Got my Japanese-Japanese Dictionary today!

I'm so excited!  I got my Japanese-Japanese Dictionary today.  I have heard that having a J-J Dictionary will improve your Japanese learning exponentially!

Wish me luck!  I'm looking forward to looking up everything!

Facebook in Japanese

Most people use Facebook on a daily basis, so why not make it a learning experience in the process?!

Here is how to change Facebook to Japanese:

Step 1:  Click on the Small downward arrow in the upper right corner of your Facebook notification bar.

Step 2: Click "Settings"

Step 3:  Click "Edit" under Language

Step 4: Select "日本語"

 Step 5: Click "Save Changes"

Finding Movies with Japanese dubs and/or subtitles

So, after much searching on Amazon, I've finally figured out how to find Japanese dubbed/subtitled movies without going to amazon.co.jp.

By going to Advanced Search (which is hard to find, but I have provided a link here: Amazon Advanced Search) and selecting movies, you are able to choose the Language Audio Track and Subtitles for the movies you want to purchase.  I found a TON that I want to buy when I get my next round of school money!  Can't wait!

６日目：Figuring it all out.

I was checking out AJATT today and went through the table of contents, where I found the overview page, which basically breaks down the entire process, including a diagram of what you should be doing and when.  He says on there, that you should do the Kanji FIRST, before anything else.  Just learn the Kanji and their English meaning and don't worry about sentences until the Kanji is completed.  Because of this, I have decided to change my routine back to the original plan. (I haven't really done much with my sentences anyway).

I also figured that I should make a nice diagram of my own, to better demonstrate the method I am using because the one on AJATT, though informative, is poorly designed.

The steps are as follows:

1. Setup an Immersion Environment that is continuous.
2. 2000+ Kanji (Reps are continued indefinitely)
3. Kana until complete
4. An additional 1000+ Kanji (Reps are continued indefinitely)
5. Sentences (Reps are continued indefinitely)

I also plan to setup a progress bar for each of these sections to keep everyone updated on my progress.

So, with this I have kinda figured out my scheduling and can better deal with the workload.
On a side note, I have found that by writing out the Kanji, I turn the learning into a sort of "game", where I try to remember the appropriate stroke orders.  I have also been trying to speed run the Kanji, by going as quickly as I can while writing them to see how quickly I can do my reps.  It's a bit more entertaining.

Kanji Report for 5/25/2014:

Studied 302 cards in 74 minutes today.
Learn: 134
Review: 100
Relearn: 68

Total: 258 reviews
Average: 19.8 reviews/day
Due tomorrow: 94 cards.

I would also like to report that I have completed 302 Kanji, for 16% complete.

4日目: 私は本を欲しいでした。

本を持っています。でも、私は本を聞くしたかった。

Audiobooks are proving to be an amazing immersion tool.   Just turn it on and "hear" it. No need to "listen", no need to even try. Just have it playing in the background while you do housework, cook, ride in the car, go for a jog. Basically have it playing all the time unless you're doing something else in Japanese that requires you to listen, like watching a TV show, movie, or anime. 

I would also suggest an iPod for this, making your Japanese more mobile. 

Are you in school?  Listen during lunch or between classes.  Pretty much anytime you can be listening to Japanese, you will be learning Japanese. 

Why listen?  Listening comprehension is a major priority for any language. Children learn their language entirely by listening and having things put into context for them, either through questions or by being shown an item and having the word for that item being repeated over and over until it sinks in. 

We don't have this luxury. We don't have a Japanese mama (お母さん)watching over us and pointing at things. We have to be our own mothers and find out for ourselves.  The best method for this is through movies and television shows.  Combine the two and you're a learning machine!

Day 3: 家政婦のミタ/kaseifu no mita (I'm Mita, the Housekeeper)

Today I stumbled upon 家政婦のミタ on Crunchyroll.com.  Although this television drama is no longer in production, I am really enjoying the plot.  Plus, the show is subtitled, so I actually know what's going on.

I like Crunchyroll.com.  It seems to have a lot of good shows that I'll probably been spending a lot of time enjoying! I even got their app on my iPhone so I can watch when I'm back in school.

Absolute Zero

I realize that some people are reading these posts that have no background in Japanese at all and want to learn the language as well, so I decided to post something about starting at absolute zero. Or "How to learn Japanese when you don't know any Japanese."

I have the fortune of taking Japanese classes in college and have already been through the elementary level courses.  In those courses the main focus at the beginning was learning to read and write kana.

Kana refers to the Japanese alphabets of hiragana and katakana.  Hiragana is used for the pronunciation of Japanese words, while Katakana is used for foreign words.

Below is the list of all of the Hiragana and Katakana as well as practice sheets for learning to write them.  These would be best used while studying sentences in Anki.  Just write the sentence out to practice the letters.

You will also want to learn stroke order.  I HIGHLY recommend these sheets.
Hiragana Stroke Order Sheets
Katakana Stroke Order Sheets

HIRAGANA:

The basic 48 hiragana characters.

When a " or o is used next to an hiragana character, the pronunciation changes.

Adding a small YA, YU, or YO also changes the pronunciation.

A small TSU means to lengthen the following consonant.

A ー means to lengthen the previous vowel.

KATAKANA:

The basic 48 katakana characters.

When a " or o is used next to an hiragana character, the pronunciation changes.

Adding a small YA, YU, or YO also changes the pronunciation.

A small TSU means to lengthen the following consonant.

A ー means to lengthen the previous vowel.

JAPANESE WRITING PRACTICE SHEETS: Download (right click and save)

Japanese write verically from top to bottom, right to left.

Tools of the trade

I thought it would be a good idea to post links to all the tools I am using to study all of this.

First thing you will need is Anki.
http://www.ankisrs.net

I am using the RTK (Remembering the Kanji) deck created by Adam Shapiro at JapaneseLevelUp.com.  This website is a great resource for learning Japanese on your own.

http://japaneselevelup.com/japanese-level-up-rtk-mod-anki-deck/

There is a download link on that page to download the Anki deck.

I have the "8547 Japanese Sentences - from the 日本語文法辞典/Nihongo bunpou jiten (Japanese Grammar Dictionary)" deck from https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2032035930 that I will be using for sentence reps.

Hope this helps anyone who is also working on learning Japanese, or who wants to get into Japanese!

New resource: Lang-8.com

So, I found a really cool website, www.lang-8.com, for when I start with my sentence reps.  Its a blogging website, where you post to a journal and have native speakers correct your work!  So once I get more comfortable with the language I can post sentences there and have them polished over by people who already speak Japanese.