Success! I just watched my whole first anime: shirokuma kafe. It was a lot of fun, and I watched it with no subtitles. I'm looking forward to #2.

I also just cancelled my fluentu subscription. I think that I'll be using crunchyroll instead for a while.

(2016-02-15, 11:48 am)トリピー♫ Wrote: Another month, another Anki Stat Report

As of February 15:
---Kanji---
Total mature: 556
Number matured this month: 175
Average matured per month: 276
---Vocab---
Total mature: 955

I have been meaning to ask, but: according to the official Anki site a card becomes mature when the interval between two shows are greater or equal to 21 days. Now, does that mean that when a card is mature you have actually learned the card, meaning that it will be in your long-term memory, and you can recall it anytime at will? It just seems a bit too quick to me, but whatever. I guess it's just a fun fact

(2016-02-15, 12:47 pm)ariariari Wrote: Success! I just watched my whole first anime: shirokuma kafe. It was a lot of fun, and I watched it with no subtitles. I'm looking forward to #2.

I also just cancelled my fluentu subscription. I think that I'll be using crunchyroll instead for a while.

I'm glad you like it! I love the intro song too. I only watched 2 episodes as I'm trying to read ahead in the manga first.

(2016-02-15, 12:50 pm)Raschaverak Wrote: I have been meaning to ask, but: according to the official Anki site a card becomes mature when the interval between two shows are greater or equal to 21 days. Now, does that mean that when a card is mature you have actually learned the card, meaning that it will be in your long-term memory, and you can recall it anytime at will? It just seems a bit too quick to  me, but whatever. I guess it's just a fun fact

I don't think it's a binary system where a fact goes from unknown to known like a light switch. Any criteria that you use to gauge progress is going to be somewhat arbitrary. But as long as you're consistent about the criteria that you use, I think you can at least tell whether or not you're making improvements. There's certainly no real difference between how well you know a 20-day-interval card and a 21-day-interval card, but longer intervals do correspond to longer retention times in memory, and having more cards with longer intervals indicates some form of progress overall.

In terms of recalling facts any time at will, that seems like a hard metric to get a hold of. For one thing, personally, I always study recognition cards (seeing a word in Japanese and trying to remember what that word means) as opposed to production cards (trying to think up a word based on a meaning). So I'm not actually practicing the skill of recalling words, but practicing understanding meanings. This basically means that I'm practicing building passive vocabulary, not active vocabulary, which results in me often times knowing that I know the word that I was to use, but not being able to think of it (like having it at the tip of my tongue). But, I can almost always understand words that I've studies when I encounter them in native material (at least reading).

And actually, even studying production cards (trying to think up a word based on a meaning) would not perfectly solve the "tip-of-the-tongue problem", because your brain is always using as many tricks and shortcuts as it can, Just the fact that you are flipping through flashcards can be enough to prime your brain into being able to come up with a word that you might not be able to in any other context.

For a discussion on anki's definition of "mature" cards I recommend reading their manual (http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html) and searching for "mature".

You can also ask on their forums.

I haven't researched this in detail. It certainly doesn't mean that you know it 100%. But I'm guessing that there is a relationship between card interval and liklihood of you getting it right. Like, you're more likely to forget a card with a short interval than a card with a long interval. That relationship is probably really clearest for cards with a short interal (e.g. words you just learned), and then it probably peters out. I'm not sure how they picked 21 days as the cutoff.

For me, I found counting mature cards more useful than counting total cards. Because I can't really pad the number of mature cards. For example, if I counted mature + learning cards I could just throw in a bunch of words at the end of the month and be like "hey look at me! I learned so many words this month!"

(2016-02-15, 5:52 pm)ariariari Wrote: I'm not sure how they picked 21 days as the cutoff.

It's arbitrary, but you can kind of reverse engineer it. Assuming the defaults most regular cards which you answer only "good" on will eventually be seen at an interval of between 14-16 days and then the next one is around 38-41. That makes the midpoint of those 26-28 so we probably want a number slightly less than 26 but far more than 16. It's hard to say why 21 specifically was picked but it does fall into a nice period of exactly three weeks and is slightly conservative in case you had to fail a card once or twice. Damien has a lot of data he can query to make guesses like that so it was probably also influenced on whatever was stored in AnkiWeb at the time he was trying to come up with a sensible number.

Like Trippy wrote the specific number is not nearly important as the fact that you have a consistent metric.

Wanted to do a quick post because I just read this nice story about hideyo noguchi from the level 3 graded readers. The story was 15 (!) pages, which felt like a foreign language marathon to me. This booklet I'm reading now is 3 stories, and it's all about biographies of people who appear on Japanese currencies. 

At the beginning of the book they say that there's a rule that you shouldn't consult a dictionary. I found that rule hard to follow. But I did it - no dictionary lookups for me!

I'm looking forward to watching the next episode of panda-kun in shirokuma kafe. Maybe next week I'll get some free time to watch it!

Just a quick edit. I'm always one the lookout for differences between my level now vs. when I was studying for the N4. Back then I don't think I could have imagined reading 15 pages of Japanese, at all. Ditto for watching a 30 minute anime. It's fun to level up!

Small success: Finished 600+ cards today in Anki. They've been piling up for 4+ weeks, and I finally got the chance (and motivation) to finish them up. They were all Kanji production cards. Also finished half of the grammar points in the Japanese for Everyone book, I also noticed that in the last 1-2 weeks my listening became better a little bit. Yay!

Wow, so yesterday I wound up going on a crunchyroll binge and watched a few more episodes about panda-kun and his adventures. Then I just started watching everything and wound up here, on ooyasan wa shishunki! The show's interesting for a number of reasons. One is the obvious: we'd never have a show like that in the US. But the second is that, wow, each show is only 2 minutes. And there's a lot of sharp humor in it. I started watching with no subtitles, and then going back and watching with subtitles. I understand nothing but stray words and the pictures when watching with no subtitles. 

It's probably the first time that I've been exposed to sharp humor and double meanings in Japanese like that. It made me appreciate just how limited my Japanese is now. I just focus on vocab, grammar and increasing the amount of basic, straightforward meanings I can understand. This threw me for a loop. There's a whole other world ot there...

I wanted to ask: Japanese for everyone grammar: how far does it take you? My ebook is around 360 pages long, I edited it, cut out the grammar points only, and put them together in a single document for memorization. This makes approximately 100 pages (A4), which is a lot, imo. I've looked on the net before, they say the JFE only takes you to N4 level....is this true?
I'm trying to assess how much raw material needs to be studied for N3. I have a good guess regarding vocab, reading and a little bit listening-wise,  but I'm clueless on grammar. Just how many pages needed to be studied?

Here's something bizzare: apparently crunchyroll let's you watch the anime in either English or Japanese, but the manga is english-only:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-82...n-japanese

Does anyone know of a similar service that let's you read stuff in the original Japanese? I love this all-access library model, but reading the stuff in English-only isn't very interesting to me.

(2016-02-21, 12:09 pm)Raschaverak Wrote: I wanted to ask: Japanese for everyone grammar: how far does it take you? My ebook is around 360 pages long, I edited it, cut out the grammar points only, and put them together in a single document for memorization. This makes approximately 100 pages (A4), which is a lot, imo. I've looked on the net before, they say the JFE only takes you to N4 level....is this true?
I'm trying to assess how much raw material needs to be studied for N3. I have a good guess regarding vocab, reading and a little bit listening-wise,  but I'm clueless on grammar. Just how many pages needed to be studied?

Grammar is my worst part as well. But I have a high opinion of the Japanese Online Institute (JOI). Here is their N3 page:

http://www.japonin.com/study-jlpt-n3.html

The book they use is shin kanzen master N3, and that page has a link to its amazon page.

I did minna no nihongo shokyuu 1 and 2 when I took N4 and (barely) passed.

JOI used to also recommend minna no nihongo chukyuu 1 for N3, but it looks like they dropped that recommendation.

Finally got around to the JCAT today.

Listening: 67
Vocabulary: 43
Grammar: 34
Reading: 30
--------------------
Total: 174

Listening was due to some lucky guesses, I think. There were times I didn't even let the audio finish because I had no idea what was going on. I'm a little disappointed in my reading. There were two times that I had my finder on the button when time ran out. :/

(2016-02-22, 8:58 pm)トリピー♫ Wrote: Finally got around to the JCAT today.

Listening: 67
Vocabulary: 43
Grammar: 34
Reading: 30
--------------------
Total: 174

Listening was due to some lucky guesses, I think. There were times I didn't even let the audio finish because I had no idea what was going on. I'm a little disappointed in my reading. There were two times that I had my finder on the button when time ran out. :/

I have listening envy

But something tells me that if I continue listening to panda-kun's adventures my listening will continue to improve.

Great job トリピー! Your listening is double mine.

I'm still in some experimental phases in fixing my grammar issue so I'll update when there is some progress in that.

@ari: how many episodes are you in shirokuma? I only watched 2 episodes so far.

(2016-02-22, 9:20 pm)RawrPk Wrote: Great job トリピー! Your listening is double mine.

I'm still in some experimental phases in fixing my grammar issue so I'll update when there is some progress in that.

@ari: how many episodes are you in shirokuma? I only watched 2 episodes so far.

I think that I've only watched 2 or 3 so far. Then I binged and watched a bit of a lot of stuff.

(2016-02-22, 9:26 pm)ariariari Wrote:

(2016-02-22, 9:20 pm)RawrPk Wrote: Great job トリピー! Your listening is double mine.

I'm still in some experimental phases in fixing my grammar issue so I'll update when there is some progress in that.

@ari: how many episodes are you in shirokuma? I only watched 2 episodes so far.

I think that I've only watched 2 or 3 so far. Then I binged and watched a bit of a lot of stuff.

It sounds like you are at the point where you can start enjoying Japanese and get some good practice in at the same time!  I'm jealous   I hope to start watching and enjoying some anime around midyear if my study plan goes the way I hope it will.  I hope you don't mind me following along on both of your coat tails and let you both find the good anime that's worth watching.

(2016-02-23, 12:49 am)yogert909 Wrote:

(2016-02-22, 9:26 pm)ariariari Wrote:

(2016-02-22, 9:20 pm)RawrPk Wrote: Great job トリピー! Your listening is double mine.

I'm still in some experimental phases in fixing my grammar issue so I'll update when there is some progress in that.

@ari: how many episodes are you in shirokuma? I only watched 2 episodes so far.

I think that I've only watched 2 or 3 so far. Then I binged and watched a bit of a lot of stuff.

It sounds like you are at the point where you can start enjoying Japanese and get some good practice in at the same time!  I'm jealous   I hope to start watching and enjoying some anime around midyear if my study plan goes the way I hope it will.  I hope you don't mind me following along on both of your coat tails and let you both find the good anime that's worth watching.

Thanks man. By the way, I still think that that's the hardest thing. Finding content that's both at your level and enjoyable is a life's work.

Also, I wanted to share a nice graph of my N3 deck's mature cards over the last year:



From 250 to 1000. Not bad!

Fwiw, some crunchyroll shows that I think are relatively easy to follow,

Koutora-san
Tari-Tari
Sailor Moon Crystal (except the past-lives discussions sometimes get difficult)
Chi's Sweet home (shorts) (easy except for Chi's slurred speech)
and of course you already know about Polar Bear Cafe.

I think Locodol and Non-non Biyori aren't too hard either (largely because they are very slice-of-life and use a lot of daily language), but maybe they are a little harder than the above. Hard to say. Worth a try anyway.

Hrmm. There are several other shows that were pretty easy that seem to be gone now.

Also, shows like One Piece, Fairy Tail, Bleach, and Naruto are realllly long, which can be an advantage. If one of them is to your taste, you could just give it a go, because you'll get used to the specific terms used in the show. There's also a lot of repetition/recapping to keep the audience on track ... after all they originally released over the course of years, with 1 episode a week at most and periods where the show is on hiatus. You can also read along in the manga if you want to help build up your vocabulary. Once you get used to the accents, character names, and frequently used terms of a specific show it's much easier to follow each episode. With a 12-episode show you're just getting there and the show is over.

Of course, all four of these shows are also full of examples of speech that would never be used in normal life. That, however, only means that they're bad models for your own speech - other than a handful of made-up terms, there's nothing in them that you won't encounter in normal Japanese at some point, just not used in quite the same way the word or speech patterns are used in Anime.

Thanks! Just started watching Koutora-san. From what I can gather the girl can read minds and it's leading to all sorts of problems. I'm definitely not picking up everything, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting more than a guy off the street who didn't understand Japanese at all would get.

(2016-02-23, 8:33 pm)ariariari Wrote: Thanks! Just started watching Koutora-san. From what I can gather the girl can read minds and it's leading to all sorts of problems. I'm definitely not picking up everything, but I'm pretty sure I'm getting more than a guy off the street who didn't understand Japanese at all would get.

どういたしまして。

Yes, you've got it.

Other than... I think it's 超能力者 that she's called in that series? Anyway, other than the one kind of advanced term for her powers (which repeats enough that you'll get it), it's pretty much just a school-setting slice of life. Mostly. Pretty normal and easy vocabulary other than that anyway.

Even using her powers is described in pretty normal terms. 心を読む I think it was. I don't think there was even a token kansai-ben character. Not to say there won't be challenging bits, but every show will have that.

頑張って

I need to eventually start watching anime without English subs (Yes, I said the dirty words "English subs"). So far, the only anime I watch without it is Shirokuma Cafe. Then again, I only do this because my choice in anime isn't slice of life hence why I counter it with watching drama raw.

Though, I can technically attempt to watch "Youkai Watch" raw as it is essentially slice with the exception of the 妖怪. I love the anime (simple plot yet hilarious) and the 3DS game is fun too. I'm not sure if I am ready to take the Japanese sub/raw plunge with anime besides Shirokuma

(2016-02-24, 1:52 am)RawrPk Wrote: I need to eventually start watching anime without English subs (Yes, I said the dirty words "English subs"). So far, the only anime I watch without it is Shirokuma Cafe. Then again, I only do this because my choice in anime isn't slice of life hence why I counter it with watching drama raw.

Though, I can technically attempt to watch "Youkai Watch" raw as it is essentially slice with the exception of the 妖怪. I love the anime (simple plot yet hilarious) and the 3DS game is fun too. I'm not sure if I am ready to take the Japanese sub/raw plunge with anime besides Shirokuma  

I would never ever consider reading / watching japanese (multi)media stuff solely for learning purposes. Enjoyment is the factor. If you're enjoying it, you will make progress one way or another.

(2016-02-24, 1:52 am)RawrPk Wrote: I need to eventually start watching anime without English subs (Yes, I said the dirty words "English subs"). So far, the only anime I watch without it is Shirokuma Cafe. Then again, I only do this because my choice in anime isn't slice of life hence why I counter it with watching drama raw.

Though, I can technically attempt to watch "Youkai Watch" raw as it is essentially slice with the exception of the 妖怪. I love the anime (simple plot yet hilarious) and the 3DS game is fun too. I'm not sure if I am ready to take the Japanese sub/raw plunge with anime besides Shirokuma  

One idea is just to watch it twice, once with subs and once without. 

Also, at least with crunchyroll you can easily turn them on and off as well (just right-click the video and click the menu).

Today I understood my first tweet in Japanese:

https://twitter.com/shi_7kun/status/703580945815728128