I found out today I will be leaving Sunday for Alaska! If anyone has any advice/creative study ideas I appreciate any suggestions. I will have no computer or internet!

As I review RTK here I might have to clear it and start over (?)........or probably just hack through a big review a month from now (over the course of a week or two perhaps)---I mean, I was doing well and box 4 is up to 1500! I like having a record of my reviews too...it's cool to see a cumulative count. And I like doing RTK here instead of anki. What are peoples experience with this? Will this create a virtually insurmountable review pile, with massive review waves? Is there anyway to suspend?

And what about anki? How does it work with the algorithms when you suspend? My deck is quite small (400 or so), so maybe I can just leave it be and hack it back down to size. I wish I had an ipod touch, but have to go without.

All of my anki sentences have audio, and are in my ipod, but the text is an English translation (due to audacity shutting down every time I type Japanese labels), and my beat up flickering screen sucks anyway... At least I will be able to listen to them, so I might not loose too much....I should be able to catch up on recognizing the readings with out too much trouble, and I will have the listening/shadowing down well.

I also have Pimsluers Advanced course, which I haven't done yet. This will be a hands free way to introduce some stuff, helpful for when I mine those words latter on I suppose.

I will be working for 4 weeks. The first week will be prepping the boat, so I will have some evening time to study. The other three weeks I will be out to sea, working 20+ hr days, be seriously sleep deprived, and probably not be able to have the ipod going.....sleep will be so precious.....so I'm not sure if I will be able to do much if any audio, or reading.....

As soon as I finish I plan to travel for a few weeks too, but will hopefully be buying a new laptop right away, and get back on things. At best internet access will still be inconsistent though, (camping and such) so I may not be able to catch back up as fast as I would like. At that point it will probably be damage control, and I won't be able to add stuff.

All my text books are library loans (I did all of RTK1 with a library copy), but I do own RTK3. Maybe I can do this, at least the story creating part. I had planned to do RTK3 slowly this summer anyway.......

I might be able to pick up a good text book to read about grammar and the like (key word is good). I have been reading "Japanese in Manga Land" which I really like, but probably need to return. Any suggestions?

So basically I have 3 days to come up with a strategy to limit the entropy I’m facing. You all are the best think tank in the [kana]日本語の勉強[/kana] game (my biased opinion of course), so I appreciate any suggestions.

"This thread will self destruct in 3 days..........."

Go buy an EEE 1000HE netbook. Transfer all your Anki and RTK data to it. Done.


My netbook = life.

Bring Heisig's physical book and review that way. 4 weeks is 50 kanji each day, so just start from the beginning and work through it all. Hit em all once in a month and I bet your "big review" when you get back will be very manageable.

Otherwise, just switch gears. Bring a Japanese novel and a notebook go crazy.

activeaero Wrote:Go buy an EEE 1000HE netbook. Transfer all your Anki and RTK data to it. Done.


My netbook = life.

Wouldn't a netbook be fairly incompatible with life on a ship?

I'm imagining 20 foot waves, a waterlogged deck, and a constant struggle between life and death, of course.

If you're planning on buying a laptop anyway, its probably a pretty good idea though. (Unless you will buy it from the money you earn, in which case you can't buy it beforehand?)

Definitely transfer your RtK stuff to Anki. That way you won't be reliant on an internet connection that is likely to be spotty at best.

I wouldn't bother going through RtK3 though. You will already have a huge backlog of reviews building up, you don't really want to be adding to that. Plus you won't be able to SRS any of the stuff from RtK 3 so a lot of the work you put into it might be wasted.

I agree that the best idea is to purchase a copy of RtK1 (you probably can't take your library copy) and use that to review when you're on the ship like welldone suggested. That should let you have a much easier time of it when you have to tackle your review pile.

Yeah...can't buy a laptop untill I get paid. RTK 1 Book is a good idea too. Come to think of it, I have all my stories with a drawn Kanji in notebooks....I can just use those.

2000 years worth of scribes in heaven just facepalmed. We are so hooked on computers now it's silly sometimes.

Edit: just in case that sounded attacking, I was talkin about me too. I was just as stumped as everybody else until I looked over and saw a stack of aging flashcards on the shelf.

Haha yeah it might actually be a GOOD thing, just to keep me on my toes and force me to be creative. Last night I definitely felt burnt out adding sentences to my SRS.

The biggest problem is the 3 weeks of 20 hr sleep dep. days....I will have to just practice speaking in Japanese as much as I can (0 input but better then nothing). I have to turn my sea madness into AJATT somehow.

Surely you can buy a really, really basic laptop for just a few tens of dollars? It doesn't need to be very swish to run Anki.

Sidenote - I've just spent a couple of weeks in hospital after a heart attack and subsequent cardiac bypass surgery. I had my laptop with me, and learned far more characters each day than I ever did at home. Very few other distractions.

You only have 400 cards so it doesn't really matter. Worst case scenario: All of them expire, so you will have to spend a whole 1-2 hours reviewing them. I'd say that's a problem so small it's not worth thinking about.

OMG! Glad you're ok. I'd be too afraid that studying would be stressful. Then again, I guess laying around in the hospital gets boring fast. My wife's gonna have a baby soon (we're counting contractions... probably not time yet) so I'll probably need to sneak in my reviews.

Tobberoth Wrote:You only have 400 cards so it doesn't really matter. Worst case scenario: All of them expire, so you will have to spend a whole 1-2 hours reviewing them. I'd say that's a problem so small it's not worth thinking about.

He says his deck is 400 cards, but he also says he has 1500 cards in box 4. So I guess he is reviewing RtK on this site, and has added sentences to Anki maybe. 1500 is a lot less trivial though.

EDIT:
Hope you're well now onafarm!
drivers99, congrats on the impending parenthood ;-)

Some serious dedication here - after cardiac bypass surgery and between contractions!

onafarm: That's a big life curve ball. I wish you a quick and comfortable recovery.
drivers99: how exciting! (gasp)
Taylor: wave to all the Alaskan members.

Onafarm - admire your dedication and spirit...puts things in perspective. I wish you good health and longevity!

I can't buy even a cheapo laptop, my last dime will probably be spent on dramamine and ginger. But I will be buying one imediatly after I get off the boat (in Oregon...no sales tax, yes!). Even if I had one I could only use it for the first week I'm there.....the next three will be all work with 2-4 hours for sleep. But I think the srs will be not too FUBAR, as it isn't too big to begin with. I suppose many of my RTK cards at koohi will pile, but some will be safely chillin' in a deeper box. It will be a little inconvienent but fixable.

drivers99- [kana]おめでとう[/kana]. Soon we may both be seriously sleep deprived!

Thora- Will do....I'm really excited, never been to AK!

みなさん-Thanks for the posts. I found out yesterday about this, so I think the sudden shock of a drastic change had me a little more worried than is realistic. I've had the good life when it comes to J studies for a few months. When I slack off for even one day I feel like I lose some ground on Japanese, so the thought of 3-4 weeks has me concerned. But I can get it back pretty fast I think.

Thanks to all for their good wishes regarding my health. I'm doing just fine. Will be back to my cross-country 30k races within the year!

TaylorSan, absent a laptop, I would join the previous poster who recommended you take your copy of RTK1, and of course your notebook.

Enjoy the trip!

Yeah. Take RtK1 and your notebook and calculate how many you need to review per day. That way the RtK reviews won't crush you when you get back. Then when you get back, you'll have a lot of reviews to crunch through, but hopefully you won't be failing many and all it should take is a day or two of hard work.

For your 400 sentences, just print those out and read through them once or twice.

For the kanji, well, you'll have a lot to review when you get back. I say, transfer them to Anki before you leave then review them on Anki when you come back. Reason being, Anki compensates for breaks in reviews. If you took an extra 4 weeks on cards you still answered correctly, the next scheduled time takes that into account. Unfortunately, RevTK's srs does not do that.

Good idea's Nukemarine. Anki deck ipod audio+printed sentences will work great.

Is there a way to move my RTK1 deck/stats and everything from here to anki, or do I have to start from the ground up? Not too thrilled about that option. It's too bad....I really like reviewing RTK here. I searched around to find an answer to this on another thread but only saw a post decribing it, but not telling how. I'm sure the answer somewhere, but times right now I don't have time to keep searching. I suppose I can post this q on anki's forum (looked there too already) if no one here knows/responds.....

Also....should I suspend my 400 deck? What does that do the deck stats?

Sorry to be asking anki q's here...just hoping someone can give me the info in this already established thread (I've spent too much time searching for other threads, and reading threads that turn into programmer jargon..aurgh!). I'm sure there's an easy solution.

Ok Thanks again to everyone here! Off to catch a plane.....be well one and all!

TaylorSan Wrote:Ok Thanks again to everyone here! Off to catch a plane.....be well one and all!

Good luck! Let us know how things went when you come back!