Comments on: Success Story: From Frustration in Japan to Ownage in Japan

By: 亜波愛留

亜波愛留 — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 23:50:25 +0000

really motivating. Just goes to show that any one can learn any language they set there mind too. All you need is a solid method to get there. almost to 1000 sentences.

By: JN

JN — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:02:45 +0000

good stuff. very motivating

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:08:47 +0000

Welcome back Khatz!
Thanks for posting another inspiring example that gives me more of a reason to continue my Japanese conquest. Going to check that Kanji Odyssey out.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:22:17 +0000

Will – I feel you buddy. I think we should send Khatz a gift basket filled with gold bullion. The autodidactism+SRS method has changed the way I approach every academic goal I set for myself.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:35:30 +0000

Khatzumoto. long time listener first time caller…I’ve started using your method starting this summer and all I have to say is thanks. I’ve been stressing over how difficult college has been for me, specifically, the leaking bucket problem. I wound up withdrawing from a survey Microeconomics course this past semester because I had forgotten the basics. Over the summer I’ve applied Mnemosyne to intro to Micro and Macro and I think I might even be able to TA those classes this coming semester!!! Also, I’m a Japanese Economics Double Major (yeah, I know, completely pointless, just major in econ and learn Japanese on the side) and I’ve been failing horribly in Japanese…particularly, kanji. It’s going to be nice to show my teachers what progress I’ve made over the summer, seeing as how I’ve been the one messing up and holding back the other 5 kids in class. I managed to learn the meaning and writing behind ALL of the RTK kanji and I’ve memorized All 2,000 words we’ve learned so far in the past 2 years in context. I used to think I had screwed up my life with the past two years in College (my GPA isn’t the greatest) but now there is REAL hope that I’ll make up for the past two years and do something amazing. Thank you for the most life productive and life changing summer I’ve ever had, I don’t know if it was fate or what that I searched “how many kanji do you know?” and I happened to stumble upon your site, but all I know is that my life will never be the same. As soon as I feel I’ve gotten fluent and that I can write to you my success story, you can expect a big fat addition to your donations box. Thank you SOOOOOO much for all that you have done with this site. You really are making a difference.

P.S.
I’ll do as much as I can to tell people about this site as repayment in the meantime. I’ve already gotten my high school Japanese teacher to recommend it to her students at school! And she’s been using it with her daughter who doesn’t know Japanese…Yet.

By: Japanese Words

Japanese Words — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:42:29 +0000

Great article and great inspiration. Learning a language (especially Japanese) can seem a very steep climb at first, but if you stay with it and immerse yourself you can definitely become fluent!

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 13:31:35 +0000

As far as the problem of not wanting to stop midstream, I usually just don’t. If I like a sentence (which usually means a scene) enough, I’ll find myself wanting to go back and see it (read it) again, and at that point I’ll focus on the words used. The first tenet is fun after all, right?

By: Jaybot7

Jaybot7 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:26:17 +0000

Nice story, makes me feel like a turtle. I’ve been doing this since last August or so. I’m not living full-time in Japan though.

I’m All Japanese Most of the Time honestly. I’m roughly at 2255 Kanji (and add more whenever I see something new, which is surprisingly not as often as I thought). Creeping past the middle of 3000 sentences because I enjoy reading Manga too much to stop and enter sentences I should (Khatz! You didn’t warn me about this!!) Maybe I should buy a highlighter 😉

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:52:10 +0000

Step 1 is belief. Only you can believe in yourself. Don’t rely on others to believe in you for you – only you can do that. Step 2 is immersion. You need too much immersion to allow someone else to immerse with you, unless that person is as dedicated as you are in learning Japanese. Though feel free to share Japanese foods you learn how to make and Japanese music with others. Reading Japanese culture books in English does not count as immersion. Step 3 is Heisig. Heisig is a self study course. Don’t study the Heisig course together with others. We’ll discuss Step 4 (the last step) when you finish Heisig.

Being smart has nothing to do with it. You are smart enough to learn Japanese if you are a human of average intelligence. Smart people have failed at difficult things before while dumb people have succeeded. What is the difference between those who succeed and those who fail? Some pretend to know. I am not one of them. All I can do is try to succeed. Khatsumoto is talking about “grit” in the twitter posts now; maybe that has something to do with it.

By: 亜波愛留

亜波愛留 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:15:59 +0000

Interesting story. So far i’ve got to 3007 kanji in around 2.5 months of learning it. I also did katakana for hiragana i already did that sometime ago. I’m only at around 100 example sentences in my anki SRS. But hopefully if i keep at it i’ll get fluent in no time. Anyone got any tips for monolingual sentences and stuff. I remember reading that khatz said you should go around 500-1000 sentences make the shift to pure monolingual sentences. (I’m trying to learn 50-100 sentences per day to try to speed up the process but i’ve got school coming soon but i’m sure i’ll manage in the Japanese since i want this badly. I’ve got around 3 years time till i’ll head over to japan so more than enough time. 2 years left of my program by then hopefully i’ll be fluent. Anyhow can anyone help me with the monolingual stuff i.e. give me some tips or something.

By: Katie

Katie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:58:54 +0000

I’ve yet to start AJATTing officially, though I am feeling out the immersion technique. I input into my brain machine only doramas, Japanese movies, Japanese music – though I am currently reading my books on Japanese history, art, bushido, traditions and culture in English. I’m still looking at Japanese text and seeing only 1 or 2 words on the page, so no mono dictionary yet. Though audio-wise, I’m doing a lot of sentence-picking whenever I notice a phrase being used again and again.

Strangely enough, watching press conferences for films is great for audio recog because I already know the content they are discussing and I know which actors/actresses speak slowly enough for me. (Ryuhei Matsuda’s wpm has to be a world record in slowness)

It’s been difficult to find other learners at my low level – that’s my main problem. Everyone’s so damn smart and seems to have started younger than me 😛

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:35:32 +0000

No problem. I just wanted to spready the joy! 🙂

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:14:53 +0000

This is why I love this site. Every time I’m feeling like I can’t keep up learning Japanese, I turn to look at any one of the stories here. Case in point: at 898 kanji right now (with the nice Mr. Heisig, of course), and was feeling a little low, cuz THERE ARE JUST SO FRICKING MANY! But it’s always nice to know there are other people out there, persevering and succeeding, and to take motivation from their struggles. 😀

By: Terence

Terence — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:30:26 +0000

Thanks to the writer, and thanks to Glenn for the link!

I checked out the weblio link, and judging by what I’ve seen, I can’t wait to test it out and some new sentences hahahahaha

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:19:52 +0000

What better time to leave my first comment? 🙂 That was a great story! I’m looking forward to standing in his shoes a year from now. I just started AJATTing two weeks ago and I already know more Japanese than I learned in two years of high school Spanish! I just hit 300 Kanji today (Heisig), and it sure is motivating not only to mark my own ‘little victories’ but to read stories like this about the cumulative results of these small steps. I’m currently taking in about 8 hours of Japanese audio, about 3 hours of video, and averaging 20-25 new Kanji per day (SRSing with Anki). I never would have started down this path without this site; thanks for everything Khatz, I’ll let you know how it goes.

By: Glenn

Glenn — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:01:22 +0000

Always nice to see someone succeeding. This is a bit off topic, but I recently found this website and thought I’d share, because it’s pretty sweet, and I don’t see it in your link section. It has a search engine that searches lots of dictionaries, including specialized ones, Wikipedia and other encyclopedia-type sites (JAXA came up a few times), and a thesaurus. It has a random search feature as well, where it will just pull up whatever. The address is www.weblio.jp/ and it’s become my reference site of choice. Cheers!

By: Colby

Colby — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:56:38 +0000

I’ve been following the program since early February, and things are really starting to click now–especially after getting that children’s dictionary on your site.
I figure if I can use a mono-dic, even if some of the entries don’t make sense (yet), what’s going to stop me?
And that’s what I’ve been realizing more and more lately, I think an intelligent, working method is important for anything, but the biggest thing I’ve been keeping in mind is that little twitter you made awhile back.

続けるかぎり「負け」はない

By: Saif

Saif — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:55:53 +0000

Very motivational, thanks for sharing.
I think it all goes down to your believe in yourself AND the methods you are using 🙂