Tackling 4 High-Priority Missions Simulatenously

Recently I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed by my projects. I had a lot going on, was working hard, but felt like I didn't have a good grasp on the sheer amount there was to do. Let me assure you, this is nothing new. I often give myself way more than I can handle, and then try to figure out after the fact how to do it all. I don't recommend trying to manage numerous critical goals at one time; in fact, having a single goal at one time is often more than enough. But if you're running through life at full speed and need some way of taking charge of it all, this guide may be of some help.

So I decided to stop and think about what I was doing, what was of high priority, and figure out how to focus on those things.  I was able to break them down into 4 "missions:" Get Married, Go Home, Find a Job, and Learn Japanese.  I'll save you the details, but I wrote a Japanese blog about them here. :p

Out of all the crazy things in my life, these are the ones I determined needed the most attention.  In doing so, I replaced two of my previous somewhat-vague goals of Language Teaching and Psychology, and kept Japanese.  After narrowing them down, I thought about how I could utilize the time management techniques I know to make things easier.  There's nothing fancy here I haven't already explained.  I decided not to make a Goal Calendar for each mission (except for Japanese which I'm using already), primarily due to their short timelines of about 2-3 months.  However, I did utilize some principles that you'll find familiar if you read that post.  Well, let's get started.

1. Prioritize missions - this could be a post in itself, but try to figure out what in your life currently demands the most attention.  Not because you have to do it, but because you choose to do it.  Dare I say you want to do it, because this is your life dagnabit!
2. Define missions - what does it mean to say that you've completed that goal?  Where da' finish line at?  One clear, straightforward sentence should suffice.
3. Create mission timelines - decide not only when you want to finish the goal, but when you want to start as well.  Give yourself some time to make the below preparations and look forward to your mission.
4. Commit to missions - make a public commitment that you're going to complete your goals, and it'll be harder to back out later (see this post and the right column on this blog for my example).  You don't have to write it on your blog, or even online, as long as you tell a few people who can (hopefully) give you some support along the way.
5. Prepare mission environments - it can be paper, it can be electronic - whatever medium you use to get things done, use that.  It needs to be something you refer to everyday, or often enough that you won't forget to check.  But if you're already using the below items everyday what's the point of mentioning it?  So you can take full advantage of them; if you don't use them now, I suggest you start.  BTW, my solutions below are all cloud-related.  You're free to use pen/pencil and paper, just think about how much time you're wasting, trees your killing, and liabilities you're creating without a saved backup on the interwebs ready to be used any time and anywhere. :)
1. Notebook - I set up a(n electronic) notebook on Evernote for each mission, and enter whatever comes to mind related to that specific goal. It's a thought dumper.  A rough draft.  It doesn't need to be perfect, just get what you're thinking out of your head, and what you're researching into one place.  Sometimes we get overwhelmed because we simply don't know what we need to do, so this is a way of becoming aware of it all.  After refining your thoughts a bit, begin to come up with a list of general tasks.
2. Folders - any and all files related to the goals go in their own special folder in Dropbox.  Manila folders and regular plastic folders work fine too.  Think of this as another way of dumping things you find related to your goal into one place.
3. Tasks - after coming up with general tasks in my notebook, I made task lists on Remember the Milk for each mission.  When you actually enter the tasks, however, they should be well-defined and very simple, easy to start and finish without requiring many steps.  The most pressing matter is figuring out how to make measurable progress no matter how small; if you need to research something, fine, but that should be a task on its own and the details can come later.  Another thing that's helping me is ordering the tasks sequentially, such that I know the order in which to perform all the tasks.  I then choose about 2 or 3 from each mission to aim to complete before the end of the week.
6. Reward missions - pay yourself for working on each of your goals.  I pay myself every week in hours, as discussed in my schedules post.  My goal is 20 hours a week, and lately I've been racking in around 15 for my 4 missions.  This is enough for me, but consider giving yourself an external reward for progress on your goal.
7. Manage missions - timeboxing, batching, etc.  In particular, timeboxing helps me to keep track of the time I pay myself in, and to start as much as possible.

I've been rolling with Japanese like a motherlover as usual, but I completed revamped the other 3 missions according to the above.  I'm making great progress so far, trying to work on one task from each mission every day.  So on any given day I'm doing 1 thing for the wedding, 1 thing for job searching, and 1 thing for preparing to go home.  Since my environment is set up with the missions plastered all over the place, I'm not going to forget easily, or let others forget either (sorry, honey!).  I reward myself to increase motivation, but the core motivation comes from the discipline of knowing what you want.  That's why they're high-priority missions in your life - because you choose them.  Our decisions are a powerful force in our motivation levels.

Again, not recommending you try 2, 4, or 10 critical goals at once.  But if that's where you are in life, I hope this helped.

Marrying the Woman I Love

As mentioned in a recent post, the countdown has officially begun.  The big day is 7/7/2012, and I couldn't be more excited to be marrying my best friend, the girl of my dreams.

It's hard to believe it's less than a month away now!  Both of us have been pretty busy these last few weeks, but my fiance has been especially wrapped up in the planning.  She's currently residing in her hometown of Guam making preparations - meeting with the church, deciding arrangements for the reception venue, making and sending out invitations, contacting other professionals... the list goes on and on.  Luckily, her best friend is in town from California to make the process go a bit smoother, and along with other family members she has plenty of support.

Still, it's not an easy task to plan for around 200 guests at one of the nicest venues on the island, and I want to support her as much as possible.  I wish I could be there to help, but I'm working full time here in Japan and I'm told I would just mess it up if I got too involved anyway. ;)  So I'm focusing on the little things that I can do, like making the website and getting information from people (addresses, suit sizes, etc.).  I'm excited to see what an American wedding is like when it's not in a movie (I've only been to one Japanese wedding before); figures the first one would be my own. lol

Aside from the wedding itself and the sheer size, I'm looking forward to seeing people for the first time in a while.  First and foremost, two months is too long to spend apart from the one you love.  Secondly, we're really excited to have family and friends fly in from my hometown of Maryland.  We haven't been back in 2 years, so it'll be a preview of sorts prior to heading back a month later.

My fiance and I have actually been engaged for quite a while, almost 2 and a half years to be exact.  I'm just realizing that's over half of the total 4 and a half years that we've been together!  I popped the question at the top of a snow-frosted mountain in my ancestor's hometown of Pennsylvania, about half a year before we both came to Japan and lived here as a couple.  It was the start of our lives together, halfway around the world from where we started.  If I didn't stress it enough before, I couldn't have survived here in Japan without her.  The transition hasn't always been easy... but we had each other, and sometimes her family too when they came with us on trips to places like Hokkaido and Tokyo. hahaha

Come to think of it, our relationship has been full of renewed beginnings.  Like when I went to Japan for the first time, separating from her for about 6 months.  Fortunately I was able to make a side trip to Guam on my way there, and then she came to visit me during my stay.  If it's not already painfully obvious, we like to take trips together. ~_^  After I graduated college, she began to spend more time in the states, and hence with me as well.

Living together for the past 2 years in Japan has definitely brought new light to our relationship, and in spite of occasional hardships we made it work.  I love you honey, and I can't wait to take the next step and start our lives together, once again.

Cutting Slack with Batching

Hey guys, here to mention a quick (maybe? perhaps?) time management technique that I've been consciously applying for the past couple months to the beat of hours of time saved per week.  It's called Batching, and I'm betting you already use it to some extent.

Since I'm from Maryland, I'm going to explain it through the example of catching crabs.  The delicious kind you dip in Old Bay, not the kind that makes you scratch down there.  When I was growing up, during summers we would drive to the beach and my dad would set up a metal crab trap with some raw chicken as bait (see Exhibit A above), and throw it into the canal.  Now it's waiting time.  Question: If two vehicles of equal size are traveling at a velocity of 50 mph toward each other... how often are you going to check the trap?  Each time you check, there may or may not be any crabs; if there are, you dump them into the bucket and head home.  If there aren't, you take the bucket and head home.  No matter how many crabs are in the trap (equal to or above 0), it usually takes more or less the same amount of time.  Why?  Because most of it involves stopping what you're doing, putting on some pants, walking outside to the canal, pulling up the trap and inspecting it, putting it back in and walking back.  If you're going to check it every 10 minutes you might as well set up camp right there, but if you don't check it all day the bait will disappear without you knowing or the crabs could escape.

In this situation, most people develop a routine so they're not checking too often or too little, right?  However, this routine fails way too often to extend to more everyday tasks, the type that are made so convenient by proximity and technology that you don't notice a large chunk of your time adding up.  That's time that could be going toward your goals, high-order priorities, top-secret missions, etc. but is instead disintegrating in the face of "have to" tasks.

The worst culprit: e-mail.

Checking email is a habit engrained into our society.  We wake up, we check email.  We're about to leave for work, we check email.  We arrive at work, we check email.  And what happens when we check email?  We get Facebook and Google+ notifications, so we go to our web browsers and make a comment, then find an interesting article that someone posted.  Well reading one article never drowned a baby, so pop open another tab and read it, and oooh a link to a video on YouTube.  Man that was awesome, you guys gotta check this out - share it with some friends, batabing bataboom.  We've been awake for less than 2 hours and we've already spent over 45 minutes "just checking email."  It's a distraction, and yet because we depend on it for work, school, family, and friends it feels justifiable.  We'll often check it at least every hour, and if you have a notification system it's even worse!  You know as soon as something comes in, and no matter what you're in the middle of, no matter what it's distracting you from, email suddenly becomes PRIORITY NUMBER ONE.  It could be the mayor asking us to save another drowning baby!

So what I've gone and done is batched my email checking time to: once per day.  That's right, you just heard a part of the internet explode.  Gone are the days of waiting for email notifications and going straight for the inbox as soon as the bell goes off.  What are we, dogs in an experiment by some dude named Pavlov?  And when I do check email, since I know it's the only time I'll do it that day I'm much much more likely to actually respond then and there rather than put it off.  I also strategically created the habit of checking as soon as I get back from work, sometimes with a little bit of timeboxing sprinkles to save even more time.  While it's tempting to check first thing in the morning, managing to avoid this has been a hidden secret to increased productivity at the beginning of the day.

If you want, you can limit your email checking even more, like once per week.  This is especially true if you own a business (!), which I learned thanks to The 4-Hour Workweek, by being smart about your communication methods and giving responsibility to your underlings employees outsourced folks. ~_^  With email batching comes the understanding that "emergencies" are often not emergencies at all.  Problems often take care of themselves without you need to do anything.  If you're really worried about people expecting your reply right away, you can set up an auto-response saying you only check email at x time(s), as a way of training those people.  Besides, if someone really needs to contact you, that's why we have cellphones.  And texting.  Put yourself in the cockpit and choose to do things by your own time convenience.

Many people will recognize "Batching" as a technique not only associated with time batching for one task between longer intervals, but as task batching to tackle several similar tasks at the same time.  You can combine both time batching and task batching to do simple things such as waiting until you have a few errands before going out and doing them in one go, or waiting to go to the post office until you have a few letters/boxes you want to send, or making all of your phone calls at once.  That sort of thing.  You want to put stuff off as long as possible, and then do a lot at once.  I've applied batching to things like:

• Checking post mail (once or twice a week)
• Balancing my check book (once every 2 weeks)
• Adding to my address book (once a month)
• Washing dishes (once every 3 days, so it takes about as long as a TV show episode, which I listen to and use as a timebox while washing)
• Writing my Japan experiences (twice a week, based on the limits of my horrible memory)
• Other cleaning and organizing

Batching works especially fantastically if you have a digital task manager (like Remember the Milk) that can handle recurring tasks.  Or if you can work it into your daily routine it will be an even stronger tool.  You can set up your batching schedule and don't even have to think about it.

The moral of the story: don't waste your time doing something multiple times, if you can get the same or better results doing it less often.  Get the stuff you have to do out of the way so you can focus on what you want to do.

Syk3 out!

Living on JET with Your Partner

I decided to write up a short article on what life is like in Japan on the JET Programme when you've arrived with your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/significant other/buddy (?)/wife/husband/etc., as opposed to living here looking out for number one.  This is aimed towards future JETs in my prefecture, but bear with me while I trick myself into writing it as a blog post. :D

I initially applied to JET together with my partner.  We decided that if one of us didn't make it, we wouldn't go.  Only I got in.  We went anyway.

And so we began our post-college lives together living in a foreign country.  Upon arrival, our BOE was more than willing to accommodate both her and I.  They even suggested looking for other housing if the one provided wasn't enough, and though we considered the option we soon adjusted to my predecessor's two-story apartment and double bed.  My partner's city hall registration, cell phone, bank account, etc. went as smoothly as it had with me, though these were things we were required to do on our own.

The hardest thing to find for her was work.  Before arriving in Japan, we were told to keep an eye out for eikaiwa (English conversation schools), ALT positions, private firms, juku (cram schools), and pre-schools.  I was also quick to mention to my schools and the BOE that she was looking.  Unfortunately, helpful information can come very slowly if you're going to wait on these sources.  She eventually settled with a weekly eikaiwa less than an hour away, to work for one hour a week.  The pay and time isn't great, but it gives her something to do and she loves working with her students.  Eventually she also started doing private lessons here and there and it's now up to four sessions a week.  At this point we stopped actively looking for work, though she remains very busy maintaining all of the tasks around the house and keeping us both happy, including making delicious meals, organizing social gatherings, and planning for our upcoming wedding ceremony.  The extra time also awards her the opportunity for more creative pursuits such as teaching herself Japanese cooking, gardening, and sewing.

Suffice to say most of the income comes from my working as an ALT.  I keep monthly budgets for five categories (gas, groceries, eating out, fun, and other living expenditures), and input purchases into an excel file weekly.  I never imagined I would go that far, but after setting it up it only takes me 10-15 minutes a week to maintain.  Thanks to this budgeting, we're able to pay the bills, have fun, and go on (sometimes bordering excessive) trips, in addition to saving quite a bit of money.  It's doable, you just have to stay on top of it.

Alas, having lots of free time and little knowledge of (or perhaps confidence in) the local language can be a bad combination.  This doubles when the other person in the relationship can speak the language, leading your partner to rely on you for many everyday things.  One point I've learned in hindsight is that it's important to encourage your partner's independence, such as by asking them to run quick errands by themselves.  The more your partner interacts with his or her environment, the quicker and smoother they can adjust.  Another result of this excess free time is that when I come home from work and want to relax, my partner has been relaxing all day waiting for me to come home and is ready to go out.  In this case, I'd suggest making plans in advance, perhaps weekly trips on certain days or simply deciding you'll go out to dinner and pachinko the next day.  This way the working JET knows to save a little time and energy.

Luckily, my partner did make some great friends during her stay.  Some are JETs in the area with a work schedule similar to mine, but others are Japanese that she met in the community.  Her Japanese has actually increased to the point where  she can understand a lot of what's being said without me needing to translate!  Your best bet is to make friends with people in your town and find out who speaks English.  One of my partner's best friends turned out to be the local English juku teacher.

Negative experiences are bound to happen, but try to keep an open mind about whether that's a feature of living in Japan or just normal marriage life.  We also had some of the most amazing experiences of our lives, and despite the struggles my partner expressed interest in staying even longer.  She and I will really miss Japan.

How to Learn Japanese Step 2/2: Live It

There are 2 steps to learning Japanese.

1. Adjust to the characters (the easy and lazy way, and learn kana too)
2. Live the language

That's it.  No need to complicate things.

Following my numerous posts on kanji, it would seem that some readers have since applied these methods to successfully (and happily) achieve kanji fluency in just a few short months.  I guess it's time for me to explain where to go from here. lol

Am I even qualified to write this post?

I mean, kanji is one thing.  I wouldn't call myself a kanji expert or anything, but can write and recognize over 2,000 basic, everyday kanji?  Sure.  So I felt like I could share with you guys how I and countless others before me utilized a shortcut to overcome the infamous "kanji hurdle," which frustrates so many Western learners of Japanese.

But I'm not going to lie - at this point in writing, I have by no means "mastered" Japanese in general.  I have my up days and my down days.  When I talk to native speakers, it ranges from noticeable to painfully obvious that I still have a long way to go.  Contract talks occasionally frustrate me, as do some 3rd graders who I'm sure are talking about nothing but have to do so in such an incomprehensible way.  When I watch TV or movies, even if I can understand the gist of everything, at least 1/4 of the specifics tend to go over my head.

Having said that, I get by in everyday life in Japan with almost no problems.  There's never a time when I feel so overwhelmed that I tell someone I just can't understand and leave it at that.  I know how to pinpoint what I don't know and ask what it means, or explain around a word I forgot.  At work unless I'm helping out kids I'm using Japanese, often even with junior high school English teachers. lol  I'm reading my 5th book, have read countless manga, and am watching about 3-4 movies a week.  I passed the stupid JLPT 2 with no specific studying whatsoever just to show that I could.  If the average foreigner were to see me conversing in Japanese with a native speaker, it may be difficult to notice the gap.  While I attribute this primarily to ignorance, it gives me enough confidence to refer to myself casually as "fluent."  And though I don't like comparing myself to other Japanese learners, I'd put myself in maybe the top 10-15% range (though admittedly the difference from the top 1-5% is huge).

The important part is that I've come a long way from when I starting studying Japanese in fall of 2006.  Two years of classes, half a year of study abroad, a year and a half of self-study in the states, and about two more years of self-study in Japan later - even if I haven't hit native fluency yet - I feel like I'm on my way, and can give tips based on what I've come across, experienced, tested out, and found to have helped my Japanese the most in the last 6 years (whoa, has it really been that long?).  I started with classes and textbooks and learning from licensed, professional teachers.  In time I learned from these mistakes, and have made the most progress with untraditional methods and working things out on my own.  If I had done this from the beginning, I would have been fluent in half this time.

OK, so give us the method

You decided you want to learn Japanese, that's just peachy! But what method/technique/strategy/system should you choose in order to work toward fluency most efficiently?

Here's the thing.  Lean in close, now.  Closer.... wait, too close. Ok, perfect.  There is no method.

"I have not invented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that" method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds." -Bruce Lee 

Or more specifically, a method in the beginning (no matter how FANTASTIC it is or how many super cool people endorse it) will only hurt you, and it's not something you need to worry about it, so there might as well not be a method.

There's tons of specific systems on how to learn languages: AntiMoon sentences, LinQ, AJATT MCDs, 英絶方式 (the "Absolute English Method" from the book 英語は絶対、勉強するな), etc.  Some people will even try to sell you their methods.  Essentially what this amounts to is people worrying about which method to choose, before and instead of doing something, ANYTHING in their target language.  That's like a baby trying to develop efficient running techniques before learning to walk.  Or watching soccer videos to acquire skills before going out and kicking a ball around.  Or spending all of your time planning how you're going to write your book without writing a single page.

What if I put it like this: stop worrying about how you're going to learn Japanese, and go learn it.

Many people who are starting to learn Japanese go and look for classes, textbooks, teachers, and blog methods to tell them what and how to learn, without having spent enough time with raw Japanese to know what's going to be useful.  You're putting yourself into a box without knowing what lies outside of it, and trusting the authority of those carrying the box to get you to your destination.  We all have the right to choose what we want to learn based on our preferences, and the ability to go out and learn it on our own, something that school does a great way of conveying to its students (can't you just taste the sarcasm?).  And that's the problem.

So in place of the method is....

The language environment

It's all about exposure, immersion, and input, folks.  We want an environment that's fun and engaging on its own, but also immersive and in-your-face 24/7 so that you can't forget what you want: fluency.

A lot of people will say they "don't have time for Japanese."  They have "school work," "house work," "workwork," "a relationship," other "mandatory work."  First of all, you need to ask yourself whether Japanese is really something you want to learn.  If not, don't waste your time.  Stop reading this and go back to all that work you really want to do.

Anyone still with me?  Okay.  Second of all, does all that work stop you from using English?  "I don't have time for English, I GOTTA WORK DUDE!"

The environment destroys any excuse of "I don't have the time."  Take a look around you.  Do you have time to listen to music?  Do you have time to use a computer?  Do you have time to check Facebook/Google+?  Do you have time to listen to the radio while driving?  Do you have time to chat with friends?  Do you have time to write notes or to-do lists to yourself?  Do you have time to watch TV or movies?  Do you have time to wait in line at the store?  Do you have time to sing to yourself in the shower?  Do you have time to play video games?  Do you have time to use your smartphone?  Do you have time to read books?  Do you have time to search for things on Google or Wikipedia?  Do you have time to THINK?

OMFG.  If you answered "no" to all of the above, I think it's time to take a good hard look at your life, or see me for therapy in about 10 years...

If you answered "yes" to any of them, you'll know where to start your Japanese input environment.  This isn't the twice-a-week language class you go to for a couple hours, this is the language that's woven into the fabric of your everyday life.  Japanese is your chill time now.  I'm talking about a major overhaul of your personal bubble, as if you were Japanese and English were a boring foreign language you only use when you have to.  This bubble is the reason why there are weebos who have lived in Japan for decades but can't even read more than a handful of kanji, and why any Jane Smith can learn Japanese from her home country.

You won't understand everything in the beginning, and that's okay.  You don't even have to necessarily engage with the environment at first; passively living in high-input, high-interest Japanese immersion will slowly but surely encourage a natural curiosity on its own.  The important part is exposing yourself to raw, unadulterated Japanese (FunBun - for natives, by natives).  The sooner you do this, the sooner you can give yourself the chance to adjust to native-level speed and get a clear picture of the playing field.

Let's get this order of operations set now.  It's not "she can read books because she's good at Japanese," first getting awesome and then reading.  You're good at Japanese because you read books.

Sounds great! How do I start my environment Japanese?

The best way is to look at what you do and think about how you can do it in Japanese.  This may initially take a couple weeks, and require constant tweaking along the way.  But for starters:

1. Your computer - not just your keyboard input, but your entire operating system if possible (Macs can do this easily in system preferences).
2. Your internet - within Chrome or Firefox, don't forget to change your language preferences in Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and YouTube, and to friend/subscribe to/follow Japanese people or companies.  And search in Japanese on Wikipedia and Google/Yahoo.
3. Your smartphone - iPhones and Androids are language-adaption ready, just check the settings.
4. Your music - obtain lots of Japanese music, and take your English music off your hard drive and onto an external drive.
5. Your TV - watch live Japanese TV online for free with KeyHoleTV.
6. Your books - Amazon is your best friend.
7. Your movies - even Netflix has movies in Japanese.
8. Your news - I recommend FNN and Google for news sources, but there are a lot so check for more.
9. Your podcasts - downloading podcasts on iTunes has been a fantastic way for me to keep the Japanese sounds flowing.
10. Your friends - seek out Japanese who live in your area and befriend them, possibly through Meetup.

As long as it's in Japanese it's good for you, so within that single restriction decision find something you love.  If you were fluent today, what would you do?  Watch an anime without subtitles?  Sing karaoke?  Go have fun with it now.  Also try to sample as many things as possible - watch tons of movies and TV shows, listen to tons of music, flip through tons of books and manga.  That way you increase your chances of finding something you really like.  If it doesn't interest you after the first 2 minutes, you don't need it; THROW IT OUT!  It's the media's job to entertain you, so don't feel obligated to see things through to the end on principle.

Don't force yourself to only use Japanese and never use English, or you may become frustrated and quickly leave the environment.  The key is putting Japanese there so that it's easy to do, like a bowl of fruit on the table and a jar of cookies in box in a high cabinet.  Put a Japanese book within arm's reach of wherever you are, and the chances of you picking it up will only increase.

Learning Kanji with methods

"But Syk3," you say.  "You say not to use methods at first, but didn't we use Heisig and Lazy Kanji as a method to learn kanji?"  Yes we did, and I should make clear who that post was target towards: it's for people who have been frustrated with the characters for a long time, frustrated with learning in an inefficient way and want to know how to do it better.  If you're just starting out, I don't recommend Heisig right away.  First buy books.  Or at the very least, accumulate material with Chinese characters, so you can be inspired by their appearance alone.  Try to trace them, play around with them.  When you get to the point where you are honestly motivated to learn them, Heisig and Lazy Kanji will be waiting.

In the meantime, until you finish kanji should you put off your immersion environment?  Of course not!  If anything, you should use that time to train your ears.  Any time there's silence in your life, turn on your TV or computer, put in your headphones, and shove your head full of Japanese sounds.  That's all they are at first - sounds.  Sounds become words, become phrases, become sentences, become conversations.  Consider continuing this even while you sleep, literally approaching 24/7 as closely as possible.  You should be able to see at this point that we need lots of material to make this work.  I personally like ripping audio from anime and dramas.

Once you've gotten used to the characters with Heisig, your knowledge of the English meanings will do wonders in helping you successfully navigate your premature environment.  If you change your computer operating system, for example, you'll quickly be able to understand what a lot of it means using the characters alone.

In closing

Don't make the Japanese textbook your world.  Make the world your Japanese textbook.

I'll save explaining how to start looking for methods, and how to utilize the life textbook with specific methods for a later post.  But first thing's first: creating the environment and developing the Japanese habit.  Like kanji in Step 1, the finer details can come later.  But don't get me wrong, this is Step 2 of 2.  To achieve fluency, there are no more steps after this.  Fluency is best determined by how long you spend with the language, so the more you interact with your environment the less it matters what your method is.

I just heard a great story yesterday at one of my schools.  You may be aware that among the countries with the fastest runners in the Olympics, Kenya ranks at the top.  But do you know why that is?  Apparently, often times schools and transportation are very scarce, and kids have to travel around 20 km from home everyday.  To top it off, since there's no school lunch, they have to go home, eat, and then return to school.  Now that's an environment that's going to create some killer runners.

We want to set up an environment that'll create some killer Japanese skills.

A Week in Tokyo pt. 2/2

OK, where was I?  Something about Disney, Ghibli, and a bunch of kids running around loose in Tokyo?  Yeah, that sounds about right.  Let's pick up there.

Sunday, the 1st, started out ordinary enough, and like Friday we devoted the morning to much-needed recuperating.  It wasn't until noon that we had regained enough energy to leave the hotel, and we hit up Asakusa - a tourist-packed area with a huge gate (kaminari-mon) and shrine (sensou-ji).  When I say tourist-packed, I'm not kidding; you'll be fighting for elbow room all the way down that line of shops.  That's when it happened - before we knew it, the two kids were gone with the baby.  Did they go into one of the shops?  Didn't seem like it... Did they continue on?  Only one way to find out.  We split up and I went with my fiance to the big shrine.  When we got to the top of the stairs, we were in for a surprise - there they were, in the sacred area, touching (in baby E-chan's sake, drooling on) the golden statue of Buddha!  It was both an appalling and beautiful sight.

APRIL FOOLS!!1!!ONE!1 lmao  Did you believe me?  XD  Actually, my regret for the day was completely forgetting that it was April Fools Day at all.  There, I've got my fill.  The kids were safe and accounted for, and my fiance and I even got a good fortune at the shrine.  Cool beans.  Our next stop couldn't have been better picked - Ueno Park is the biggest park in Tokyo, and the sakura (cherry blossoms) had just begun to bloom.  Along with the sakura came many people doing hanami, a type of flower viewing that involves friends, family, and coworkers coming together under the trees, getting really drunk, and making fools of themselves.  It's fun to watch, actually, and I took a couple videos of people partying and dancing.  Unfortunately, the Ueno Zoo was closed for the day, and even though we found some rides and festival food, baby E-chan could smell the animals in the air and started getting excited. "Zoo, zoo!!"  We turned back defeated for the day.

On Monday we were determined to get back to that zoo, and not even waking up late would stop us this time.  And it was a great zoo.  Complete with monkeys, penguins, soft little bunny rabbits, 2 big pandas surrounded by crowds of humans, and magical ponies all for our entertainment.  Thus we defeated the zoo masters and claimed the zoo for our own.  We may still be there today if it weren't for the odd smells that got to us after a while.  For dinner I brought everyone to Shinjuku thinking we could see the huge walking intersection (turned out it was Shibuya, how could I make such a mistake?!), and while we were there we emptied our wallets a bit more into arcade crane games.

Tuesday was rainy.  My fiance had done some research on a man-made island called Odaiba, so we headed out there.  On our way we looked for the famed Pokemon center to no avail, thanks in part to conflicting directions from confused station attendants who must have thought we were crazy foreigners trying to "catch them all."  The rain got worse and turned into a typhoon with reports that trains might close down, but we got to Odaiba just fine.  We saw a life-sized Gundam model from the train, and I really wanted to check it out but considering the rain, wind, and distance, well... I never was that big of a Gundam fan, after all. ;) Odaiba turned out to have a nice mall, with its highlight being the arcade (oh God, the wallets).  Let me tell you, I've been to a lot of arcades in my day and all across Japan, but the sheer size and variety in this arcade trumped all others.  Not only did it have basically any kind of game you could want, but tons of crane machines, batting cages, soccer cages, a kids play area, electronic animals you could ride around the arcade, a haunted house, massage chairs, a life-size sumo game... the list goes on and on.  After dinner we were heading back with the trains stopped. haha  Figures, right?  Luckily, there was another station on a different line about a 5 minute walk away, so we made our way back somehow.

Our last day was Wednesday, so we got up early and were all packed and checked out by the time we left for breakfast at Tokyo Station.  There was a tiny bit of money left in the wallets at this point, so we went to Akihabara, the anime/manga/game/cosplay capital of Tokyo/Japan/Earth and, naturally, found some more arcades and crane games.  We used up the last of our time as well, and found ourselves rushing to the airport and making a photo finish a mere 30 minutes before international take-off.  If we hadn't checked in with our phones on the train we might have been in big trouble. :p  After we said our goodbyes, my fiance and I then rushed to the national airport for our flight home to Shimane.

It had been a long week and a half, and it was time for some well-deserved sushi and sleep.

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A Week in Tokyo pt. 1/2

The other day I went to Tokyo for the 7th time.  You'd think I'd be tired of it, huh? ~_^  Or that it wouldn't be a big deal, or that I'd have run out of things to do already?  I thought so.  WELL, WE'D ALL BE WRONG.  This time, my fiance's brother his family accompanied us on a 1 week adventure through and around Japan's megatropolis.  It was a long week, so I'm splitting this up into 2 posts.

At the start of the trip, my fiance and I were already a little tired from our Hokkaido adventures.  After arriving back in Shimane we had a mere 1 day break before heading back out on Wednesday the 28th.  But Tokyo isn't the place to go if you're feeling tired, what with the dependency on public transportation and walking everywhere.  So we kept our hopes high and flew out early in the morning, only to look at our watches and find it was nearly 12 by the time we rendezvoused with her brother, his wife, and their 3 kids and were heading to the hotel.  We'd be staying right next to the imperial palace, and you can bet that's the first place we tried to go.  Yeah, "tried."  Apparently the palace is closed most of the year; I think they just don't like foreigners. :/  After exploring the area, we found sakura (cherry blossoms) on the verge of blooming, a concert hall, and even a sakura matsuri (festival) in preparation just down the street.  We were also close to Tokyo Tower, so we hit that up before concluding our first day.

Thursday was the day the kids were waiting for, the happiest place... um, in the depths of the cold and heartless Tokyo city (please note not everything written in this blog reflect the author's true feelings, and are primarily intended to set up the situational atmosphere, though some readers are bound to agree with these artificial sentiments): Tokyo Disneyland!  For my fiance and I, this would be our first time... in 3 and a half years.  It hadn't changed that much - still felt the same as America Disneyland and Disney World, complete with long lines (probably from kids on Spring Break).  We attempted to go on as many rides and attractions (read: with 45 min. or less wait lines), and got to see It's a Small World, Captain EO with 3D Michael Jackson, and racing cars.  That's about it, apart from lunch and walking around. haha  In Tokyo, you get used to walking around a lot, and we never missed a chance to make up for it with calorie intake. :D  That night we dined in Tokyo Station, and then did some shopping before checking out for the night.

The next day we were feeling pretty exhausted, so we spent the morning in our hotel rooms taking our sweet time.  We were warming up for the next BIG exploration, something we reserved tickets for MONTHS (2, at most) in advance.  If Thursday was for the kids, Friday was... well, also for the kids, but for the adults too, maybe especially me: the Studio Ghibli Museum!!  Unfortunately for you guys, they don't let you take pictures inside or else I would have taken at least a hundred more.  SPOILERS: there were tons of drawings, models and designs of how they make cartoons, materials used to reference for drawings, a real cat bus, a free short movie, and much much more.  It was truly one of my highlights of the trip.  After the museum, we picked up some KFC and then returned to the sakura matsuri near the hotel for some festivities, which seemed to have either left or not yet come apart from the food tents... oh well, the food was pretty good. lol

The next day was Saturday, a day we (some of us) dedicated primarily to shopping.  What's a Tokyo trip without a good wallet diet, eh?  Breakfast was at a nearby book cafe, lunch was within a huge mall in Ikebukuro called Namja town (gyoza stadium ftw), and dinner was at Harajuku - the fashion capital of Tokyo, perhaps Japan.  We bought plenty of things to keep us happy for a couple weeks, and noticed that it was a bit cold walking around everywhere.  The fam wanted to climb Mt. Fuji at some point, but at this point we all but gave up on that idea if it was hard enough to simply walk in the streets.  Turns out it's actually closed for climbing now, so that was a wise choice.

Instead of Fuji, we hit up some other places including the park, the zoo, and a man-made island.  Stay turned for... PART 2!

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Hokkaido Niseko Boarding

Oh, Hokkaido... with your 1-story-high snow, its quality like a powdery milk, and with your actual milk that tastes quite a bit better than a mouthful of said-milky snow after your first snowboarding face-plant.  How I wish we had more time together, before a plane ticket and lack of funds stole us away.  Sigh desu.

My fiance and I visited Hokkaido for the first time a couple weeks ago for some intense snowboarding and R&R.  Don't know Hokkaido?  Take a look at a map of Japan - it's that island way up north.  Looks huge, right?  The Japanese think so to, until I point out that it's actually no bigger than New York.  The mountain we chose for the extended weekend was Niseko, famed as one of Hokkaido's biggest and baddest for snowboarding.  Then we reserved the Green Leaf Hotel in Niseko Village for ski-on-ski-off awesomeness.

Shortly after flying into Sapporo on Thursday the 22nd, we met with my fiance's brother, his wife, and their 5-month-old daughter.  Since our first meeting in December, their daughter had grown to be able to move her head quite freely, and enjoyed making baby babble that she was only beginning to do 3 months back.  It was interesting to watch as she experienced many firsts in her life: first time in Japan, or any foreign country, or anywhere outside Guam, or anywhere on a plane, first time seeing snow, touching snow, eating snow (Father of the Year), etc.  We all got to experience eating ice cream for the first time, but I think No-chan liked it most of all.

When we arrived at Green Leaf in the late afternoon, we were already itching to snowboard.  So my fiance volunteered to watch No-chan, and the rest of us went to Niseko Hirafu to check out "the best night boarding in Japan" (source: fiance's bro).  The lower trails were alright, but being late March it had already gotten a little icy.  Stupid March.  We made our way as high as we could go, and finally we hit the powder.  People had been telling me how the quality of snow in Hokkaido put the snow from everywhere else to shame, and I finally got a taste of what they meant.  Even outside the best time of the season (Jan. and Feb.), it was so hard to mess up because the soft snow was cushioning the board from every angle.

The next day was our first full day of boarding.  My fiance and I went out in the morning, and after a couple frustrating runs near the bottom (including getting lost while walking between trains lol) we checked-in for lunch.  Man, just as icy as the night before; this wasn't the Hokkaido experience I was expecting.  After lunch, I finally made it nearly to the top with my fiance's brother and found the sweet snowboarding conditions like the night before.  When in doubt, just go further up, yeah?  Niseko is split up into 4 parts - Niseko Village, Grand Hirafu, Hanazono, and Annupuri - and though you can access all on a single all-mountain-pass, you need to get pretty high before you can switch to another part. We switched to Hirafu and got dinner in the cool town below, and then I went right back out with my fiance's brother to night board.

Saturday was our Sapporo sightseeing day, an official break from snowboarding.  We took a taxi early in the morning to the station, and then a train into the city of beer and ramen fame.  Turns out that taxis are the cheapest and most convenient method of transportation when you're in a group of 4, so we went to a fish market for breakfast, the Sapporo factory mall for shopping, ramen street for lunch, the TV tower, and finally back to the station for a bit more shopping.  I must say that I was quite impressed with the food.  The sashimi was pretty good, but ramen and surprisingly Sapporo beer were delicious (though I'd recommend sticking to the standard tap, not the cans or Classic or any other flavors, and feel free to have it with some cheese made from that quality Hokkaido Jersey milk ^_~).

Our last full day was the next day, Sunday, so we devoted it to boarding.  My goal was to get all the way to the top of the mountain.  After stuffing ourselves with viking (read: Japanese for buffet) breakfast, the morning saw a couple practice runs and the end of my camera battery.  Finally, my fiance's brother and I decided to make the climb to the top right before lunch.  Wait, the climb?  Yeah, at Niseko, the final ascent has no lifts because the top of the mountain is home to god spirits.  That's right, this is god territory (watch more Gibli if you don't believe me).  The actual climb takes about 20 minutes, so using our boards as hiking sticks we slowly made our way.  Not going to lie, it was a bit exhausting, but we finally made it!  Our reward?  Lots of fog that made it so you couldn't see 10 ft down the mountain. x.X  But we took some pictures, talked to the other 3 guys we met, and pointed our boards down the mountain.  Now THIS was the powder, guys.  I can say without doubt that it was the pinnacle snowboarding experience of my life, though I know were it January or February it would have been much sweeter.

We got some yakiniku (self-bbq beef) for dinner in Hirafu, and prepared for our return to normality the next day.  It would be a short-lived normality, however.  For our week-trip to Tokyo with my fiance's other brother's family was about to begin...

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Your Goal Blueprint

Yo guys, back with another Time Management technique.  This is going to be a bit of a doozy of a post, and I've accepted that most people aren't going to read the whole thing, but those who do are in for a treat!  Also, my next post won't be for another few weeks since I'll be traveling around Japan for Spring Break.  No, I don't plan on hitting up many beaches, but perhaps a ski slope or arcade or two.

In the last couple of months I've shown you how to organize your week and daily commitments with the unschedule, and attack your projects in the present moment by continuously starting with timeboxing.  This, my friends, is the micro-view of time management, if you will.  While these are great techniques, in the wrong hands they can be ABUSED for evil purposes.  You don't want to abuse my poor children, do you?  If in timeboxing you end up focusing on the nitty-gritty, nose-to-the-grindstone work, it may look productive but its actually just busywork to occupy your mind.  It's not consulting with the overall project blueprint, and that's one thing that leads to workaholism - constant work without regard to priorities or direction.

Today, I want to discuss what I'm going to call the "macro-view" of time management, one of the missing links to efficient and assured goal success.  I'm especially excited about this technique, because while it's partly made up of ideas that were borrowed, infringed, and created through reading about this kind of thing (especially from a book I just read called Awaken Your Strongest Self by Neil Fiore, same dude who wrote Now Habit), what I'm going to show you is something I came up with initially from scratch.  "This" can be used for anything from learning Japanese to studying for tests, to losing weight.  I've used it for all three of these purposes before (and in fact mentioned it when I was studing for the GREs last April), but if it's a goal you can dream of then the possibilities are endless.

But before I unveil the finished project to the world, let me talk about the philosophy behind it.  The other day (literally) I came up with 3 basic principles to ensure goal success, and I found they fit quite nicely with this technique that I've been using for the past year and a half.  Sweet.

1. Confidence. From the outset, you not only believe you will succeed, that you'll become fluent in Japanese, but you KNOW you will.  It's not even a question, you've made up your mind.  It's only a matter of carrying it out.  You don't need to be overflowing with motivation or all-knowing about how you'll do it, you just need to consciously choose the goal and be confident of your success.
2. Direction. You should be able to feel the effects of your goal progress every. single. day.  I'm talking in-your-face seeing, feeling, and tasting some part of the distant reward, living as if you've already achieved your goal.  There's no way you could forget it's there.  By going a step further and quantifying your progress, you can clearly see that you are better off today than you were yesterday, no matter how small, minute, or seemingly insignificant the progress seems.  Even if it isn't measurable, feeling yourself (compared to the you yesterday, not to the people around you) going in an upward direction will bring you far.
3. Enjoyment. Lastly, and most important, you are enjoying the everyday small progress actions that relate to your goal.  It's just fun to do, you might do it anyway without even knowing that its bringing you closer to success.  So forget about the future, distant goal and immerse yourself in the enjoyment.

"In the game of habit change, an immediate reward always wins over a distant and indefinite reward." -Neil Fiore

I've come to believe that if these three elements are in place, no matter what method you choose it's only a matter of time before you realize your goal.  How much time depends on the person and the efficiency of your method.  If you're missing one or more of the three, it may still be possible to reach your goal but your chances of succeeding drastically decrease.  That road may take much longer and be much more painful than it has to be.  Do you want to waste that kind of precious time in life?  PLEASE NOTE: these aren't principles in the sense that if you don't follow them I'll disown you like I did my last two children.  These are general guidelines that seem to work but are open to experimentation and fluctuation.

Now let's take a look at my Goal Calendar for learning Japanese, shall we?

English version

日本語 version

Just like how the weekly unschedule doesn't skip an hour for 6 days, my goal calendar doesn't skip a day for 6 months.  This is the blueprint to your goal.  You can track your progress everyday, and eventually see everything you did from beginning to end.  The idea: set it up so you just check off everyday (ooh, I love that feeling!) and you're assured of reaching your goal.  Success is easy.

From here on out, things will go a lot smoother if you download the templates and mess around with them as I explain it.  Here are the files:

• Goal schedule xls (English)
• Goal schedule xls (Japanese)

Unlike the weekly unschedule, I HIGHLY encourage you to try your hand at putting this together yourself in Excel.  It's not that difficult once you get the hang of typing, copying, and pasting, but if you insist on a PDF version to write it in by hand here it is:

• Goal schedule pdf (English)
• Goal schedule pdf (Japanese)

Then again, if you're going to write in all those days of the week by hand, might as well just write out all your flash cards on paper while you're at it!!  What year is this?!  Does the internet still make that dialing noise when booting up?

Defining Your Goal

Our first objective is to define our goal.  This is perhaps dually the most difficult as well as the most imperative part of the process.  If you don't know where the finish line is, how can you expect to run towards it?  So we are defining our goal in a way that's clear and measurable (see principle #2 above), and gives us some hint about what we need to do.

For example, your goal measurement isn't "to be thin," it's "to be 160 pounds" (don't give me that face!).  It's not "to pass the test with an A," it's something much more in your control like "to replicate and master (using an SRS perhaps?) 500 test questions I'd normally have trouble with."  It's not "to become fluent in Japanese," it's "to learn 2042 kanji (at first, anyway ~_^)."

Like I said, this can get difficult.  And not all goals are going to have a single, straightforward goal measurement; you may end up working towards multiple measurements in one goal calendar, or creating multiple goal calendars to be used in succession.  Any goal or project you can think of can be broken down into skills.  Skills can be measured, and pro mad skillz we're aiming for can be placed at the peak of the graph.  You can even use time as your goal measurement.  Luckily, there's a formula to be the best - just invest 600,000 minutes (or 10,000 hours), and you'll be a world class musician, computer programmer, comic book artist, or whatever you want.  If there's anything beyond that, you'll know what to do when you get there.

Creating Your Time Frame

Now we need a deadline for our goal.  If you have a big test, event, or trip coming up that you're working towards, then use that date.  Don't worry if you don't have a particular date in mind, just make a rough estimate and you can change it later since we're only working with 6 months at a time.  If you're going for 10,000 hours, I'd choose a date about 10 years from now. ~_^  Write that deadline date in the bottom right after "End / 終わり."

Our birthline (get it?) will be set for about 2 weeks from now.  Leading up to that point, your objective is to observe and motivate yourself.  Without trying to change anything, simply observe your normal behavior and record your problematic symptoms (those behaviors inconsistent with your goal and high vision).  Decide whether you really want to commit yourself to this goal, and give yourself the option not to, otherwise you haven't really chosen it.  Read articles about your goal, make a public commitment, and talk with people about it to build up motivation.  You can also use the time to make this goal schedule, so go ahead and put in that birthline date after "Start / 始め."

Let's do some simple math.  First, count the number of days between your birthline and your deadline.  That's right, all of them.  This is your total time.

But doing this every single day sounds like a drag, huh?  If you're following principle #3 it's not going to feel like work, but alright tell you what: you can take off one day a week.  So find [total time - (total time / 7)], and this is your progress time.

I'll take you one further.  If you can maintain your habit for 6 days (and not even continuously, AM I CRAZY?!) you can add a point to the "Non-H / 不習慣" box beside the +.  When you accumulate these points, you can use them to take off a "non-habit / 不習慣" day in addition to your one day off a week. "A break / 休憩?!"  No, no, no... this isn't a break, everyday is going to feel like a break ("Does this really count as work?" Yes, add it to your hours in your weekly unschedule).  But even so, you should reward yourself for taking a step in the right direction toward goal success.  When/if you take this "non-habit / 不習慣" day, don't forget to write a point beside the - box, and try to keep the + and - points about even.  Find [progress time - (progress time / 6)], and you will have your action time.

Back-Time Schedule

Now I'm going to walk you through creating a "back-timing" schedule that goes from the deadline back to the birthline's starting point.  This is the general goal blueprint.

I'll leave the details of your goal measurement up to you.  A certain number of hours?  A certain number of cards in your SRS?  A certain weight and particular body sizes?  A certain number of kanji or vocabulary words?  A combination of the above?  Whatever your ultimate goes is, write it now at the bottom of the calendar after "Goal / ゴール."  Once again, this is your goal measurement.

Can you guess what's coming next?  If you're planning this over years then do this -> goal measurement / # of years (for ex. 2 yrs, 1.5 yrs, 3.25 yrs), and write the answer after "Annually / 毎年."  Cut that number in half and write it after "Biannually / 半年."  Divide that into 6 and write it after "Monthly / 毎月."  Now go back and get the number from your action time.  Do this -> goal measurement / action time, and write the answer after "Daily / 毎日."  Multiple that by 6 and write that answer after "Weekly / 毎週."  I know, this sounds all over the place but just trust me. haha

Implementation

You're almost done!  Man, I'm tired.

Once you decide on your goal, deadline, and daily actions, you should give some thought to your action plans:

1. When will you work on it?
2. Where will you work on it?
3. How will you work on it?

You have those 2 weeks to think about these plans.  Also, make a commitment for what you can do RIGHT NOW (once the birthline hits).  Reviewing 5 minutes in your SRS?  Learning one kanji?  Doing 10 pushups?  Write it after "Right Now / 只今."  This is where it's at, we've come full circle back to the micro-view with timeboxing in the now.

Now print the sucka out and post it on your wall next to your unschedule.

At the top of the first month that you're starting, after "Left / 残り" write the number of months (including that one) remaining in your project.  In the space under the month, write the measurement you entered after "Monthly / 毎月."  This is your goal for the month (assuming you're starting from absolute scratch).  For each day, you will record your progress according to the "Completed? / 出来た？" key in the bottom left.  It's not just check or no-check - it's check or why-aren't-you-checking-me-fool, so you can test yourself and make adjustments as you're going.  Under the "Now / 今" and "Total / 合計" rows, you can write in your current progress.  After you write the "Total / 合計," subtract that from the "Goal / ゴール," and then go to the top of the next month and divide that answer by the number of months "Left / 残り."  If you add what you get to your "Total / 合計," then you have your goal for next month.  Yee-haw.

Your finished products should look something like this:

Psychology GRE

General GREs

日本語

Alright guys, try it out before you bash it too hard.  Experiment, revise, and personalize - man, that could be my catch-phrase or something, sounds slick.  I also recommend only doing one at time until you get really comfortable with it and it becomes a habit, then if you really want you can try two at a time.  This concludes the time management posts that I had been planning, so I'll be focusing on some other stuff in the future.

Once you make your goal calendar, put all your focus and concentration on the action you can do today, the action you can do NOW, which is always the most important action. Tomorrow you'll be grateful you started this yesterday, making it easier for yourself today.

THE END!! ..of the Japanese School Year

As of last week, English classes have more or less come to an end for students across Japan.  In fact, all classes are wrapping up over the next couple weeks because March is the end of the Japanese school year.  That means kindergartners are graduating into 1st graders in elementary school, 6th graders in elementary school are graduating into junior high school, and 3rd years in junior high school are graduating into high school.  That's how I'm seeing it from my perspective anyway, working at 5 elementary and 2 junior high schools.  Of course, students are also graduating from high school and college and applying to become salarymen.

Are you getting the image?  As these kids are studying for and taking their final exams and entrance exams, it's approaching the tail end of winter, with snow flurrying here and there (it's snowing right now actually).  Then they get their exam results back as it slowly begins to get a bit warmer, and by the time they return to school or start their new jobs in early April it's actually somewhat bearable outside and cherry blossom trees have begun to bloom.  It's a sort of "new life," ya know, the type that inspires Spring Cleaning in the states, and inspires one to wear less than 5 layers of clothes inside one's apartment in Japan.

Maybe you knew that already.  What you may not know if you've never worked in the Japan public school system, however, is that kids aren't the only ones moving around.  Sure, some teachers are retiring, but other teachers often accompany students up a grade as their homeroom teacher, or even change schools entirely.  Japan has this very strange system of cycling teachers around every year, so that they're only assured of their location for one year at a time.  Licensed teachers are usually only in one place for around 3 to 4 years, but it could be only 1 year.  Could be 7.  They go where they're needed when they're needed in the prefecture they're licensed in, even if it's on the other side 4 hours away.  My one friend just found out he's getting relocated to one of my prefecture's small and somewhat isolated islands, which takes about 3 hours by boat.  Sure, he could refuse, but then there might not be available work next year.  Plus he gets "points" for going there, and is much more likely of becoming a real, licensed teacher from his provisional status.  So inconvenient distance, or lack of job assurance?  As for me, I'll be moving to...

Nowhere. lol  Pfft, I'm not a teacher!  I'm an Assistant Lacky Language Teacher (or ALT).  I'll be in the same city visiting the same schools until I go back to the states.  Now that English classes are done, the only students I really have to say goodbye to are the 3rd years in Junior High School, which is a shame but there's still the possibility of running into them in town.  And until classes start next semester, apart from the occasional graduation ceremony I'll be sitting at my a random desk at the Board of Ed (BOE) studying Japanese and taking occasional naps preparing diligently for classes in April.  Since it'll be my last 4 or so months before going home I want to go all out; prepare some lessons (primarily for elementary schools, since I usually just help out English teachers in junior high schools), organize my huge bag of teaching material that's been piling up since I got here, research some fun games and activities, and figure out what to give away.  I came across tons of stickers and prizes I haven't been using, so I'd like to reward the winners of those games I mentioned.

That's if I have time, though.  This Spring will be pretty busy, what with our trips to Hokkaido and Tokyo with my fiance's family in just a couple weeks.  So time is limited, but when I start the next semester on April 9th, I want to put to good use all that useful info I picked up over the past year and a half, having come from zero teaching experience to helping kids everyday.  My real objective is to focus on anything I can do to make the class and English more fun for the kids, which I think is my actual job.  You know, play with them during recess, encourage them to talk more if they try, and just get them out of learning the language from a textbook.

If it's fun, they'll find a way to learn it.  And maybe I'll learn a thing or two from them in return.

Kanji Notes 1.5: Inputting Lazy Kanji in Current Anki Decks

I'm writing this post directly to those super awesome people who love the idea of Lazy Kanji but are already deep into an RTK-based Anki deck.  This is a tutorial of exactly how you can add Lazy Kanji card formats into Anki, so you can keep what you have so far and then go even further.  IF YOU HAVEN'T READ MY LAZY KANJI POST GO DO THAT NOW.  That is all.

Should have seen that one coming. haha  After all, I'm one of those who switched to Lazy Kanji after learning RTK 1 and didn't want to sacrifice my current deck.  It's totally possible, but there are a few things you should be aware of that I'll point out along the way.  Alright check it out, total walk-through mode now.  Please keep in mind, however, that I'm using Anki in Japanese; some of the English parts might be a *little* off, but let me know if they're totally wrong.  I'll leave the Japanese in for reference.

1. Open your kanji deck in Anki
2. Settings (設定) > Deck Properties (単語帳プロパティ)
3. In the Basic tab, click "Add" (追加(A)), then copy the Heisig model (Heisigをコピーして追加).  Important notes: this is the model in "Heisig's Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+ 3"; if you're using a different deck, just make sure that your model info is in line with the screen shots below.  Also, the reason why we're copying the model is so that we don't change the format of the existing cards.  If you wish to do that and accept the consequences for your actions, than simply click "Edit" (編集) as per the next step.
4. Highlight your newly copied Heisig model and click "Edit" (編集(E))
5. Change the name (名) to Lazy Kanji, and click "Card Layout"

Click the "Field" tab at the top, and you should see a screen like this:

Let's edit those fields:

1. "Kanji" should be selected; I recommend going to the bottom and changing the size for "Reviewing" to 90 or less
2. Select "On-yomi" and change the name to "Info"
3. Add (追加(A)) a field and name it "Example"

Now go back to the "Card Template" tab, and you should see this:

We'll now edit the template:

1. In the question (質問) field, erase what's there and copy-paste this (hint: delete the spaces in the HTML formatting, aka within the < >):
   
   {{Story}}
   < br >
   {{Kanji}}
   
2. In the answer (解答) field, erase what's there and copy-paste this (hint: delete the spaces in the HTML formatting, aka within the < >, except between "a href"):
   

画数: {{{Stroke count}}}, Nr: {{{Heisig number}}}
< a href="http://kanji.koohii.com/study/?framenum={{text:Heisig number}}">{{{Keyword}}}< /a>
< br >
{{Info}}
< br >
{{Example}}

It should now look like this:

When you return to your deck and go to "Add Fact," you can select Lazy Kanji from the model drop-down menu at the top.  The card layout will be ready to add cards as you desire.

Things to watch out for

If you have your deck set up to display a set number (default 20) of new cards per day in order, then when you add Lazy Kanji cards they're going to go to the end of the deck.  In other words, they won't come up for review until you've studied the first 3000+ cards. lol  To fix this, click on the magnifying glass to open up the Card Browser, and then find the last kanji that you studied.  Make sure that it's sorted in order of Heisig Number (top right), and then select all cards after that latest kanji.  Press the big pause button (Suspend), and the cards will cease to come up when you do your reviews.

Another recommendation I have when inputting new kanji cards Lazy Kanji style that are already there in Vanilla Heisig Kanji style, is to search for that kanji and copy the information into the "Add Fact" section.  This is so you don't have to start from scratch with each new card, and can concentrate on the fields that are different.

...though it occurs to me that if (as mentioned earlier) you change your existing card model rather than copy it and make a new one, the above problems no longer apply.  Interesting.

Hope this helps, and happy kanjing!

Read on:

• Kanji is Easy
• SRS FTW
• Kanji Notes 1: Lazy Kanji hax0rz in Anki