I changed my Vista language to Japanese and downloaded Japanese firefox today. Still not finished with my kanji... but I thought it would be a good step to take. Should at least force me to learn a few words of computer related vocabulary.

:: wishes a windows wide rikaichan existed ::

I have various Japanese decorations for my room (a fan, a couple of Momiji dolls, a book I can't read...), for motivation and as reminders, and have recently been listening to J-pop almost constantly. I'm not entirely convinced of the usefulness of this, except for accidentally learning words like 'てがみばくだん' (letter bomb) when you check to confirm that 'てがみ' is indeed 'letter' after hearing it and looking at the translated lyrics. Still, can't hurt (much).

Have been sticking post-it notes with Kanji I have trouble with on, and the occasional compound (what do you mean, do I really need 廷臣 right now?) to my door as well.

I want to switch my video games to Japanese eventually, but I think it's way too early for that to be efficient (still on Kanji stage, and know almost no Japanese), so am sticking to looking for ones with a Japanese voice track for now.

rich_f, that's the 'マ' in 魔道士, right? (nice choice ^_^) I picked that one up trying to use a Japanese item guide for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (am playing the game itself in English), so I guess that's kinda something else I'm doing...not that there's an English version available. >_<

I just offered my first born to the gods of kanji and prayed that this year I may finally get a grasp on the Devil's Language. Though my soul may teeter at the edge of heaven and hell, I swear that by the 12th of the 12th of 9th the 24th the Jouyou will be mine!!!!

Way back when I did Khatzumoto's idea of breaking movies and TV shows down into 3:30 segments and put on random. This didn't work to well for me, as I'd get interested in a segment and it went away.

Anyway, now I still break them down, but I have each episode as it's own album name, with about fourteen 3:30 segments under J-Drama Audio Genre. I put my iPod on album shuffle for J-Drama audio genre. With seven series (Galileo, Kisarazu Cat's Eye, Byakuyakou, Last Christmas, GTO, Hana Yori Dango, and Tiger and Dragon). That's almost 80 albums. Good results so far.

PS: I use the subs2srs program to break down the audio, though I now wish it had more robust labeling options (file name and file labels).

Ampharos64 Wrote:rich_f, that's the 'マ' in 魔道士, right? (nice choice ^_^) I picked that one up trying to use a Japanese item guide for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (am playing the game itself in English), so I guess that's kinda something else I'm doing...not that there's an English version available. >_<

Well, it's also the マ in 魔法, 魔女, 魔王, and a bunch of other fun words. I just liked the character at the time.

I haven't been playing much in the way of video games lately, unless Mahjong Police for the iPhone counts. It's a riichi mahjong game (in Japanese) for the iPhone. Great way to kill time, but it's also pretty brutal on the battery if you leave the sounds on. But it's all in Japanese, so it counts.

Nukemarine Wrote:Way back when I did Khatzumoto's idea of breaking movies and TV shows down into 3:30 segments and put on random. This didn't work to well for me, as I'd get interested in a segment and it went away.

Anyway, now I still break them down, but I have each episode as it's own album name, with about fourteen 3:30 segments under J-Drama Audio Genre. I put my iPod on album shuffle for J-Drama audio genre. With seven series (Galileo, Kisarazu Cat's Eye, Byakuyakou, Last Christmas, GTO, Hana Yori Dango, and Tiger and Dragon). That's almost 80 albums. Good results so far.

PS: I use the subs2srs program to break down the audio, though I now wish it had more robust labeling options (file name and file labels).

I've tried mining vocab from the tv scripts and putting them into iKnow. I've done it with one show. I took a long time. If I stop getting errors from the smartfm script I'll import them into Anki. I didn't mine the tv script directly so that I didn't get tired of the show too quickly.

I moved to Japan. I have forbidden myself from buying/renting english books or movies. My iPod has nothing but Jpop and Japanese podcasts on it. My PSP and DS only have Japanese games. When I bring stuff with me to work to do on my down time, it's always only Japanese manga or books. All the links on the quicklaunch bar of firefox are to Japanese websites. I changed Windows XP and all my necessary websites to their Japanese versions. All of my electronic devices are set to Japanese. My girlfriend is not only Japanese, but she practically doesn't speak a word of English. When I watch rented DVDs, I watch them with Japanese dub and Japanese subs. When I meet a Japanese person who speaks English, I try to speak to them in Japanese.

And yet despite all this, I still stray toward my unavoidable English influences: I have a lot of foreign friends who I speak English to. I chat with friends back home in English. I download and watch english TV shows to catch up with what's going on. I visit English language forums about learning Japanese instead of learning Japanese (no offense). My job is technically to teach English. An occasional English language podcast slips in. I use a Japanese-English dictionary far more than my Japanese-Japanese one. I read Watchmen in English (though it is the only printed English thing I've read in the last year). I read too much English news. I watch hard-subbed drama a lot because I can't find another alternative, and I end up tuning out the Japanese.

Can anyone suggest a way for me to be more disciplined about not doing so much in English? I'm going to buy a PS3 so I can play next gen games in Japanese, so maybe the better graphics will encourage me not to "cheat" on Japanese.

esgrove Wrote:I chat with friends back home in English.

This is fine. IMO Keeping in touch with people is far more valuable the small amount of progress you'll get in Japanese (assuming you aren't talking to English friends 10 hours a day of course)

Quote:I download and watch english TV shows to catch up with what's going on. I visit English language forums about learning Japanese instead of learning Japanese (no offense). I use a Japanese-English dictionary far more than my Japanese-Japanese one.

Cut english TV completely for a month. You'll stop caring about it. For websites, use Leechblock or edit your hosts file. Throw out your J-E dictionary.

Quote:I watch hard-subbed drama a lot because I can't find another alternative, and I end up tuning out the Japanese.

Tape/set up a piece of paper over the hard subs.


Don't be too hard on yourself, you're already doing great.

Dood go here:

http://www.d-addicts.com/forum/torrents.php

Half of the shows there aren't subbed and of the ones that are ..half are usually softsubbed so you can take it off.

And if you like anime (which you prolly do) go here. And ONLY download the anime that aren't hard subbed (which are most of them)

http://www.boxtorrents.com/

Its not hard to remove the english when it comes to media and music..there is a wealth of it.

well ive just started yesterday making my environment more japanese..
i put up my hiragana poster next to my new kanji study desk area.. i started making a kanji poster for myself with the kanji RTK-lessons separated by color..

my dad added TV japan to our tv service.. i try to watch every day..

i would have loved to have my kanji desk be a low table.. but ive got a bad back and sometimes need help getting up from the floor.. i did sit in my floor chair yesterday while i assembled some furniture.. hmmm but my dog got mad at me (he thinks the floor chair is his or something)

well i also have some japanese magazines and a couple of books in hiragana that are near me most of the time.. i dont have an mp3 player to listen to japanese music because mine got stolen on the bus.. stupid me didnt have backups of the japanese music on it..

i have a netflix account where i only order movies that are in japanese.. (movies and anime) im not fond of horror movies ever since my depression went away so now the selection of liveaction sucks on netflix.. why does it seem that only horror movies get imported!?.. i dont have money to buy movies and i cant download them to my computor because its got a tiny hard drive..

oh i love JRPG.. its a game that teaches the pronounciations of both the kana and kanji.. its very addictive.. however it wont work on vista.. i think it sort of counts since normally i would be playing a game only in english.. baby steps

I downloaded some new anime and some new J-drama's.

I don't mean to be a downer here... but what do you guys get out of going full-immersion (besides mad Japanese skills)?

I occasionally listen to Japanese news and podcasts to get my listening skills up, and if I want to read or watch something that was produced in Japan in Japanese, I read/watch it raw or with J-subtitles... But if something was meant to be experienced in English I watch it in English, and I have no desire to ruin the experience by overlaying a badly-made Japanese dub on top. And I certainly have no desire to cut out of my life the things I do everyday in English... I'm learning Japanese to add to my life, not replace it.

Am I the minority here?

It just depends on what your priorities and desires are. If you desire fluency in Japanese enough, then you'll do whatever it takes to achieve it--even cutting out as much of other languages as you can. If you're not that crazy about learning Japanese but are just doing it in spare time to enjoy native Japanese media, then you probably don't need to cut out English. It just depends on how much you want to learn Japanese.

igordesu Wrote:It just depends on what your priorities and desires are. If you desire fluency in Japanese enough, then you'll do whatever it takes to achieve it--even cutting out as much of other languages as you can. If you're not that crazy about learning Japanese but are just doing it in spare time to enjoy native Japanese media, then you probably don't need to cut out English. It just depends on how much you want to learn Japanese.

I do desire to speak Japanese fluently, as my teachers speak very little English. Within that aspect of my life I am crazy about learning Japanese (I'm spending hours each day studying... that is significant, no?). But cutting friends, family, and everyday activities out of my life in the name of Japanese seems crazy. Sure that might make me fluent in less than a year, but at what cost? I'd have lost all the friends, family, and relationships I've spent years developing... I don't know. If one of my friends in real life shut themselves up in an immersion cave and stopped communicating with the outside world except in Japanese, I'd tell them they need some serious psychiatric help. But here in internet land that seems to be the norm (or at least the ideal).

Whatever, I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll make this my last post.

mafried Wrote:I occasionally listen to Japanese news and podcasts to get my listening skills up, and if I want to read or watch something that was produced in Japan in Japanese, I read/watch it raw or with J-subtitles... But if something was meant to be experienced in English I watch it in English, and I have no desire to ruin the experience by overlaying a badly-made Japanese dub on top. And I certainly have no desire to cut out of my life the things I do everyday in English... I'm learning Japanese to add to my life, not replace it.

Am I the minority here?

No. It's been discussed a few times in other threads, there are people on both sides. I personally do a lot of active study and try to read something in Japanese often. I don't cut out English though and don't really think the extra passive input is worth discarding the English things I enjoy. I'm happy with the rate I've been learning and don't see my stand on this changing anytime soon.

igordesu Wrote:It just depends on what your priorities and desires are. If you desire fluency in Japanese enough, then you'll do whatever it takes to achieve it--even cutting out as much of other languages as you can. If you're not that crazy about learning Japanese but are just doing it in spare time to enjoy native Japanese media, then you probably don't need to cut out English. It just depends on how much you want to learn Japanese.

The thing is, you don't have to cut out every other language from your life just to get fluent in Japanese. Reaching fluency takes a really long time and it won't be overnight just because you didn't watch any English movies while studying.

Enjoying Japanese stuff is great, but enjoying English stuff isn't detrimental.

Yeah it is a choice if you want to cut out the english. Cutting out the english makes you work that much harder to find alternatives in japanese, the whole point is to expose yourself as much as possible to the language isn't it? The more you expose your self..the faster you get to your goal. Some see not cutting out the english a step in the opposite direction of learning japanese (sometimes i think that way). But in reality, i dont think so, i think that the more time you spend doing something english..the more time you spend away from japanese (ahem..browsing this site).

There is also people who say it is a waste of time exposing yourself to native material if you cant understand it. It is so true that you must expose yourself to this early as possible if you want to have no problems understanding it in the future. I know a lot of 1kyuu passers and when we watch movies in japanese even they still have trouble understanding the speed at which the subs and voices are going..i dont want to have issues like that after...6-8 years of studying (like they have). I see a VERY big difference between the one who has exposed themselves to lots of japanese media throughout their studies and the one who only experience japanese through a 教科書（text book).

p.s. as for what i did to make my environment more japanese...just bought FF13 trial version and Advent Children..happy happy times

mafried Wrote:Am I the minority here?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion so I don't think being a minority is a problem, even if you actually are, but I think there is a reason some people try hard to cut their native languages out as much as possible though.

Japanese and English, or any other European language, are pretty much like antipodes and it takes enormous amount of time for westerners to acquire Japanese. You might already know this but U.S. department of state have language programs for their diplomats and according to them it takes 2400 to 2760 hours for an average English speaking individual to get to the level where they can understand most Japanese materials and express most of what they want to say with a strong accent and some grammar errors. This is more than 3 times the hours required for some of the "easy" languages such as Spanish which they say takes only 720 hours to get to the same level.

Let's look at things from the perspective from the other side. If you go to any college in the states, you'll probably find tons of different sorts of Asian students. Some of them hang around mostly with the guys from their home countries and although they use English several hours a day in classes, and can read books and write reports on the topics they are studying, their spoken English typically have very strong accents and a lot of errors, and you can tell they have to try very hard to express themselves. And there is another kind who share rooms with American dudes, watch TV with them, go to the movies with them, etc, and after 4 years, they usually acquire quite natural spoken English.

I'm actually learning English (I'm Japanese), and have already spent something like 9000 hours, and I feel, or hope, I need another 3000 or so to get to the level I want. And in order to get that much hours, I really need to cut my Japanese time like guys here are doing with their languages. No Japanese TVs, No Japanese books, Trying to stay away from Japanese web sites (This is the tough one), I even read Manga translated in English. I don't think using your mother tongue for 30 min or an hour a day would hurt that much, but if you always hang out with guys from your country and use your native language for hours every day, the outcome will probably be like these Asian students' who mostly hang out with the people from their countries. Which is still pretty impressive though.

masaman Wrote:

mafried Wrote:Am I the minority here?

I'm actually learning English (I'm Japanese

Wow. You're really Japanese? I'm impressed. Your English is better than mine. I had to look up the word "antipode". If you're a Japanese person studying English, why are you on this forum? Was it an interest in kanji or English that brought you here?

I hope I can write as well as you after I've been studying for 9,000 hours.

9,000 hours... that's all? You come off as an extremely well educated individual. I assumed you were a native English speaker until you mentioned it. (And I had to look up "antipode" too, lol).

I'm curious too, how did you find this forum? Do you apply AJATT to learning English? If so, how did that work for you?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm just really curious. I hope that I can be that good at Japanese at the 9,000 mark...


EDIT: cracky, Tobberoth, saizen, masaman: thank you for the thoughtful words. I'm glad I'm not crazy, and I'm better understanding the other side of the argument as well.

esgrove Wrote:

masaman Wrote:

mafried Wrote:Am I the minority here?

I'm actually learning English (I'm Japanese

Wow. You're really Japanese? I'm impressed. Your English is better than mine. I had to look up the word "antipode". If you're a Japanese person studying English, why are you on this forum? Was it an interest in kanji or English that brought you here?

I hope I can write as well as you after I've been studying for 9,000 hours.

Thanks! I'm flattered. I stole that word from 'Alice in wonderland', a little old fashioned now a days, but I read it anyway as I thought 'hey, it's a classic.'.

I had never lived abroad, outside of Japan that is, until I was 18 and I've never even had education in English besides some ESL (English for second language) classes, and I'm a slacker, so no. You will not be like me. You'll be better

As for why I'm here, I know, why am I here? mmm. Somebody posted a link to this site on a Japanese forum for English learners, and since then, I've been lurking here. I guess I respect the people here for tackling Japanese as I know how hard it is to study a language that is completely different from your own, and I find a lot of information here is actually useful for me too. Anki is a great software for instance.

mafried Wrote:9,000 hours... that's all? You come off as an extremely well educated individual. I assumed you were a native English speaker until you mentioned it. (And I had to look up "antipode" too, lol).

I'm curious too, how did you find this forum? Do you apply AJATT to learning English? If so, how did that work for you?

Sorry for all the questions. I'm just really curious. I hope that I can be that good at Japanese at the 9,000 mark...

Hey, it took me a lot of work to accumulate that 9000!!

Seriously though, I guess I basically agree with AJATT. I used to be one of these typical Japanese guys who spoke somewhat OK (pretty good for a Japanese) "Engrish". Then I just read and listened a lot of things. 200 magazines (150 were mountain bike related, not very difficult ones) and thousands of e-mails, 700 hours of TV, meetings and classes (IT related), and I started to understand local papers no problem. After that, I spent 2-3 hours a day reading magazines and writing e-mails, watching TV, lurking in English forums, etc. for probably 4 years or so, and here I am.

I can't say much about learning Kanji as I don't even remember how I learned them, and to be honest, some of you write Kanji better than I do, but I do believe immersing in (pseudo) native environment is the key to acquiring natural language abilities.

masaman Wrote:I can't say much about learning Kanji as I don't even remember how I learned them, and to be honest, some of you write Kanji better than I do, but I do believe immersing in (pseudo) native environment is the key to acquiring natural language abilities.

Your posts of confirmation of the "system" restore my faith and bring tears (of joy) to my eyes. Thanks for sharing your experiences and opinions.

I really think you all will be better than I am if you spend 9000 hours. I really am a slacker and my major in collage was drinking and partying.

I'm good at partying though

masaman Wrote:As for why I'm here, I know, why am I here? mmm. Somebody posted a link to this site on a Japanese forum for English learners, and since then, I've been lurking here.

Can I ask what forum that is? I've looked for language learning forums in Japanese before, but I couldn't really find much.