regular basis proved to be impossible for me. And that’s coming from someone who LOVES to see his own words and enjoys writing. So I know how much effort he’s put into this site. As other people have pointed out, both in this post and in the other, though it perhaps seems like a lot of money to join Silverspoons, when you break it down, it’s not much at all. Perhaps, eventually, as he gathers more students and automates his process, it will become lucrative, but at least the initial waves of SilverSpooners are paying a relatively small amount for a relatively high investment of energy and time. I imagine that the money Khatz makes from this and other projects is just enough to allow him to continue to invest such high proportions of his time and energy into DOING SOMETHING HE CARES ABOUT. As much as it would be nice if just giving everything away for free and living on donations paid enough of the bills to make it possible to continue an endeavor like this indefinitely, in the real world it just doesn’t work that way.
As far as Khatz changing tactics, yes, for years he’s been saying, “You don’t need me to hold your hand. You don’t need me to make the day-to-day decisions for you.” Hell, even recently, when he posted a response to the question “What was a day in the life of Khatz like?” And basically he said, “it doesn’t matter what I did. Just look at adding more Japanese to your own life.” and people were all getting their feelings hurt and stuff, and begging for a “serious” answer to the question. So, I think Khatz has simply embraced the fact that some people don’t want or might even find it impossible to, do this without more direction and encouragement. Sure, there are plenty of us self-starters out there (although in my first few weeks of ajatt, i probably emailed khatz 20 times), who CAN and WILL do this deal on our own, there are a lot of people who will benefit from more guidance.
Can he provide that kind of guidance for free? No, as I spoke about above, it’s unrealistic to think that would even be possible unless he was independently wealthy or something, and to the best of my knowledge that he is not. As others have pointed out in the original post, a course at your local community college, a boring course where you’d probably learn the kana, a handful of words, and a bunch of useless grammar, such a course would cost you MULTIPLE TIMES what SilverSpooners are paying Khatz for this new service. The biggest difference, though, Khatz has GUARANTEED you fluency. I can guarantee you just as assuredly that after two semesters of college Japanese you will NOT be fluent. Not even close. I took 3 years of Japanese at uni and I learned more in two months of AJATT than during all that time.
The difference is, most of you complainers and haters have probably never paid a tuition bill out-of-pocket in your life. You got fin aid, or student loans, or your parents paid for it, so the cost of those college courses doesn’t seem real to you. Meanwhile, this requires “real” money coming out of your own pocket.
Truth-be-told, I don’t have the money for AJATT SS. And honestly, I doubt it’s for me anyways. I like to do things my own way far too much. But for those who can both afford it and benefit from it, I certainly bear no grudge. And I commend Khatz for continuing to pursue something he’s obviously passionate about. I hope the day comes when he never has to take a job or work assignment he doesnt personally want to take again, and that he can make a good living just from doing ajatt stuff, if that’s what he chooses.
Good luck khatz and がんばって SilverSpooners.
Yeah, 1$ per a half hour work is even less than I- the plant worker from a small East-European country- earn, not much less, but still…
Summarizing- if you don’t like SS don’t buy it.
I can’t believe it’s sold out already! I tried to put my name on the waitlist but there was an error.
Khatz, please email me when round 5 is open.
Damn…sold out already…
Where’s this waiting list?
Please add me to it too, Khatz.
Thanks.
If there is a waiting list, I’d love to be on it, or know when its going to open before hand. If this guy says that he’ll make me fluent if i do what he says for 85 weeks, well I’m game! Also, raising the price is unfair! so many of us want to take advantage of the price, but can’t because of the sold outness! hehe
How did I not know about this earlier? I’m following you on Twitter! I would have signed up. Not fair! *smoulder*
Hi guys!
I’ve just found this: www.lexiophiles.com/language-lovers-toplist/time-to-vote-for-your-favorite-language-learning-blog-2011
It is a web competition and you can vote for your favourite Language Learning Blog from a list.
You can find many interesting blogs about language learning, and also AJATT.
oh for those who don’t know how, getting on the wait list is just a matter of clicking on the subscription, then wait a bit, then it will redirect you to a wait list sign up. I never waited long enough before hand lol!
/sold-out or go there
The link for the sold out page doesn’t work when you put your details in, it just gives a MySQL error:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ” at line 1]
select * from wp_wpr_subscribers_ where id=;
it works just fine for me :(, if anything just click on the link in the blog itself, or type in sold out on the search, should bring it up for you
Holy crap this is awesome!
Can there be a list of “full” members with their blogs so we can all live vicariously though them?
Or possibly even a reality TV show, or at least video blogging?
Seriously what an awesome idea. Much love to all the haters, except I learned Japanese in about 595 days and I totally bugged Khatz the whole time wishing there was something like this. This is a completely logical progression from the beginning to the QRG to plus and now this. I am personally really excited for this.