I’ve actually stopped using Anki in favor of the dictionary app “Japanese” for iOS. It has fewer settings to play around with and I think Anki has a better SRS algorithm, but with the Japanese app, it’s really easy to add cards to study lists (flashcard decks) since I can do it directly from the dictionary. Also, the cards are interactive; you can tap on pretty much anything to get more info. It’s a bit like being on Wikipedia where reading one article leads you to another and another; each card has links to the kanji in the word, and the kanji pages have links to common compounds which have example sentences which have other words with have other kanji, and so on. And you can easily generate flashcards for any of them right there on the spot.

It has it’s flaws, mainly that there is no way to customize the cards (although you can add notes to them), but it’s an amazing app. If you are in it for the long haul, it might be worth buying an iPod touch just for this app.

I never actually finished Textfugu. Actually, I went through all of the content that was here at the time I started learning, but that was a long time ago where there were only 2 or 3 seasons or chapters or whatever they were called then. That only took about 2 weeks to get through since I’d already learned the kana. Needless to say, after finishing that content, I couldn’t understand anything.
I haven’t really looked much at the content that has been added since then. There was a period where I checked from time to time to see if there was anything new added that I hadn’t already learned on my own, but that was never the case. The truth is, and I think this applies to a lot of the people on this forum, that Textfugu never kept up with me. I just looked through the table of contents now and I would say that getting through the content of this site would not enable you to delve into anything native. You will still be a beginner when you are done.
With that said, I don’t think that Textfugu is a waste of time. Many people start learning a language, get lazy, give up, pick it back up again a year later, and repeat; they never really get anywhere. I would not say that these people are “beginners”, but “interested parties”. Getting through Textfugu, in my opinion, puts you at the point where you can really call yourself a beginner. You’ve learned the very basics and you’ve invested some effort, time, and money into the process. Those three investments make it less likely you’ll give up. If learning Japanese is a long journey, finishing Textfugu is like getting your bags packed.

今日は海の日だよ！

http://www.juzp.net/RrQ8cnkilHHw_

“Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication”
Use that book and an electronic dictionary and start writing short journals on lang-8.
I would point out which words you had to look up in a dictionary in order to write the entry and ask people to make sure you used those words correctly.
Also, when using lang-8, try putting a question or two related to the topic at the end of the journal entry. That way, you will not just be getting your own ideas corrected, but getting natural input on the topic from native speakers.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 4 months ago by  thisiskyle.

To Joel’s point, I think, if you were trying to emphasize the fact that the adjective no longer applies the the noun, you would want to add modify the statement more than just changing the verb conjugation. For example:

Although “高かった本を買います” does mean “I’ll by the book that was expensive,” I think if you were trying to emphasize that it no longer is, you would want to add additional information. A more natural way to do so in English would be ” I’ll by that book that used to be expensive.” Using “used to be” has a stronger implication of the fact that it no longer is than “was”. Saying something like “高くなくなった本を買います” (lit. “I’ll by the book that came to be inexpensive”)  might be a better way to bring emphasis.

You might also try “以前高かった本” but I’m not actually sure about the grammar here. Maybe someone else can chime in.

Wooo! #124
I kind of gave up when my mom and sister came down to visit…

I second Tsetycoon.

There are really two places one could get confused here. The first is the tendency of using the present progressive tense to talk about the future instead of using the more grammatically correct terms “will” and “shall”. For example, one might say “What are you doing next weekend?” as opposed to “What will you do next weekend?” The second sounds a little stuffy but add a little clarity.

The second point of confusion is that we use the verb “to go” for many different things. In particular, to talk about the future even when nobody is actually going anywhere. For example, contrast “I’m going to the store,” with “I’m going to eat oatmeal.” “Going” means two very different things in these sentences. If we look at the second sentence, “going to” can be replaced with “will”. In the first sentence it could be replaced with “traveling”. (This rest of this paragraph is confusing.) The first sentence also brings back the issue mentioned in the previous paragraph about using the present progressive to talk about the future. Does “I’m going to the store” mean I’m on my way right now, or does it mean that I’ll go later. Probably the second and the sentence could be written in the grammatically confusing though natural form of “I’m going to go to the store,” or in the less natural but more clear form “I will travel to the store.”

Keeping these two points in mind it is possible to rewrite sentences so that the meaning is more clear. This will make it easier to think about putting them in Japanese. Below, I’ve written translations of the more clarified versions of your sentences. Each contains two forms: a) a very explicit form, and b) a more casual, natural form.

1a. I will travel to the park and study. – 公園に行って勉強する。
1b. I will study in the park. (same meaning as above) – 公園で勉強する。

2a. I will travel to the park in order to study. – 勉強のために公園に行く。
2b. I will travel to the park to study. (same meaning as above) – 公園に勉強しに行く。

As an aside, I find some of the constructions that arise due to the odd uses words tend to take on in English (I’m sure other languages as well) quite funny. “Going to go to…” was mentioned above, but there is also “I would have had to have had…” meaning “I would have needed to have possessed…”

I never saw the point of subdecks. There seems to be no difference between them other than that you can study a set of subdecks at the same time. This would be useful if doing so gave you the cards in random order (mixing from multiple subdecks), but it doesn’t. At best it saves you a few mouse clicks.

With that said, I think its best not to divide your stuff up into “a lot of decks”. Three or four should be plenty. Having a deck with only about 20-30 cards in it is not useful since you can use the fact that you know what deck you are in to help clue you into to an answer (aka cheat). For example, if a card comes up like 結構 and I can’t remember if it’s けっこう or けっこん but I know that I’m in my chapter 4 vocab deck and けっこう was a chapter 5 word, then I can get the answer right without actually knowing it. You could say that finding the answer that way is cheating so, even if you do figure it out, you should fail the card. But a lot of this goes on subconsciously so you don’t realize your doing it and, even if you are aware of it, figuring out the answer that way does not mean that you wouldn’t have been able to get it “honestly” if given another second or two to think about it.

Long story short, make a few decks based on card type (kanji, vocab j-e, vocab j-j, sentences, etc) and avoid having decks separated into what chapter they came from, what part of speech they are or some other category (body parts, colors, etc).