Radicals are really helpful once you start getting to kanji with higher strokes. Something like 愛[love] is actually pretty simple if you think of it in terms of radicals. Just keep at it :)

If you’ve been studying Japanese for years (even just on and off), I think TextFugu might be a little basic for you – it’s aimed at absolute beginners and doesn’t really have much content. I could be wrong, but just a heads up :)

What sort of level would you say you were at anyway? *Please* tell me in those years of studying you’ve learned at least *some* kanji :P

@zeldaskitten: Does it use the same forum software as this place? Are there more regular users? Does Koichi actually show his face? D: Maybe I’ll wait to see if EtoEto gets a forum, that might be better :P

Firstly, the idea of Koichi being here to read this is laughable :P Maybe if you’d posted this 2 – 3 years ago, you would have got a decent response (but then it wouldn’t make any sense).

Secondly, you really didn’t need to write so much :D You don’t have to say “Koichi, you’re perfect, this website is perfect, I love it, I love you. There’s also a small issue I wanted to raiseBUT DON’T GET ME WRONG this is all my fault and not your fault and I should have held back my studying to fit around TextFugu and…” – he’s a busy man these days, doing so many non-TextFugu-related things, keep it concise and to the point and he’ll be more likely to answer. Even back in the day when I used to email him a lot, he switched to this “3 line reply” system of handling emails: I’m not sure if he still does it, but he switched to only sending really short replies because he was getting so many emails and was spending too much time on them. Your concern might warrant a longer reply but I’m just illustrating the point that he’s busy, so the less he has to read the better. He won’t think any less of you if you don’t heap the praise on him :P

@Rowen: Does it matter if Jpod101 add any new content though? They’ve got so much as it is, it would take a long, long to actually get through all of it :D

Also, I’d recommend watching those Japanese anime with Japanese subtitles instead, if you can. I’ve not tried it yet myself (I don’t really watch anime but I mean with other TV too) but I’ve heard it’s a lot more effective – if you’ve got English subtitles, your brain is drawn to the English and you’ll be less likely to take in the Japanese being spoken. Still pretty difficult, though it could fun to try, see how much you can understand :D I keep meaning to do this with a series called “Densha Otoko”, supposed to be pretty good.

@Vanandrew: Yeah, Koichi says a lot of things. He also told me he planned to finish the core content of TextFugu (6 whole seasons to start but hopefully add another few for more advanced stuff if he had the chance, which under the new system of shorter seasons would be around 12 up to maybe 16 respectively) by… I think his first estimate was around the end of 2011 (I know, right?). And back when he used to update more often and was more actually *involved* with his customers and the community, he’d frequently keep pushing back the dates for when stuff would be done. If a lesson was to be up “this Wednesday”, you can bet your ass he’d keep pushing it back till it finally came on the Friday of the next week. Don’t forget numerous promises of “5 new Tofugu videos every week”, “a few new Tofugu videos every week”, “one new Tofugu video every week” – don’t get me wrong, those videos were usually pretty good, it’s just that those promises were obviously going to fail. And then there was the whole “Cat Island” section of his TofuguTV series that didn’t get done for god knows how long. And then there was the experiment he was supposed to do regarding learning Japanese in your sleep: instead of making post explaining that it didn’t come to anything (or that he couldn’t be bothered), I only found out what happened to it after asking him about it directly in an unrelated email.

@Reiden: Welcome back haha. Did you used to use a different avatar? I can kinda remember the username but something seems a bit off :P Maybe I’m thinking of someone else…

@Rowen (again): As for communities worth joining, this one! :D As much as I moan about TextFugu as a whole, this part is pretty good ;) I caught up with the material in TextFugu (and thus stopped using it) about a little under 2 years ago maybe; besides a couple of long(ish)-term absences, I’ve stayed on this forum ever since :D Though it may not be the best forum from a technical stand-point, there are some pretty decent people here, even though a lot of the regulars from when I first started don’t really come here much (or at all) any more.

@vanandrew: But it’s so easy to :P The feeling that the number of due cards keeps increasing the longer you leave it is too much to bear XD Plus, if you keep leaving cards undone, doesn’t it mess with the SRS algorithm process?

I agree, Joel.

Hm, I guess I sometimes do something similar: I just move the window so that half of it is off screen, meaning the remaining number is hidden.

Another, better, technique I found was to listen to something while I was doing reviews. You don’t need 100% concentration to do Anki cards, so it’s not too distracting. I’ve been doing it a while now and found it really helps. Since maybe the start of this year, almost every time I do cards, I’m either listening to old radio shows from Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant/Karl Pilkington, or watching some YouTube video. Having said that, I did find listening to Japanese audio was quite distracting, for me at least (which is a shame since that could be really helpful).