@missingno15: High five, man! haha Let us know how it works out for you.

@winterpromise31: Hmmm… well it turns out that I’ll have to delete a lot of these sentences from my deck. While it was jkl’s advice to do that, it seems there are a LOT of basic sentences. No point having a couple of hundred sentences that are all「XはYが大好きです。」,「XはとてもYですね」, etc. haha. Having said that, I’ve only actually got the Core 2000 cards so far; fingers crossed the sentences get a little better in the other 4000 cards :P (though I have a feeling that won’t be the case – they’re just designed to get the meaning of the vocab across, rather than mentally challenge you). We’ll just have to see how it goes :)

Another thing I might have a look at doing is reading Harry Potter :P The gist of the method is to listen to an audiobook while reading the actual thing and just keep going – apparently it doesn’t matter if you can’t understand a humungous portion of it, you just have to keep going (which is what the audio book is for, to keep up the pace). Stop the tape every now and then, highlight problem words you don’t know that keep coming up (keep it to about 2-3 per page, so as not to disrupt the flow), and just become absorbed in the book. There’s something to do with using parallel texts as well, but he writes about it (and properly explains it) here: http://languagefixation.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/mad-flow-become-absorbed-in-your-book/ – the whole blog is for this method, but that seems a good post. And yes, I realise my description of the technique is a bit rubbish, so definitely check out the blog for more haha

The guy also said, for learning German, he watched all 7 seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space 9, and even though it was difficult at first, he was understanding a LOT of the dialogue by the end :) http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-i-pwned-german-using-dubs-and-translations

It seems you are the only one who actually buys stuff haha

I also see you haven’t switched your browser +/ OS language to Japanese yet. I don’t think I could do that atm, but I’m sure it’d be pretty useful for you :)

@Elenkis: Well, what he actually says is that you don’t HAVE to learn it kanji->keyword because apparently in time you’ll just know it. I agree, if you’re learning the WRITING of the kanji backwards (kanji>keyword), then THAT’S counter-productive, but there’s nothing wrong with using it to remember vocab. The old example that I keep pulling out time after time: the word「飛行機」is read in RTK terms as “fly, going, machine”. How is that NOT helpful!? I’m not saying you have to think of “fly, going, machine” for all eternity, it just helps when learning the vocab at the first instance. Over time, you don’t think of the words in RTK terms, you just know the words as they are.

Also, I’ve been doing RTK cards both ways for a while now and I’ve had absolutely none of the troubles you speak of. I barely associate readings with Kanji anyway, only vocab words (which are sometimes one and the same). For instance, when I see「手」, I think of “hand”,「て」and「しゅ」(depending on the word it’s in) and that gives me no trouble whatsoever. When you start out learning ANY language, of COURSE you’ll translate things in your head back to your best language, it’s pretty difficult not to. And anyway, since I see vocab more than I do RTK keywords, I kinda reasign them in my head e.g. instead of thinking of「備」in terms of “equip”, I now relate it to “prepare”, as in the word「準備する」.

I’m getting really sick of all these people telling me that my way of doing things, which has worked wonderfully for me, is wrong because they assume it can’t work for them (without even trying it). It’s not you personally Elenkis, I just hate having to keep defending myself against EVERYONE. >.<

But anyway, yeah @Armando: Whoever you decide to listen to, don't bother doing 2 decks the same way (koohii and anki) – it means you get more reviews, yes, but it detracts from the "Spaced Repetition" algorithm that's employed. The algorithm for when to schedule cards is what helps you remember stuff – leaving a card JUST the right amount of time before you have to recall it again stretches your brain and helps reinforce it. You could argue that seeing it more times helps do that too, but you have to be careful – passing a card in one deck only because you saw it and failed it in the other 5 minutes ago isn't a good way to be doing things, I think; kinda defeats the point. It's up to you though, just whatever works.

The worst thing about defending myself all the time is that it wastes so much time with all the replies XD Though I'm doing this to help Armando, not just to refute Elenkis.

*phew*

I totally agree with Missing (wow, now there’s something new hehe): aesthetically, it’s a slight upgrade, but technically, it’s a major downgrade. I have to Google search “site:textfugu.com/bb/ [searchterm]” every time I can’t find a thread XD The old forum could (and did) have sub forums, so I’m a bit confused as to why we moved… :S

Since everyone has answered the first few questions perfectly well already, I’ll just have a go at the last one.

6: “Even at a time like this, Dad was worrying about his shoes getting wet” – seems like an air of “Can you believe it?! Something important is going on and he’s focussed on something so trivial”
Either that or, if this has something to do with the nice day mentioned in previous sentences, it could be just showing that the person’s father REALLY likes his new shoes haha – “Even though it’s a nice, fine day, he’s worrying about them getting wet – how silly is that LOLOLOLlolLOLOl!!1?”

If you think you are reviewing too much, cut back on the kanji/day. I find reviewing the cards backwards and forwards really helps remember them, so stick with it… if that’s what you’re doing, that is. The objective is to remember them well, not to race through as fast as you can cause it’s boring. If you keep clicking “hard”, you’re obviously doing too many a day for them to stick properly. Kanji overload.

I once tried to do 100 RTK frames per day for a couple of days but I had to reduce it greatly cause the reviews were just too much XD I was really slow when I started, but by the end, once I had learned lots of little helpful methods and tricks for learning them, I could maintain about 50-60 per day. I slowed down to a crawl when I did the supplement a few months later, but that’s because it wasn’t as important.

@Swoosherz: If people think they’re speaking a language better when drunk, it’s probably less likely “more self-confidence” and more likely “distorted perception of reality”. I’m sure a lot of people, when drunk, think they are awesome at everything XD
“Hey guys, I can TOTALLY do a backflip off that wall there, watch me!! *falls off the wall* Aw man, did you see that?!? I totally OWNED back there!!!1″