Comments on: The Fork, The Choice and You

By: Inflating Effort | Study Shack

Inflating Effort | Study Shack — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:27:05 +0000

[…] The Time wrote two excellent posts that provide a much better way to accomplish things. They are The Fork, the Choice and You and Potheads, Planners and Players. Using this now with great […]

By: 星空

星空 — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:12:56 +0000

there is no ‘else’
the ‘while’ is “breathing” so the ‘else’ would be “death”
an ‘else’ can’t possiblly exist.

By: Inflating Effort » Study Shack

Inflating Effort » Study Shack — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:12:42 +0000

[…] The Time wrote two excellent posts that provide a much better way to accomplish things. They are The Fork, the Choice and You and Potheads, Planners and Players. Using this now with great […]

By: Jaybot7

Jaybot7 — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:18:12 +0000

This reminds me of that one thing Khatz said … hell, it might not have even been on this site. Something like… you don’t know Japanese, you just get used to it as long as you keep doing it *constantly*.

So much truth in that. It’s pretty much like f**king magic once it happens, and you realize you’re following all (okay, 99.9%) of the 漢字 in the 字幕 during an 映画 or ドラマ or even during some バラエティー show.

By: Drewskie

Drewskie — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:32:35 +0000

Spence, I think it depends on what extreme you take AJATT to as to whether or not the people around you care. Khatzumoto rightfully pushes 100%, but you can shave off 10-20% and skip all the ‘alienating friends and family’ sacrifices. My dad invited me to see Avatar with him last week. I’m not about to tell him “Nope, it’s in English.” When my friends recommend a book, I pass, but when they want to hang out and play Rock Band, I’m there.

My unwillingness to make social sacrifices almost made me avoid AJATT entirely, but it’s turning out fine. I’m making some fantastic progress. Yeah, I’m not going to pull a ‘Moto and be in Japan a year from now, but I’m not in such a rush.

It comes down to the fact that AJATT is not completely binary. Yeah, you need the mega-monster-personality-changing-commitment, but you can go 90% and make a lot of progress. What you need to decide is whether or not 6 months matters. For me, I’m 8 months into AJATT (5 kanji, 3 sentences, immersion for last 4), and I have a year and a half of college left. If I take even twice as long as Khatzumoto did to be reasonably proficient, none of my plans will change.

So to answer your question directly, no. No interventions, no “You’re taking this a little far.” I annoy my friends when I reject English media recommendations, and I annoyed my family when I told them I don’t want anything in English for Christmas, but that’s all pretty tolerable, so nobody bats an eyelash.

By: アメド

アメド — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:21:27 +0000

Hmmm, thinking in japanese will probably take alot of time. I’m not quite at that level yet, but I am general understanding japanese easier than a few months ago. I can even predict what ppl say now in most situations(not all of course). But i still think i’m far from fluent yet. I remeber talking on the forum for reviewing the kanji. And i said i dreamt in japanese. And some replied back that, dreaming in the japanese means you’re developing+gaining fluency. But when i look at my skills+success so far in Japanese. It’s still not where i want it to be. I used to add so much sentences before, but I have lower that now. Cuz they reviews were building up alot for the past few days. So as of today I’m at 5100 sentences. Feels good to be this far into japanese and wanting to go far and very far into japanese. I’m sure my motivation to get fluent+the love of japanese will get me fluent in no time.(1 year i;’m hoping?!, ppl say that’s the benchmark year for some majority improvements). But as long as people keep going, they will reach there goal. For some sooner than later.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:10:11 +0000

Katz, are you aware that many people are using you as their “person” primitive down at Reviewing the Kanji?
It would seem that your blog is quite good at getting into people’s heads…

“On a side note, has anyone’s parents ever threatened to kick them out of the house if they don’t stop AJATTing?”
No, but… they made me go back to Spanish for a while.

If I listen to Spanish all day, I can think in it almost exclusively. I’m not quite that far in Japanese yet.

By: qaz

qaz — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:53:41 +0000

Khatzumoto: have you ever realized that AJATT is basically a way of placing one’s self in the halting problem? there is no final output(spoon) o_O

By: Spence

Spence — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:41:12 +0000

short and sweet… just what I was looking for. Some times taking the japanese route causes more stress than it is worth. Like wearing head phones in the house, It is a huge deal in my house. So, I switched to listening with speakers. Little things like that make it less stressfull. On a side note, has anyone’s parents ever threaten to kick them out of the house if they don’t stop AJATTing? Well… this happened to me yesturday, not fun folks. I think its time to lay low. Use the foot in the door affect (start changing small and then slowly build up the immersion).

Best of luck to all.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:00:02 +0000

Here I was thinking I was the only one who skipped showers.

By: KREVA

KREVA — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:56:52 +0000

Gotta love the loop! 😀

By: Gav

Gav — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 09:49:37 +0000

We don’t really need to shower as much as we think anyway.

By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Potheads, Planners and Players

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 08:32:29 +0000

[…] “The Fork, The Choice and You“, I was trying to write something that it might perhaps be better to draw. So I went ahead […]

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:24:34 +0000

“Khatzumoto really needs to just up and start a general personal development blog. For real. The stuff in this post could so easily be applied to any aspect of life.”

ajatt *is* a general personal development blog. Do you think anything he’s said here is at all specific to learning Japanese?

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 04:38:02 +0000

What I try to do is to fill the gaps with up and down activities in Chinese. I have my power study methods: textbooks, SRS reps… basically active studying. But I also have my laissez-faire study methods. Basically, I found the gaps in my day where I wasn’t doing something Chinese related and filled it in. My down activities involve watching a drama series I quite like, Chinese translations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, manga, news, music videos, etc. Things I would do to blow time procrastinating in English, I just turned into Chinese. I made sure I had a variety of down activities that I would like to do. I don’t always want to read a novel, so I’ll switch to a comic book instead. Maybe I’m lazy to read, or what I want to watch something while I eat, so I pop on the drama. Or, maybe I just want to sing poorly to drive away my friends, then I go for the music videos.

All in all, it’s actually really easy to do it’s just hard to start. Wikipedia is a good place: look up what you like in English, then click on the “other language” sidebar and find the name of the movie/book/series/author in the language you want to pursue and then go find it 😀 That’s what I did anyway.

Hope it helps! 🙂

And a P.S. you know how most of what we say in English is probably quoted from someplace else? Movies, books, TV shows, etc? Those ‘catchphrases’ probably exist in other languages too, you just have to watch and read a lot and they’ll start to pop up. Plus it’s fun to pick a character to “speak through”. I found my voice through a combination of Keitaro Urashima and Arthur Dent. Chances are if you love then in English, you’ll love them in your target language too.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:22:56 +0000

As a wise guy once said “when you come to a fork in the road, take it”.

By: branigan

branigan — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:36:27 +0000

Khatzumoto really needs to just up and start a general personal development blog. For real. The stuff in this post could so easily be applied to any aspect of life.

By: アメド

アメド — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:35:04 +0000

I don’t know if this is the site to discuss this but has anyone had dreams in full japanese? It’s weird as I’ve only had two dreams in Japanese before. One was all full of kanji characters and the other full of japanese speech. Anyone care to share there own dreams-based on japanese in someway. Unno if this is anything related to learning japanese but I guess nothing wrong with it. I guess i’m asking this because i’m not yet capable of thinking in full japanese yet or fluent yet. But it’s weird b/c I remebering just a week ago I was listening to japanese+watching anime for like 90% of the day. And I literally was dreaming in japnaese in every sense of the way lol. It was sooo weird. Anyhow anyone care to share?

By: David

David — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 02:01:17 +0000

I think I have found Bizzaro Katzhumoto. anond.hatelabo.jp/20091026215137

By: Daichi

Daichi — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:51:55 +0000

Haha, great code. But if it’s a while loop, do you really need the else clause? XD