A while back, I wrote an article on how to teach yourself to understand Japanese (TV) news to basically 100% comprehension. Essentially a “how I did it and how you can, too”. A young, virile, extremely good-looking man named James followed that advice. This is his story, in his own words.

Understanding the News

This article is about how I learnt to understand the news. I started by listening to the Yomiuri News podcast and the Nihon Keizai Shinbun Podcast when ever I had a moment’s spare time. At first I understood close to nothing, maybe the odd word or two. However the more I listened the more I understood. As a result I now have the confidence that I will understand it all first time. What was particularly helpful was the reading TBS or Fuji News Network articles in the morning and then listening to news podcasts later in the day. Generally they all report the same news so having that initial knowledge about a story helped astronomically in boosting my understanding. What I also did was read articles/editorials/anything news-related and if there was a word phrase I didn’t understand I would simply copy and paste into Mnemosyne/Khatzumemo. This to me is the definition of sentence mining. Harvesting any sentence that you would like to be able to say or want to understand. This is really a simple process but is essential to get the large amount of names of people/places/crimes/boats/buildings/etc. into your SRS and thus into your brain. I didn’t actually read many ‘newspapers’ as such but I read editorials and articles from online sources (much easier for SRS entry) and since these are practically the same as newspaper articles you will be able to understand real newspapers.

My typical day in the ‘news’ phase would be: get up read listen to news online whilst having breakfast. Walk to uni whilst listening to News podcasts. If the lecture was boring, I would listen to news podcasts and try to write out what was said (or the headline) on the notes in front of me. Any free time during my day where I was alone, I read news articles online or listened to news podcasts. A lot of the time I would just walk around listening to news on my iPod and mimicking (albeit very quietly) the news reader. I tended to mix my focus on news with other Japanese studies such as books, magazines, Youtube videos — pretty much anything that was in Japanese. The best thing about this was following a news story for weeks and seeing how it developed over time.

One thing I struggled with was understanding the headlines of news articles. Often they rely on Japanese people’s knowledge of kanji to decipher the meaning or simply are just words with no particles in between them. As you learn more and more Japanese you will understand the incredible flexibility of Chinese characters and hence will become able to, as the Japanese do, to grasp the meaning simply from seeing the characters in the Headline. To this end, knowledge of ALL 2000 odd characters is essential as they ALL appear in news no matter what internet forums/idiots may say about the lesser-used ones.

As Khatzumoto has recommended previously, using the FNN Video News (http://www.fnn-news.com/) would be a good place to start as the videos’ text is in the corresponding article on the main page. If you loop the video the same news articles repeat — thus giving you reinforcement of the content. I combined this with podcast listening.

In my opinion the most important thing for the learner of Japanese is knowing all the general-use kanji. Everything stems from this. I can concretely say that if I had not done Heisig, I would have quit Japanese years ago. Anyone who has done the Heisig method will tell you it works perfectly and it is 100% worth doing. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of knowing ALL the kanji in general use; they are the foundation of Japanese and will provide a helicopter to the top of the mountain that is Japanese whilst everyone else falls by the wayside.

He’s right about the kanji, you know…

Nations of the world, lift up your heads! For KhatzuMemo has been updated. These are the new features:

• Edit Item Fix
  My webhost recently upgraded to a newer version of PHP, and so some of the code involved with page transitions had to be updated. You may have noticed that you were enable to edit items from a question or answer page. That has now been fixed.
• Item Warning
  By design, an SRS shows you items on which your performance is weaker, more frequently. But sometimes your performance on an item is so bad, that it’s actually just wasting your time; this usually happens when you’ve added an item that is too long, too complex, or not well thought out enough (remember that an SRS is not a substitute for learning or memory techniques, it’ll help you to not forget, but only if you’ve gotten — remembered — the item in the first place). Such items are called “leeches” in SuperMemo terminology. In KhatzuMemo you now get a warning about them, and some suggestions as to what to do [delete or rethink].
• Number of Repetitions/Retention Calculation
  …is now more accurate than it was before; it’s now calculated directly rather than indirectly.
• Repetition History
  This is a behind-the-scenes thing that won’t really come to light until more detailed item statistics are being displayed, but, the repetition history is now being kept to a higher accuracy (date and time) than it was previously (date only).
• Swap Question/Answer
  This is just a little feature that lets you switch the question/answer fields without going through the trouble of going to the Edit page. Note that it is an editing feature rather than a display feature. I’m not so sure about adding it, so if it turns out to be less than useful I may scrap it .
• Longer, thicker, harder! 30% Less Fat!
• Et cetera!

For reference purposes, let’s discuss how one would learn kanji (meaning and writing only) using an SRS.

It’s quite simple, really. The question section (the front of the “SRS electronic flash card”) contains the keyword (core meaning) of the kanji and the mnemonic story that links the structural components of the character to the keyword — and also pictures, if desired. The answer section (the back of the card) contains the kanji itself. For example:

[QUESTION/FRONT]
DEMENTIA
a SICKNESS that makes you mentally DODGY
You could also add pictures here: of course, ensure they do not contain the actual kanji or any of its components.

[ANSWER/BACK]
癡

So, when you (1) see the front of the card, your job is to (2) reproduce the kanji from memory and (3) compare your answer to the answer on the card, after which you (4) score your performance accordingly. Let’s answer some common queries and/or objections to this idea right here and now.

1. Do you need to go the other way (kanji to keyword)? Dr. Heisig would say “no” and I would tend to agree with the sensei.
2. Isn’t it cheating to give the mnemonic story in the question? Not really, because you still have to reproduce the entire kanji from memory. I think Heisig actually suggests that you do, in the book where he gives a sample flashcard…but that might be wishful memory [confirmation, anyone?]. Anyway, I recommend you do it.
3. What about readings? You learn those later, in the context of sentences. It’s easier that way.
4. Are you sure? Yes.
5. What’s with these stories? Why am I memorizing stupid stories? It’s called a mnemonic device, it’s the basis of virtually all human active-memory techniques and so-called “tricks”. And one way or another, producing kanji from memory, indeed language itself, is a memory trick. The kanji stories will eventually fall away quite naturally, like a scaffolding, leaving only the kanji.
6. Are you sure about the readings? If you love readings so much, why don’t you marry them! If you want, you could include maybe one reading in the question section to “get yourself familiar” with it, but, there’s really no need other than that, as I see it right now. Just focus on the kanji. Readings come later, seriously. Just do it now. You’ll thank me later.
7. Should I continue reviewing kanji after, like, finishing RTK? Definitely. Yes. Big yes.

As always, anyone with useful tips and advice, please feel free to share.

You know, one of the things we take for granted is knowing what websites to visit. When you’re trying to immerse yourself in a language, you may not know where to go on the internets for good stuff to read. Well, here I am to save the day again, with more website recommendations.

• A friend of a friend (actually, he’s totally just plain “friend” now, and he says I’m his favorite ) runs this blog that’s tangentially related to his graphic design business. Mostly it’s just about cool-looking stuff he sees and people he meets in daily life. It’s got lots of photos, which helps as a learner because it boths keeps your attention and clues you in to what’s being discussed.
• Goo appear to have launched a new lyrics search service. Mercifully, it’s text-based. None of that Flash nonsense that people have been trying to force on us for a while. Effen Flash, riding roughshod on my lyric-reading attempts.
• Watching Japanese dubs of movies and TV shows you’ve previously seen in another language, or any audiovisual materials that are from a culture with which you are already deeply familiar, is a great learning tool. And so is reading about them. At Goo, you can read film synopses, like this one of The Rock (1996) — “You want me to stick this into my heart?”. You can find more such things using Google Japan. Run a query like [(荒筋 OR あらすじ OR 粗筋) (name of the film in Japanese or original language) 映画]. It’ll get you even meatier explanations of the plot, such as this one.
• Luce e ombra (light and darkness?), by a Japanese person living in Italy. The author, Kanako, has visited this site, so you already know she’s cool. Subject matter is art and personal experiences.
• Ikeda Nobuo writes cool books about economics. And also a runs a blog about it so you can read it for free .
• This blog is all about the musings of a private home tutor. He mainly discusses 国語 (Japanese language) education (for Japanese kids, of course).
• Another blog by someone in the education industry (why do I have so many of these?). This time by a mathematics teacher.
• JSTAGE — The Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic. You can find lots of academic papers here (with a focus on physical science/engineering/computer science) for free. The papers are primarily in Japanese.

That’s all for now. More later .

So, I was sitting at the train station, about to go to the starting point of one of my epic walks, listening to my meager collection of Cantonese hip-hop which consisted (consists?) entirely of the few LMF songs I was able to scrape together. But I was really enjoying it, and realizing that I understood a lot of the words, like 開開心心(hōihōisāmsām)、唔該(mhgōi ) and cetera. And it struck me that rap was “nothing but” words attached to music. I thought of making and recording my own Cantonese raps, but then that seemed like too much trouble, and I wouldn’t want to get creative yet, for fear of picking up bad habits. Then I realized that I have Cantonese words — audio made for Mandarin- and Japanese-speaking learners of Cantonese. And I have music — lyricless electronica from the likes of The Prodigy, The Crystal Method, The Daft Punk and The Soundtrack to Ikebukuro West Gate Park. Why not, eh, how do you say, combine them? So I did . Now I have more Cantonese “rap”. And I have a way to get me to listen to those useful but by themselves rather bland language-learning audio tracks. So, I’m pretty 開開心心(hōihōisāmsām) about it. Just to give you an idea of what I made, here are some 30-second samples of my simple sound-mashing.

• [sample] 香港広東語会話 feat. Gustav Holst – 早晨+木星
• [sample] 香港広東語会話 feat. Mussorgsky – これは何+Promenade.mp3
• [sample] 基礎廣東話 feat. Daft Punk – 簡單問句+Aerodynamic.mp3
• [sample] 基礎廣東話 feat. Mr. Oizo – 約會+Flat Beat.mp3
• [sample] 基礎廣東話 feat. The Prodigy – 簡單答句+The Way It Is.mp3

I used the program Cool Edit Pro to do it. I’m sure there are free programs out there that can do the job for you. If you’re reading this and you know of such an app or apps, feel free to let the rest of us know. Also, if anyone knows good Cantonese music of any genre, feel free to share. 唔該(mhgōi ).