I typically think that one should make big goals with regards to Japanese, but also be flexable in how they reach them. One central goal of my life has been lately to learn the vast difficult language of Japanese on a level par to the native population of Japan. It’s a rather large goal and at the moment I’m doing little to attain any ‘speaking/reading/writing ability’ other then writing kanji.

Yet, these past two and a half months of doing just kanji have been a much welcome reprieve from the daunting drudgery of Japanese study. It’s given me some *new* perspectives on what I might do now to attain Japanese literacy then later on fluency- yet none of this really answers the broader, albeit haunting, overall question often posed by others… “Just What is it with Japanese?” “What’s your purpose for studying Japanese?”

To tell you the truth I used to have a strikingly good answer. Something along the lines of Translation Opportunities or Government Embassy work… Then when my major in College changed to “East Asian Studies” I said the reason was to ‘advance my knowledge of Japan’ through reading native texts and talking to Japanese natives.

However, I’ve realized lately that my pursuit of Japanese doesn’t need to be for some central obvious purpose– rather the pursuit can be just for the sake of pursuing something that’s rather large, vast, useful, lasting, & challenging. I.e. A challenge for the sake of having an awesome challenge to pursue in life.

I compare it to getting my Eagle Scout Award. Getting one’s Eagle is a long term process. If you start at age 11, it takes between 5-7 years to get a *legitimate Eagle Scout. (* Legitimate Eagle Scouts know what I mean by that). When one pursues Eagle Scout in Boy Scouts their goal is to get the award… Later on, it becomes valuable for getting a job or boosting one’s reputation. On occasion I’ve heard boys say they want to get their Eagle for the sole purpose of it looking good on a Resume, but more often or not they either don’t get their Eagle or they just “Eagle out” and split (sometimes turning into blemishes on the “Eagle Scout” reputation).

The essence of an “Eagle pursuing” Boy Scout then is that he is pursuing something based upon the merits of the award and not for any other secondary purpose. So I believe this should also be the essence of learning Japanese. You pursue Japanese literacy and fluency based upon the merits and abilities Japanese Fluency and not for any other secondary purpose. Later on, like the Eagle Scout, having Japanese literacy and fluency will enhance your profile and your welbeing. This concept should be much more charming and open to all sorts of possibilities then any other view that’s been held in the past. Let me explain:

By making your goal to study Japanese for the merit of what Japanese literacy and fluency represents– You set your bar higher and plan your objectives with new awesome feats and abilities you want to attain. It makes any other reason to study Japanese rather limiting in scope.

Take common reasons for Learning Japanese and apply it to this idea to understand what I mean:
*”I want to learn Japanese so that I can speak to A-san, B-san, and C-san about X-desu, Y-desu, and Z-desu”
*”I want to learn Japanese so that I can read signs, posters, manga, or books”
*”I want to learn Japanese so that I can watch Anime w/o subtitles and get the jokes/plots/’real story’ before others do.”
*”I want to learn Japanese so that I know the exact meaning of a Tattoo I want to get”
*”I want to learn Japanese for business reasons and cust. relations”
*”I want to learn Japanese for some quick easy phrases to get around Tokyo- They say a little Japanese in Japan goes a long way”
*”I want to learn Japanese for my job as a Government liaison/Military liaison/Diplomat.

and so on and so on….

All these reasons very fine and dandy, but all imply that each reason in the list inhibits or limits students of Japanese to a certain vernacular spectrum. For example: Kanji knowledge required for Tattooing is so that you don’t look like an idiot…However, for Anime reasons kanji knowledge isn’t as important as listening to the dialog. And for travelers– you basically learn “Where is?” “How much” or “How do I?” but the answer is often baffling.

Now take a look at a student who practices and studies Japanese for the sole purpose of mastering it on it’s merits. in context:

“I want to learn Japanese because I desire full Japanese literacy & fluency”

Their range of focus and pursuit of knowledge encompasses all of that list plus a whole lot more. This student over roughly a same period as a regular student whose limited their goal to a specific goal knows more because they didn’t limit themselves. In the end they’re able to complete all the tasks required of them and be functional in Japanese society proficently. Later on, someone who is litgitmately proficient is of a higher caliber of knowledge then one who has a limited vernacular.

At the root of this– it simply comes down to “semantics” or “the meaning or the interpretation of a word, sentence, or other language form.” One who calls themselves “a student of Japanese Language Study” should mean that they’re studying Japanese for the pursuit of Japanese literacy and fluency. Otherwise they  should revise that to be more like “a student of the JLPT”, or “a student of commonly used Japanese phrases”, “A student of the most frequently used Kanji Characters”… etc, not “a student of the Japanese language.” That’s because it gives off the wrong connotation. By telling a native you’ve studied Japanese for 10 years you are not telling them what “you know”– So they assume you know 10 years worth of what a japanese student from high school might know.

So my advice is two fold. Either re-evaluate your reason for studying Japanese and revise it to be “the general pursuit of language for fluency & literacy sake” or be honest in what you are really ‘a student of.’ It’s not a matter of right and wrong or bad or good, but a matter of simple semantics.

How about that as food for thought? ね〜?

~J out

In boy scouts we always used the metaphor of a trail to __X__. We would say “The trail to Eagle is…” or the “Trail to First Class” or the “trail to Brotherhood” in Order of the Arrow. Now that I’m older I look back on my time as a Boy Scout and perhaps I can create a trail to Japanese Literacy.

I’ve thought a lot on the subject lately. The big thing I was thinking about was ‘what exactly is at the core of something gigantic as a language’. At first I thought it had to be the spoken word. Every language develops at the spoken level first before adopting a writing system- so perhaps the ancient core of a language is that. Then I thought that over time this may not be because languages develop and the spoken word gets revised over time. If one follows only the spoken word then they’re limited to only what people are saying. Using my language (English) as an example– If at the root of English was only the spoken word– over time English would loose a lot of advanced concepts and words simply through not using them. If asked, I would rather point someone to a dictionary then rely upon my own knowledge simply because I’m fallible like anyone else. I need text to remind me or teach me new things.

So then I have been thinking that the root now is within text & literacy. If you head over the CIA’s World Factbook there’s an interesting tid-bit on the matter. According to the CIA World Factbook’s Page on Japan:

Literacy’s definition is age 15 and over who can read and write (pretty basic here)
total population: 99% who can
male: 99% of men
female: 99% (2002) of women

Then a note on when you click on the “Literacy” link:

“…There are no universal definitions and standards of literacy. Unless otherwise specified, all rates are based on the most common definition – the ability to read and write at a specified age… Low levels of literacy, and education in general, can impede the economic development of a country in the current rapidly changing, technology-driven world.”

Undoubtedly there is a lot of information on the topic and opinions on which is the core. I think it’s literacy and my plan thus is to focus on expanding my ability to read and write Japanese. The premise I basing this on is just my personal knowledge and experience of living in Japan. Living there- the Japanese language felt like a symbol of great pride amongst it’s people. Covered over the walls and ceilings of nearly every subway were always signs, ads, and things almost all in Japanese text. As a percentage I would wager that I spent more time 70% or so reading and writing and trying to interpret Japanese then I spent trying to communicate in the spoken word. As a general rule– I think having literacy is greater in the long run then even knowing how Japanese pronounced. Thus I generally feel that if I can read and write Japanese like 99% of 15+ year olds then speaking and listening comprehension will follow.

This is because reading text can and will make me aware of proper Japanese I need to know to function. The more I read the more I’ll have questions. At this point I’ll be very happy just clarifying somethings in Japanese using the typical question model (~ka, ~so desu ne?, wakarimasu ka?). Overtime, as I become literate, I’ll experiment with talking about things I learned and go from there.

Overall, I believe literacy and fluency to be something organic that grows to the environment it’s in. It’s a process no doubt… one that should be organized and executed as efficiently as possible– but also left to grow and expand as opportunity allows.

More to come on the trail as I think about it..

~J out

Tonight on a rare occasion I finished early with my 19 characters from James Heisig’s Remember the Kanji book. With the extra time I decided to skip ahead to read a rather lengthy start to Lesson 31 even though I won’t get there till tomorrow. As I was reading along, Heisig drops a bomb shell on page 270 paragraph two.

In Lesson 31′s summary Heisig is talking about phases in which one passes through Kanji comprehension. He says phases 1-3 are primarily ‘story based’ phases. The idea being that to learn a particular keyword/kanji pair– you begin with a full bodied story, then later reduce it down to plots, then finally into primitives which ‘prompts’ you to remember the other two (if it’s even necessary) in order to remember the associated kanji with the keyword. You do this for all 2,042 Kanji and subsequent kanji afterwards (up to 3,007 in RTK3 or beyond).

In the second paragraph however he explains a forth stage which as you’ll read later is quite shocking:

“There is yet a fourth stage to be reached, as you have probably realized by now, but one you ought not trust until you have completed the full list of the kanji given here. In this stage, the primitive elements are suggested according to form without any immediate association to meaning. Quite early on, you will recall, we insisted that visual memory is to be discarded in favor of imaginative memory. It may now be clear just why that is so. But it should also be getting clear that visual memory deserves a suitable role of some sort or other, once it has a solid foundation. This is a process not to be rushed, however appealing its rewards in terms of writing fluency” (Heisig 270). (Emphasis added)

This is a huge shift from what he said in the beginning. Note exactly what Heisig said: “Visual memory is to be discarded in favor of imaginative memory.” This is in fact a radical understatement. What Heisig really said was this in his introduction:

“What makes forgetting the kanji so natural is their lack of connection with normal patterns of visual memory… the more efficient way would be to relate the characters to something other than their sounds so to break ties with the visual memory we rely on for learning our alphabets” (Heisig 1) (Emphasis Added)

He goes on to talk about popular strategies that use objects (like a tree or a mountain) to remember the kanji in a sort of ‘visual mnumonic’ , but writes,

“Proper etymological studies are most helpful after one has learned the general-use kanji. Before that, they only add to one’s memory problems. We need a still more radical departure from visual memory” (Heisig 2) (Emphasis Added)

Heisig is explaining that visual substitutes simply mask the overarching problem of Kanji-recollection which is why Visual Memory, as a method of learning, is to be avoided. However if you are still convinced NOT to depart from Visual Memory Learning Heisig writes a ‘zinger’ — that sometimes we make up for ‘our forgetting of kanji’ –due to poor visual memory– by making excuses for it as Heisig explains on page 3 of the Introduction,

“Now the odd thing is not that this occurs, but rather that, instead of openly admitting one’s distrust of purely visual memory, one accuses oneself of a poor memory or lack of discipline and keeps on following the same routine. Thus, by placing the blame on a poor visual memory, one overlooks the possibility of another form of memory that could handle the task with relative ease: imaginative memory” (Heisig 3).

This last point was where I was at for the last 1,105 frames. This notion that patterns of visual memory or the use of visual memory when recalling kanji to a keyword was a wretched sin and would lead to forgetting a kanji/keyword pair soon, Vis-à-vis the “Kaleidoscope Phenomenon” (explained below). However what Heisig is saying in Lesson 31 is that once there is a base, a foundation if you will (through the aforementioned “three phases”) perhaps visual memory, “deserves a suitable role of some sort or other” rather then being the scourge of the earth?

Why is this Heisig? I believe It all comes back to the Kaleidoscope example presented on page 2.

Heisig writes, “Let me paint the impasse in another, more graphic, way. Picture yourself holding a kaleidoscope up to the light as still as possible, trying to 3x in memory the particular pattern that the play of light and mirrors and colored stones has created. Chances are you have such an untrained memory for such things that it will take some time; but let us suppose that you succeed after ten or fifteen minutes. You close your eyes, trace the pattern in your head, and then check your image against the original pattern until you are sure you have it remembered. Then someone passes by and jars your elbow. The pattern is lost, and in its place a new jumble appears. Immediately your memory begins to scramble. You set the kaleidoscope aside, sit down, and try to draw what you had just memorized, but to no avail. There is simply nothing left in memory to grab hold of.” (Heisig 2)

In this example Heisig is giving a great reason for why NOT to use visual memory. In short, it’s because the instant visual memorization of the pattern yielded poor results. In this case imaginative memory would have saved this poor soul. I believe now what Heisig is presenting is if instead of simply ‘memorizing’ this pattern in the Kaleidoscope we make a story about a building with a triangle staircase and an oval window for example, then wrote that story down– perhaps ran it through an SRS for a few times– when the rude gentleman who nudged your shoulder and ruined the image came around again you would be able to still draw the image easily because you would of had a story which could bring back more easily that image. Moreover, say this image was a particularly unique image and you wanted to draw it as art or draw it for a friend (or multiple friends). This would be feasibly impossible without some sort of record (such as a photo). In the latter example (using a story rather then your visual memory), if you’re drawing the image for the 6^th or 7^th time over a period of time– the story you made will eventually fade and in its place are the primitives (building, stair, window). These primitives bring up an image which you draw without hesitance. Even later on, Heisig is saying there will be a point in which you will no longer need the primitives because visual memory will suffice ONLY because it has been rooted in something much more durable.

In relating this to Kanji, and more broadly Japanese, the preferred approach to learning vis-à-vis Visual memory– skipped the precious step of this ‘foundation building’ which anchors in the mind a point in which to recall vast amounts of information. We are told, or it is perhaps implied, that ‘kanji bashing’ through long drawn out repetition, will build a core foundation- as good as- Heisig’s phases of recollection (Stories> Plots> Primitives). The product of the former method can end up being no more better then if you would have done nothing at all in some cases, while the Heisig’s method produces someone who (theoretically) is able to recall and produce like that visual student a kanji/correct meaning/and phrase over a greater period of time and with a more accurate precision. That is to say, in the end, everyone will using visual memory- but only the Heisig people will be rooted in solid foundation.

Heisig explains it another way,

“In short, the number of steps required to learn the Japanese writing system has not been increased by what we have been doing. It has simply become more pronounced than it is in traditional methods of drawing and redrawing the kanji hundreds of times until they are learned, and in that way the whole process has become much more efficient. Pausing to think about just what your mind has been doing through this book should make the ideas mentioned in the Introduction much more plausible now than they must have seemed way back then” (Heisig 270) (Emphasis added).

This is Heisig’s way of telling us that my efforts thus far have not been in vain, but in fact been enhancement over others who are too attempting advanced Japanese studies (like where I used to be) . Perhaps this last comment is also to comfort any other skeptics that have made it this far, but are still unsure if what they’re doing in RTK is an exercise in frugality or an exercise in futility. After 1,105 frames & 30 lessons I’m leaning towards the former: Frugality. The time wasted on trying to fill up pages of identical kanji over and over could have been spent better firming up the foundation of my knowledge of the said kanji. Truth be told- the reality likely is- with time I’ve spent on Anki and Kanji Koohii thus far- I’ve probably written the same kanji an equal amount of time overall as if I did it repetitively. The difference being of course I now have a ‘story based’ foundation on which to draw upon.

So what’s the verdict? Use visual memory sparingly. In fact continue to avoid it at all costs until after RTK1 is finished with. In time visual memory will offer itself more freely with better results. It’s an enhanced technique that if implemented could save anyone scores of time. The downside of course still remains that this ‘exercise in ‘enhanced kanji techniques’ will set you back a good three months– so as all us Eagle Scouts say, “be prepared.”

Good food for thought for anyone for or against or on the fence.

~J

Updated Gallery with a grip more photos from Japan from back in ’06.

Brings back tons of memories– and now that I have new camera equipment I’m more then ready to knock your guy’s socks off with more awesome Japan Pics!

Check out the new additions here: http://r3dragon.net/gallery-2/

If you’re a new reader or have visited my site recently you would have noticed that I’ve updated (kinda) my Japanese Page. Along with some textbook reviews and such I included a primer on CMJS or Conquer My Japanese Surroundings. I want to expand a little on what that entails:

The concept behind CMJS is simple: Take what’s ‘foreign’ around you and learn it. Having studied Japanese for along time I know that there is a school of thought or mindset that you ‘learn’ Japanese basics first- then through magical osmosis that Cell Phone manual, Remote Control, or Junk Mail is ‘revealed.’ However, that was not the case for me when I lived there in ’06 and won’t be the case in ’09. This calls for action up front to learn all this first, then learn the rest in tiers.

Another notion about Japanese studies is that “it’s hard.” I understand whatever I’m saying can be made into a ‘that’s too difficult to setup’ statement. However I don’t buy into that. CMJS can be as easy as taking a photo of your remote, blowing it up big, putting into an SRS, and each time it comes up writing the meanings> readings> or what have you. If you don’t get it the first time- Fail-Up.

The ground work or foundation of CMJS is rooted in AJATT or All Japanese All the Time. The difference is that CMJS prioritizes it into tiers (immediate surroundings, local, regional, national, special). By prioritizing your sentences or vocab into these stages- what you learn becomes immediately relevant and usable. This is as opposed to taking classes about Japanese you don’t use because your friends/boss/town folk/etc speak something else.

The reason why CMJS and not JLPT is another thing all together. I believe JLPT is to us, as Shiken Hell is to Japanese High Schoolers. Somehow wired into our systems or in Japan’s systems is this idea that JLPT Proficiency automatically equals fluency and success. An example I once heard about was there was a friend of mine who entered Welding classes at the local college. He took class after class with his sights on getting a certification of some sort. After (what seemed like) a few years he passed all his classes and got that certificate. With paper in hand he went to go look for a job and what he told me was, every-time he’d go into somewhere they’d ask him to test weld a piece of steel. Based upon what he welded right there determined if he got the job or not. I found that fascinating and telling– While a certificate is impressive, and showing of hard work & study, ultimately it comes down to your ability.

My objective with CMJS is to communicate efficiently. It is in no way to substitute the JLPT, but rather to tackle the broader obstacle..

Whether it’s a success or not completely is up to me and if it works it may be help you too.

~J out