A lot of material I study comes from Japanese video games, and I thought I might as well study live in case it helps anybody else wanting to learn. I've started a channel on twitch.tv, and I'd like to make broadcasting a regular thing if people enjoy it. I'm going to go live now, and if you plan on tuning in again, we can talk about convenient times to broadcast.

My goals for this channel are:

1) To get people interested in Japanese
2) To help Japanese learners by answering their questions
3) To learn from viewers who know things I don't (which is each and every one of you)

Whether I'm playing Japanese games and making flashcards, or studying and editing those flashcards, I invite you to join me and ask questions whenever you'd like some clarification, and I'll do my best to answer them. This seems to be the best way to meet you where you are in your progress, as I don't want to lecture needlessly if you already understand a lot of Japanese, nor do I want to ignore the brave soul just starting his or her Japanese journey, so I'll simply do my thing until a question arises. The format may change later, but this seems like a decent way to start.

This question is bound to come up, but as a rule, I don't share my flashcard collection as a whole, because it's a continuing work in progress, and it contains many mistakes that I need to fix before I'm comfortable sharing it. I'm always correcting mistakes that I come across in my studies, so I ask your patience in waiting for the day I feel my collection to be ready for public release. In the meantime, as I make flashcards during broadcasts, I'll export that day's cards to my public Dropbox folder (accessible from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g30xg8s54wsz2...ZWaDa?dl=0) in case you wish to study them.

Finally, a little about me. I started learning Japanese in the summer of 2004, and it turned out to be one of the few pursuits I've enjoyed enough not to give up on. I've been working as a Japanese language interpreter in the automotive industry since May 2012, but it's been my long-time dream to work in the video game industry, and that's one of the reasons I've kept studying Japanese all these years. I expect that there are many people on Twitch.tv with that same goal, so for those considering a similar path, I hope this channel can help you and me both in getting there!

Here's the link:

http://www.twitch.tv/mantixero

Love,
mantixero <3

I didn't catch this live but was interested in checking out the VoDs, sadly it seems Twitch's new polices have butchered your audio. If this is going to be a regular thing you might have to record your streams yourself and upload them somewhere else or maybe consider moving over to hitbox.tv?

I think you might be talking about the video where they muted the audio because I was playing copyrighted music in the background. I left the one video that still retained unmuted audio (maybe due to the obscurity of the songs?), and it sounded fine to me, but if the audio still isn't up to par, I'm open to suggestions on how to improve it.

I watched a VoD from yesterday and from a viewers perspective there wasn't much point watching. Explain what you're doing, what are the sentences about, talk more!

Helltrixz Wrote:I watched a VoD from yesterday and from a viewers perspective there wasn't much point watching. Explain what you're doing, what are the sentences about, talk more!

Your feedback has been duly noted. At first, I thought I would only speak at length if there was a question, but since the live feed had 0 viewers, I guess I shouldn't expect many questions and I might as well talk out loud and explain what I'm thinking and doing, right? I'll try that in this next video today, and you can tell me how it went.

Edit:

The VoD from this morning's study session is up:

http://www.twitch.tv/mantixero/b/561443877

and I've uploaded the cards from that session here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g30xg8s54wsz2....apkg?dl=0

One thing I forgot about is that my webcam is displayed in the upper left corner of the stream, which blocked out some of the card formatting information and web urls that I was trying to show, so for the next video I'm going to try moving it to the upper right corner. Hopefully I'll find a good place for it soon. Thanks for your patience!

Yeah exactly, thinking out loud with low volume background music would be a good start in my opinion.

I've never watched someone study a language on twitch before, so I'm not sure what to think. I and the majority of twitch viewers switch between actively watching a stream and just having it alt+tabbed in background as a kind of radio/podcast. So... try and see how it goes, you're really targeting a niche audience here.

Is there a tried and true source of background music that won't get flagged as copyright infringement and therefore muted? I'd hate to record a whole episode only to have no audio because a song got flagged.

Edit:
I'll think more about the music thing. If you're multitasking while you watch twitch anyway, I'd rather let you play your own soundtrack while you watch the broadcast.

I just tried another broadcast, but the video must have gotten interrupted, because I ended up with about a dozen videos of different lengths, none of them being much more than 4 minutes. Maybe because it's Sunday night, the servers are getting hammered?

mantixen Wrote:Edit:
I'll think more about the music thing. If you're multitasking while you watch twitch anyway, I'd rather let you play your own soundtrack while you watch the broadcast.

This. When I do watch twitch streams, I often won't stick around long on a channel with music playing (which is most of them, it seems), because then I can't play my own music. I guess there's something of a culture among twitch viewers to tune into a channel for their music selection, but it doesn't work for me.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:When I do watch twitch streams, I often won't stick around long on a channel with music playing (which is most of them, it seems), because then I can't play my own music. I guess there's something of a culture among twitch viewers to tune into a channel for their music selection, but it doesn't work for me.

I'm in agreement with you here. Even if the music doesn't get flagged as copyright infringing, I don't want to have to worry about whether viewers like the music I'm playing or not. I'd hate to ruin a potentially productive session just because there are some tracks that someone can't stand.

By the way, I recorded yesterday evening's study session for YouTube since trying to stream gave me so many problems. I'll try to stream again tonight, but I'll record it offline for later upload to YouTube just in case. Here's last night's session:

http://youtu.be/bi08lUlNbXI

Twitch.tv is working again, yay! I successfully streamed a new video and uploaded a recording of it to YouTube. Here are those two links, including the link to the exported Anki cards from the video:

http://www.twitch.tv/mantixero/b/561907571
http://youtu.be/5OXdKxufl-E
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3051...40825.apkg


Make that two videos successfully streamed and uploaded!

http://www.twitch.tv/mantixero/b/561973002
http://youtu.be/hme-unMJ1e0

I hope these are helping someone.

[ファブリス]

When I recorded my Hearthstone games to watch later I found it quite convenient to use Twitch.

As of today, remember to turn the VODs you want to keep into highlights, otherwise they will only last for a week or so.

mantixen Wrote:I hope these are helping someone.

Thanks for making these - I for one have found them very useful.

Your use of the Japanese definition in particular was an eye-opener for me. I had always assumed people put that on the back of the card.

And I heartily approve of your use of weird kanji as I do that too. I only do recognition cards, so the weird kanji act like a halfway-house cloze deletion.

Do you study kanji separately? Your anki decks were briefly shown in one of the vids but I couldn't really make out what was going on with that. Looked like you had the Core6k in there unfinished?

ファブリス Wrote:As of today, remember to turn the VODs you want to keep into highlights, otherwise they will only last for a week or so.

Thanks for the tip. I'll turn some of them into highlights after work today.

anotherjohn Wrote:Do you study kanji separately? Your anki decks were briefly shown in one of the vids but I couldn't really make out what was going on with that. Looked like you had the Core6k in there unfinished?

First of all, thanks for your positive feedback. Although my YouTube account was mysteriously terminated yesterday (maybe because I used a PS2 emulator?), I intend to continue making videos on Twitch.tv, so be sure to subscribe there since I don't feel right continually posting to this thread every time I make a new video. At present, my goal is to stream every night at 6pm EST (GMT -5:00), and possibly before that time on evenings where time allows, for at least an hour. That will start tonight (in approx. 9.5 hours). I hope viewers can make the experience more interactive and interesting by posting questions in the chat room during the stream.

To answer your questions, I do study kanji separately in a deck called Heisig_plus, although I've let that deck slide as I've been keeping up with reviews and working through decks (currently, the Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar, and Core6000). The Heisig deck gives the kanji definition in Japanese and most common readings on the front, and I write the kanji on an erasable board called a Boogie Board, then show the answer, which shows the kanji with stroke order information and example words, as well as my Heisig story (although my primitives may have totally different meanings compared to Heisig's). I can showcase some of my other decks on Twitch.tv sometime if you'd like.

Yes, I'm going through the DIJG and Core6000, which may seem odd for someone who passed N1 in Dec. 2011. Fact is, I barely passed, and I want to make awesome decks for other people to use, and the only way to ensure quality is to study them myself. I hope to get through Core6000 and DIJG by the end of the year, and then complete the DAJG and Heisig_plus decks next year, all the while continuing to make flashcards from video games on Twitch.tv for others and my future self to use.

Just an update on my channel. I wasn't a 三日坊主(みっかぼうず) for this one, and I've been broadcasting every weeknight at 6pm EDT (GMT -5) since the last time I posted. There have been some improvements to the channel during that period, including:

1) Display of new followers during the stream, as well as a pop-up notification for new followers.
2) No music, and more talking!
3) Giving viewers points (called mantiyen) that they accumulate and spend in order to participate and influence the channel as a thank-you for their time. The current payout is 1 mantiyen for every 10 minutes watching the stream.
4) Holding drawings where viewers can spend their mantiyen to pick my character's costume or have their name displayed on my offline image. I plan to allow voting with points to choose the next game I play, and drawings for picking my shirt color or naming characters if the next game allows for it. If anyone has any other ideas for point usage, please let me know. I want to involve the viewers as much as possible, and prioritize viewers who actually watch regularly (by using the point system).
5) Addition of info panes with my 30-day Anki stats, my YouTube channel, and Twitter page.
6) Last but not least, actually having viewers to interact with! This is completely thanks to my viewers. The fact that people show up day after day to watch and interact means more to my channel than any of the other changes, in my opinion. Come join the fun!

Just like the high caliber people on this forum, my viewers so far have been very conscientious and helpful. I know there's a lot more people like that here, and I hope you guys can join too now that my channel seems to be here to stay. There are people with higher levels of Japanese than me here that I'm sure would be able to give me tips and improve the quality of answers given during the stream. Any level of Japanese is okay. Just ask questions about things you don't understand, and I along with my viewers will do our best to answer them.

The link, again, is:

http://twitch.tv/mantixero

See you there!

Fantastic stuff man! I checked out your stream earlier and really enjoyed it. Apart from the questionable ゆさゆさおっぱい. I replied to your message on twitch, and yeah, I think we can work something out. I'll try and get as many students that I teach as possible to watch your stream

よろしくお願いします！