Found out that My Yaruki has been following my blog, and I didn’t even know it. Oops. Anyway, he has a quiz that I thought I’d answer, just for the heck of it. (free post, yay!)

AJATT is All Japanese All The Time, the method I am using to learn Japanese.

  1. How many facts do you have in your SRS?

    6362 total facts, 3020 unseen. All kanji. I have a separate deck for sentence mining, but there’s not much in it yet.

  2. What sentences have you and are you putting into your SRS?

    Not much. I tried adding a sentence list from a travel site so I could cram for my Japan trip (which fell through this month), but those were terribly boring, so I stopped and I haven’t decided what to do next.

  3. Do you do production (audio/hiragana to kanji) and/or recognition (kanji to meaning) or something else? Is there an order (e.g. production and then recognition)?

    Recognition only. Production will come later when I get into sentences full-force.

  4. Do you use any kind of special techniques when you review an item with your SRS? eg. dictation, role playing etc.

    With the kanji, I keep the story covered up with <font color=”white”> tags so I can’t see it unless I need a hint, and then I just I highlight it. I want the keyword and concept to be intimately attached to the kanji, so I don’t depend on little English stories to produce the kanji together.

  5. How many cards on average do you add to you deck per day? Or if life is getting in the way of this, once things settle down how many do you intend to add per day?

    I stopped ‘learning’ new cards a few months ago. I simply added them all the way up to 3,007 (the end of RTK3). I had about 3,300 cards in my deck before hearing about the Kanji Kantei level 1, which tests you on over 6,000 kanji. I figured that if I need to learn the kanji, I’m going to go for the gusto and eventually learn every one I might possibly need for the rest of my life. Most of these I haven’t reviewed, of course!

  6. How much exposure (immersion) to Japanese do get (or intend to get) on average each day or week? In what form?

    Music: during my commute (30 minutes round trip) and all day in the background.
    Doramas and anime: I try to watch at least one episode or part of an episode each night, if possible, all raw. I avoid subtitles most of the time, but sometimes I’m just lazy.
    Movies: I just found a boatload of great movies here, so I’m downloading a good dozen or so now. It usually takes me two or three days to watch a movie (in place of the nightly dorama or anime). I try to watch at least one movie each weekend.

  7. Describe your level including any strengths and weaknesses.

    I have a good grasp of probably 2,000 kanji now. My deck has several times that, but I have not been able to review as much as I want because I haven’t had a good on-the-go solution until now.

  8. Are you satisfied with your progress and the techniques you are using?

    Not happy with my progress. I figured I would be much closer to fluency by now, but family, work, social networking, and laziness have interfered with that significantly.

    Techniques? AJATT and Anki are the best!

  9. Are you satisfied with your level?

    Nope.

  10. How far do you want to go with Japanese?

    Complete fluency to the point where I can live and work in Japan if necessary and, eventually, the ability to pass the Kanji Kantei level 1, which few Japanese and even fewer foreigners have passed. I’m not going to bother with the JLPT, rather, I want to test with what the Japanese test with.

  11. How confident are you of getting there?

    I will. I definitely will.

  12. From when you started adding items to your SRS, aside from your process evolving bit by bit, are there any major things you would do again differently if you could?

    I would have started with Anki from the beginning instead of Khatzumemo (now Surusu). Anki wasn’t as good back then and Khatzumemo was simpler, so I went with the simpler choice at first, but eventually was drawn to the awesomeness of Anki like a moth to the flame. (Sorry Khatz.)

    It took me a good week to move all my facts over to Anki. It looks like now I will have to do that again (edit: no I won’t, yay!), and since my deck has ballooned in size, it will take me much longer. But I welcome the challenge.

  13. How long have you been studying?

    Since May 10, 2008–over a year. Quite a bit of catching up to do if I want to catch up with Khatz‘s 18 months. Probably not gonna happen, but you never know.