Comments on: Secrets to Smoother SRSing, Part 3: Don’t Go Looking for Items, Let Them Come Find You

By: vgambit

vgambit — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 09:47:45 +0000

I finally downloaded a good amount of that Down Town show. It’s amazing.

Also, I bought the first DVD Box set of Game Center CX from Amazon.co.jp (a total of $75 for 7 “challenges,” not even entire episodes). A few days after it arrived, I found a veoh user profile that had almost every single episode uploaded. I’m not buying Japanese DVDs anymore. Definitely not if I’m paying $28 in shipping. From now on, instead of spending money on media, I’m just gonna look harder for the downloads. Now I want to watch stuff like Prison Break with Japanese dubs, but I can’t find stuff like that anywhere.

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By: NDN

NDN — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:07:24 +0000

@Jason
Well, what I’m going to say is most probably not new but anyway, if you meet a really difficult kanji and you’re REALLY stuck, try making ABSURD images out of the given primitives, for example: for tree you would imagine a tree of gigantic dimensions. I hope it should help in such cases.

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By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 19:17:33 +0000

@Rob

Thank you very much, i’m still new to it all so still figuring out the details

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By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:14:12 +0000

@vgambit

Everything you mentioned is those guys show: ダウンタウンのガキの使いやあらへんで!!. The cool thing about it is every week they do something different so you never know what it’s going to be about. They have some recurring stuff they do like the Silent Library and the 7 changes and the no laughing batsu games. That show is the longest running comedy show on TV there; it’s been on since 1989 or so I think. I got hooked on it back when I lived in Japan in the 90s. They post the new episodes every week on d-addicts if anyone is interested in watching it in normal TV quality.

@Jason

I think it’s okay if you don’t remember the story but remember the kanji, in fact, that is eventually what you want to happen. The stories are really just tools to help you remember, in time the stories will all fade and you’ll just remember the kanji. The good thing about using the SRS on the website is if you do ever forget the story or kanji it will be there if you miss it.

I definitely recommend taking the time to write out each story on the Reviewing the Kanji website and record them. When I started I didn’t do this and later had to go back and do it.

Actually the main piece of advice that I wish someone had given me when I started RTK would be before getting to far into it, go through all the most common radicals like water, finger, person, thread, soil, etc. and choose an easy mnemonic for each. It makes it sooo much easier to make stories and remember them later on if you use something like Spiderman for the thread radical instead of just plain ol’ thread or string.

Also I think it’s better to not get in a hurry. I know there are stories galore about how people did the whole RTK in one or two months, but I think slowing down, concentrating on writing the character right and taking the time to review is better in the long run. What I did after I finished the first thousand was stop and do nothing but reviews for a month until they were all solid in my head and then I did the second thousand. I can’t say if that way is better than just blazing through it, but when do my daily reviews I have about 90-95% retention rate.

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By: nest0r

nest0r — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:25:56 +0000

Cool, thanks.

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By: vgambit

vgambit — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:33:58 +0000

I found the third one. Looks it was part of the same game show you linked to. jp.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkqF2oK7fU

The end of part 1 is just too funny.

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By: vgambit

vgambit — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:23:02 +0000

Rob, the second dude from the left in the beginning of that show looks familiar to me. I think he was also on another Japanese game show where the contestants all sit around a table, then shuffle a bunch of cards. Each contestant picks a card, and whoever pulls the card with the X has to be the victim/do whatever the next page of the book on the table says they have to do. Also, they had to keep quiet, because it took place in a library.

There was also another show where they would sit around while people randomly came in doing random funny things, and anyone who laughed had to pay some amount of money.

There’s also the show where these people would go into the room and make them laugh, but anyone who laughed got spanked afterward.

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By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 06:09:23 +0000

Hi, just came to this site this week and although this may not be the right section to post these questions, it seems the newest blog so figured this is where I should; sorry in advance. As I just came to this website this week, I also started Hiesigs RTK1 as well. Mon/Tues/Wed I went through the book and basically just read the story and wrote down the kanji once and went onto the next one for a total of 125 kanji. Thursday comes around and I found the Kanji.koohii; So I go through with the reviews. Basically if I missed one I would write it down a couple times thinking of the story. However a lot of the time when looking at the word I would remember the kanji immediately and not the story but still proceeded to hit “yes” i was right, and one other thing, my kanji writing is terrible… or well sloppy terrible. As for the questions (I always seem to drag things out.. )

Should I still be content if I don’t remember the story behind the Kanji and click the “yes” i know it, or should I make sure to know the story as this may play into remembering the kanji longer?

As I said my Kanji writing is horrible, should I also consider the the answer wrong or right if perhaps i had the right symbol in mind but I didn’t make one of the strokes quite long or curved enough? you can still see i thought of the same symbol, but it definitely looks different because of it. (However I am making an effort to make my Kanji writing better)

I know I shouldn’t be trying to compete with others on how fast they went through the hiesigs RTK, however if I’m not mistaken people made it through that book in 1-3 months. Right now I’m not having problems with the motivation or anything (enjoying it very much), but it took me till just a little while ago to get a 99% out of the 125 Kanji I embarked upon this week, should i be aiming for more kanji per week, even if i haven’t put the others fully into my head or should I only move onto more once I have a 90% or more on the reviews for the kanji i have?

And Lastly, thank you very much for this website, before running into this site I didn’t know where to start for learning Japanese, I had found out about Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana but 2-3 weeks ago and the JLPT list words. So I had taught myself Hiragana to start off with, then moved onto translating the JLPT words that were in kana and memorizing about 200 of those. I had no clue if i was even on the right track or not. Now through your website I now have a view of how to go about some of it, and I love the motivational speaks. Thanks again!

Jason

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By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:20:34 +0000

@nest0r

Here is a link to an episode of one of my favorite comedy shows. They use subs all the time. You can find many episodes by doing a search in youtube of “gaki no tsukai” or ガキの使い。

jp.youtube.com/watch?v=rgkbB9jEt2E

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By: nest0r

nest0r — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:54:14 +0000

Hey Rob, thanks for the tip (didn’t realize you could take screenshots of YouTube videos, for some reason, and I’ve been looking for an audio recording program like that), what shows are you talking about, if you don’t mind my asking? I’ve never encountered a scene where they write in Japanese subs what they’re saying for emphasis or whatnot.

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By: toadhjo

toadhjo — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:58:32 +0000

I also agree with the group theory, especially if you can be in a group that is all/mostly Japanese people besides yourself. Even if they sometimes address you in English, they will most likely speak Japanese amongst themselves, and that means you can at least listen to their conversation, and join in if you desire (in Japanese, of course!)

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By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:06:02 +0000

Just to backup what Jadpan said, in terms of keeping it in Japanese, groups settings are the way to go. Just like if we were all in a room together, invariably we would all have different levels of Japanese ability and probably wouldn’t feel comfortable having a conversation in Japanese only. When I lived in Japan it would happen all the time, a person would have no reservation about speaking English if I was the only person there, but as soon as other people came you’d never hear a word.

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By: Jadpan

Jadpan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:05:35 +0000

@Benni
In Japan there are plenty of people who don’t care about learning English. And they don’t mind being your friend, as long as, as someone said before, you’re interesting or you share common interests. And there are plenty of people who put on wanting to speak English, but as soon as you are in a group, as long as the group is made up of mostly native Japanese speakers, the conversation goes to Japanese pretty quickly, with the occasional foray into “How do you say that in English?” tangents since you the foreigner are present. (I’m hoping that goes away eventually. Maybe once my J-skills are up to par.)

@Kaba
Not sure what you are basing your idea of beauty on. But if you look at how people actually write kanji, it doesn’t look anything like the typeface kanji that you see on computer screens. If you know stroke order and (more importantly) stroke direction, you have a chance of figuring out what kanji it is. Beyond that, good luck.

That brings me to a question. Are there any resources that collect actual Japanese handwriting samples for purposes of being able to figure out what the hell they are writing? Even with the Heisig method which allows me to pick out details in kanji very easily based on the stories and elements, I have trouble reading handwritten kanji. And these are kanji written by teachers in a classroom. Anyway, yeah something I’ve been wondering.

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By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:19:47 +0000

Or you could not be a **** and let them talk in English and you talk in Japanese. Then help them with their English and watch as they magically help you with your Japanese. It’s amazing.
Sometimes I think some people take this All Japanese All the Time thing a little too literally. It is fundamentally impossible, especially if you live in non-Japan. The idea is to drastically increase your Japanese input, not be ******** to other people.

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By: Madamada

Madamada — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:02:17 +0000

@Benni

I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that if you want to have Japanese friends with who you speak soley in Japanese then you have to start out speaking Japanese and just stick to it. If the other person keeps coming back in English and there is no other compelling reason to stay in contact with them, then cut em lose.

There can be a period of clashing heads as you so aptly put it, and that’s when you just have to dump the humble foreigner-guest-in-the-country routune and stick it out.

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By: Kaba

Kaba — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:24:07 +0000

Something that’s been working for me lately to make SRSing more fun is focusing more on handwriting quality (I’m not saying this will work for everyone or that it’s an especially important thing to focus on). If I write a character nicely and make it look as if a native Japanese person had written it, I get a thrill out of it and actually get pumped up to see what kanji I’ll be writing in my next card. I used to rush through writing kanji to get the job done quickly, but I find that if I take my time and use more deliberate handwriting, it’s enjoyable to see pretty things appear on the paper as I’m writing. For each sentence a write, I ask myself, “Would a native think a native wrote this?” Of course, it doesn’t have to look perfect or anything, but I like to pride myself in the fact that I think it does~ It makes SRSing go by quickly and more enjoyably for me.

However, sometimes I’m not always in the mood to write pretty, and I get bored with the SRS. Sometimes I leave thee SRS and go off to do something fun, but I have this uncomfortable feeling of not having things done, knowing my number of due cards will increase. It’s a feeling of relief to leave the SRS with a nice blank slate 0 due cards. I actually get a good deal of pride from seeing that “Congratulations!” message （笑）

Does anyone here have the same thing going on?

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By: nacest

nacest — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:30:11 +0000

Zarxarx,
if adding “good and useful” sentences into the SRS makes you feel better, then in my humble opinion that falls into Khatz’s “fun” definition, and it’s fine.
This seems like a very simple matter of common sense to me. A no-brainer. You do what you feel is rewarding to do. You use an SRS because it makes you remember stuff: that’s rewarding. But you don’t do it too much, because you have things more (strictly) fun to do: that’s rewarding. And rewarding is “fun” in a (general) way.
That was just my take on this.

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By: Alyks

Alyks — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:38:29 +0000

I think a textbook or one of the community sentence packs can be useful, but only if you’re at that beginner stage. If you’ve finished a textbook like Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar, or Japanese for Everyone, sticking with learning resources is just redundant and will hold you back. Khatsumoto is right about textbooks being bad.

But if you can open up a manga and figure out what the sentences mean in a reasonable amount of time, stick with real Japanese stuff.

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By: Zarxrax

Zarxrax — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:43:58 +0000

I disagree with part of the advice of this particular article. I see absolutely nothing wrong with adding sentences that are “good for me” into the SRS. If I can take sentences from some structured book that will let me learn lots of important kanji readings, vocab, or grammar in an efficient way, then why not? This has absolutely nothing to do with the “fun” aspect of the whole thing. Of course I still watch anime and dramas and other stuff. I wouldn’t even be studying Japanese if I didn’t care about all the awesome Japanese media out there. But when it comes down to reviewing stuff in my SRS, I want *good and useful* stuff in there. The whole SRS thing isn’t exactly going to be “fun” no matter whether you take your sentences from the latest Naruto or from a legal contract. Now I don’t hate doing SRS reviews everyday, in fact I don’t even mind doing them. I actually get quite a bit of enjoyment from the simple fact of knowing how much I’m learning every day. And besides, I’m pretty lazy, so its a heck of a lot more “fun” for me to just take premade sentences that I think will be useful than to do through all the trouble of trying to copy something out of a drama.

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By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:23:34 +0000

For ripping the audio, I use this free program:

www.download.com/Free-Sound-Recorder/3000-2168_4-10698910.html

It’s a simple program that basically just records any sound that comes out of your computer. I use it all the time to record the audio from movies, dramas, etc. to put in my mp3 player and also to record little snippets to put in the srs. It is a simple program -you can’t edit the file or anything, but it works well as an audio ripper. I’ve been using it for several months and never had a problem.

There are probably several programs like this out there, this was just the first one I tried and it worked so I’ve stuck with it.

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