Hello
I agree perfectly with dilandau23. It may seem to somebody that the AJATT site is just a list of "instructions", and that simply following those steps blindly will magically make you fluent in Japanese. But it's not like that, imho.
What Khatzumoto's trying to convey (and I think he's doing it quite well, even though it's really hard) is the APPROACH, the PHILOSOPHY he used while learning. It's not about performing an action exactly by following some rules (which he couldn't have done since he was inventing, or perfecting, the method on the way), but to dive into a river of Japanese input. More importantly, to have fun with it and never be scared of the supposed difficulty of the language.
"Sentence mining", like Khatzumoto himself admitted at some point, is not a good name for the concept he's proposing (again, in my opinion). You shouldn't set out with the goal to find sentences "because you have to". Let sentences find you!
If you do "all japanese all the time", you constantly encounter words, sentences and kanji that you WANT to understand, and you think "damn, it'd be awesome if I could read that!" or "that word comes out so often, I could really gain a lot of understanding if I learned it. Cool!". When that happens, and only then, you know that you have found something worth digging and "SRSsing" for. It's gonna be REALLY fun and when, later, you find the same word or sentence and you are able to understand it... it's a huge satisfaction. So a better expression could be "sentence fishing"? "Sentence dating"? I dunno
As for input before output... Khatz never said "don't you dare speak or write! You'll get a curse that will stop your Japanese learning for eternity!". Actually, in one post (I'm lazy right now, but if you want me to find these posts say so and I'll look for them) he told about a Korean-Japanese friend with whom he always spoke. Why did he do that, if it's "input before output"? Because that friend constantly corrected his mistakes, mercilessly.
So the concept is: if you go and start speaking and writing naively when you are still a beginner, you'll probably get more harm than good, since you'll probably make, and get used to, mistakes without even realizing it. But if you are very careful, aware of your possible mistakes, and have someone who can correct your errors before it's too late, than great! It's even BETTER than shutting down all output! Again, one should concentrate on the philosophy, the "why" a method works. The "how" is relatively unimportant, and you can even change it as you prefer.
Those were my thoughts on the matter. I'm sorry if I said obvious stuff!
Also, nice to meet you all, this is my first post!
