hey guys i just got back from Tokyo this past week (what an awesome trip that was ^_^ as always) anyways i started going through the Genki 1 book while i was there and i am about 1 chapter away from finishing right now. (yeh i had a lot of time on my hands...) anyways just recently i'm trying the whole Anki thing out for the 1st time and i am just in awe of the results i am having... i am remembering all kinds of random words out of my head that i know i could NEVER learn studying my old way of writing things 20-30 times and just hopeing they stick after that. i just wanted to tell the people that have never truely tried anki to give it a shot even for a week and i'm sure you will never use a different way of studying again... i really understand how the AJATT guy became fluent so fast now... i am remembering not only the words but the kanji they are composed of too ^_^... i'm planning on putting all the vocabulary in the back of the Genki 1 book in Anki when i get finished studying the last chapter (they have kanji for all of the vocab. in the back index which is really nice) i might throw sentences in with all the grammar examples too to help them stick... anyways i just wanted to rant for a while on how much i love Anki ^_^

in other news, i got a new Japanese Verb book called Japanese Verbs: Saying what you mean by Tim R. Matheson... i've skimmed through it and it looks really great, it uses kanji in all of its example sentences and it's perfect for sentence mining... you guys might want to check it out yourselfs ^_^