“All failure comes from trying too hard.” / NAKATANI Akihiro

1 is bigger than 0.

Obvious, I know. Common sense, I know. But common sense isn’t common. Common sense is the least common of the senses, as other people have pointed out.

1 is bigger than 0. How often we forget this simple fact.

You know how it is. We all learn about mathematical concepts like negative numbers — which were probably considered a wild and crazy idea at one time, and perhaps for good reason — so we tend to think of 1 as only being slightly bigger than 0.

But it’s not. ¹

In RL ², 1 isn’t just slightly bigger than 0. 1 is infinitely bigger than 0. That means it’s not just a matter of 1 > 0 (1 is greater than 0). 1 ≫ 0 (1 is much greater than 0). Because 1 is the start of everything. While 0 is the path to nothing. No matter how many 0′s you string together, you get nothing. But a bunch of 1′s adds up. A bunch of 1′s, multiplied by a bunch of time, adds up. And it doesn’t just add up — it even compounds, like interest.

0 is a white shirt. 1 is a blue stain. 100 is a red stain. 1 is much closer to 100 than it is to 0. No, 0 isn’t even a shirt. It’s a transparent Ziploc bag. No, it’s not even that. It’s a vacuum. 0 is the total absence of existence. Add 0 to anything and…you get the same anything. Add 0 (nothing) to 0 (nothing) and you get…nothing.

The current evidence from places like Swaziland suggests that humans have had math for some 35,000 years, give or take. Yet for most of human history, we didn’t have the number 0. Apparently, mathematicians in Greece and Egypt were like: “Dude, how the FXXX can nothing be something?!”. The entire Roman empire ³ started, rose, declined and fell all without the number 0. Engineers in ancient Rome implemented public works projects — roads, aqueducts, indoor plumbing, massive buildings — on a scale and to a standard that was not equaled in Europe until about last Tuesday ⁴…without 0. We’re talking about people who had to write the number “2347″ as ”MMCCCXLVII”.

Here — count to 0. Where’s your zero finger? 0 is a very weird number-slash-concept. It sits next to ⁵ 1 on the real number line ⁶, but the real number line, names notwithstanding, isn’t “real”. In content and character, 0 is nothing like 1 or any other number. 0 is not of this world; it is of the math world.

So when you do 0, you’re not just doing slightly less than 1. Doing nothing is of a fundamentally different character than doing something. And doing something is of a fundamentally different character than doing nothing. Something (1, etc.) and nothing (0) are not the same; they’re not friends; they’re not neighbors; they’re not cousins; they don’t know each other; they don’t even live in the same universe.

It’s not doing too little that kills you(r projects). It’s doing nothing. No need to hit home-runs. No need to hit 100. Go easy. Take it easy. No need to swing with all your might. Screw that. Just bunt it. Just do 1. Right here. Right now. No big deal. No fanfare. No parade.

Don’t listen to Japanese. Just play a Japanese song and turn up the volume.

Just do 1.

Hey guys! This is Andrew! Let me tell you a little bit about me: I’ve been fascinated with learning languages since I was 12 and got ahold of a Berlitz French book from the 1950s. Since then I’ve worked on, to varying degrees: German, Swedish, Japanese, Spanish, and now French (again). I’ve been mostly focused on Spanish over the last 4 years and about a year ago I decided to start a blog where I shared what I’d learned about how to teach yourself languages (I primarily focus on Spanish but a lot of what I post is applicable to any language) using mostly free online resources because it seemed like that’s what most people wanted to do but did not know how. You can check it out here.

You know the primary reason that most people who try to learn a new language fail?
They give up.

Weren’t expecting that, were you? Yeah, ok, but why did they give up? Primarily because they got bored, that’s why. It just didn’t interest them anymore, not enough to keep going anyway. A large part of this problem is the learning material they were using, trying to force themselves to plow through boring workbooks or courses or memorize words they didn’t want to or what-have-you. Now, I know that Khatzumoto’s explored this topic in depth many times before: use media (TV shows, music, movies, anime, whatever) that’s actually FUN. I want to make it clear that I’ve found precisely the same thing to be true, I completely agree with him, but I wanted to be a bit more specific right now and tell you why I personally really like using music videos to teach and learn Spanish and why you should consider using them to learn whatever language it is that you’re learning.

How could you be bored?

You’re listening to music you like–you better be, whatever your tastes it’s just about guaranteed that you can find an endless supply of music videos in that genre for free online–so it’s interesting and pleasant for you, and the fact that you’ve got an artist you like performing in a music video for you is even better, you can see their mouth moving as they speak, you can see their facial expressions and body language, and all of these things not only add context to the words that you might not have gotten from just the audio track alone, but it also serves to entertain you and make it that much more fun.

When I started my blog about how to learn Spanish I got a little bit of interest from people, I did good research and was good at explaining things, but it was a couple months of just sort of…meh. I just felt like I really wasn’t saying anything insightful or bringing any type of new value to the table that you couldn’t get elsewhere. It was only when I did my first post on learning Spanish with Shakira where I used one of her music videos to teach people Spanish that I really got honest excitement from people in response to what I was writing, I mean people just went nuts over that one, it exploded. Which, of course, resulted in me doing another 5 such posts and I’ve got another one I’ve had in the works for a while that I need to finish and will be putting up shortly. This was when I realized just how much of a difference using something fun and interesting made to people.

A single song has more useful information in it than anything else of similar size

A MAJOR plus of using music videos is that you can almost always get a precise transcript for every single thing said and you can frequently get some backstory-type information on what the song was about so you can get even more context to learn from. No guessing about what was said (as in a TV show or movie that you can’t get a transcript or the script for), no misunderstandings or misinterpreting one word for the other.

In addition to this, musical lyrics tend to be very heavy on slang, idioms, and colloquial sayings which is precisely what you want to learn if you want to be able to talk to a native speaker like a native speaker (and you do if you’re here), plus that sort of stuff is so much more memorable than “days of the week” or “how to say you’re allergic to shellfish”, isn’t it? It’s fun and cool and interesting and…therefore: really easy to learn. Why? Because you’re enjoying it, because you want to.

Speaking practice is fun!

You sing. You sing a song you enjoy, after an artist you like, how could that not be fun? Look, I didn’t say you had to do this in front of people. Also, you’ll get the pronunciation down pat by doing this and you’ll never forget what you learned, you can’t really ‘forget’ a song that you once learned how to sing.

A few quick tips…

1. Check to see if you can turn on English subtitles, on a lot of music videos on YouTube now you can do this and they’re almost always correct, this is the easiest way.
2. If you can’t do 1, then google “[song name] english translation” and “[song name] english lyrics”, I don’t have a favorite lyrics site I use (people have asked me this) I just do what I described above, go through the top 5 results or so, and pick the best one.

3. If you have any questions on what a particular expression means and Google can’t tell you, just get on a language learning forum and ask someone, a native speaker will gladly tell you and you’ll have an answer in short order, that’s really the easiest way to do it.

4. When it gets old, when it’s no longer fun, DITCH IT. Go on to the next one. “But I haven’t figured out what everything means, I haven’t learned everything I could from it!”: doesn’t matter, you’re far better off in the long run just going on to the next one because if you don’t and you keep forcing yourself to grind through every single little thing in that video until you’ve got it all then guess what? You get sick of it eventually and give up. Remember what I said at the beginning? Don’t let that happen.

I really hoped this has helped some of you, please let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers,

Andrew

Try not to have opinions. Opinions are for politicians and voters. Try not to have beliefs. Beliefs are for religions.

You’re an engineer. You’re a tinkerer. Tink. Tink. Tink. You have tools. You use tools to construct inevitable fluency — engineered inevitability.

There is nothing to believe in or opine about. Not in this game. If you want to believe, join a major religion. If you want to opine, go to a town hall meeting. If you want to have arguments, join a debate club.

And if you want to get used to a language, gather and play with tools. Tinker. Mix and match. Throw some away. Pick them up again. Change them. Mod them. Share them. Sell them.

Kids often ask me “Khatz, what’s your opinion on X?”. “What about this app?”
F### my opinion. My opinion can eat a dionions. Onions. Raw. Arngh. Bite into them like apples.
Either the tool works or it doesn’t. I’m handsome, but I’m not G-d. I’m not the Buddha. No, wait, no use being humble: I am the Buddha…’s younger brother, who stayed at home, in the palace, with the hookers and blow. Nirvana? I already live there. It’s called: “the palace” .

My buddhacial status notwithstanding, my opinion is just so much verbal flatulence, at the end of the day. And so is yours. All we have are the facts. Either the tool works or it doesn’t. Try it or don’t try it. Use it or don’t use it. Facts speak for themselves. There is nothing to believe in. Don’t be a believer. Don’t be a debater. Be a tinkerer.

Here’s my point. I’ve finally got the off-color religious humor out of my system. So here’s my point: you’re going to, at some point, run into an idea that people around you will think is crazy. One of these ideas might literally change the world of getting-used-to-languages. At the very least, it could change your life. But you’re not going to get to see this change if you’re always running to some authority to ask their opinion. I’ll give you my opinion, but…

Just…don’t be obsequious. Don’t be humble. Be courteous, but…inside, in your heart of hearts, don’t be humble. And this why I hate the JLPT.  I hate the attitude people. have toward it. I actually like tests; I (almost) love tests. But I don’t value tests above myself. I don’t think tests tell me anything about who I am. Indeed, tests are a better learning tool than an evaluation tool. Tests are just tools. Tools are not to be worshipped.

Khatz, just to clarify, this applies to the “study aspect” like doing SRS reps, etc, but given any 86,400 second period one should be striving to be in a Japanized environment for as many of those seconds as humanly possible right?

I guess what I’m saying is, it doesn’t matter how many kanji you learn a day, as long as you learn some, or how many sentence reps you do, as long as you do some — that totally makes sense to me.

But is immersion different? I know that there have been times when I was tempted to get slack about immersion, to stay in English even after things I NEEDED to do in English were finished, but because I have deeply drilled into myself this instinct to constantly maximize Japanese exposure, I have been able to overcome those temptations to get sucked into the 24-hour NCIS marathon on USA [Network] that was playing in the other room, and etc.

If I’d been taking a less hardcore approach, and expected less of myself in this regard, I can easily see days passing with very little time actually spent in Japanese. Basically doing a small “token” amount of immersion and then saying, well, as long as I do some each day that’s good and then tuning into the Family Guy re-runs (when in the he## is this gonna get a Japanese dub, btw?).

And, I think if my immersion fell apart like that, my SRSing and what-not would follow quickly behind it. Generally, slippery slope arguments are fallacies, but in this case, the pull of English is so powerful it really does create a “slippery” condition, I believe, and we must be on guard.

I feel like I haven’t worded this very clearly, but hopefully what I am trying to ask/address is coming through. Thanks.

To put E-Dub’s question into 6 words:

Do “Wide Standards” Apply To Immersion?

They do, actually. In a weirdish way, though.

I currently practice what I like to call “leveraged immersion” (mixed with a technique called “multiplexing“). Leverage in the sense of pivots — using minimal effort to get maximum results.

I have “wide” standards in terms of the effort I am willing to expend. But I want to get big results from it.

What does that mean in practice?

When I was in college, doing the “original, 元祖 AJATT”, before there was a website or a name for what I was doing, when it was just a personal experiment, a little game, I had traction.

I wanted to see how far I could take it and what would happen if I did. Well, I came, I saw, I got used to. The whole of my world was in English and I was in danger of becoming monolingual for the first time in my life. I didn’t want that. So I playfully…very playfully…pushed against it.

Obviously, the experiment produced impressive results, and I wanted to extend it. Higher, further, faster, deeper. More Japanese. More of other languages. A lot of my writing can sound rather fruity and hippie-ish, but there is a side of me that loves the core ideas of organizations like McDonalds and Wal-Mart, that shares the American corporate penchant for massive-scale, plug-and-chug replication and systematization, that makes out with pictures of Ayn Rand taped to my pillow (don’t…don’t judge me).

But the trouble with saying “no English” is that it can feel like deprivation at times. It was fine when it was just a game — “let’s see what would happen if I said ‘no English’” — but now it feels more like oppressive prohibition than playful restriction. Before I was doing it just because. Now, I’d doing it because: “Khatz must practice what he preaches”. And you’d be doing it because “Khatz practiced it and now preaches it”. Well…screw that. That’s dogma. We don’t need that. We need pragma.

So I don’t say “no English”. I just don’t allow English media on any of my good — best — machines. I let English exist — there are business books I need to read that are untranslated — but I don’t allow it on my best/most convenient hardware. English can be around, but it has to settle for a second-class existence.

So it’s not “no English“, it’s…”no convenient English“. It’s not “no English”, it’s “no unaccompanied English”.

It’s sort of a Pareto principle thing. The machines and physical spaces on and in which I spend 80~90% of my time, and which account for the majority of my computing power, have no English going on — they’re reserved for Japanese and Chinese.

So I can watch Family Guy if I want, but it’ll have to be on my iPad (she’s been demoted to bi##hbox status), over a Wi-Fi connection, with chintzy speakers, in the kitchen, standing up. Meanwhile ¹, the nice Bose speakers and 90-inch projector screen right next door are playing a Stephen Chow movie. And I can hear the Stephen Chow movie. And there’s this obscenely comfy beanbag right there, right in front of Stephen Chow. There’s no competition.

I can watch Family Guy if I want, but there has to be Japanese/Chinese playing and audible at the same time. Maybe some reps going as well. In other words, the English has to be accompanied; it has to have a “chaperone”. Case in point: I’m playing Ghost In The Shell (Cantonese version) as I write this English post ².

What AJATT was and is…is total immersion in principle ³, but Pareto majority immersion in practice. It’s de jure totality and de facto majority. Now, it happens that:

1. In college, during the original AJATT process, I was always aiming for 100% total immersion, even though I only ever hit it a few times — Thanksgiving Break, etc.
2. In college, my apartment ⁴ was a 100% Japanese zone. It literally was Japanese soil. It was…I had…an AT field ⁵ around it and everything.
3. You (E Dub Kendo) and I have both grown into adults with almost total control over space and time — we can be wherever we want — at home — doing whatever we want almost 100% of the day. We’re time billionaires (although, as I’ve discussed before, this actually turns out to be a “lottery winner” perspective of our time wealth – because of overhead and “time taxes”, in actuality we have maybe 2~6 hours per day more than regular civilians; we’re not just rolling in time like Scrooge McDuck rolls in gold coins, and we can’t directly re-generate our time through savings and investments).

So we feel like we should go for “total”, and we feel bad when we don’t. The only reason we never went total before, the only reason other people don’t go total is because they don’t have the control that we do. But we have control. So shouldn’t we go total? Well, maybe not. Like I said, I have business books to read, seminars to watch.

It’s the critical frequency/probabilistic algorithm thing all over again. It’s engineering (imperfect functional perfection) over mathematics (abstract perfection). IMHO, we want to approach this like engineers ⁶, not mathematicians ⁷. We don’t need infinity, we just need…a really large number. And…that metaphorical dirt, that margin of error, that imperfection, that traction, that resistance, that English pimple on our otherwise-perfect Japanese skin, may turn out to be necessary for us to, I dunno, feel human or something. I sound like an old man now; I’m old at heart .

What about the slippery slope? Well, there is none any longer. We’ve literally inverted the slope. All convenient paths lead to Japanese. All our best gear is there. You can go English if you want, but it’ll suck. Who wants to stand up in the kitchen when Evangelion is on the big screen? I certainly can’t be bothered…

• × All Japanese All The Time
• ○ Some Japanese All The Time
• ○ All Japanese Some Of The Time

• × No English
• ○ No convenient English ⁸
• ○ No unaccompanied English

Don’t control yourself. Control your environment. Your environment will control you for you. And don’t control your entire environment, just control the leverage points: that is the wide standard.

PS: Should regular civilians — wage slaves, people at school, etc. try leveraged immersion? Yes and no — mostly no. Certainly not as much as say, housewives and freelancers and NEETs and NR people. For civilians — people who don’t have full control over all their time — their lifestyle already forces partial immersion on them anyway, so it’s not something they need to do consciously; they’d get better results with a deliberate focus on maximizing the immersion function at all times and in all places. So the “old ways” still apply. Having said that, things like sensory split (splicing) and multiplexing ⁹ are something anyone in any position could use and benefit from.

Whether on the Internets or in RL, if Japanese is the topic of discussion, there always seems to be a kind, intelligent, well-meaning buck futter waiting in the wings to tell you: “Don’t learn Japanese from anime yada yada yada ¹“. It’s like Towelie from South Park, but pretentious and lame and unanimated.

• “Anime is bad for your Japanese” = “Futsal is bad for your soccer”
• A non-native-level user of Japanese worried about sounding like anime = a person in the desert, about to die of thirst, insisting on Evian.

“The Japanese” have a word ² for this foolishness: 贅沢な悩み ³. Luxurious worries. High-quality problems.

You are not in a position to be worrying about this kind of thing. You are literally covered in ignorance. You are in the ignorance toilet and need to wipe. Who cares what color the toilet paper is: wipe your behind first.

I mean, this is madness. Thus us Sparta. This is like getting a on baby’s case because she puts the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle when she says her first word. I mean, for the love of milk and cereal, man.

Premature optimization is the root of all evil. Let go. Let it go. Let it all go. Watch anime and talk like an anime character. It’s fine. ‘Coz guess what? Anime is Japanese! By Japanese people, for Japanese people. So saying you “sound like an anime” is just saying you sound Japanese, which is kinda sorta generally considered a good thing when you’re (get this…wait for it…hold…hold…) speaking Japanese.

Plus, you’re just a kid ⁴, Japanesewise. Talk like an anime. It’s a phase you need to go through . You’ll outgrow it and be able to talk proper — just like a stuck-up jerk on the Internet — later. So let’s review:

1. Childhood now.
2. Soul-deadening gayness ⁵ later.

End of rant. Now go back to your Ergo Proxy.

“I would rather learn from and speak like an anime character than spend so much time worrying about my source of learning that I don’t learn anything at all!”
May

Trick-or-treating brings young people out on the streets after dark, leaving them vulnerable to attacks when they least expect it. And we’re not talking about people that kill cats or put razor blades in apples or poison lollipops… No, there is a much more serious threat, a threat that can easily grow to post-apocalyptic proportions if left unchecked…

We are talking, of course, about zombies.

Luckily, at least one successful escape from a would-be flesh eater has been captured on video. A few years ago in Japan, against all odds, a young boy — with a little bit of help from his sister and younger brother – saved their family from a zombie attack. As avid horror film enthusiasts, the three children were uniquely prepared with the knowledge and tools they would need. Their valiant fight was recorded by a TV camera crew who just happened to be filming at their home that night.

We present that footage here, in the hope that it can act as a kind of instructional video to help us all prepare for the unthinkable.

 「ホラー大好き3姉弟、ゾンビ撃退作戦！」 （ほらー・だいすき・さん・してい＝きょうだい、ぞんび・げきたいさくせん！： “3 Horror-Loving Siblings and Their Zombie-Repelling Tactics!”）

The Night That Turned Their World Upside-Down

It was an evening just like any other evening. The family members were relaxing at home, enjoying wholesome family activities like imitating the crabwalk from the Exorcist—a “special skill” (特技・とくぎ) of the daughter.

Then all of a sudden—

外から悲鳴が・・・　（そと　から　ひめい　が・・・）

—shrieks from outside.

The family hurried out to see what was happening, only to find

逃げ惑う近所の人々　（にげまどう　きんじょの　ひとびと）

panicked neighbors running down the street, fleeing from…but it couldn’t be…but yes, yes it was…

ゾンビが来た！ゾンビが来たぞ！皆が好きなゾンビが来たぞ！

（ぞんび　が　きた！　ぞんび　が　きた　ぞ！　みんな　が　すきな　ぞんび　が　きた　ぞ！）

A zombie! In a tragic twist of irony, one of the children’s favorite horror film icons had come to attack their own neighborhood!

The family rushed back into their home, the youngest child, Tomo （友・とも）, overcome with terror:

怖い！（こわい！）

Unfortunately, the worst was still to come. A woman from next door arrived—

近所のオバちゃんがゾンビから預かった手紙

（きんじょの　おばちゃん　が　ぞんび　から　あずかった　てがみ）

—with a letter from the zombie!

なんて書いてある？（なんて　かいてある？）

“What does it say?” The children gathered around only to have their worst fears confirmed:

「もうすぐいきます　ゾンビ」

“I’ll be there shortly.    -Zombie”

An announcement of an imminent attack—in chillingly polite Japanese!

Battle Plans

戦おう！（たたかおう！）

“Let’s fight!” The reporter rallied the children.

俺（おれ）、やるわ！

“I’ll get him!” cried Tora（虎・とら）, the older brother, waving his toy machine gun by its barrel like a baseball bat.

よーし、やる気（き）になってきた！

“Atta-boy! All fired up and rarin’ to go!”

Meanwhile his older sister Rinko（凛子・りんこ） readied the traps. Pot hung above the door, check. Tape stretched across the bottom of the door frame, check.  And most importantly:

タバスコを配置（はいち）！

Tabasco sauce, CHECK.

３対１や！　（さん　たい　いち　や！）

“It’s 3 against 1!” she piped up with Kansai bravado as they took their stations.

Confidence was running high until…

タバスコ　こぼす！

“You’re gonna tip over the tabasco!” warned the mother. But it was too late. The sauce spilled, unnerving Tora.

But this was no time to cry over spilled tabasco sauce. Thud, thud, thud—heavy footsteps on the stairs!

The Zombie Arrives!

来た、来た！頑張って、頑張って！　（きた、きた！がんばって、がんばって！）

“He’s come, he’s come!” whispered the reporter, “Give it all you’ve got!”

Removing his shoes after entering, as Japanese zombies tend to do, the zombie

仕掛けには、全てお付き合いします　（しかけ　には、すべて　おつきあい　します）

obligingly stumbled through all the traps that had been laid. But would it be enough to stop him?!

The door creaked open…Rinko dropped the pot too soon!  In his panic, Tora threw his toy gun at the zombie and had to retreat.

But the next trap was successful! The zombie fell to his knees…

冷たい～　（つめたい～）

“It’s co-old!” He lurched up only to trip once again and plunge head first into the next trap!

With the zombie distracted…

凛子ちゃん、先回りしてサランラップスタンバイ！

（りんこちゃん、さきまわりして　さらんらっぷ　すたんばい！）

Rinko ran ahead into the next room to ready their secret weapon—*SARAN WRAP*

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen—

アレ血、アレ血！　（あれ　ち、あれ　ち！）

—“That’s blood, that’s blood!” Tora bravely guided the zombie toward the “blood” on the floor…

血！？　（ち！？）

“Blood?!” The zombie was all ears.

食べるんやろ！　（たべるんやろ！）

“Try some!”

Tabasco bombs away! His mouth on fire, the enraged zombie turned on the children…

Backed Into a Corner

早く、早く！こっち逃げよう！そっち逃げよう！　（はやく、はやく！こっち　にげよう！そっち　にげよう！）

“Hurry, hurry! Run over here! Run over there!”

Flinging projectiles at the zombie, the children backed into the inner room.

来い！　（こい！）

“Bring it!” yelled Tora from the door, holding a toy dinosaur tied to a string above his head.

The zombie lurched closer…only to be struck back by the swinging dinosaur!

死ねよ！絶対死ね！　（しねよ！ぜったいしね！）

“Die! I mean it!!”

もっと来い！もっと来い！早く！もっと来いや！

（もっと　こい！　もっと　こい！　はやく！　もっと　こい　や！）

“C’mon! C’mon! Hurry up! Come back here for some more!” Tora was on fire! He swung the dinosaur one last time into the zombie and shut the door.

みんな、用意、用意！　（みんな、ようい！ようい！）

“Everyone, get ready, get ready!” The children prepared for the final battle as the zombie pounded at the door, but a new conflict was brewing within their own ranks…

Breaking Point

友、何にもしてへんやん、自分　（とも、なんにも　してへんやん、じぶん）

“Tomo, you aren’t doing anything,” the reporter complained as Tomo hid behind a stuffed animal on the bed.

And Rinko, holding the saran wrap ready, was starting to panic,

来て、みんな、お願い！こっち来て！　（きて、みんな、おねがい！こっちきて！）

urging everyone to come closer to the door.

Tora shot back:

噛まれたらどうすんの！？　（かまれたら　どうすんの？！）

“[Come closer to the door -- great idea!] And what if he bites us[, genius]?!”

グチャグチャにソレ、すんなよ！

“Don’t mess this up!” he barked.

だって、怖いもん！　（だって、こわい　もん！）

“But I’m scared!” she pleaded.

The reporter started telling them they’d need to work together to make it through this, but Tora couldn’t take it anymore…

全然、手伝ってないくせに！何言ってんや！そんなん言わんといて！

（ぜんぜん、てつだってない　くせに！　なに　いってん　や！　そんなん　いわんといて！）

“How can you say that! YOU haven’t been helping us at all! Don’t SAY that!”

俺たち、頑張ってんね！（おれたち、がんばってんね！）

“We’re doing our best!”

He was on the verge of a meltdown, but this boy was not about to back down to a filthy blood licker…Oh HELL no!

The Final Battle

俺が戦ってやる！早く、出て来い！早く！（おれがたたかってやる！はやく、でてこい！はやく！）

“I’m taking you down! Come out here already! NOW!” Tora shouted through his tears.

The zombie staggered in through the door, closer and closer…

食べてやる！　（たべてやる！）

“I’m gonna eat you!” he rasped, and Tora, perched on top a pile of futons, unleashed a hail of blows onto the zombie’s head.  It was time for the…

サランラップ！

“SARAN WRAP!”

Rinko quickly handed it to Tora. Facing down the beast’s deathly jaws, he held up the secret weapon and…

よっしゃあ！

Hyah! Plastered it over the zombies face!

虎、ありがとうな

“Thanks, Tora,” Rinko said as she patted on some more.

The zombie flailed as they wound more and more saran wrap around his head, followed by with a storm of punches and kicks from behind.

The zombie collapsed to the floor and groaned under the relentless assault.

ゾンビさん、大丈夫（だいじょうぶ）ですか！？

“Are you okay, Mr. Zombie?” asked the reporter.

もうこんな家、来ない！　（もう　こんな　いえ、こない！）

“I’ve had it with this place!” whimpered the Zombie as he headed for the door.

来い、もっとオラ！　（こい、もっと　おら！）

“Come here! I’m not done with you yet!” cried Tora, showering the poor zombie with blows （滅多打ち・めったうち）.

But the zombie couldn’t take any more from these crazy kids.

もう二度と来ないよ！　（もう　にど　と　こない　よ！）

“I’m never coming back again!” he wailed as he limped out of the house.

VICTORY!

倒したぞ！　（たおした　ぞ！）

“We defeated him!” cried Tora triumphantly, breaking into tears of relief and exhaustion.

みんなが頑張ったから勝ったけど…　（みんな　が　がんばった　から　かった　けど）

“We won ‘cause everybody did their best,” he sobbed into the microphone…

みんな協力して頑張ろうってや　ゆったのに、あのな、協力してなかったな！

（みんな　きょうりょくして　がんばろう　ってや　ゆった　のに、あのな、きょうりょく　してなかった　な！）

“But even though I told everyone to work together, they…they didn’t cooperate!”

でもよかったな　倒れたもんな　（たおれたもんな）

“But it turned out all right! You defeated him!” the reporter pointed out, trying to cheer up Tora, who was now crying into his sleeve.

だれが頑張ったから？　（だれ　が　がんばった　から？）
“And it was all thanks to who?” asked the reporter to the boy who had almost single-handedly saved the day.

みんなが頑張ったから

“Thanks to everyone,” answered Tora, generously.

Conclusion

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that night will go down as one of the best or worst memories of their childhood, but one thing is for certain—those three little horror fans will never ever forget it.

While nothing can really prepare you for a zombie attack, we hope this footage has shown you how a little bit of tabasco sauce, saran wrap and courage go a long way. And teamwork…if the rest of your family doesn’t chicken out on you.

More links:

Version with English and Chinese subs: youtu.be/oEUWG1tmg_I

Niconico version (registration required): www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5140891

Don’t get it right.

Don’t get it done.

Get it started.

It’s not surgery. Yes, you can be this lax and still win. I did. Nice, huh?

Don’t aim for perfection. Don’t even aim for excellence. Just aim for “better than nothing”. Aim for “not nothing”. Do “not nothing”. The time-averaged sum of “not nothings” will give you the excellence you seek.

As my good friend Jang Mi once said the other week: “two wrongs don’t make a right, but two halves make a whole” . And a trillion millionths make a million.

I think counting things in hours at least is more sensible; seconds can give an impression of more than it actually is (“I’ve studied for a million seconds!” “But that’s only like, 228 hours…”)

www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/so-should-we-track-and-log-every-second-of-japanese

Why do I kind of insist or…persist…in counting language exposure time in seconds? Because it’s a cheap win. It’s like timeboxing. It usurps the delay component of Piers Steel’s Temporal Motivation Theory equation. Or rather, it recruits the delay component in our favor by suppressing it, therefore driving up utility.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry…I stare at that equation practically every day ¹. What I’m saying is, a second is so short that it virtually erases and motivation to procrastinate. You’re like “a second? SURE!”.

Trying to rack up an hour feels like work. Screw that. Racking up seconds is a game that is easy to win and, yes, makes you feel good. Sure, a million seconds is “only” 278 hours…But that’s fine. Why? Because it’s accurate. A million seconds is an accurate (if sweet-sounding) measure  of exposure time — it is real time — whereas “2 years” is almost always a vague, meaningless lie.

Counting language acquisition in years makes us think that we’ve been playing way harder than we actually have.

It’s not the years, it’s the minutes. It’s the seconds.

You can’t compare a stack of dollar bills to a stack of Benjamins and call them the same, playa.

Don’t tell me how many “years” you’ve been at the language.
Tell me how many seconds.
That’s seconds on task. Seconds on the bike, whether pedaling or coasting.

And, no, the time you spent being emo but not doing anything does not count.

School and well-meaning, 真面目 people with an overactive sense of duty will teach you Type 3.

Your normal, sane friends will teach you Type 4 for a laugh at your expense .

When you ask questions, people will answer with Type 2.

Type 1 is the only real kind. It’s the only kind you need to know. But even if you ask for it nicely, people won’t give it to you. Because either they don’t know where it is (unconscious competence), or they don’t think it’s right for anyone, from any country, to use it. So you take it. You take Type 1 Japanese. You steal it by observation and imitation.

• Bad goal: Skate for N hours/day
• Good goal: Show up at rink
• Even better goal: Put on skates
• Better still: Leave house with gear

• Bad goal: Practice puck-handling for N minutes
• Good goal: Touch stick ¹

• Bad goal: Write N words per day
• Better goal: Write N sentences per day ²
• Good goal: Open writing program.
• Extra goal: Mash keyboard.

Rout gripeth

…watching movies in Japanese is so boring when you can’t understand more than a few words or an occasional simple sentence. Even if you’ve seen the movie in a language you can understand before.

And just leaving them on in the background and doing something else is so distracting and gets annoying after a while. The same, sadly, goes for podcasts or ebooks.

ahndoruuu lovingly answers:

I used to feel this exact same way. What changed the experience for me was a realization. I’m not quite sure what the realization was, in that I can’t verbalize it well, but basically when you’re watching stuff in a language you barely understand/don’t understand well, the entire experience is different. I had to change the way I watched movies.

Rather than just kinda passively stare at the screen and let the story and dialogue over me, when I watch L2/L3 movies it becomes an opportunity just to people-watch. See how they act, their facial expressions, intonation, stuff in the background. I’m explaining this terribly but I kinda just take it like I’m observing another world. Frankly, I don’t really care what the story is. I’m just trying to get used to all of this new stuff. 「Hey cool explosions.」 「Hey cute/hot girls.」 「Hey cool-looking guys fighting.」 「Hey that was funny; I don’t know why but I’m laughing anyway.」 Whatever yo.

From what I recall, this was kinda how I watched stuff when I was a kid. I think one important AJATT principle is to, as much as possible, mentally return to childhood. That has helped me more than anything else but it’s such a personal thing and so hard to verbalize…which is, I think, why I haven’t seen anyone else try to write about it. But the way I see it is kinda like…each new language you learn is a chance to sorta relive childhood. While your Chinese/Japanese/French/whatever self grows. Luckily your other nationalities grow a lot faster than your native one. ^^

P.S. Another thing that helps is to put all your movies/tv shows into a giant playlist and just have it playing all the time. If they’re actual dvds (hah) rip them. When you shift your attention to what’s playing, just keep hitting the skip button until you hit something that can hold your interest at that point. If you skip into a long video file, keep skipping a few minutes at a time through the video if need be. Screw continuity.

Also, screw trying to figure out what’s going on unless you REALLY want to. most of the time it’s just a pain in the a$$ and makes you want to stop watching entirely and run back to Englishland where things make sense.

ブライアン addeth:

The funny thing is, you’ll find that language isn’t actually necessary to get the gist of what’s going on, in terms of character interaction at least. This also requires some skill on the part of the production. If it’s a bunch of people siting and talking without much emotion, ¹ good luck with that. But that’s a boring movie in any language.

Also, don’t automatically assume your tastes will be consistent between languages. In English, I love science fiction and crime shows and don’t really care for sitcoms. In Japanese, I’m all about sitcoms and character drama. YMMV.

Final tip: if your reading is better than your listening, Japanese subtitles ² are extremely useful.

Key word: Observe. It’s like you’re an ethnographer, method actor and stalker-voyeur. All rolled into one. Linguist? Not so much, actually .

AJATTeers are way more articulate than I am. It’s hard for me to use more than the simple English, so I just get angry and yell and fake swear. Thanks, ブライ and ahndy .

“The key to strategy… is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.”
— Cavilo, The Vor Game

If you change your environment then, you won’t have to “choose” anything. You can just live. Your environment will essentially make your choices for you.

I never needed to “manage time” and I never needed to “discipline” myself. People who have dealt with me know how I am; I am intensely undisciplined: I sit around unwashed; emails and phone calls to me go unanswered.

I knew all I needed to do was change my environment. And that’s all I really “tried” to do, that’s the only place I made an effort. I am encouraging you to try the same. Not because you “should”, but because it’s the easy way out.

Real men don’t take the easy way out. But I’m not a real man. I’m a pathetic wusspot who thinks sweats can count as formal wear if they’re new ¹.

Take the easy way out. Don’t change yourself. Change your environment. Don’t choose Japanese. Choose a Japanese environment. Don’t do Japanese. Only have Japanese to do ². Don’t try to “win” at Japanese, just make it so that winning at Japanese is the only possible conclusion.

• Don’t try to read Japanese books. Just only have Japanese books in your house/room/car/bag.
• Don’t try to watch Japanese TV and movies. Just only have Japanese TV and movies. And then leave them playing.
• Don’t watch movies. Just leave movies playing with the sound on.
• Don’t surf more Japanese websites. Just have them always loading and loaded. Make Yahoo Kids your homepage. Use the Surusu URL Shuffler.

Easy, right? Like a speck of dust, it’s nothing, really. It is nothing. It is 無為. But pile up enough dust and you’ll have a mountain.

You don’t learn the language you could, should or want to learn. You learn the language of your bedroom, your kitchen, your living room, your web browser history, and your iPod.

So, if time “is” anything at all, it is at best a force multiplier. By itself, it’s powerless. Time multiplied by 0 gives you, well, 0. To mean anything, time needs to be crossed with choice.

Choice is where the real power is.

I think I’ve waxed pop philosophical enough for one day. Let me wrap it up and bring it home.

Don’t “do” Japanese. Don’t “set aside time” for Japanese. Choose Japanese. Show up to Japanese. Then, just to be safe, lay down some suppression fire — make other choices difficult, inconvenient, or impossible.

What we call time (in the sense of “you’ll get better with time”) is not time, it’s really the sum of our choices. It’s the sum of things we showed up to. The sum of our showings up?  They don’t have to be big choices. Not at all. They’re just choices. The simplest choice, the atomic choice, if you will, is a choice of direction. The sum of your directions determines your destination…your “destiny”.

So, again, time will not make you better or worse. It’s not the time, it’s the number of times, the number of times you choose to show up to Japanese – you will get as good at Japanese as this number is high.

Choose fun. Choose kanji .

1. Turn on the TV at 9pm today.
   • Turn it off at 9:30 pm…2 years from now. Seriously.
     • I am not effing kidding. This is not hyperbole. Leave it on. Leave it audible. I used to leave things playing even when I wasn’t home, just to be a bastard about continuity.
   • Get cable/satellite ASAP. More variety.
     • Don’t be an idiot and get basic . Get premium. I’m talking about WOWOW and all the fixin’s. Coz they keep all the good stuff there. You’re a remedial native speaker of Japanese, you need variety and volume. This is an investment in your education, homegirl.
   • Channel-surf like a fiend.
2. Rent one Japanese-dubbed Hollywood movie every day.
   • One DVD.
   • That’s only 100 yen per day.
   • You spend more than that on beer and cigarettes, you vice-loving gaijin, you.
   • Why can’t you be like me and use hookers and blow ¹? You know, like a proper grown-up?
3. Get a new copy of 少年ジャンプ (Shounen Jump) every week (or キャンキャン (CanCam), egg, ageha and Men’s Non-No every month…yes, all four; it’s only once a month, champ) .
• Tear out 3~10 pages and post them on your fridge and walls.
• Increase, replenish and/or replace these pages weekly.
• Don’t be a jerk about buying these. They need to be in your house, in your bedroom and living room. They do you little good sitting on the shelves of the nation’s convenience stores because you don’t live at the conbini, do you?

Related Reading:

• The Gaijin 12-Step Program | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/kigd6n
• If Immersion Works So Well, Then Why Can People Live In a Country For Double-Digit Years And Never Learn The Language? | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/gqYqpz
• Top 10 Reasons Why Expats Who Live In Japan Don’t Know Japanese | AJATT | All Japanese All The Time j.mp/9hkmMx

1. 茶の味/The Taste Of Tea (2004)
   • Quirky. No plot. It doesn’t need one. This movie is above and beyond plot. It just makes you happy. Plus it really lends itself to repeat viewings. Just watch it, man. I no I said “in no particular order”. I lied. There is a reason why this is at the top of the list.
2. バトル・ロワイアル/BATTLE ROYALE (2000)
   • A relentlessly bloody orgy of violence wrapped around an emotionally wrenching, thought-provoking story. Wrapped around an enigma. Wrapped around a  conundrum. This is the kind of movie that made Japan great .
3. インストール/Install (2004)
   • I wish 上戸彩 (UETO Aya) had been my neighborhood truant high school girl when I was ten years old … Fun story. Cool editing. Also pretty quirky, not 茶の味-level quirky, but pretty durn quirky. Based on a grown-up award-winning novel written by an actual high schooler (綿矢りさ/WATAYA Risa).
4. 誰も知らない/Nobody Knows (2004)
   • Based on a true story. Seriously messed up — I mean, it’s a about child neglect, baby — and interesting at the same time. Not a tearjerker, though: this film is better than that. Powerful stuff. Might make you want to go and thank your Mum for being such a nag .
5. がんばっていきまっしょい/Give It All (1998)
   • So I had a crush on 田中麗奈 (TANAKA Rena) after seeing her in NIN×NIN 忍者ハットリくん THE MOVIE/Ninja Hattori-Kun: The Movie (because she has the same eyes as an RL girl I used to really like. Actually, now that I think about it, all my crushes seem to be on different versions of the same three people. Now you know).
   • Tanaka’s really young in this movie, though, so she definitely doesn’t look as, you know, “all there” as she does in Ninja; she just looks like a middle schooler who will one day grow up to be…Rena TANAKA . Which leaves the fun of the story, the verdant beauty of the Japanese countryside (Ehime Prefecture/愛媛県) and…whatever you call that feeling you get from watching people who sucked at something, get really good at it. The opposite of Schadenfreude.
   • Yes, in terms of surface subject matter, it is a high school sports movie (with girls’ rowing as the sport in question), but the pacing and flow is such that it’s really more than that. It just feels like…an examination of the simple joy of life? At some level.
   • AJATT history note: IIRC, this is the first domestic Japanese movie I watched completely unaided — no subs of any kind, no prior knowledge of the plot .
6. デスノート/DEATH NOTE (2006)
   • Requires no introduction. I never really got into the manga actually. Um…certain women I know are obsessed with the actor who plays “L”, 松山ケンイチ (MATSUYAMA Kenichi).
7. にゃんこ THE MOVIE/Pussycat: The Movie (2006)
   • More documentary than movie. Follows the actual lives of real cats. There are about 3 sequels out now, all equally good. Really enjoyable.
8. 光の雨/The Rain of Light (2001)
   • Based on a novel that’s based a true story, that of the brainwashing, interrogations, physical and psychological torture carried out by idealistic, ultra-left-wing student groups in Japan in the 1970s, specifically the so-called “United Red Army“. What’s jacked up is that these Communists (Maoists?) didn’t lynch random civilians or right-wingers, they lynched each other. For basically not being “communist enough”. They even sentenced each other to death, IIRC.
   • Anyway, it’s really jacked up (psychologically, especially…you feel trapped right there with them in that mountain cabin)  and won’t leave you feeling good. But at the same time, another level, it’s also powerful and inspiring. I finished the film grateful to be living in a happy time and place, free to live my life without some rear orifice of a human being telling me what to do or think.
   • Other than the punch-in-the-crotch content, one interesting thing about the movie is its narrative structure: it’s a movie within a movie — rather than portray the incident outright, the movie tells the story of a group of typical, apolitical, present-day college students creating a movie re-enacting the original 1971~1972 events. Yeah…weird, and you’d think it might fall apart, but it totally works. It’s also a good device for easing the pressure on the viewer at regular intervals, because it really is hard to watch psychological torture, actually.
   • No, really.
   • So let’s review: it’s a movie within a movie based on a novel based on real people and events.
9. 呪怨/The Grudge (1999)
   • Way too freaking scary. I can’t watch this kind of movie. But I’m glad it gets made? In a way …
10. リング/The Ring (1998)
    • Again, I cannot watch this type of movie. But as art? I guess…it’s worthy? As freaking emotionally scarring art. Who makes these movies?! How do they sleep?!

Honorable mention (films I haven’t seen sat down and watched properly but that look good and I keep meaning to see from start to finish):

• UDON (2006)…my liking of this movie has very little to do with 小西真奈美 (KONISHI Manami)’s face, by the way. I just want to make that clear.
• クローズZERO/CROWS ZERO (2007): non-stop チンピラ (hooligan) action with great cinematography and bone-crushing sound effects…what’s not to like?
• 本格科學冒険映畫20世紀少年/20th Century Boys: A Serious Science Fiction Adventure Movie, Be Arch (2008): One of the Japanese movie industry’s biggest ever projects, budgetwise. Flawed in places but a great effort and very watchable. I just haven’t watched all of it yet. Hmmm…I guess I sound snobbish. No, I mean…they did a good job; converting an intricate, sprawling, 22-volume manga into a coherent, enjoyable, well-paced, attention-holding movie is no joke, and they took their job seriously. This isn’t some fiasco like the Gantz anime ¹. From what I’ve seen of it (it’s actually a trilogy that spilled over into 2009), it’s a decent flick.

Well, that’s it for now. This list is highly subjective and these are just my personal favorites. I actually haven’t watched as many domestic Japanese movies (邦畫) as I could or “should” . Plus I know I’ve skipped over some really cool stuff that simply escaped my memory at the time of writing, so…yeah.

Anyway…

What have your favorites been?

カイト (2010)

So Wonderful (2005)

鐘を鳴らして (2008)

Coincidence? I think not!

1. Do nothing.
   • “I’m tired”
   • “I’m burned out”
   • “I can’t”
2. Do something hard.
   • “It’s good for me!”
   • “Suffering builds character!”
   • “I need discipline!”
   • “I have to”
   • “I should”
3. Do something easy.
   • “No way!”
   • “This counts?”
   • “But it’s so much fun!”
   • “This is so easy!”

You’re like, “but wait, that’s three things!”

No.

Because 1 = 2. Telling yourself to do something hard is the same thing as telling yourself to do nothing at all. Why? Because either:

• You never do hard stuff, or
• You do do hard stuff (like, once), but you don’t keep doing it

So again: telling yourself to do something hard is the same thing as telling yourself to do nothing at all.

Stop kidding yourself. You’re not gonna do that hard thing. You’re just not. It’s not going to happen, and even it does happen, it won’t keep happening. It’ll happen once, and it’ll hurt so much that it’ll never happen again.

So do something easy instead. Do something small. The smaller the better. The easier the better. The choice is not all or nothing: it’s easy or nothing.