AJATT SilverSpoon Blogger Tanoshimini

Well I have been looking at this blog Tanoshimini by Matt. He has been posting about the things he is doing with AJATT SilverSpoon which I am so jealous that he is participating in. He has been posting about two specific techniques - Copycat and Shadowing which he did in the very beginning while setting up his Japanese environment as well as starting kanji. I have been going a little crazy thinking what to do while I get enough kanji to start reading to be able to sentence mine. Now I have an idea. I am still trying to get caught up with my reviews, but with my new 5 minute session limit on Anki I am able to stay motivated to do some everyday. I don't know when I am going to get caught up, but I will eventually.

Extensive Reading

So I just wanted to mention that I recently discovered extensive reading. Through an AJATT tweet I found Liana's Extensive Reading Blog which lead me to Culture Quirk's Video. I am only just starting to find out about it, but it seems like just what I need to be doing. I just need some super easy level one books. Luckily in the area are some lovely japanese bookstores and libraries!

Anki Changes

So I have made a little change to the way that I study my kanji in Anki that has made a huge difference in the level of boredom. I have been playing with timeboxing. I know that I read all bout it on AJATT long ago but I ignored it. I thought 30 minutes is a really short amount of time to review hundreds of kanji. It appears that it was too long. Khatzumoto was right. Smaller chunks are better. I have changed my session limit from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Now I am finding that I am running out of time long before I am bored with the process and then I am just irritated enough that I didn't get to finish that I want to go back and study more. I have gone from 0 reviews a day to at least 15. I feel really good about that even though it is just a baby step. I am entertaining the idea of an even shorter time like 2 or 3 minutes, but maybe I'll wait until I feel bored with everything again. I am not studying new kanji yet and am holding steady at 395, but my number or reviews due is getting smaller bit by bit. Yay! I just need to spend some time reading somehow so that I am seeing the kanji more frequently so they stay in my brain.

Kids World

I rented a Kids World disk from HQ Video for Miss S who will be attending a Japanese immersion school this fall along with　たまごっち　she really enjoyed them both even though she doesn't understand a single word of what they are saying aside from はい. I have to confess that I felt really pissed off that I couldn't understand these shows that are made for little kids. However it is great to have Japanese playing that is appropriate for little eyes and ears and maybe I'll be able to learn from it too.

Playing With LingQ

Today even though I have about 300 Cards to review I have been playing with LingQ. I added the little avatar to mt side bar just for fun.

So, Seriously. . .

Well the kids over at Kanji & Tea are posting which always reminds me that I need to post. . . and study kanji. Watching Dramas over and over again isn't all that helpful. Though I may just have a decent fake Japanese accent. Plus my deadline is approaching pretty quickly. My daughter was accepted into a Japanese school so she will be learning Japanese starting this fall. I would love to be able to stay a little bit ahead of her at least through kindergarten. The key will be getting past the 300 kanji I have done so far. In order to do that I have to unbury my RTK from beneath my sewing.

災

Ok, so thanks to Heisig "災" is one of the few kanji  I recognize easily. Unfortunately Japan has had a huge 災. There is fire and water just like the kanji. I am seeing it over and over again on the blogs and many tweets on twitter. I have been watching NHK on Ustream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-gtv. I am lucky and grateful that I was able to hear from my "little sis" Yuki in Tokyo and know that she and her family and her husbands family are all safe. Also there are 4 of Miss S's classmates at preschool who have family in Japan and all are safe. I have 4 "siblings" in Japan I haven't heard from. They are probably fine since they live in Tokyo, but I wish I I knew for sure. I have so few of my Japanese posts to read these past 2 days I hope that all of the bloggers and their families are safe as well. Positive vibes for Japan.

Immersion Day with a friend

Well I have a friend who is also trying to learn Japanese and we had a great day on Saturday. We spent  the whole day shopping in Japanese stores and hearing いらっしゃいませ over and over again. There is something comforting about hearing that phrase. I really like it. I like it almost as much as おかえり. Anyway we started the day at Mitsuwa and HQ Video. I bought ホタルノヒカリ２。I rented ホタルノヒカリ Disk 1. I love my HQ Video Card. 2 hours of immersion fun for $1. It was fun but sort of awful because there were so many movies and I only had a little money and I had to save some money for lunch. At the grocery store I bought a grape juice drink and it was yummy. We had lunch at Shojin. I ordered a delicious spicy ramen. Then we went to Bookoff and I bought a back issue of Sakura magazine for $3.

I have no idea what day this is.

ok. So being a mom and doing kanji are not that great of a match. I am not having any trouble doing my reps, I can do those while the baby is napping and while the older one is playing at the park. I am having trouble with the finding 5 minutes to sit down, get out my RTK and learning any new Kanji. That book is just too big to carry around everywhere I go. My diaper bag already weighs a ton. Anyway I did 100 cards on Anki today and I am still a bit behind, but I am sure I will get caught up again by tomorrow.

Smart.fm is no more :(

I was using smart.fm to work on my kana and it was working really well for me I think, but now the tool is going to pay only. Since I have only been using it for kana I cannot really justify paying for the new service. I just have to decide if I should put them into Anki or not. I know that it is sort of silly to only find this out now, but it just came time to do my reviews.

You can read more about it over on Tofugu:
http://www.tofugu.com/2011/01/26/smartfm-closing-down/