Yeah…no.

Here’s some reading to help you calm the heck down and stay off the resolution bandwagon:

• Potheads, Planners and Players | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/9aRfCL
• Automated Discipline: How To Stay On Track All The Time | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time http://j.mp/9iWIaw
• Making Yourself Happy
  

  “New Year’s Resolutions are behaviorally unsound. In order to keep doing something, we need periodic reinforcement, like recognition or reward. That is lacking with New Year’s Resolutions. Usually New Year’s Resolutions are too grandiose, like: I’m going to get myself fit this year. Or, I’m going to finish my MBA this year. Too much for most of us.In setting goals, you can be happy if the goal is doable — something, that is within your power to accomplish in a relatively short period of time. It is like playing tennis with someone close to your skill.”

  j.mp/h5Z3RO

• ‘One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way’ by Robert Maurer j.mp/sxynqf
• “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy j.mp/tllC6a

January
Stop Trying Hard. Try Easy.
“In the long run, (in)convenience almost always triumphs over the human will. Don’t master your will. Don’t become a better person. Master convenience….change what it is that’s convenient to do and/or not do.”

February
Don’t Plan Your Day, Plan Your Environment
“the only Japanese that really matters is the Japanese you’ve done in the past few minutes…The only Japanese that can help you is the Japanese you’re doing right now. ”

March
The Fun Algorithm
“Boredom is pain. Pain makes you stupid. Stop getting hurt. Start getting addicted. Experiment. Reject. Accept.”

April
Max Out The Cause Card: The Omnipotence of Precursors
“You can’t fully control when exactly you’ll become awesome at Japanese…not in an immediate, satisfying way. But you can control how much and how often you expose yourself to Japanese. That’s more than enough. You can’t control the results, but you can control the things that produce the results.”

May
When To Start Getting Used To Japanese
“The longer a thing takes to do, the sooner it must be started on.”

June
Top 10 Japanese Documentary Shows I Have Loved: 1991~2011
“爆笑問題のニッポンの教養 (Bakushoumondai’s Education for the Nation): One hour, one thought leader (usually a Nobel-level college professor), one field of expertise, two comedians taking the mickey. Pretty sweet.”

July
How To Enjoy Movies You Don’t Understand, Like A Kid
“Observe. It’s like you’re an ethnographer, method actor and stalker-voyeur. All rolled into one. Linguist? Not so much, actually . ”

August
Don’t Compare, Don’t Despair
“The…only…people in the world you should ever compare yourself to: (1) Yourself in the past. (2) Yourself in the future.”

September
Not Nothing
“two wrongs don’t make a right, but two halves make a whole”

October
The AJATT 7-Step Victory Formula
“Have no good intentions whatsoever. Just pick a good direction. No intentions.”

November
Luxurious Worries, Or: So Effing What If You Sound Like An Anime?!
“Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

December
Do “Wide Standards” Apply To Immersion?: High Achievement Despite Low=Wide Standards
“it’s not “no English“, it’s…”no convenient English“. It’s not “no English”, it’s “no unaccompanied English””.

“Silverspoon has done more to get me learning Japanese again than anything else I have tried in the last 8 years and honestly works a lot better than any of the classes I took in high school or college.”

tokyostyle (Current SilverSpooner):

“…people paying for SS don’t consider it a significant amount of money. I pay 200yen a day for it. I guess maybe I could enjoy an extra Aquarias every day or even most of a HUB happy hour cocktail … but ultimately I don’t miss the money. The current price is 500yen a day. How is this a significant amount of money?

What I wish I had back is the $2500 I spent on one semester of tuition to learn a few hundred kanji, a few grammar points, and some vocab. I’m still pretty bitter about that.”

mark95427 (AJATTier):

I’m certain I would never have gained my current proficiency in Japanese without Khatz’s [free] ideas.

アーロン (Current SilverSpooner):

“…I love Silver Spoon like a fat kid loves cake. I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to enhance my mental faculties, while at the same time retarding my social skills by essentially making me into a hermit.”

tokyostyle (Current SilverSpooner):

“you get exactly what it says there in the “What You Do Get” section.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“What’s particularly amazing about SilverSpoon is that it’s all bottled up and packaged for you. You just buy it, un-wrap it, and eat! You don’t have to worry about if you are doing the write or wrong thing or if you decrypted Khatz’s cryptic blog posts correctly.”

Danchan (AJATT Plus Sempai Member):

“…the reason many people fail at learning a foreign language is because they have never really learned about how to take on any kind of large project and see it through, thanks in part to the passiveness fostered by modern schooling…

…I studied Japanese for many years, including a year of exchange, but it wasn’t until I found AJATT and really carried out Khatz’s advice as best I could that I really became fluent. This is only my experience. Everybody is different. But nobody, certainly not Khatz, is claiming that his way is the -only- way. But it is -a- way (and a damn site better than what is typically offered to people setting out to learn a foreign language).”

Zyaga (Current SilverSpooner):

“Too many times I have lost focus, pushed myself too hard, or just simply slacked off. With the SilverSpoon program, I actually let Khatz do the worrying for me. I trust his judgment, but I also can see exactly where he is coming from and why he tells us to do the things he does.”

Aubergine (AJATT Plus Member):

“…when Khatz releases products like SS it’s in response to demand. Notice how SS came a short while after a post about “what was my daily routine”. People have been asking and asking and asking for specifics and for so long he’s resisted giving specifics. Finally he relented, some people just want the external motivation. I think paying for SS helps provide motivation, too. No-one likes to waste money. It’s easy to ignore free advice, but advice you need to pay for is more likely to be implemented. Especially when it comes every day.”

Jeremy (Prospective Spooner):

“I think there’s a real need for something that is a simple unstructured structure. ”

ケイちゃん (Current SilverSpooner, First Gen):

“I just want to let you know that I’m loving SS and I’m very grateful to you for making this available. I love the way I’m progressing–I love the results I’m getting. Even though I’ll admit that I haven’t picked up a book in awhile, yesterday I was blown away by being able to read a few sentences of the subs that came up during one of my favorite shows while they were up on screen.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“With SilverSpoon, it builds your Japanese slowly and steadily until you reach fluency. Don’t expect some 「miracle」 to occur, after 1 day, or even 2 weeks of Silverspoon. Yes, I might come off as rude and sorry if it offends you but it’s the truth. But I can tell you one thing, if you keep at it, you will surely reach your destination…”

Aubergine (again!):

“For the price, it’s good value”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“I just tried Decremental Timeboxing and I love it. It makes doing [reps] a lot easier. I can take out a…chunk of my [reps] and take a break…with Decremental Timeboxing, I get more…done and don’t feel bad about taking a break.”

E Dub Kendo (AJATTier Extraordinaire):

“…a course at your local community college, a boring course where you’d probably learn the kana, a handful of words, and a bunch of useless grammar, such a course would cost you MULTIPLE TIMES what SilverSpooners are paying Khatz for this new service. The biggest difference, though, Khatz has GUARANTEED you fluency. I can guarantee you just as assuredly that after two semesters of college Japanese you will NOT be fluent. Not even close. I took 3 years of Japanese at uni and I learned more in two months of AJATT than during all that time.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“SilverSpoon has already helped me immensely and I’ve lived in Japan for five years now and speak Japanese every day…Yet I’ve never been able to get into a pattern where my Japanese level was steadily improving until now. I’ve never been able to get into a pattern where my Japanese level was steadily improving until now.”

Cranks (AJATTier)

“…my consistent enjoyment of [AJATT.com] has given me some of the best ideas I’ve ever had.”

sesshomaru (AJATTier, former skeptic)

“I don’t see much difference between Khatz and Heisig in promoting unorthodox methods that yield results.”

Matt (Current SilverSpooner):

“Sentences are retaining in my head much better, despite me not trying to memorise…anything. All I do are the reps and it slowly sticks into my mind. I really do encourage everyone to try MCD’s…”

lisbet (Current SilverSpooner):

“[Khatz has] got the best grasp of language pedagogy I think I’ve ever seen.”

Not everyone is a good fit for SilverSpoon and not everybody can get it in. Find out if you qualify for a place:

SilverSpoon: Structure Without Stricture.

Do you like DDR?

Yes?

Okay, great. I have good news for you.

You’re going to play DDR. I’m going to help you be really good at DDR.

Here, get on the machine.

Let's play!

You can even pick the song. And the difficulty. It doesn’t matter. Just pick something.

Okay, good. Now you’re playing DDR. You’re having fun, right? Because you like DDR?

Now… don’t stop for five hours.

You want to get good at this, right? Well, to do that you should play a lot. More effort = more betterness, right? I can see you’re in pain. That’s good. Just push through that pain.

What’s that? You’re tired? Too bad. This is  important. You should play DDR.

What? You don’t like DDR anymore? You’re quitting? You don’t want to play DDR ever again?

I think I’ve lost track of what I was trying to say, so let’s just hear from AJATT+ member アンソニー:

I freaking love DDR. I love dancing to the music in DDR, much like I love the content of my srs. If I were to force myself to without variation, play DDR for 5 hours every day, I would grow to hate DDR, despite the fact that the content of the game is really fun. I would also be physically exhausted, and unable to have fun playing DDR under those conditions, just as having high daily expectations of srsing everyday would mentally exhaust me, even though the contents of my srs deck is fun.

Oh, right! Thanks アンソニー. Learning Japanese should be like playing DDR, or whatever your addiction of choice is. If you force yourself to do it, for hours and hours, you’re going to hate it. But if you do it whenever you feel like it, and you quit when you want to, you’ll not only love life more, but you’ll see more improvement. Because you’ll keep going back to the game.

Trying too hard = pain = burn out = no improvement.

Treating Japanese like your favorite video game = fun = keep doing it = becoming awesome.

Always keep the Japanese going (I wish there was a catchy way to say that… like AKTJG or something… hmm, maybe it’ll come to me later), but don’t always be exerting effort. Don’t make your SRS own your whole day, or even more than an hour. Don’t do the same stuff. Give yourself variety.

Just, please…. don’t make video games a chore.

Original post here.

Where's your timer?

I have another AJATT+ post to share with you.

Are you time boxing?

Have you read Khatz’s timeboxing “trilogy”?

If you haven’t read it — or tried timeboxing for realz yet — perhaps you’ve wondered if it actually works?

ファイズーhas tried it, and is alarmed at the results:

I haven’t read any timeboxing books or anything like that, just caught the gist of it from Khatz’s posts.  Every time I try it I get freaked out because it works so well.  It feels unnatural.  Like… life isn’t supposed to work like this.  Wasted time has always been a part of me!

Here’s a link to the original post where our favorite sempais chime in with their thoughts about timeboxing:

TripleJ:

I’m getting more and more into timeboxing. I just did a altenating set of 15min SRS, 15 off, 15 SRS, 15 off, 15 SRS and it was super easy. Before I was doing 30 minute sets but this seems better, shorter sets might be even better.

ファイズー:

What I’ve found most helpful is doing “just 5 minutes” on those tasks that I never want to start in a million years.  I’m always thinking, “This task is going to take foreeeever, it’s annoying, and I don’t even want to look at it today.”  But I usually can submit to doing something distasteful for 5 minutes… and when I do I realize the task isn’t as bad as I thought and within that 5 minutes I’ll get some ideas about how to move forward.

あんど:

I absolutely adore timeboxing. Some stuff I do would never get done without it. I’ve often found that, for myself, the shorter the timebox, the better …

Finally, the very lovely rigabamboo:

I work more efficiently because I want to feel like I’ve accomplished something in each box. … I also have more productivity because each time I switch to a new task is like taking a pseudo-break. So I’m constantly working, but it feels like I’m giving myself a break when I switch to another task for a brief, refreshing 4 minute period.

Timeboxing is scary stuff.

Frighteningly efficient.

Try it in time for Halloween.

ぞくぞくするぞ!

Just to let you know that SilverSpoon BigBoi: The SilverSpoon for Post-RTKers, will be launched on September the 1th. Um…there’ll be a special pre-launch thingy for AJATT+ darlings and people who’ve shown their undying loyalty to AJATT by previously purchasing quality products ¹ at the AJATT Store.

These True Believers in the One True Way of AJATT (AJATT+/AJATT Store customers) will get the chance to join BigBoi before the official launch, in “Round 0″, that is to say:

1. At lower prices than everyone else in the entire world
2. Free from worry about headcount limits and narrow time windows
3. With a coupla freebies to boot.

Such is the reward of the meek and faithful.

Good gosh.

On a serious note, I’m really excited about having a post-RTK SilverSpoon, actually. I was initially ambivalent about splitting off a SilverSpoon variant — AJATT.com is already confusing enough as it is! But the more I thought about it and mapped it out, the more I realized how sweet it would be. At a purely personal level, it’s great to have a chance to work with people who are so smart and demonstrably self-motivated, and I’m really flattered that there are those of you out there who would choose to use SilverSpoon.

More importantly, there are phenomena like:

• the (in)famous post-RTK sophomore slump — the one where people run through RTK like a champ and then proceed to totally fall off the wagon — and
• the (in)famous intermediate slump – the one where people fall off the wagon because they can’t feel themselves moving forward even though they actually are — Leonard’s Mastery plateaux spring to mind)
• the (in)famous never-ending monolingual transition — the one where people never quite get themselves to really turn Japanese and start using Japanese to learn itself

And it’s precisely these treacherous interim(?) waters — where many a Japanese dreamboat has sunk unnecessarily ² — that SilverSpoon will safely navigate you through. If you make it in, that is , given that time and numbers are limited.

SilverSpoon: Structure Without Stricture. It’s here. It’s real. It’s happening. I like starting sentences with “it’s”, and I look forward to seeing you.

So we were hanging out at the park with all the hot women and their kids, and there’s this one kid who’s telling the story of what happened at school to his Mum, “the computers were all gatagatagata” but she keeps correcting his grammar so that he’s stuck at the same stage in the story…

The kid’s grandmother is also there and starts speaking a weird Japanese dialect, maybe Akita-ben, but it sounds way too weird (I’m hearing not looking), and suddenly it dawns on me that his grandmother is speaking Russian and is incredibly Russian-looking. It also turns out that the kid’s Mum is Russian, correcting her half-Japanese kid’s Japanese.

And then, I kid you not, there were these technicians who happened to be fixing power lines at the time (scheduled maintenance), and they’re in the park as well, sitting on a big workmat, waiting for things to stabilize. For no apparent reason one of the techs gets up and starts jumping up and down, and his colleagues ask him what he’s on and he goes: “Well, I was bored and I can’t really stand, so I figured I’d jump”…

So anyway, much mirth and hilarity was had in our little town.

‘Coz that price? ¹ Is never going back down.

Due to popular demand, I, in my…my magnanimity, my boundless graciousness, using my unequaled copy-and-paste skills, have added an option for you, my public, to receive AJATT posts by email. Now you can, like…not bother with RSS and all that jazz.

You’re welcome .

PS: I haven’t tested it yet, so let me know whether or not it actually works! Hehe.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal”

Pablo Picasso

“I guess that makes me well ‘ard then, innit bruv?”

Khatzumoto

Remember back in the day when there used to be an AJATT consulting service? Well it’s back again, but in a different form, and just as a tentative thing. I decided to steal one of my favorite bloggers’ ideas and try it out. ‘Cause, that’s just the gangsta thing to do.

So, yeah, I am auctioning a one-time, 60-minute audio/video consulting session with me. You can use it however you want, to talk about whatever you want. You can even record it and put it up on your blog if you like. You’re the man now, dawg.

So whether it’s setting up your environment, getting out of a slump, formatting your SRS cards, making the transition into monolingual sentences, or just how handsome I am, feel free to come along and talk about it.

The auction lasts 7 days and is up and running already. So the clock is ticking like Jack Bauer. Yes, apparently, Jack Bauer himself ticks now. The starting price is $0.99, no reserve. Highest bidder wins.

Happy bidding! I look forward to talking to you .

• For more details, check out the: AJATT Consulting Auction listing

EOF

So, AJATT will be on holiday for the rest of August. See you bright and early on September 1 for more rants and baseless remarks .

May the AJATT be with you.

For what, indeed, are you waiting? Visit the AJATT Store to-day! Everyone’s doing it.

Because the folks at Pimsleur have figured out a way to teach you Cantonese in ten days.

TEN DAYS! That’s less time than it takes to lose a guy! Screw this immersion crap! Get me one, no, two boxes of the ten day stuff! In fact, get one for all my friends!

And fries! And some diet pills to slim down with after the fries! From now on, I’ma “learn like a spy!” and “pass for a native”. Ten days, be arch!

See ya!

• UI: The UI has returned to its very basic roots. However, the default font size has been increased, and there’s also the addition of ample margin space that so many people had requested.
• Stats: There is more statistical information now to help you analyze, manage and direct your learning progress. Mostly I just added median values since those aren’t as prone to skewing as the mean. More representative measures of central tendency: it’s the gift that keeps giving.
• Date Display: This is minor, but…dates are displayed with proper singular/plural units now: “1 month” rather than “1 months”. A part of me couldn’t care less, but one of my CS professors brainwashed me into caring about this sort of thing.
• Extra Reps: KhatzuMemo had the problem that it would offer you extra reps to do whether or not you had any…to do. The problem has now been fixed. Extra reps are now only offered if and when they exist.

• A reset password function was added. If you’ve forgotten your password, you can use your username and email to reset it from the login page.
• Changed stats page display to be easier to read, and contain more information
• Shortened and reformatted the information display between reps, for faster reading
• “Do Extra Reps” changed to sets of up to 10 at a time (rather than 5)

Your feedback is, as always, more than welcome. Also, be aware that KhatzuMemo may also be changing names and moving to a shorter, easier-to-enter domain name soon. When that time does come, you may experience a service blip on the order of a few seconds; there’ll be a clear notification beforehand, so there’s no need to worry about it.

Update: there were some security changes, too. As a result, some of your cookies may be invalid, and so you may need to log in again.

The server update is complete and KhatzuMemo is now back in action. Enjoy. Let me know if you have any issues…

…Well, that was awkward. Anyway, AJATT’s webhost is upgrading its servers to a newer version of MySQL, so the KhatzuMemo database is going to be down for a short while. It should be back up again well within 24 hours. Until then, go…watch TV or read comics or listen to music or play video games or something .

兎に角じっと待っててね、そのうち直ぐ復帰するから^^。やっぱ膵臓ってイイね。もう絶対に馬鹿にしない（笑）。

Hey everyone. Young Khatzumoto (= me) is sick — too sick to even work at a computer long enough to get some proper writing done — with an as-yet-undiagnosed minor illness. Let’s just say he appreciates his pancreas more now than when it was second on his list of “organs I like to ridicule”, right after the spleen. Apparently this condition also precipitates writing in the third person. Anyway, please patiently await his return.

Hi Khatz, just wondering what you think of the JLPT. Is it worth taking to measure your Japanese fluency, even if by some chance it’s not required when applying for a job in Japan? If so, how do you know when you’re ready?

Let me answer that very handsome man’s question with a rhetorical question. Would you, native user of English reading this, take the TOEFL/TOEIC, to put on your resume in order to prove your English proficiency?

Think about it.

• You have a resume in Japanese.
• Your name is kanjified.
• Your cover letter is in Japanese.
• You talk to HR on the phone in Japanese, and they have to ask your nationality to make sure, because they thought a gaijin was supposed to be calling.
• You also write HR emails in Japanese.
• Your interview is in Japanese. Interview: a one hour Q/A session on academic/technical subjects.
• Not to mention the essay you submitted days before the interview, which you discuss and liberally quote from.

If this doesn’t prove Japanese proficiency, then what the billclinton does?

I hate the freaking JLPT. It’s nothing but a way for the test-givers to make money [nothing wrong with that] asking stupid 4-choice questions in which 50% of the time [fake statistic] 2 of the answers are correct Japanese in some reasonable context, but of course only one answer is “JLPT correct”. I know I’m being harsh; I understand and even share the desire for unbiased third-party evaluation of language skill. But this is not it, folks; it just friggin isn’t. This beast is a failure. The never-ending human desire to reduce everything to a number and a certificate falls flat again. And I like numbers. Dude, I love money, numbers and machines, and Progress and all that good stuff. Last week, I was wearing my sweatshop-made Nikes and washing down my McDonald’s burger with a Coca-Cola, when I accidentally ran over an entire family of hippies with my brand new Hummer; their screams were so loud I could barely hear my iPod. And this, people, is why I’ll be the first to tell you that these JLPT numbers is whack. Matt Damon and I both avidly dislike them apples.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is just like every other standardized test in that it doesn’t measure actual ability or proficiency in the field in question; it merely measures proficiency in taking the test. Oh, don’t get me wrong — you need to know some English to understand SAT directions and some Japanese to understand JLPT instructions, but beyond that it’s all about splitting the stupidest, ugliest hairs imaginable.

For the sake of honesty, it should be renamed to something along the lines of the “Japanese Language Proficiency Test Proficiency Test” — much like how the SAT has at various times in the past respectively been called the “Scholastic Aptitude Test” and the “Scholastic Assessment Test” but ETS had to back off them lies because SATs neither measure nor assess scholastic anything. The SAT group of tests, now literally reduced to a meaningless acronym, measure SAT-taking ability. That’s why Adam Robinson had to go and write Cracking the SAT . Did you know that your score will go up each time you take an SAT or JLPT or even an IQ test? Did ya suddenly become more scholastically apt? Did ya get smarter? Do ya know more Japanese than 5 minutes ago?

And somehow the JLPT people have got the whole freaking world convinced that you need a JLPT to get a job and even be recognized as an adult in Japanese society. None of my Japanese friends, colleagues and associates have ever even heard of the JLPT. Just as most English native speakers have no idea what the TOEIC and TOEFL are. Tellingly, the author of this super-excellent book discusses the phenomenon of people with madd dope TOEIC test scores but crappy English.

Anyway, the JLPT matters far more to and among gaijin, than to and among actual Japanese people. Because guess what — Japanese is not about passing tests, it’s about listening to, reading, speaking and writing real, live, uncut, unedited, NON-MULTIPLE CHOICE Japanese. Are Japanese people going to come up to you and be like:

“私は東京に行きました” And then go,
Did I go (a) TO Tokyo (b) FROM Tokyo (c) IN Tokyo or (d) AT Tokyo?

No! For one thing, Japanese people don’t say lamo, borderline textbook-sounding things like “私は東京に行きました” any more often than English speakers say “how do you do?!” or “what is your good name?”. More importantly, there is no multiple freaking choice in real life. Real life is “harder” like that, in that you either understood fully and correctly or you didn’t. But it’s also easier in that you can actually have fun practicing and not have your Japanese “childhood” turn into a JL-motherlovin-PT preparation ritual.

Urrrggh. Did I mention I hate the JLPT?
BTW, if they buy me off, I’ll take it all back. This post? Gone! What joke? Whose town?

Focus on 日本語, not on stupid tests. Take it from someone who knows: your daily interactions in Japanese are the greatest preparation and proof of proficiency. Watching comedy shows, talking to friends, reading manga — this is the real deal; this is life; this is your test of Japanese language proficiency. You should aim to be so good at Japanese that some stupid deskmonkey circle-filling test of it would simply be an insult to your very being — a proposition as ludicrous as asking you to take the TOEIC or TOEFL.

Do. Not. Learn. Japanese. To. Take. Tests. In.

End of rant.

PS: I have reviewed resumes written by candidates who (wrote they?) had passed upper levels of this JLPT (at least level 2, and maybe some level 1)…the resumes sucked — poor usage, terrible formatting, kanji errors left and right. For all their precious test scores, do you think I recommended them? DO YOU? In cases like this, and indeed in most of the cases that I can think of that matter, language skill is — or at least freaking well should be — self-evident; it doesn’t need to be tested.

Save your time and money for that cosplay convention in a couple of months.

End of rant. Really. I’m done.

And another thing! The arrogance of those JLPT-makers. When did I die and give them the right to decide what constitutes “standard” Japanese? On what authority do they decide these levels? By what divine, Khatzumotoan power do they decide the contents of the test? No, wait, scratch that — if you don’t yet know enough Japanese, the JLPTers can always hide behind that — all you need do is go look at some ESL/EFL materials to see for yourself the kind of bullwinkle that passes for language “education” and skill evaluation. My friend, the emperor has no clothes. You do not need these tests; they’re just a bunch of junk some people who think they know what they’re doing put together. If you really want to test your Japanese ability, turn on the television.

For real. The End.

You thought I was done, eh? Well, rants don’t conclude: they merely pause! I’m back with another talking point! What’s all this shizzle about “well, Khatzumoto, I’m going to take the JLPT to motivate me”. ‘The fooooooork? Dude, if you need, to shell out actual dollars, to have someone ask you, to fill in crappy little circles, with a stupid little #2 pencil, in some massive room, filled with other nervous deskmonkeys…to get <airquotes>”motivation”</airquotes>…then maybe you shouldn’t be learning Japanese in the first place. Dude, come on! Make your own phrekkin’ goals, man!

If you really want to test your Japanese ability, turn on the television.