Tag: AJATT

When it boils down to it, I’d rather spend time with friends or family than locked up in my room studying Japanese. It would have been best if I’d discovered All Japanese All The Time (AJATT) when I was in college and had all the time in the world to devote myself to studying, but there’s no point going “what if” now. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t devote all 24 hours of my day to studying Japanese. I’m not going to beat myself up if I take time out to bake a cake with my sisters or play a little Mario Kart with my brothers. When I’m 95 years old looking back on my life I’m 99% sure I’ll wish I’d spent more time with those I loved rather than on studying Japanese.

Having said that, there’s a lot more room for improvement in my current studying process. Another weekend went by and I still haven’t bought my mp3 player. I am making headway with internet radio, though. I downloaded a program that records sound playing on my computer, so not only do I listen to the programs as they stream but then I save them as mp3s for later listening. I might use that on my anime files as well, so I have ready-made “drama CDs” to enjoy. I got some sound-editing software I’ve been itching to fiddle with, so I can use that to cut out the non-talking bits.

I also heard of a program that records youtube vids for later watching and I’m going to investigate that thoroughly later today. It pisses me off when I watch something really funny or interesting on youtube and come back later to find it removed or just plain missing.

So little by little I’m getting somewhere with Japanese, even though I’m not devoting as much time as I should to it. I realized I spend about 3 hours commuting every weekday so I MUST get that mp3 player and take advantage of that down time. Looks like I can get a decent 2GB one for under $50 so I’ll look into it. This weekend for sure!!!!!!

With that, today’s websites…umm… actually I didn’t read last Friday’s pages at all. I spent all the time on Dear Prudence, but I got rid of that and I’m not replacing it with any other pages so that’s the end of that. And that’s the end of today’s entry.

It’s like this: I’m not really a blogging fan. And I’m not the blogging type either. So I’m just going to use this as a log to track my Japanese studying progress. Basically I’m following the AJATT approach [previously: method] (google it, I’m too lazy to link) and getting as much Japanese input as possible. So every day I’ll just track here what sites I visited, what movies I watched or what games I played (there’s going to be a lot of that), that sort of thing. I’ll also mention any real achievenement I’ve made, but my goal is just to be able to read, write and speak Japanese like a native and I’m well on my way to getting there.

I’ll confess up front, I cheat a lot on my Japanese studying, especially with the Dear Abby website. I’m trying to switch to Yomiuri’s 人生案内 but it’s just not the same, you know? The answers are so non-confrontational and vague, no fun at all. Until I find a good replacement, I’m going to be skipping back and forth between Dear Abby and Japanese pages. Sue me.

Last thing to mention: I’m not a fan of exams either. So I don’t plan to take the JLPT or the kanji exam or anything. I also don’t plan to live or work in Japan any time soon (never say never though) so everything I’m doing is purely for my own satisfaction. So long as in the end I can read whatever I want and say whatever I want to say I’ll be happy.

And so, without much further ado, today’s website:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B9_%28%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BC%E3%83%97%29
(アリス　－フォークグループ）
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A0%80%E5%86%85%E5%AD%9D%E9%9B%84
（堀内孝雄）
http://mainichi.jp/enta/mantan/game/review/news/20080512mog00m200006000c.html
(ゲーム批評「花と雨と太陽と」

This weekend or the next or the next I need to buy: an mp3 player, earphones (preferably canalphones) wtih 4ft cable or longer so I can listen to Japanese radio online at work. Also a wireless card for my laptop so I can use the internet at home ‘cos this is getting ridiculous. Remind me, aight?