-1. For Starters
0. Mental Tools
0.1 For the Start of the Journey
- Advice On How To Take Advice (Including Mine)
- How To Accomplish Great Things: Small Victories, Winnable Games
- Comfort Zone, Growth Zone, Panic Zone and Situational Goals: Life Is Easier Than You Think
- Potheads, Planners and Players
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="22" height="7"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg> "New")
Tortoises and Hares- Aim To Fail
- Cute Girls, Mathematics, Language
- The African Way of Learning…Just Do It
- 10,000 Hours: Building Listening Comprehension
- Desires and Decisions
- You can have do or be ANYthing, but you can’t have do or be EVERYthing
- Showing Up
- Propaganda
- Classes Suck
- No Fun, No Good: You Must Enjoy Learning Japanese
- Language Is A Martial Art
- Language Is Acting
- Language is Like a Video Game
- Stop Mystifying Japanese
- There Was A Time When…
- Other People’s Perceptiveness (OPP): What It Takes To Be Great
- All In Moderation?
0.2 For During the Journey
- Beyond Binging and Purging: Why You Maybe Sometimes Shouldn’t Try Overcorrecting When You Screw Up
- Are You a Three-Day Monk?
- Boiling Water
- Motivation For Cynical People
- The Language Learner’s Prayer
- The Eternal Sorrow of the Intermediate Learner: “Are We There Yet?” Syndrome
- Practice: Don’t Beat Yourself Up
- I Meant To Do That
- Make the Process Fit the Person
- Inertia Can Be Your Friend
- How To Learn Japanese In 1 Second
- The Fork, The Choice And You
- Just Do One: Lowering Your Standards and Using Patterns from Addictions to Achieve Success
- Strategies for Overcoming Burnout
- Calm Down and Hurry Up
- When Will I Get Good?
- When Will I Get Funny?
- Unrealistic Expectations That You Need To Stop Having
- Time Management: Too Much Japanese?
- Time Management 2 (mainly advice for high school/college students)
- Automated Discipline: How To Stay On Track All The Time
- Intermediate Goals, Mini-Dreams
- Little and Often
- Processes Not Results, Or: Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Life I Learned Washing Dishes
- Turn Yourself Into A Monster: What To Do When People Around You Are Not Encouraging Or Supportive
- Social Resistance
1. Equipment
1. 1 Immersion Environment
- Why You Should Keep Listening Even If You Don’t Understand
- If Immersion Works So Well, Then Why Can People Live In a Country For Double-Digit Years And Never Learn The Language?
- No Speak English
- The Immersion Environment: Rome wasn’t built in a day…But this isn’t Rome, so a week should totally do…
- Japan is Wherever You Are: 10 Ways to Turn Your Environment Japanese
- Make Japanese the Center of Your Life: The Only Time You Have is the Time You Make
- But I Don’t Have Time For Immersion!: How To Immerse Even When Your Time Is Controlled By Others
- Eat Your Dessert First: Why Doing the Fun Stuff is the Most Effective Way of Learning Japanese
- Shaping: What The Immersion Environment Does For You
- Compromise: Maintaining Your Immersion Environment Without Completely Alienating Your Fellows…or Yourself
- Massive Turnover: How To Banish Boredom and Burnout from Immersion Even If You’re Just a Sucky Beginner
- Taking A Break: The Third Way
- You Don’t Have A Foreign Language Problem, You Have An Adult Literacy Problem
1.2 SRS: Spaced Repetition System
- What is an SRS?
- What is an SRS? 2
- How to Score Yourself on Repetitions
- How to Score Yourself on Repetitions 2
2. Kanji (meaning and writing only)
- Remembering the Kanji
- How To Learn and Review Kanji Using an SRS
- Lazy Kanji Cards: A New (?) SRS Card Format
- Lazy Kanji Cards: An AJATTeer Shares A Personal Status Report
- One Kanji Poster to Rule them All, One Kanji Poster to Bind Them, One Kanji Poster to View them All, and into the Mind Grind Them, Or “Shameless Product Placement is Good for the Wallet, and the Lymph”
- Kanji File: Save Yourself Some Typing
3. Kana
4. Sentences (wherein kanji readings and grammar are naturally learned)
- What It’s Like In The Beginning When You Don’t Know Jack. Or, How To Watch Japanese TV
- How to Watch the News in Japanese
- On Grammar
- Grammar Does Not Exist
- Grammar Does Not Exist 2 [looking back, this was an unnecessary act of conciliation intended to placate to the grammarati; I am through trying to please everyone. Ramses is right. The truth is that you-do-not-need a declarative knowledge of grammar; you need a working, physical, almost kinesthetic one; declarative knowledge/study of grammar tends to impede this rather than help it. Ultimately, things are said the way they are said because that is the way they are said. Period. Full stop. End of sentence. 終止符. So-called grammar rules are virtually always ugly, exception-ridden patterns observed and “imposed” ex post facto]
- The “Flat” Approach To Languages With Tons of Inflection
- On Input
- 10,000 Sentences: Input Before Output
- 10,000 Sentences: Why
- 10,000 Sentences: How[the original sentence method I used for learning Japanese]
- 10,000 Sentence: Where
- 10,000 Sentences: What
- SRS Precedence Rules
- How To Banish Boredom from Sentence-Mining (Sentence-Picking)
- Popping Bubblewrap: Tips for Better SRS Sentence Items
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 1: The SRS is a Servant Not a Master
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 2: Fun
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 3: Don’t Go Looking For Items, Let Them Come Find You
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 4: Collect ‘Em to Throw Away
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 5: Timeboxing
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 6: Maintain Only The Baseline/SRS Holidays
- Secrets to Smoother SRSing Part 7: The Place of Pre-Mined SRSing and Other Ramblings
- When You Just Don’t Feel Like Doing Sentence Reps Any More…
- How to Use a Japanese Textbook
- Why Monolingual Dictionaries Are Worth Your Time
- How To Make the Transition to Monolingual Dictionaries
- How To Really Make the Transition to Monolingual Dictionaries
- How To Pronounce Japanese
- How To Speak Like a Native (in any language)
5. Juggling Multiple Languages + Advanced SRS Techniques
- Critical Frequency: A Brand New Way of Looking At Language Exposure
- Whatever Happened To Boiling Water?
- How To Learn Multiple Languages Without Getting Confused: The Laddering Method
- How Do I Learn 500 Languages At Once?!
- Language As An Investment
- Managing Greed: How To Deal With Your Language Lust
- Learning Songs Using the SRS: My Current Method
6. Questions from Readers
- FAQs
- Help A Reader Out (many common questions answered here)
- Isn’t Real Japanese Too Hard for Beginners?
- How Many Languages? + Abandoning a Language After Bad Experiences
- On The Very Serious Subject Of How To Have Fun All The Time
7. Reader Stories
- Understanding the News: James’ Success Story
- Success Story: I’ve finally figured out this AJATT thing
- Momoko’s Musings
- Other Success Stories
8. Materials
8.1 Website Recommendations
8.2 Book Recommendations
8.3 Other Recommendations (Movies, Podcasts, Books, etc.)
- Japanese Music Recommendations from AJATTeers
- Japanese Shows with Exact Subs
- The Top 10 Best Japanese TV Shows of Recent Times
- The Top 10 Japanese Comedians
- Saying Yes to YesAsia: Free Worldwide Shipping + PayPal + Wide Selection = Smiles
- Shopping Japanese Online Stores from Abroad
- Podcasts: Simulate Real Japanese Friends
- Tools of the Trade: Headphones and Earphones
- Git up, Git up, Git Down, JLPT is the Joke in Yo’ Town: Why I Hate the JLPT and Why It’s a Waste of Your Time and Money
9. News
10. Life In Japan
- Top 10 Reasons Why Expats Who Live In Japan Don’t Know Japanese
- Life in Japan
- Slice of Life [how many times is the word “life” going to be repeated?]
11. Further Reading
Like I said, I didn’t just come up with this all by myself, out of the blue. I found techniques and inspiration from many other people.
- Stephen Krashen
- AntiMoon: Learn English Effectively
- Zompist: When Do People Learn Languages?
- Spanish Only
- SuperMemo: Forget About Forgetting
- Deschooling Society (online text)
- John Taylor Gatto (online text)
- John Holt[his work focussed on children, but it applies just as well to adults; replace “children” with “adults” or “you”, and you’re good to go]
There are a lot of trolls out there hating you. [@RevTK]
Don’t worry khatz, they have no reason to hate.
Just do what you do, sir.
Without you, I’m certain thousands of people wouldn’t have succeeded in learning a foreign language (including me)
Many people would have quit a few months into their endavors.
Incredibly motivational site for people that need structure, and for people that need to be spoon-fed.
endeavors*
;P
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to post. You are very uplifting and its really inspirational. I like to read your post’s whenever I am feeling down about my Japanese ability or I’m just feeling too worn out to study, I especially needed your uplifting articles and comments right before the JLPT this past weekend! Thank you and Merry Christmas (or whatever other Holiday you might celebrate this time of year).
Hello! This is kind of off topic but I need some advice from an established blog. Is it difficult to set up your own blog? I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out pretty quick. I’m thinking about making my own but I’m not sure where to begin. Do you have any points or suggestions? Appreciate it
Where can I buy PDF if I am to lazy to make it myself?
Hi Khatz, dunno if you’ll read this someday since it’s been a decade this blog has been managed but anyway.
I heard about AJATT via MattVsJapan youtube channel. I started reading through the Table of Contents a little less than a month ago. I went through all the posts excepted some at the very end.
I liked the motivational content, the kinda revolutionary vision you brought regarding language learning and finally, that made me read English every single day which what such a good exercise. Indeed, I’m French, straight outta croissant&baguette’ kingdom.
I’m finished my studies last June and I’ll work starting november 1st. I bought a ridiculous amount of books from what you and Matt advised. Currently reading The Mind Illuminated, my next target is RTK and you know the song about what comes next.
I’m setting a pretty reachable easy-winnable goal/game : 1 year for RTK vol 1 +/- 3, 1 year of sentence mining/MCD and then we’ll see if I’m still alive !
See you there on the other side ! I might cross your path in Japan someday, recognize you and yell all my gratitude across the street, who knows ?
Dr. Murdoch