Notes from April, May, June, July

Where does time go?

I can't believe i haven't posted on this blog in that long, almost four months. Well, actually i guess i can. Anyway, here's some of the notes i've been keeping for the past few months. Basically, instead of writing all my thoughts down in some epic, well thought out, journal writing spree, i pretty much just write down my thoughts as they come in a notebook on my computer. So, thats why these posts are really random. Basically, the bottom thoughts came first, the top ones are more recent. Enjoy? I dunno, these are more posterity than for reading, but if you enjoy reading my lunatic thoughts, eat your heart out. Here goes:
__________________________________________________

I could work for a moving company

New life goal: read (part of) a book every day

i always want hope to come in an e-mail.

Most people associate ability to output with intelligence, and so when you are speaking a second language, your ability to output is the thing that other people judge you by. However, there's really not much you can do to really improve your output directly-all you can do is indirectly improve it by getting more input and then mimicing that...

a company that recruits one on one teachers https://jobs.gaijinpot.com/index/view/company_id/1787/job_id/32390

so this APU Job just fell in my lap. Maybe I should apply... but anyway I am kind of feeling like "no i don't really wanna do that." Basically, i think it shows that my goal is not necessarily to work in japan next year. My real goal next year is to have fun/do something interesting in Japan. So therefore, I should see where this Ski opportunity takes me.

the thing about living on your own and working is that your happiness, your development is no longer the responsibility of your teachers and parents. It is completely your responsiblity, one that no one really teaches you how to deal with. its always glossed over as being too basic to teach, too obvious, your own responsiblity to learn, not to be taught

i think one of the most difficult things about doing cards is basically doing them getting tired, and being very inefficient about them. Id like to do cards first thing in the morning, before going to work. However, this would force me to change my habits-- the one that I've always had trouble with. Well not always, i have gotten generally better at it -- bedtime. The thing with bedtime is it always seems to fall aside. Its a goal that I can only focus on once a day

ok, here's my newest best idea. maybe. So, I go to IUC for a few weeks, If I like it, and think that it's worth the money--more so than if I were doing it on my own-- then stay. (be sure to have some very clear credentials about what will qualify as "worth it")

Assuming I don't like IUC, stay in Tokyo, and study on my own. Meditate and go to Aikido in the mornings every day and then go straight to somewhere with free unlimited internet. Basically live exactly the lifestyle I want with nothing to hold me back. Possibly a university in tokyo. Do my reps and adds. Be sure to have clear daily goals, and timebox so not to overdo it. In addition to studying Japanese, it would be a good opportunity to study for the GRE. So basically spend 3 months doing GRE prep and Japanese study. Then, in the winter time, go to a Niseko or Hakuba to work. Hopefully as a ski instructor, but any job where I could use Japanese would be good. Keep studying when I can, but mostly just ski. Yeah, be a ski bum for a season. sounds sweet. Then when that's over in like march or april, maybe travel for a little while-europe and India, taking pictures, and then its woodenfish and China! sweet i like this plan.

Speaking is a privelege. reading is a responsibility.

i also think that it was a mistake to not try to get a girlfriend while I was here. Maybe I'll try that out for next year.

i suppose when i thought about the sayonara party thing, i was a bit indifferent, as usual. But in retrospect, i am regretful about not going. so i guess, I actually cared after all, i just convinced myself that I didn't.

i used to rely on other people to help me make decisions. But now, I just have to make decisions for myself.

I don't want to blame my decision on other people, but i guess I did make it based on what Shane said "i don't like those people.. i never see them... its a waste of money" yeah... what BS.

doing things with people I like=fun

ok well i don"t have trouble finding sentences, but I do have trouble with getting them in the SRS i mean typing them in is slow. basically i have more input that I know what to do with. there are too many sentences... and not enough time to deal with them all. I mean Ideally, I would read and keep marking sentences like I have been, and then add all those sentences. In addition I would add all the new words i have looked up in my ipod with either definition items or sentence items. The number of sentences i can find in a day is higher than number i can add with the amount of time i normally spend.

currently i just did 11 in 40 minutes. ideally i'd like to be spending like 1 minute - 1.5 minutes per sentence, cuz at the current rate it would take 3 hours 20 minutes to get to the 50 sentences goal and piling reviews on top of that, i'd be spending 5.5 hours per day working on just srs stuff, and that doesn't even cover reading and listening so yeah obviously at this point, SRS input needs to be increased.

Solutions: ok, I can decrease the number of entries i have to do by picking only the "REALLY REALLY good ones". I could keep finding sentences like i have been, marking potential ones, and then going back and adding only the ones that are relevant. only the ones that make sense instantly when i see them. only the ones that have only one element missing. only ones that are short.

i think its gonna be a good idea to put a little comment in the space about where that pharse could be used, or what it is describing, especially in the case of sentences from a dictionary.

Just like how I clean up my desk every day when I leave school I shouldalso implement a system where I 片付く my living and work space at the endof every day

Ok new idea, Limit myself to X number of minutes of english reading per day. (what about e-mails?). Now x=30

Who is the teacher of this class? (read aloud)
-The class teacher is Miss Yoshino and Msr Tom (lol Monseigneur Tom)

I thought that the JET program would jumpstart my life after college, instead it dead-ended it.

i think when answering cards, you might think about answering two questions:

first, Do you understand this sentence? Do you understand all its parts/words, and how they fit together? Take some time to notice and think about why that word to instead of another, that character instead of another, へ　instead of　に

second, where/how was that sentence/phrase used? or (especially in the case of dictionary sentences) how could I use that sentence/phrase? what *exactly* is it describing?

I really really need to do something about my fucking kanji cards. Like I need to be practicing them to some extent, but with almost 1000 reviews due its super overwhelming just like it was when I started doing sentences. Man, I dunno what happened, but i really messed up the kanji cards. I guess one thing was that I was never satisfied, and still am not satisfied with any of the methods i used for making the cards themselves. So, i kept and keep tweaking it. Basically as of right now, I think the most important thing to review about the cards is the stories. You have to have the stories solid for them to be useful.... i guess. ARGGH I dunno! Wheres the answer Khatz??? ok well lets think.... what is the absolute fastest, easiest way to review the cards. Fuck effective.... it doesnt matter like Heisigs method is only effective to a degree... and not to the degree I had hoped, but its at least much better than jezus im procrastinating. argggh i hate this job!! but if its to work to any degree whatsoever, i gotta keep reviewing the cards. OK, absolute fastest easiest way. Well, first of all, i have to tell myself to stop. absolutely no more edits to kanji cards, no matter what. just let it go. In fact, you can even delete kanji cards. yes i just said that. I can delete them. sayo mothafucking nara. i dont need crappy cards wasting my time. If i need that kanji later, i can make a new card later. Argh,, so re-read the kanji article for the billionth time. Well, basically i need to decide what to do here. Ok, move all the kanji back a month 900/1 month= about 30 per day, not impossible. You are not allowed to make edits to kanji cards. No more edits. no more changes. no more perfectionism. With one exception: if the card has no keyword. In fact, I could just go find all those and do them all at once
ok, i did that. Now i just have to NNNNO I HAVE TO LEAVE WORK!

umm ok and about what was it somethng about studying.. ok so Khatz is like "you can do 50 sentences a day" and I'm struggling to do that. Well I think its better to start small... and only have a goal of about 10 per day in the first month, and then 20 the second month, 30 the third month, etc.. Of course you can always add more, but its always better to have small, acheivable goals and go beyond them on your own accord than it is to have big, difficult to achieve goals that you'll likely miss, and beat yourself up about it. If the outcome is the same- for instance, saying I added 25 sentences today, but I was only planning on adding 15 is psychologically way better than saying i added 25 sentences today, and then beating yourself up because you meant to add 30.
Building up over time does two things: first, you learn how to enter sentences and as you get better at it, i.e. more efficient, you can add more. Second, at first, good sentences that come from real japanese and are comprehensible are probably fewer and farther between. So, you will need to wade through a lot more dirt to find the gold nuggets, anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with adding bad sentences, but especially at first the "unripe" sentences to "ripe" sentences ration is much higher, so for the same amount of time you might spend later, you won't be able to add as many sentences at first.

maybe I should tell sarah about MSF?

okkkkkk,,,,,,, first I not sure I want to apply to Medicines Sans Frontiers this year, but I think I'd like to do that at some point. Maybe during or immidiately after grad school? I guess it comes down to If I got into MSF, would I rather do that, or go to IUC? Although I think probably MSF would be a better experience, I can do that at any point in my life really, while practically, IUC is something I can only do now, or well, at least now is the best time to do it, because my japanese ability is already at its peak, having lived here for two years. Anyway, someday I'd like to go on Medicines Sans Frontiers or something like it.

im on a boat motherfucker don:'t you ever forget

yet another new way to do kanji cards keyword+primitives in question. Answer is writing and story production. grading is based on accuracy of the story i.e. included all elements in the same way you originally wrote it (not necessarily exactly memorized) and also accuracy of the production of the kanji (if inaccurate, fail it)

im on a boat motherfucker dont you ever forget.

all i really want to do in my life is to be around people/ to communicate with people, to be given the opportunity to say what I want to say. Although I also have to remember to listen to what other people have to say. thats much harder for me. i what I want to do is be heard, be listened to. I feel like i dont want to have to listen. ive done too much listening and i guess i feel like i havent found anyone i really want to listen to... well there are a few people... actually a lot... more like people i want to have conversations with. unfortunately, there arent many japanese people ive met that fall into that category...

all I really want to do next year is have fun. I want to do whatever will put me in the largest number of situations where I can have fun.

Why do I still have no confidence in my japanese ability?

ok, so today, i think i used a word that I definitely (85% sure) learned a couple months ago without using a dicionary

also, as a "test" (that i told myself I wouldnt do) i read through some of the JLPT shit. It was pretty easy reading. i mean there were a few unfamiliar words, but like nothing to really sweat over. so.. maybe...just maybe...ajatt is working... i hope so...


Remember: You are too critical of yourself. You are too critical of others.

sentences i like: ones that are easy to understand. ones that come from manga. ones that come from the bible ones that i understood when i read them, and have an image associated with them. to a lesser extent, sentences that come from books i've read. ones that i want to say. ones that come from reading. sentences that have something unusual about them. Sentences that I understood without needing to look anything up, practically. Short simple sentences. Sentences that have personality.

sentence i don:t like: ones that i felt obligated to add, because i had spent all that energy to look up that word in the first place. sentences that are not sentences, but simply terms. sentences that come from the dictionary, especially for words that i had to look up. random ass words that are technical and i would only ever see in the dictionary. words that i "had to " look up, in order to understand the definition of a word that i "wanted to" look up. sentences where the target word was not the only new word. Sentences that are hard.

listening i like to do: stuff i understand. movies especially. tv shows. i like music, because although i don't understand the lyrics I don't really care.

listening i don:t really like: stuff i feel like i should understand, but don't. stuff that i can't take the time to actually listen to. mostly the stuff i listen to at work. i mean i dont hat it

Those who have the skills didn’t just want to be good, they 決ecided to be 良ood.

i think that the uncalendar is really helpful, just as is maintaining action lists, but with the move to a different computer at school, its become a bit of a hassle. not so smooth as it was before. I was thinking, one idea would be to keep a very basic uncalendar like this on evernote:


22:43 5 minutes journaling

scheduled events could simply be written down at the beginning of the day. ok, let's try to make this work. remember, if at first you don't suceed, try, try again.

another option would be to make a whole ream of those calendars from the now habit book and use that as a "calendar" but its like a bit of a pain.. hmm. ok, well starting now we'll try the new calendar method. I wonder how well it'll work. I guess it's all about what is the purpose of the calendar, which is to make me conscious of my time.

don't procrastinate by pretending you're doing work :)

I guess the thing with time boxing is that while i work hard during the time boxes, I tend to procrastinate in the transition period between them. for instance, on saturday, i did like 30 minutes of studying, (timeboxed) but in real time, it actually took me like 45 minutes, with little breaks between the timboxes. I think its ok to take a break, but maybe that should be timeboxed too? or maybe micro-macro time boxing, where i do twenty minutes of work, but that 20 minutes is divided up into five minute blocks of different things (i.e. 10 mins entry, 5 + 5 minutes of reviews?) dunno...

Hmm.. i gues the reason i am more likely to do my cards than i am to do entries is that cards are so easy. like popping bubble wrap. sure they can be boring sometimes, but its mindless, easy. Making cards however, takes a lot of brain power, and also, decison making. Will i enter this sentence? will I look up that word if I don't get it? i think systematizing the entry process is important.

in additon, yeah so i had said that for writing cards 4 characters, plus okurigana and particles max. I think though, on average, most cards should be two characters unless theres some compelling reason to have another word.

kanji cards: have some cards that are just for the primitives (primitive=> writing) to confirm the shape of the primitives and the stroke order. when you go through the cards later, be sure to take note of any ways in which the primitives change. Heisig mentions some of these, but not all of them. Make separate "writing" cards for these. Also be sure to take careful note of the stroke order of the primitives, and note any changes that break the rules or are an unusual pattern. For these as well, make "writing" cards. The purpose of this is to get you to a level where you are able to write the character, but without having to write every character during review.

For all other "normal" characters, make primitive (+reading) => keyword (+writing) cards. This is to get you to review the stories. I found that reviewing the stories from the primitive alone was too difficult. I needed a hand to get correct character. If already knew a word that had that character, I would put it in the question field (like this...) and that would make it easier to produce the character (oh THAT one). However, many characters I obviously didn:t know the reading yet. For these ones, i experimented with keyword+primitive with the story in the answer field. Here, i was able to write the characters easily, but If i saw them in the real world, i couldn:t remember the story at all, (even though i re-read them when I was reviewing) and would often confuse characters. I then tried keyword+story, as khatz suggested. When it came to producing characters, I would confuse them less, i think, but if i saw a character in the real world, i could recognize it, but not remember the keyword. I then thought that "ok, when you see a character in writing, you can read the primitives, but the keyword what you are missing" so, i decided to, in direct opposition to Heisig and Khatz, to start reviewing story=> keyword with close deletions (example). i think this was more effective (in terms of recognition..) and easier to review. when you see the primitives, writing is relatively easy. The only missing piece is their relative placement, which is pretty simple. But, i still had trouble when it came to producing them from scratch (i would easily confuse similar looking characters such as 構　and 横 which meant i was still using my visual memory to some degree)

This required some soul-searching. What is the purpose of heisig? am i trying to memorize the writing of the characters? Am i trying to memorize the primitives that are associated with them? Am i trying to do both? The obvious answer was that I was trying to do both, but Heisig adamantly states that " you dont need to review both, you can kill two birds with one stone" etc.. So, i stubbornly never made cards that review both. My current opinion about "what is the purpose of heisig?" is that if you believe the answer is "both" than you should be reviewing both. I.e. having cards that go both kanji=> keyword in some fashion, and keyword=>kanji. However, I came to believe that the most important thing I could get out of heisig was not learning the writing of the characters, but by memorizing the keywords associated with them. To do this, I started making my Heisig cards like this primitives => keyword. When reviewing, my only goal was to get the keyword, but the only way to do that was by having the story firmly in mind. In a sense I was reviewing the story, which I think is what heisig really wants you to do in the first place.

better way to remember lists: present them in chunks of three, and the item you want to remember is missing so like for instance

Q: 一日二日三日　____ ___ ___ 七日八日九日
A: 四日五日六日

for the first set of a series, you could do like this ___ ___ ___ 四日五日六日

its better to not be distracted

ummm............... what;...... was....... oh yeah ummmmmmmmmm if i fail a card and it appears a few seconds later, i dont need to write out the whole card, only the part that I missed. yeah

ok, so sleep is like food. you need it to survive. you also need a certain amount of it. If you dont get enough of it at one point, you will eventually need to get it later. In the case of food, you can put it off and you will experience physical pain (i.e. stomach pain) and probably eventually lack of energy. In the case of sleep you will experience sleepiness and lack of energy. In my particular case, when haven't had my daily amount of sleep, i feel tired to the point where my brain will not do what I ask it to anymore, it refuses to operate and shuts down. In a sense, i am not in control of my own mind. Its both funny and sad that in two years, i still havent been able to get this under control. Hmm... ok i dunno what I need to do to get this under control.... i feel like ive tried a lot of tricks and they work ok. I guess I need to stop ignoring my alarm. thats one thing. Getting in a rhythm is important too

New rule: only add sentences with words that you have seen in reading materials

mark sentences that might be worth picking out and then enter them later. With internet material, print out the material first so it can be marked by hand. Of course the problem with that is that you have to go back and find the sentence. and also remember what you found interesting about it. Of course, this would put a natural filter on potentially crappy sentences, because if they dont look worth taking when you come back to them, then they probably arent worth taking in the first place.

the other option that would work with internet matrial is to sentence pick as you go along. of course then reading becomes less for pleasure and more for sentence hunting. even though it is more efficient. Ok, yeah actually the print out, mark and then pick method will work the best.

it may be a "good sentence" but you're not looking for "good sentences" but "interesting" sentences.

カードが眠く成らせるというわけは、カードが長過ぎて、詰まらない。だが、非常に短い文章をつかって、詰まらないものを解消しましょ。

毎日、読売ポッドキャストともう一つのポッドキャストをダウンロードをやっていきたいと思う。

like, I dont think i need to bother looking up every word in the definition that i don:t understand. do only what is necessary. if you need to drop some extra defs in the answer section, thats fine. but i dont need to look up words just for the sake of looking them up, especially when i:m trying to do sentence hunting from a book. hmm... なんか。。 i think i could express this better..

my ipod dictionary should be a guide of *useful words*---a good set of words to get sentences for

anytime i fail a reading of a reading card, write out that word in hiragana

how about this: Ok, I have one week to make any final revisions to kanji cards. At the end of this week, I cannot touch my kanji cards. NO MORE!! only review (maybe not even reviews)

i dunno, I really want to redo all my kanji cards but its HELLA annoying. i mean its like the third or fourth time ive done that, and every time its like a big pain in the ass.

in cards that have an easily confused character, try not showing the keyword in the question spaceadd the sentence first, look up words for it second

put a * next to cards that are primitives and should be written out

actually writing cards can also include katakana words, instead of reading cards. I think generally if you don' t have to look at the word twice thenits good.

ok writing cards should be either a noun modifying another noun, or a verb with a noun. basically the target word and its related word in the sentence underlined

ok my handwriting sucks in english. But :s rater it didnt suck in japanese. be careful with everything you write.

definitely underline words to be written in ひらがな　＞　漢字 cards

i really think its a good excercise to write a small note about the to-be mined sentences. then throwing them into the non-answer helper field of the srs

making cards is a bit slow. I think I should time myself and see how many I can add in a certain period of time. Right now, I took 20 minutes to make 15 cards. I feel like I should be doing maybe 1/minute at minimum. Any longer and it shouldnt be entered.

fell asleep in class today and dont even give a shit

Heisig 漢字書き 読み

find some way to display the dictionary as text

anki should reschedule cards based on the actual time you review them, not just the time it is scheduled to be reviewed

another thing that i think will help is to work only a certain type of card at a time. like, do all reading cards at once, all writing cards at once, all kanji cards at once. that might make it a bit smoother.

am i going for fifty sentences per day or fifty items per day? fifty items would be easier, but fifty sentences is more coherent with my goals.

yeah its real tough to know whether i should do cards by percentage, or by fixed number. i mean they both have merit. percentage is harder but you don:t get a shitload of cards backed up. (you do do a shitload of cards per day). rote number is easier, more do able, but theres a good chance youll not do enough per day to maintain a fify sentence per day rate.

soo i moved a whole bunch of due cards for the first time. i had about 500 due, left over from the vacation i went on. spread them out over 5 days, so maybe 50 extra cards a day for a bit should cover my bases.

are you willing to learn from a child?

so now ive made these new life monitors. and now I am responsible to fill them out.

umm ok what about a category for doing dishes? seems appropriate... maybe next month

well, ive definitely moved well into the realm of procrastination and perfectionism with these life monitors

what are my goals with the life monitors? i seem to recall having a certain number of circles, triangles, all marus would lead to some reward.... sound like a good idea, eh? Small, winnable, games.

hard work is work where you do a lot and get a lot done. difficult work is work where you do alot and it seems as though you havent gotten much done, or the results are disproportionate to the amount of work you did

actually, now that I think about it, maybe having one life monitor for school, one for my desk at home, and one by the bed for waking up and sleeping times would be better

maybe next month try to work the bedtimes a little tighter than this month. I mean, wake up times are like within five minutes while bedtimes are like still set like 15 minutes. I guess comparing the two, bedtime is a bigger problem, but it is becasue there is no "outside obligation" to go to bed ontime, while in the morning, there is an "outside obligation," i.e. work. once again showing how obligations i make to myself are not as important as obligations i make to others. well, i guess it means that I:m not completely selfish after all

ok the life monitor works like a check list and you check off the various things as you do them, and do them in the order on the list

ok well call the play category and the laundry category test categories for this month. as well as the housework and photography category for the next actions (actually, to be completly honest, photography and meditation are also test categories...)

i guess Im substituting the *fun* category for meditation and photography. I can:t forget to have fun... or rather... maybe I should say. *play* maybe a category for *play* would be good

im like thinking of having my home life monitor be a daily totals,, because I can:t think of an easier way to deal with times when i to reps and adds at home, but it will also make need to rewrite the whole thing twice which is a bit annoying, and will possibly make aversion to filling it out.... hmm...

could have a 家事　section for my next action list, instead of a general 家事 time box in the life monitor. Also, maybe a laundry column in the life monitor? ok whatever give it a shot

my best month was the month when I was being very good about keeping up the life monitor, going to bed on time, etc...

what will happen though, when i don't leave for swimming at 7:50? if i don't stop right at 7:45? will I beat myself up for being lazy? for missing promises to myself? or will i just tell myself its not really "that important" to be on time to commitments i make to myself

Not so difficult as it is different

Homemade いちご キーウィー リキュール

I want to do meditation and photography outside of from work. I think i can possibly do this without overwhelming myself. Work on a system that is able to implement both.

The attendance fee, which is required of all students, is
$19,000 for the year.

i meditated today for the first time in months!

day 1 of my "vacation" well, i did my reps and my adds, a little bit of reading, but no meditation, and no photography.

reading>listening>speaking>writing

i think the most important thing this week where i have 5 days off is to work like i do when I am busy. I can relax, but still stay productive as much as possible. "Practice/teach myself productivity at home" that's the goal for this week.

Procrastination log: the procrastination log is real useful.