I don't want to be confused for trying to represent Thora or anyone else here, these are my own critics of AJATT that try to kind of bundle together longstanding flaws of AJATT and what can be done to salvage the good parts of AJATT (if it's possible at all, with the way Khatz is)

Pedagogical:
His posts are often way more unfocused than they need to be

He writes much more about himself and spends too much of his text fleshing out his 'character' instead of focusing on the learner, who he also, for the sake of humour, talks about as though it's this lost soul who needs to find its way. Coupled with how he writes otherwise, this is part of what creates the 'guru' image that Khatz has repeatedly said he doesn't want.

He has a terrible tendency to use exaggerations in every which way that makes him very hard to understand sometimes (traditional teaching is just shit, all my critics think I think I'm a half-god or something, things along those lines). It's supposed to add humour and it does sometimes but his constant abuse of it makes it mostly tiresome and confusing by now, IMO.

From what I've seen, Khatz never reminds/warns his readers that for a lot of them, Japanese isn't going to change that much and they should seriously think about if there's something more important they should focus on and if Japanese should be allowed to get in the way of their social relations. This is the biggest flaw I find with the site and, I think, highly irresponsible considering the following that has formed. If I've missed something like this in the sea of text on the site, I apologize.

Many of the posts don't really add anything new but only drone on about points made long ago. The best thing to do at this point, for the sake of the readers anyway, would probably be to reorganize everything that's been written and make it more coherent, make the site work better with summaries etc. and declare that the site is complete and let it BE. It doesn't have to keep continuing. Just look at Antimoon for example; it gives the same kind of advice in a much more coherent manner and the creator never had this need to write endlessly about the same things over and over. There is a lot of good things on AJATT and I think its finalization is long overdue

Marketing:
The advertisements that are on the site are in the way and distracting when you're reading through everything, they're way too much in your face, I especially dislike that counter he's added.

He recommends the "Japanese in Mangaland", which I've never bought but I've had a look at them and they're just terrible. They are total crap. I can't imagine he's actually read them himself.

The "sentence pack", "japanese story book" and the "work.jp" are all stuff for suckers because anyone could find similar material but of equal or better quality and for free easily on the 'Net and they don't seem to fit very well with the advice on AJATT in general about using advice from different places etc etc. It just seems to be for people who are unable to let go of AJATT and find learning material on their own, I don't see the point of any of these "products", honestly.

I haven't seen anything about updates to the one-time payment products like the QRG, sentence pack etc. It's hard to think that there weren't any needed improvements or corrections at all in any of them.

Khatz does link to a lot of other people's sites etc. and says that much of what he writes is derived from their works... I think it would be reasonable for him to say that people should consider donating to people other than him, especially because he keeps saying that he isn't using the money for much good anyway.

Looking at what's written under AJATT Plus on why it has a subscription fee... "Forumwise, it acts as a conveniently simple barrier to people less intelligent than you, who would otherwise waste your time and flava." This is just bullshit, no matter how much irony, sarcasm or anything it's supposed to convey, this is bullshit and I despise the attitude that's behind it.Similarly, the "why wouldn't you want this?" parts of the posts for silver spoon and AJATT Plus are just a bunch of strawman arguments and well I think Khatz just uses a lot of cheap tricks in his marketing.

Skip this paragraph, Tzadeck already said it
(The Silver Spoon thing never guarantees what amount of effort will be put into the thing from the 'teaching' side (presumably just Khatz). Is he doing it as a full-time job? How many minutes of Khatz's time will each member get every day? It wouldn't perhaps be that you never have any actual direct contact, just a lot of automated things that are supposed to keep you going, with very little of any needs-specific consultation? It all seems very fishy and Khatz isn't explaining very well what you are really buying.)

"detailed instructions on specific words and word types to learn in the context of SRSing MCDs (a new SRS technique that’s even better than sentences)" Really? Are you serious? This is just classical "WE have SPECIAL information that you can only get from us!" This is the 2011 WWW, stuff like that just shouldn't be allowed to work anymore...

Bottom line is: Khatz must have already said all of the things he thinks are really important, it's been five years since the oldest post. Instead of trying to heap on more information it would be best for AJATT if he just put time into doing a final edit of everything that's been done so far and turned the site into a complete work.

Edit: Thanks for linking the video where Khatz is talking, fakewookie. I'm not going to get into any details or anything because I frankly don't care about what others think about Khatz's Japanese skills, but for me, it really shows that Khatz was grossly exaggerating his ability, just like he exaggerates everything.

(This whole post got kind of long but at least now I've said everything I'd ever want to say about AJATT so that's Done. I hope this post is worth reading to someone. I'll now happily ignore AJATT and all discussion related to it for the rest of my life, I won't be writing more in this thread as I have nothing to add)

Last edited by Surreal (2011 August 01, 4:22 am)

Omoishinji wrote:

If there is a desire not to uses a service then that is okay. It is hard to understand anyone complaining about paying $1000 to learn Japanese, when to study Japanese in Japan is much more expense than that in one year. Some course are over $1000 in one month. There is no need to spread misinformation. Also, a more accurate depiction of AJATT services is required. As it is the only honest thing to do.

Ummm well if it was me I would rather put that $1000 towards studying Japanese in Japan with Japanese people in real world context, rather than sitting in front of my laptop in my bedroom learning Japanese from dramas and what not by myself.

You can quite easily find plenty of resources to immerse yourself in Japanese for FREE or for a small cost.

Edit: The advertisment really reminds me of those dodgy sites that appear in google searches that look legit but when you click on them just go on and on forever repeating the same stuff with lame photos of people who have supposedly gained 10kg of 'PURE' muscle in 6 weeks or shed 30 kgs in 1 month or whatever it is that they are trying to convince you to buy.

Last edited by SendaiDan (2011 August 01, 4:19 am)

しかし、母は私にインターネットの未知の人を信頼しないと警告しました ・・・・

Pay him the 2 dollars per day, order, whatever he orders you to order, get your books he tells you to get, your .mp3 files, the access to Japan via Proxy, get your MP3 Players, Console games, Consoles, he tells you to buy, it is your money after all. And you want to waste it to learn Japanese! You will be fluent in as little as 47433514.356155 seconds! This will be only 595 days from now, fluent, say it out loud, run out on the street and tell your neighbours, FLUENT in 18 months in Japanese!

When it works, because you are smart, willing to throw out money, from which you could as well have bought new cloths, a spoke wheel for a Mercedes, the food for your dog or hamster for a lifetime, a trip to Maui or wherever else you wish to go, a new TV set and other goods, you should also consider doing these things.

Name your Japanese children after him
Name your dog after him
Say your prayer everyday and thank him
Pay him extra money for what he offers
And always trust him, because he is Khatz.

And if that's not enough for you, think how many hours you've been saved, from only doing what you been told to do. If it doesn't work, and the 18 months are over - by which time you hopefully forgot that you spent money for learning Japanese, you will have learned something still.

The method is not as important, as the people who are helping you out - without asking for your money. Welcome to t3h wandaful コーヒー forum, where everybody knows your name, and their always glad you cahahame. *I hope you can hear the intro of Cheers, if not, please visit this website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-mi0r0L … re=related to listen to it - while you are reading Japanish Japanese lyrics for this very song http://www.lyricsfreak.com/g/gary+portn … 32055.html

And if you are willing to give away money, sorry Original poster, give it to me. I'm ten times more trustworthy than anyone in a diameter of a meter around myself. So please give me your money, i will waste it like there is no tomorrow. And if you didn't find my non-existing product that takes you to bankruptcy in as little as 10 days, forget about getting your money back, I'm not the Salvation Army.

The motivation his site delivers and the ideas he provides are like a raw diamond. You can cut it, and soon you will rock as well, and you will be able to sell your own spoon. I wish him luck to find enough people who have the money. ;-)

Last edited by Nagareboshi (2011 August 01, 5:59 am)

@mezbup

On the one had I agree with you. When I first started researching how to study, AJATT was one of the first things I found and it was very very motivating. But on the other  I eventually found a lot of the specific advice he gives to actually be pretty bad, he throws out a lot of curve balls among the good stuff, advice that distracted me from what really mattered when I was first getting started. If I hadn't read his website first, I may well have come across other sources offering generally much better advice.

Nothing's wrong with making money, as long as there's money to make.
Some people rob banks, and some people teach how to rob banks.
Everyone needs their daily bread, a bowl of rice, I mean.

mezbup wrote:

Khatz gave good solid advice back when I needed it most. On my one of my very first days of learning Japanese when I decided the crappy little Japanese phrasebook I'd bought from the bookstore was not the way to go.

You guys can rag on him all you want but at the end of the day, I followed his advice and it worked. Hard.

Though I will say I don't agree with the silverspoon thing. And $150 a month for it would make you not just insane but clinically insane. Seriously, everything you need to know is written right there on his blog. It doesn't matter if you don't like his humour (I enjoyed it), what matters is you glean the information on the basic "AJATT" principle.

I know he's kinda douchey but I'm glad he was there for me when I needed him. Nuff said.

98% agreed (disagree with "hard" as I'm not as awesome as you mezbup- I also disagree with douchey- but I quit reading AJATT a couple years ago)

sesshomaru wrote:

This has to be the most ridiculous, yet massively entertaining thread I've read in some time.

Because that's not the point of it at all.  Even before AJJAT went commercial we saw this "concern" over the clearly tongue in cheek promises of fluency in 18 months based on what he was able to achieve for himself.....supposedly   :-). 


The phony hysteria here is what makes is 'anti marketing' so effective and at times quite funny.

@sesshomaru

Phony hysteria? I'm not sure what you mean, but that would be a poetic response to phony services offered with phony anti-marketing.

And yes, we've always freely offered advice to counter the sort of mentality that encourages frauds in general, where anecdotal claims over the Internet are used to validate someone as a pedagogical authority figure whose advice is uncritically promulgated wholesale.

Last edited by nest0r (2011 August 01, 10:49 am)

IceCream wrote:

it doesn't really come off like AJATT thinks the people who are buying silverspoon are idiots. It does come off like you think that though.

IceCream, I added "[Not refundable for 18 months]" to make it clear that I wasn't thinking only about price. What prompted this thread was his decision to sell unlimited subscriptions with deferred refunds today. Hence my repeated focus on the bizarre new "no refund for 18 months" in both posts.   So my "idiot" comment was meant more related to the overall reason I posted - the changed terms and his marketing of it - and not just price.

So, yes, of course I don't think it's smart to pay $1000 to a guy on the internet which will be kept for 18 months even if you quit after the first month. Do you? I wouldn't expect any regular buyer to agree to those terms.

People know what they're buying, and they obviously think it's worth the price, otherwise they wouldn't buy it.

Or...markets have information assymetries and had the purchasers had  perfect information they might never have bought it.  (at least per econ101) haha.  But sharing information about AJATT seems so difficult...

As I mentioned, fairness of the price wasn't my main concern, but I'll respond to this.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how many wish to purchase it for $1000/refundable after 18 mos (previously $500/refundable any time).

I don't think people are quite sure about the content and quality. They've asked for more info and bloggers are reviewing. Bloggers play an important role in that sense, but unfortunately, as beginners, they have a relatively limited perspective,  might be influenced by some of AJATT's dodgy ideas, and the famed results will take 18 months.   AJATT has posted some glowing testimonials (as Nest0r points out) and tries to diffuse negative comments with its tired "reclaim the criticism" marketing gimmick. (btw, this gimmick also helps foster the juvenile Us vs Haters thing.) If the descriptions I've seen are accurate, Silverspoon isn't much.

Some aren't fussed about what it is or how much it costs because they want to thank a blogger for his past efforts. (Lovely gesture, but it screws up our little price analysis.) ;-)  Will such desire to show appreciation also compel people to hand over $1000 for 18 months, I wonder?  d-o-n-a-t-i-o-n

Some think it's worth the price based on the aggressively promoted fluency guarantee. "That just shows how convinced he is of AJATT's effectiveness." But that guarantee is meaningless.  Oh well, we still have a reading list divided into daily reminders. It could be sold as one document - a reading list for $1000 or $2000? So, perhaps most of the perceived value is in fact in the canned daily motivators that remain. Hard to say.

Whatever the perceived value is, Silverspoon is not comparable to other complete learning programs. The price comparisons being made here between Silverspoon and other ways to study Japanese  mostly echo bizarre pricing arguments made in the Silverspoon advertisement.

"My only comfort is that the youngsters (who I fear might be more likely to fall for this   wannabe internet huckster) probably won't have the money. (Then again, it was adults who purchased pet insurance before the most recent End of the World...)"

Thank you Thora.

I appreciate the common sense commentary about Silverspoon.  My two weak points when it comes to being marketed are my dog and Japanese and I've been a legal adult for many years now.  I study Japanese on and off, mostly it's off.  For a second, the Silverspoon idea seemed tempting and then I remembered that I had done my own version of AJATT with no help from  Khatz and made tons of progress in a few months.  Small problem, I have a life which includes a job where people count on me to be 100% there for them, as well as family and friends who matter to me and who are not doing AJATT.

A number of people have asked why anyone cares if Khatz takes advantage of people as long as you yourself are not falling for his scam.  People on this forum and in the community of people who are trying to learn Japanese do care about each other.  His marketing methods are designed to put the buyer in a  nervous, vulnerable state, by limiting the number of spaces and using the timed countdown.  No one likes to "lose" an opportunity. A legitimate service gives the buyer an opportunity to cancel within a given period with a full refund.  Legitimate sites often offer a  number of weeks of free service to allow the buyer to make an informed, rational decision. 

Thank you Thora et al. for helping to activate my frontal lobe so what I could say no to Khatz.
Peace

jasdev wrote:

There is a precedent for this. Anyone here heard of Robert Toru Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame? A Florida real estate millionaire by the name of John T Reed has an extremely thorough debunking of everything Kiyosaki. Now, if you search in Google for Rich Dad Poor Dad, his page comes up fifth! And Kiyosaki is definitely someone who has made a lot of money off regular people by selling them snake oil, so if someone genuinely believes Khatzumoto is up to the same thing, there's nothing to stop them making a site!

I've read Rich Dad Poor Dad and used the advice in it to further my finances.
Unlike most of Kiyosaki's disciples, I've read many of the references used for Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as the references of those references. I've condensed all of it into "Save 20-30% of your paycheck as soon as you get it, reduce debt, keep a rainy-day savings account, and invest the rest into an index fund."

I generally have two approaches to these kinds of things:
-Read everything. Read the criticism, read the references, the criticism of the references, etc. Choose a path that actually has worked for someone and follow it through; only change it when you are absolutely sure that it does not work and you are changing to something that has also been proven to work.
-Ignore the decisions of others when it has no bearing on your own path.

kainzero wrote:

jasdev wrote:

There is a precedent for this. Anyone here heard of Robert Toru Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame? A Florida real estate millionaire by the name of John T Reed has an extremely thorough debunking of everything Kiyosaki. Now, if you search in Google for Rich Dad Poor Dad, his page comes up fifth! And Kiyosaki is definitely someone who has made a lot of money off regular people by selling them snake oil, so if someone genuinely believes Khatzumoto is up to the same thing, there's nothing to stop them making a site!

I've read Rich Dad Poor Dad and used the advice in it to further my finances.
Unlike most of Kiyosaki's disciples, I've read many of the references used for Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as the references of those references. I've condensed all of it into "Save 20-30% of your paycheck as soon as you get it, reduce debt, keep a rainy-day savings account, and invest the rest into an index fund."

I generally have two approaches to these kinds of things:
-Read everything. Read the criticism, read the references, the criticism of the references, etc. Choose a path that actually has worked for someone and follow it through; only change it when you are absolutely sure that it does not work and you are changing to something that has also been proven to work.
-Ignore the decisions of others when it has no bearing on your own path.

Common sense advice! I'll take this over (somewhat) angry ranting.

kainzero wrote:

jasdev wrote:

There is a precedent for this. Anyone here heard of Robert Toru Kiyosaki, of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame? A Florida real estate millionaire by the name of John T Reed has an extremely thorough debunking of everything Kiyosaki. Now, if you search in Google for Rich Dad Poor Dad, his page comes up fifth! And Kiyosaki is definitely someone who has made a lot of money off regular people by selling them snake oil, so if someone genuinely believes Khatzumoto is up to the same thing, there's nothing to stop them making a site!

I've read Rich Dad Poor Dad and used the advice in it to further my finances.
Unlike most of Kiyosaki's disciples, I've read many of the references used for Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as the references of those references. I've condensed all of it into "Save 20-30% of your paycheck as soon as you get it, reduce debt, keep a rainy-day savings account, and invest the rest into an index fund."

I generally have two approaches to these kinds of things:
-Read everything. Read the criticism, read the references, the criticism of the references, etc. Choose a path that actually has worked for someone and follow it through; only change it when you are absolutely sure that it does not work and you are changing to something that has also been proven to work.
-Ignore the decisions of others when it has no bearing on your own path.

This is decent advice, with the caveat: Don't use a single person as your constant launch point/reference point. View them as part of a democracy of valid sources, which you will discover even if they are your initial launch point, if you exercise the critical thought we've advised that you're echoing here. Just because they have a website and sales patter, you don't need to place them at the top of a resource hierarchy.

Also, whether someone claims over the Internet that they got rich quick, etc., using their special patented methods is irrelevant. Even if you verify they're successful, it's doubtful you can verify they did what they're recommending or anything remotely close to it, to achieve their success or something resembling the success they claim to have. Your own logic and application and a myriad of sources will bring you closer to your goals. Lastly, there's no need to uphold a single path as one you rarely veer from. There are a multiplicity of superior paths and core components that you may assemble and customize using the metacognitive skills that in particular will atrophy if you constantly seek out the spoonfeeding route and attack those who aren't uncritically accepting of a specific persona you've chosen to follow.

Last edited by nest0r (2011 August 01, 1:51 pm)

Most good advice is actually common sense (as in something that has already been thoroughly explored and repeated), but people still don't do it — that includes advice related to money, health, losing weight, time management, relationships, habits, learning, and so on. A huge number of people who aren't happy with their situation actually do the opposite of what they should do to get the results they want, almost like they're insane, or stupid, or whatever. It seems like many of them don't want to accept reality: they want to eat 10,000 calories a day of the lowest-quality foods and stay thin; they want to use methods that never worked for anyone and end up mastering a complex foreign language in a few months; they want to waste all their money and end up with more money to waste... they want to paint something black and having it turning into white, metaphorically speaking.

In the end, I don't know what to think of this AJATT SilverSpoon; being positive, maybe it's something khatzumoto's experimenting to see if he can make other people really commit to apply the "common-sense" things he advocates, using money as a sort of motivational tool, and after 18 months check if what he thinks it's possible really is. I think it's better to wait and see — things rarely end up happening in the real world the way we thought in our minds; if they did, no business or relationships would ever fail, software wouldn't have bugs, and Thomas Edison would have made a working light bulb in the first try instead of after thousands...

If his method doesn't work, those who've waited for 18 months will get their refund, and we'll be hearing from them. I think this refund policy is ingenious; this way, people will have to think long-term, and the desired thing would be that only committed people apply (if that doesn't happen, oh well). After paying, they will have to choose between doing what's being proposed, or waiting and doing nothing (therefore ending up with no results). Eighteen months will pass anyway, so it's better to do what's being said and really see what happens, isn't it? At least that's what his policy leads me to assume, as IceCream said. Also it's not like learning a language like Japanese happens magically, otherwise there would be no Americans who can only speak one language (as in that joke) — so we can assume they probably wouldn't learn the language otherwise, just like the majority of people don't.

Last edited by gdaxeman (2011 August 01, 3:23 pm)