It's been a year ago since my site has been mentioned here, and I wanted to tell you guys what I've been up to for the last 365 days. I'm a year older, and I'm going to turn 19 next month. I'm in college now. Life is better.

My Japanese is always improving, and I get to speak Japanese to people for about 10 hours a week, which is much better than 0~1.

As far as the site is concerned, I never forgot about all the good tips. I've actually been trying to make them happen all this time.

One thing that you will notice if you go to the site is that the lesson ordering is completely different. You will also know a more Japanese style to things. Titles of some lessons are only in Japanese, and the use of roomaji has almost been entirely taken away.

There are new lessons that have never been on the site before, and the difficulty level of the site as a whole, although still difficult, is far more easier than it was a year ago. Right now I'm still working on several projects. One of these projects involves adding true exercise sections for almost every single section. Another one involves moving sentences with grammar points not discussed yet to lessons later on. I've moved about 200+ examples out of the first twenty lessons. More examples that are truly at these levels have been added.

Accuracy, no one is perfect, but a native's opinion trumps that of the second language speaker. So, a few weeks ago I decided to join lang-8 and have the site properly proofread by lots of people. I've since gotten a few Japanese people to even join the site. So, there is now native support. This was the biggest fault of the site that has now been resolved for the most part. There are still 4 lessons that have not been proofread, but even they will be almost completely correct, as was the case for most of the lessons.

Benefits from this proofreading include the many optional ways to say things that you will see for lots of examples throughout the site. Sentences are often labeled with things like masculine, feminine, vulgar, old-fashioned, archaic, ちょっと不自然, 不自然, もっと自然, 改まった, dialectical, etc.

Over 600 errors were fixed. With a site of only 130 lessons, just the number alone can tell how much has changed for the better. There have also been over 200 notes that have been added thanks to extra studying into things that were left poorly explained and from the opinions of the natives, including my teacher at the university, that are reading the site.

My Japanese teacher is also going through slowly, but she is looking for things to elaborate on or make clear. Her help is going to become even more visible later on.

Another thing you'll notice is that there is a link system similar to that of Wikipedia. One problem people had last year was understanding all of the terminology. I've toned down a little bit on the usage, but now it is possible to find where something is first mentioned. I spent all day yesterday getting it back up, so I more than happy to add more as time goes on.

Another thing that's in the work is a Kanji curriculum. My site was originally not for the studying of grammar but the studying of Kanji. This, though, led to grammar as the farther you get in vocab, the farther you get in grammar.

Each lesson starting in Lesson 4 will have 15 characters prescribed to learn for that week. Although it will take some time to work out, my goal is to have sentences with those characters in it. There will always be reading aids for Kanji that have not been prescribed to that point. Even for words with Kanji that have already been prescribed, there will often be reading aids. I added tons the other day, and I will add more as I decided which Kanji go to each lesson. I've decided for 1~80, but there is still 90~149 to go. Then, I'll have to plan for the future. The hardest part will be transporting the lists to the lessons and implementing them. Although not up yet but hopefully to some degree by December, I want to have worksheets and specific information for these Kanji.

Thank you to those that gave me many of these ideas. There is still a lot of work to be done, but it's worth it. If I may have offended you a year ago, please forgive me. The site may never be the right thing for certain people, but I do strongly encourage that you at least look back and see the improvements.

これからもお互い頑張りましょう！

お読み頂きどうもありがとうございました。

P.S: I might decide making a Kanken Level 1 study thread here if any one is interested? I was thinking about maybe discussing 10 words a day.

I wish you all the best. You've got potential.
(I mentioned your site for the first time.)

Still too much unnecessary English. Example:
The particle を, pronounced as "o" by most speakers, is one of the most important particles in Japanese. You can't speak Japanese correctly without it! Thankfully this particle is not really hard!

Example sentences:
I think it would be better to use this layout:
'normal' Japanese (kanji + kana) - no furigana
spaced hiragana for all example sentences
English

No need to waste your time on exercises, what are they for?

There definitely needs to be more work of simplifying the English, but I do whatever can with the limited time I have. There are just as many projects for the site.

Script is a major contingency. I want to be able to go through at least 2500 Kanji for 1~130 and then use the rest of the lessons and those to come to etch closer to Kanken 1. My primary reason for this is self-benefit. A lot of people have plug-ins, and most people know how to use dictionaries. So, sometimes I've questioned altogether whether I should give reading aids at all. However, the reason I decided to get rid of the Kana lines for the lessons in replace of periodic reading aids is because it was really taking up so much space. And, it's hard to know where to draw the line. As for a Kana line spaced out, the problem I have with this is where to segment things off. Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean. If not, please elucidate with an example.

Also, the exercises are not pointless. It is a large site, and so there needs to be ways of checking people's comprehension. I'm not talking about changing the exercise sections at the end of lessons. I'm talking about getting rid of them altogether in replace of sections, primarily translation requests or particle drills, that end most subsections. This allows me to do review, and I can format some of the current examples into questions instead.

If it is ever going to be put into a book of any kind in the future, it is going to have something on those lines of comprehension testing. And, you also need something to get people to realize where they're at. I wouldn't want a student that can't use de or ni to save his life go on like that. If someone sucks at something, it should be apparent in their answers. Then, that's when a teacher, other user, or me can step and figure out what he/she needs to focus on.

Having been dealing beginners and intermediate students, I think that this is a much better stance than what I had a year ago.

Also, the intros can't be blank. That defeats the purpose of an intro. For some lessons it may just be a waste of two lines, but I at least want something there. I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can merge the title box with the next paragraph for most lessons. This would be good for lessons that are one topic, but not multiple topics.

Edit: Since you quoted something from Lesson 11, I decided to go back and tried to simplify it as much as possible while still saying what I think is important. I think it's better, and you're free to point out other sections that are verbose.

It really has improved a lot! You may find me using the classical Japanese section one day.

Now that is something that you will have to wait longer on. I try reading at least a page of Classical Japanese four times a week. So, I'm still getting more familiar with it. However, you will see more organization and development of the Classical Japanese section starting after my birthday in mid-November.

Some things I want to hopefully have accomplished by New Year's Day is, regardless of how many lessons are actually added, double the amount of examples and analysis sections. For sentences with things that have not been explained at all aside from a translation, that will be changed. Of course, there are some things that do have to be waited on because it is very very hard to actually find easy plain sentences with just what you're looking for.
I love sentences like 潮満ちぬ　when discussing the perfective auxiliary ぬ, but the fact is that such sentences are not near as common as full paragraph length sentences with it, and this ending is often in another base with another ending.

You can see how Classical Japanese can easily get out of hand. We only have what hasn't been burned. Not much literature was written in colloquial Japanese until the near end of the Kamakura Bakufu. I actually didn't know this until I started taking my Intro to Japan class. In fact, these colloquial writings coincided with the emergence of plays and the poetry that accompanied it. Of course this discussion was rather brief, but I do want to investigate the history of speech styles in relationship to status and region.

Dialects have always been apparent throughout Japanese literature, but questions I still wonder is how exactly different a resident of Mt. Hiei spoke versus a courtier in Kyoto and how differently both of them spoke than a commoner in Nara shortly after its decadence. Sadly literacy was nearly non-existent for people of commoner origin. However, there are exceptions. Nichiren, a strong believer of the Lotus Sutra was indeed from common origins who was a strong advocate of Kuukai's teaching of the Lotus Sutra, and his writings are close to how someone would talk of these origins.

So, I hope you do stay tuned. Also stay tuned to the implementation of the Kanji curriculum. That was one thing highly critiqued and justly so. I have been making a list of all major instances of non-Jouyou Kanji used throughout the site. The number is about 70. Some of these include characters like 嘘. Some are only used once in a word with readings provided. As one of the goals of the site is to allow people a better chance of seeing Ａ wide variety of Kanji to be able to take those higher tests of comprehension, I don't see anything wrong with using them. I'll even post the list after this.

The problem, though, that I'm fixing that I want people like you to understand is that for Kanji that have not been introduced to that point, there will always be readings provided. So, a student should not feel burdened of having to know a number of Kanji not assigned each lesson they go to. But, it is a good thing to have seen characters before you actually get to them. It happens all the time in classes at the university I go to.

Thanks. I really am trying to improve more. I hope to have an even better for you on October 16, 2013.

噛、俄、董、潅、蟄、或、箒、宏、牽、儘、鞘、晦、贔、屓、窪、雛、叉、揃、鎧、咳、蝶、輿、侭、溢、詫、濡、畦、阿、埃、釉、碗、鯉、噺、逢、馳、菅、嬉、梢、咥、銜、瞑、仇、嚆、嘗、沁、摑、掴、蝨、之、紐、繞、蘇、廻、於、秤、躓、篩、鴎、鷗、些、襷、罠、鮫、凭、罹、斯、魄、翔、駈、漱、嘗、噂、贅、綺、鋸