A language is a person.

Of course, it’s not a real person. You can’t see or touch Japanese.

But she exists.

She exists just like Harry Potter exists.

You don’t learn a language, you get used to it. When someone is used to something, what do we call them? We call them an “expert”, we say they’re “good at” it. We say they’re familiar with the object in question.

Familiar. Like family.

So not only is the Japanese language a person, not only is she a friend, she’s also family. Adoptive family, since she has no DNA of her own per se…but family nonetheless. Now, it turns out that most of her close friends and family were born and raised in Japan. And most of her close friends have known her since they were babies.

But that’s nothing more than a coincidence of convenience; those people just happened to be in places where it was cheap and easy to hang out with Japanese a lot. In no way does it mean that Japanese couldn’t become friends — family — with you. Plenty of her family members aren’t Japanese at all — see TV for details. In fact, because so many books and audiovisual recordings of Japanese have been produced – Japan’s is one of the most “media-productive” societies in the world – you don’t even need to know her other friends in order to become friends with her. Just like you don’t have to have met J. K. Rowling in order to like Harry Potter. The abundance of Japanese media is our very own coincidence of convenience. If you don’t believe me, try getting Hindi manga. More speakers, sure, but (despite the movie industry) less manga.

Remember, though — even family can become estranged; even friends can become strangers. So Japanese is your friend, Japanese is your family. But guess what? If you really want to get close…if you want her to tell you all her secrets…if you want to be finishing her sentences before she even starts saying them…then you’re going to need to hang out…a lot. A…lot. You’ll become each other’s shadow, as they say.

If you want Japanese to trust you, you’re going to have to trust her and treat her well. Would you let a close friend, a member of your family, stand out in the cold, starving to death while you ate dinner inside? As if you were some sort of wicked fairytale stepmother? No, you’d invite her to the table, wouldn’t you? Invite Japanese to your dinner table. Let her sleep in your bed (like the Herlihy boy…lol). Go on errands with her. Hang out together. Become tight.

You don’t learn a language. You get used to it. And you can’t get used to something you’re always avoiding. You can’t get used to something you’re barely ever around. You can’t get used to something you only see once in a while when the guilt hits, like some kind of deadbeat dad. What, you think you can just send Japanese $5 on her birthday and everything’ll be cool?

You can’t really become friends if you don’t play and do silly things together. You can’t do serious things together before you do fun things together. And you can’t reasonably expect Japanese to do you big economic favors if she barely knows who you are.

You cannot just start out being serious with Japanese. You have to earn the right by goofing around first. So hang out. Play. Enjoy your nth childhood together. She loves being with her friends and family: she lives through them. And she’s always looking to make another friend. She’d love to have another baby sibling or child or whatever. It would make her day. Go on. Do something stupid together.

EOF

What is the URL Shuffler?

It’s a better alternative to bookmarks. Instead of storing those cool L2 sites you come across (e.g. via recommendations on the AJATT Twitter feed) in your bookmarks folder, where they will simply be forgotten, store them in the URL shuffler

The URL shuffler will pick a random page for you each time you click the “shuffle!”/”shuff!” link. Make the “shuffle!” link your homepage and you can flip through the web like flipping through TV channels. Shuffling gives a perfect balance of turnover (mixing) and conversion (actual visitation).

Note: like SRS cards, the websites are all added by you. This way you get a customized mix of just the websites you love.

Why include it in an SRS?

Because contact is the basis of content. There’ll be no fun SRS content without fun immersion. Instead of disciplining yourself to build the habit of visiting L2 websites, let URL shuffler handle it for you. Plus, you’re not bound to your main computer. Whether at home, school, wage slavery place, a friend’s house or on your iPad, you can enjoy the same rich variety of cool L2 web content.

How Do I Use It?

Use the supplied links and bookmarklets to add, remove and visit websites.

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.
Do what you can.”
~ Sydney Smith

When I first came to Japan, I hated how people wouldn’t take a stand. In the West, you’re taught that you have to have an opinion and it has to be a strong one, and if you don’t have strong opinions, you’re weak, stupid or both. In my first few weeks and months here, I was shocked at how often people simply wouldn’t take sides on an issue; they wouldn’t take a stand. They were neither apathetic nor passionate. They were simply…impartial.

And it bugged the heck out of me. I’m all for being undecided, but not for being decidedly impartial. That just seems wishy-washy. I mean, people in the West love to say ridiculous things like: “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”; that used to mean something to me…now it feels more like a hollow, idiotic threat (“Oh, crap! I’d better hurry up stand for something!”).

As time has gone on, I’ve come to love Japanese impartiality (plus, I mean, it’s not like people are impartial on everything — I am being a bit simplistic here). And I’ve come to dislike opinionated people who think they know everything. Even when they’re right. Ironically, though, that itself as a form of…opinionatedness. So it’s not like I’ve become toadly acculturated. Because if I were toadly acculturated, if I really did 「以和為貴」 (value harmony), I’d be all: 「人それぞれですね」(“well, everybody’s different, and that’s mmm kay”)。

Anyway, back on topic. The point is: we plan and (attempt to) act with too much certainty – not in ourselves, but in the environment. We act as if the environment were full of certainty, as if we were cogs in a giant machine in which everything has already been decided. And that’s stifling. In many ways, we humans don’t like certainty. Boring jokes, boring people and boring movies are all called “predictable” – too certain.

We’ve all written to-do lists before…
…And then proceeded to do nothing that’s on the list.
Why?
Because we’re dumb?
No, because we’re smart.

Those lists of things to do (or, more accurately, the way we use them), rob us of the freedom to exercise our creativity. There’s too much certainty. Certainty of having to be stuck doing a specific thing in a specific place in a specific (read: boring) way. There’s this idea that there’s this One True Best Optimal Correct Method of Doing X, and our only job is to find it and then execute. If we find it, we succeed, if not, we just kind of suck.

But let’s take a step back here. You have to realize that your certainty is false. It feels real, but it doesn’t exist. Are you freaking Nostradamus? Can you tell the future? How do you even know – when you write the list – that those things actually need doing? I mean they probably need doing, but there’s no certainty. Heck, most of the time, you don’t even do the things on the list after about the second item, so why do you even bother write them in the first place?

We are oppressed by a false certainty – a false certainty of method, boredom and location.

So the first thing to do is free yourself of the notion that you know how, where or when anything should or will happen. Because you don’t.

Now we’re having fun. We’re unpredictable now. We’re like an early M. Night Shymylan movie, or a good-looking but mentally unstable woman, or homemade cookies. No one knows what the heck’s going to happen next.

But a part of you counter-rebels against this rebellion: “Isn’t that just irresponsible? I mean, we simply throw our hands up and let things go to the wind?! Isn’t the goal for us to work like clockwork, acting with perfect reliability and precision? OK, maybe not perfect, but isn’t it at least our goal to be somewhat reliable?”

There you go pulling words out of my mouth again.

The keyword is, indeed, “somewhat”.

So, that false certainty we discussed earlier might be described as a deterministic action model. A part of us knows that this model is flawed, but we still try to force it to work, and the result is usually analysis paralysis – we just don’t do…anything. We procrastinate; we spin our wheels; we stare into space; we go to Facebook; we check our email. Anything but deal with the lunacy of trying to make a deterministic action model work in a world where we can’t even predict next Tuesday’s weather with certainty.

Think about this for a moment – we can look into deep space, but we don’t know for sure whether or not your picnic next weekend is a go.

What I’m suggesting is that we embrace the holes in our knowledge, embrace our flaws, embrace our imperfect human nature (even as we strive to continuously improve), and adopt a more probabilistic action model.

Don’t try to get things done. That’s too hard. Too painful. Too annoying. Too prone to failure.

Don’t try to get things done.

But…

Do try to increase the probability that they will get done.

Don’t try to get things done. Do try to increase the probability that they will get done.
Don’t ask if you’re doing the right thing.
Do ask if what you’re doing increases the probability of having what you want to happen, happen.
Do ask if what you’re doing increases the probability of you getting what you want.

Don’t work with the certainties; it hurts too much; it’s too painful. Work on pushing up those probabilities.

Next time you feel so overwhelmed in your quest to become fluent in Japanese, that you just sit there and do nothing, sit there and watch English-language shows on Hulu to try to drown out the guilt you’re tripping on (just like Maddie used to), stop yourself, wake up and smell the probabilistic coffee.

Watching a Japanese anime instead of running off to Hulu may not be as “perfect” as doing your SRS reps, but it demm </SouthAfricanAccent> well increases the probability of your actually learning Japanese, more than some English escapism ever could.

Doing just one SRS rep may not make it so that all your SRS reps get done, but it demm sure raises the probability that that will happen, more than sitting there doing nothing does. (The wording on this blog is getting weirder and weirder).

Ditto for listening to Japanese music while you read English-language documents..

Or doing your Japanese SRS reps on your iPad while you sit in on an English-language meeting.

It’s not perfect; it’s not certain. But the probability that you will (1) learn some Japanese now and (2) get back into doing more Japanese later is infinitely higher than it would be if you were doing nothing.

You catch my drift? If you can’t do the so-called right/perfect/correct thing, whatever you fantasize that thing to be, at least do something that helps. Something that moves you forward. Something that gets you in the ballpark. Something that’s somewhat right. Size doesn’t matter. Details don’t matter. Only ballpark. General direction. General area. All up in there (literally waving my right hand in vaguely circular, kinda conical way). That’s the basic idea. That’s AJATT immersion. It’s also what the situational goals thing is about.

Maybe you can’t do the 100% certain, perfect, ideal, Platonic thing that gets you The Desired Outcome. But if you do so many fun, easy, simple, short, quick, little things that The Desired Outcome has a 97% probability of happening, then, well…call it a win. It’s the difference between a deterministic algorithm that you don’t have the time or energy to execute, versus, small, short, simple, easy, lazy, ad hoc (=random) methods – probabilistic algorithms – that, while imperfect, will actually get done, because it’s just so easy.

100% * 0 action is still 0%. 0.485% * 200 tiny actions is 97%. An action that has a 50% chance of not helping you with your Japanese (i.e. that has only half a chance of helping you with your Japanese), repeated enough times can give you a 99.99% probability of success in Japanese.

OK, I’m getting a bit carried away here. Fake math facts, real math truth. You get the idea. You know who you are. Make your choice.

“Nothing” is the only too little; “not now” is the only too late.

EOF

PS: Paradoxically enough, I am finding that it’s important that you (1) abandon certainty in the environment, while simultaneously (2) embracing certainty in yourself. But we’ll leave the details of that for another time…

Tired? Busy? Overwhelmed?
Can’t do 100%?

Then do 50%.

There’s nothing wrong with a half-a**ed job. Do half an a** now, half-an a** later, and pretty soon you have a nice, round a**. J-Lo would be proud.

What’s that? You can’t do 50%?
Then do 50% of that.

1. Still too much?
2. Cut in half again.
3. Return to step 2 as many times as necessary.

Keep cutting until you get to something so small, that you start tilting your head to one side, curling the corner of your mouth, and squinting your eyes in a sort of “That’s it? Are you kidding me?” pose. Sort of like the face Pope John Paul II made when I told him about this idea.

You have found a cell. A unit so small, you don’t care any more. A few years ago, this one cell actually split up so many times that it became Jennifer Lopez’s derrière. I hear the same thing happened to you, too. I’m guessing it was more mitosis than binary fission, but…same difference, really — it’s all cell division.

Can’t do your SRS reps today?
Do half of them.
Still too much?
Do half of that.
Too big? Keep dividing.
Maybe you’ll end up just doing one.
And that’s fine.

Just keep dividing those cells. Just keep cutting things in half. You basically never have to feel like you’re doing anything, you just focus on division. The addition and multiplication will take care of themselves.

“easy and hard are nothing more than words to describe how much you resist doing the work”

There is no “hard”. There is only “needs smaller steps”. Cut. Slice. Dice. Make things too small to resist. That’s most of what timeboxing is about. It’s what our “cell division” is about. It’s what Maurer’s Kaizen Way (改善道 hmmm…sounds like a martial art  ) is about.

You already know how to do this. You’ll have trouble regularly eating whole tomatoes, but if those same tomatoes are simply sliced up and placed between strips of bread, suddenly there’s no tomato left. And this is all happening despite the fact that you’re probably eating more than before.

The same thing goes for apples. You see a whole apple and you’re like “meeeh, I’m not feeling so apply”. Until, that is, a sliced apple is placed in your sphere of influence. Pretty soon, you’re running out of apples.

It’s not the “appetite” (ability), it’s the presentation. If you’re in charge of something (like learning a language on your own), you’re in charge of the presentation, too. Make it look nice for yourself. Make it appealing. Make it fun. Probably, your mother used to do this kind of thing for you. Now, no one does it for you. No one gives you colorful books and sweet-tasting medicine. Why? Because you don’t need it? No — because you can do it for yourself. You still need help, you’re just not helpless.

Do half-a**ed work. Make it so small and tasty that you cannot resist. Work from the most simple to the most complex tasks. And chill. Our actions compound whether we worry or not. Our actions produce effects of their own accord. We just have to do our part on the cause side. We often cannot directly control effects and it’s generally a huge waste of energy to try. But we’re always in charge of a bunch of causes. And that turns out to be more than enough. We already control all the causes we need to control.

Do your little, half-a**ed part. Let nature — biology, physics, whatever — take care of the rest.

Remember, it starts with one cell. The roundest buttocks…all used to be one cell. And no matter how big they get, they’re still nothing but a bunch of cells.

It’s just the summer of bookmarklets this year, isn’t it? This time around, it’s a little something to help you with your immersion:

Google Japan Bookmarklet
Source code:

javascript:(function(){var w=window,d=w.document,s="";;if(d.selection){s=d.selection.createRange().text}else if (d.getSelection){s=d.getSelection()}else if(w.getSelection){s=window.getSelection()}window.open ("http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=ja&source=hp&q="+encodeURIComponent(s) +"&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=","_blank")})()


Google Hong Kong Bookmarklet
Source code

javascript:(function(){var w=window,d=w.document,s="";;if(d.selection){s=d.selection.createRange().text}else if (d.getSelection){s=d.getSelection()}else if(w.getSelection){s=window.getSelection()}window.open ("http://www.google.com.hk/search?q="+encodeURIComponent(s) +"&hl=zh-TW&prmd=i&source=lnt&tbs=lr:lang_1zh-TW&lr=lang_zh-TW&sa=X&ei=IRRQTIuHOMHXcZyklbEB&ved=0CAgQpwU","_blank")})()

Google Reader Bookmarklet (Courtesy of Google Mania)
Source code:

javascript:(function(){for(i=0;i<document.getElementsByTagName('link').length;i++){if(document.getElementsByTagName('link').item(i).getAttribute('rel').toLowerCase()=='alternate' && (document.getElementsByTagName('link').item(i).getAttribute('type').toLowerCase()=='application/rss+xml' || document.getElementsByTagName('link').item(i).getAttribute('type').toLowerCase()=='text/xml')) { var furl; var fhref=document.getElementsByTagName('link').item(i).getAttribute('href'); if(fhref.indexOf('/')===0) { furl='http://fusion.google.com/add?1&feedurl=' + document.location.href.split('/')[0] + '/' + document.location.href.split('/')[1] + '/' + document.location.href.split('/')[2] + fhref; } else if(fhref.indexOf('http://')===0) {furl='http://fusion.google.com/add?2&feedurl='+fhref; } else { var fhref2=document.location.href.split('/'); fhref2.pop(); furl='http://fusion.google.com/add?3&feedurl='+fhref2.join('/')+'/'+fhref; } document.location.href=furl;} }})();

EOF

The essence of learning Japanese is in the almost meaninglessly small things you do.

When you find something so small, so apparently meaningless that you think “that couldn’t possibly help”, but it’s something that puts you in more contact with Japanese, then that, my friend, is your sweet spot. Because you have found something that is easy for you to do. You have found an “atomic action”. Now, just take that atom…and do it. Then repeat. Make that chain (reaction) go…

We’re always trying to make work harder, we’re always trying to make things more complex. When, in fact, the real “work” is in finding these simple, tiny, almost unnoticeable building blocks, and then duplicating them. We all have an action that we can painlessly (and even pleasantly), thoughtlessly, absent-mindedly, effortlessly, automatically perform over and over and over again. For me, it’s…I dunno…mouseclicks.

Click your mouse, just on Japanese stuff.

Power is in the small (repeated). Power is in the subtle (noticed).

Sure, one atom is small. One seed is small. One push of the “play” button on your Japanese media is small. But if we ignore every atom, every seed, every second, every chance that comes our way because it is “too small”, then we are left with, as the Chinese say…bupkiss.

「海不辭水故能成其大，山不辭土故能成其高。」

「海は水を辞せず、故によくその大を成す。山は土を辞せず、故によくその高さをあらわす。」

The sea is deep because it doesn’t look down on water. The mountain is tall because is doesn’t look down on soil.

We’ll never light bonfires if we look down on matches and kindling. We’ll never make it to our roadtrip destination if we refuse to even walk to the car. People who look down on atoms as “too small to be worth the bother” aren’t going to make nuclear weapons.

Take what you have, wherever you find it. Have your tools at the ready. Have the mp3 player with you, have the manga in your bag, have the smartphone with all the menus set to Japanese. Your chances will come; they’re always coming. And they will be small. A 15-minute walk here, a 30-minute wait in line there. They’ll seem too small; they’ll seem too easy. Good. Take them. Let them be easy. Let life be easy.

When it comes to learning, I think people plan too much and do too little. All the time I get emails from people going: “Khatz, tell me what schedule I should have”; “Khatz, give me a day in the life of Khatz”. You don’t need a day in the life of effing Khatz. Screw that Khatz kid! And his schedule! And his couch!

All you need to know is that anything (and everything) you don’t have to do in English can be done in Japanese. Any (and every) moment that you don’t have to listen to English can be spent listening to Japanese. Any (and every) English book that you are not required to own or read can be replaced by a Japanese book. Any (and every) English song or data file…you get the idea. It really is that simple.

The habit of giving any spare moment to Japanese, wherever you may find it is much more valuable than any plan. A habit, good or bad, will wipe the floor with any plan. A habit, good or bad, will trump any resolution. So, if you must, treat Japanese like cigarettes. One at a time. 90 seconds of song here, 90 seconds of SRS there. Tiny snippets of Japanese. Frequency over quantity. Don’t try to put 60 cigarettes in your mouth all at once just because these “cigarettes” are good for you…enjoy them one at a time…enjoy those tasty bite-sized pieces.

Finally, relax. Don’t get worked up and overwhelmed. Just do more than nothing. That’s all you have to do. Whenever you feel down, out, wasted and/or confused just do…one. Just do more than nothing.

OL2L: ハリウッド・セレブ・ニュース: when I said “be a couch potato and read trash, just in Japanese“, I meant it.