What Is Neutrino?

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You totally could learn Chinese without SilverSpoon. But you haven’t so far, have you? Maybe it’s time you gave it a try . Come. Chillax. Be spoonfed. You deserve it.

They All Sound Good, Which One Should I Get?

I would say the “Full” plan, since:

1. It’s the lowest price per day
2. It has the most freebies and bennies ¹
3. No matter which subscription plan you pick,
   1. you need to go through all 695 days of SinoSpoon (SilverSpoon Mandarin) anyway to get to fluency, and
   2. you get a full refund guarantee, so
   3. you might as well get it at the best value.
4. Since the price of SilverSpoon goes up with time, switching later would cost more than now

But if the lump sum on the “Full” plan doesn’t suit you too well, then “Split” would be the next best option

That’s A Bit Pricey, Dontcha Think?

Compared to what? Compared to spending the next 10 years wishing you knew Chinese and buying stuff that you never use and starting and stopping and failing and hating yourself?

Compared to what? Compared to paying college tuition to be led by an uptight, condescending teacher who hates all the fun parts of Chinese openly announces the fact that he thinks no foreigner will ever really be able to read let alone write Chinese? Who thinks Jay Chou and kung-fu movies are the devil?

Compared to what? Compared to trying stuff that doesn’t deliver results, that will happily leave you illiterate, that doesn’t have a date for completion, and that doesn’t have the guts to offer you a full, total, fo-shizzle refund if you’re not transformed into a person of language skills so awesome that your ethnic origin is occasionally called into question?

Compared to what?

Let’s learn Chinese for real this time, man. No more bait and switch by schools. Get the accountability you deserve. Get the results you deserve. Let’s do it.

The Fo’ Shizzle Fluency Guarantee

Guaranteed fluency: if you’re not fluent in Mandarin at the end of 695 days of faithfully executing the simple, easy, quick, straightforward sprint missions fed to you daily by SinoSpoon: SilverSpoon Mandarin, you can have a full refund. No questions asked. In fact, if you just decide partway through that you just don’t like it, you can have your money back. That’s how sure I am this works. That’s how freakin’ cool I am.

Just an email to < refund at ajatt dot com > , with the following subject: “I want a refund, but I still love you. I care about you. I promise I’ll be back again.”  and your billing info will suffice.

Succeed or get your money back. Fluency or your money back. The days of messing around are over. The people who take your money to help you learn should take responsibility for the results. I mean, I’m almost perfect. But even I’m not all the way there. Things happen. If and when they do, you don’t have to pay for that imperfection.

However. While a freakin’ cool person, I am also a practicing jerk, so there is one condition: the hypothetical refund will only be processed after Day 695 of the process, regardless of the cancellation/request date. There are three major reasons for this:

1. To give me time to skip the country with your money and head to my secret villa in Panama with my concubine ², Esmeralda. What, I never told you about her? Two words: h ot.
2. To discourage casual visitors and passers-by from joining without being sure about whether or not they wanted to stay and then clogging the system with their…casualness and endless billing processing requests. We’re not here to fool around; we’re here to fool around with Mandarin.
3. To encourage people to be mentally prepared to play this game right through to the fourth quarter. In it to win it, remember? Just like that famous Chinese general, we’re breaking the pots and sinking the ships ³; we’re taking the option of quitting off the table until the end of the game. You can quit when you’re fluent. No more three-day-monking. Or, if we are three-day-monking, we’re doing it 230 times straight .

So, while we’re at it, what does “fluency” even mean? Well, here’s a working definition of fluency:

• Reading: Can read a randomly selected general interest (e.g. newspaper) article aloud.
• Listening/Speaking: Can listen to a randomly selected 60~90-second audio clip from prime-time television and repeat the dialogue.
  • Can express ideas directly or via circumlocution (can explain over, around and through any words you momentarily forget or didn’t yet know)
• Writing: Can accurately transcribe a randomly selected audio 60~90-second spoken exchange from prime-time television or radio.

Which SilverSpoon do you qualify for?

SilverSpoon 7.0 is the new SilverSpoon and is codenamed “Neutrino”. It includes access to the Old SilverSpoon (1.0) for free. Which Neutrino you qualify for depends, among other factors, on your target language and level.

Japanese:

• Join Neutrino Vanilla: If you’re a (serial) beginner, then this would likely be the best fit for you.
• Join Neutrino BigBoi: Alternatively, if you already know kana and 2000+ kanji, then you might qualify for entry into Neutrino BigBoi.
  • Note: if you’re between Vanilla and BigBoi (i.e. you know, say, X number of kanji and kana, but not 2000+ kanji), then Vanilla is the best fit for you; if you manage to get a place, then you can have your status customized (“boosted”) so that you don’t unnecessarily retread old ground.

Mandarin:

• Join Neutrino SinoSpoon

Couldn’t get a place this round? Not able to join just yet? Want to be the first to know (and get a chance to get in) when, say, new rounds and new language versions (e.g. Cantonese, Korean, Finnish) and sub-versions ¹ of SilverSpoon come out? Get on the waiting list.

There’s a word for this in Japanese.

朝令暮改

ちょうれいぼかい. Choureibokai ¹, for the uninitiated. Literally, it means: “morning orders changed at sunset”. It usually has a negative connotation. Flip-flopping. Sort of a Mitt Romney thing.

Well, I am going to do what Romney could not. I am going to say it loud. I am a flip-flopper and I’m proud. 朝令暮改 for life, son!
And you know why?
Because 朝令暮改 is about admitting that, while preternaturally handsome and horrifically intelligent, I am not omniscient; I am not so perfect that I get everything right the first time. My decisions are not so perfect that they cannot benefit from being changed. My writing is not so perfect that it cannot be edited. Far from it.
So does this mean I should be president of those united states? No. But this isn’t politics.

Back on topic: Are English subtitles the devil?

No. English subs are not the devil. Romaji is the devil ². English subs are the devil’s handmaiden. Or cousin. I don’t know; I don’t check these metaphors; I just spew them out.

My original position was essentially a 100% rejection of L1 subs. I’m off that train now. I was wrong. This is me eating humble pie. Savor this moment. I’m anorexic when it comes to humility pastries.

Which is not to say that I’m riding 100% in the opposite direction: you do want to avoid L1 (English) subs as far as possible. I know too many people who’ve been watching substantial amounts of subbed anime for a long time and don’t have much actual Japanese knowledge to show for it; that, indeed, is the origin of the thoroughgoing rejection of subs. At the same time, it is better to watch Japanese with L1 (English) subs than to watch no Japanese at all. A lot better. Some Japanese is better than no Japanese. Infinitely better. So don’t get anal about it. If it takes L1 (English) subs to keep you ³ engaged and involved in Japanese, then so be it: go with the L1 (English) subs. But do try taking them off as often as is possible and sustainable for you.

There are many possible L1 subtitle usage schemes. Here are just a few:

1. Read L1 synopsis, then watch without L1 subs
2. Watch first with L1 subs, then without L1 subs
3. Watch first without L1 subs, then with L1 subs
4. Turn L1 subs off but turn them on occasionally
5. Turn L1 subs on but turn them off occasionally
6. Watch with L1 subs

Stay in the game. By any means necessary. Avoid L1 subs if you can, but don’t be too hard on yourself. If you feel you need them to stay interested, then turn them on. Maybe try one of those subtitle usage schemes up there from time to time. And, of course, L2+ ⁴ subs are always cool.

You’re not broken, the method is. Thus said Khatzumoto, once not long ago.

But does that apply to immersion media? Is the media broken?
Short answer: No.

This is not something I recommend you do unless you already know enough Japanese to fully understand it, but I actually stopped watching all TV, Japanese included a while ago. It’s not like I gave up glowing screens altogether, I mean, I still watch TV shows on DVD, but except for playing Cartoon Network (Japan) in the background, TV isn’t happening for me and hasn’t been for few years now. And even the CN I haven’t turned on in 3 or 4 months.

So what?

Well…I notice lately that a lot of the Japanese stuff I share in terms of music, anime and TV shows is stuff that I watched when I was in college. Bands I knew back in college. And that’s nice, but it’s getting to have been an extremely long time ago now. Not geologically, but…you get the picture.

The typical YouTube commenter-level response to this is to say something to the effect of “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”; “I wish we could go back to the 90s when music didn’t suck”. But I don’t think that’s true at all.

In every age and era, Sturgeon’s Law ¹ has applied ². It’s just that the passing of years creates a buttload of confirmation bias, because only the things that were worth keeping survive the passage of years. Movie stars weren’t better back in the day; movies weren’t better back in the day; it’s just that we only remember the good ones.

1970s music wasn’t any better than 1990s or 2000s or 2010s music; it’s just that we only keep playing the same couple dozen or so songs of the 1970s that transcend time, the very crème de la crème, and then we hold these 20 or so 1970s songs that didn’t suck and line them up against the hundreds of sucky songs that came out this year, and convince ourselves that we’re making a fair comparison.

Well, we’re not. The 70s and every decade before and after it had and will have its trash, but the only trash we ever see is current, contemporary trash because we’re still actively in the process of filtering it out. You can’t compare a room you’ve finished tidying to a room you’re still working on and go: “they don’t make rooms like they used to”. I mean, you can, but it’s unfair and unreasonable.

If you think about it, this applies to your English versus your Japanese as well. Your English-language persona is a house you’ve been building and extending for a long time. Your Japanese one is still under construction. Of course it feels cold and Spartan in comparison, but that’s not Japanese’s fault, it’s just the nature of…construction.

Similarly, anime hasn’t stopped being good. Japanese hip-hop hasn’t stopped being good. And Japanese hasn’t become boring for you. You’re just not exposing yourself to enough stuff. You’re not bored of Japanese, you’re bored of the stuff you have.

So, my most recent solution for this feeling of “there’s nothing to watch or listen to” has been (wait for it)…review websites. I feel guilty writing to you about this because it’s once of those things that’s like “duh”. It’s so painfully straightforward that it doesn’t seem like it would need saying. But if experience has told me anything, it’s that the very things that seem plainly obvious to one person are a revelatory kick in the nuts to another.

Case in point: watching American movies dubbed into Japanese was an obvious choice for me; I knew it was cool; I knew it would work; I knew it would be awesome. But it appears to have never occurred to 99.9% of the gaijin in Japan, even those who are more or less actively trying to get used to Japanese. Ditto leaving the TV running all day and all night.

So, with all the bloviation and discussion out of the way, here are some review websites ³ you might want to look into next time you’re feeling at a loss for media to consume:

• Movies
  • Domestic Japanese Movie Reviews@Metropolis – Movies | Eiga is.gd/Tlr5Y8
  • Japanese Movie Reviews | News, Reviews, Spoilers, Images, Trailers, and Video Clips @ BeyondHollywood.com is.gd/k0dXtp
  • LoveHKFilm.com – Reviews of movies from Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and more is.gd/YJEWtU
  • Midnight Eye: A little on the artsy side, but…whatever
  • Movie Reviews | Japan Cinema is.gd/JBxo6m
• Anime
  • T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews: This site is by far my favorite, at this writing ⁴
  • The Anime Review is.gd/Um5CJG
  • Anime Reviews | Anime-Planet is.gd/WrN9TE
  • Reviews – Anime News Network is.gd/F6lG4a
• Dramas
  • Dorama World is.gd/Y9hZPn
  •             [Not Safe for Work. Click to View.]             
  • lol, japan | your favorite drama sucks | reviews and opinions is.gd/IetjuB
  • Japanese Drama Reviews « the road to otakuness is.gd/OtGe4K — poor grammar and writing mechanics can be incredibly annoying, but the volume of reviews, synopses and opinion makes it a useful resource nonetheless
  • Japanese drama review — Drama Cafe is.gd/hg4aEA
  • Japanese Drama Reviews « aiDorama: An Asian drama & movie fanblog is.gd/uXkVQ9
• Music
  • Music (CD reviews, live previews), dance, stage and more) | The Japan Times Online is.gd/QVhOtJ

There is no too hard. There is only too big. ¹

The reason you think it’s hard is because the pieces you’re trying to handle are too large.
It’s not hard. It’s not difficult. You’re just not using your knife on it.

The slices you’re trying to eat are too thick.
Assuming you’re even slicing at all, that is.

There are no hard problems, just poorly sliced ones.
There are no hard problems, just oversized slices.

You think too big. You make it hard. You need smaller slices. You don’t necessarily need to change the problem or the question (although that might help from time to time), just cut the slices smaller. So small that you’re embarrassed. So small that you kinda hate yourself. So small that it’s almost self-condescension and you’re a baby and you suck at eating and so you need mommy to cut up your food for you.

And you do suck. At eating. But that doesn’t mean that you have to starve.
Think about it: the bigger an explosion you want to make, the smaller you need to think.

SRS didn’t change kanji, it just cut up kanji memorization into smaller pieces. And then fed those small pieces to you. Like a father to his child.

My bath-taking homeboy Archimedes wanted a massive lever to move the world with ². But perhaps all we need is sharper knives, and a willingness to use them.

You thought supersizing it ³ was only bad for your waist. It turns out it’s just as bad — worse — for your soul. Well, for your mind and life and projects. If in doubt, get your knife out.

Vegan or straight ⁴, we would think it cruel, revolting and unwieldly to eat animals — well, mammals and birds, say — by just biting into them while they’re still alive. People simply don’t go around biting into poor little live cows and lambs and chickens, let alone attempt to swallow them whole. The idea is so abhorrent to us that the thought has never even crossed our minds. Animal foods are cut, flavored and even renamed to the point that they look and taste nothing like the original living creature. There is a lesson here for the attentive.

Why do you let your projects have bad, unsexy names that gross you out? ⁵
Why do you try to eat them alive with you and them kicking and screaming and blood and suffering for all involved? ⁶
Why don’t you cut them into appetizing slices?
Why do leave them so bland? Why don’t you flavor them — make them taste sweet and savory?

You make things taste good before you put them into your mouth. Perhaps your life ⁷ deserves the same courtesy. ⁸

Once a year, for brief moment, a legend awakens and flies into the eyes and loins of a chosen few.

Cunning linguistics literally has a name and it is: The Moë Sentence Pack.
This is not that kind of website. But, yes, the MoëSP is that kind of sentence pack.

This year, for a brief time only, she comes to you in an brand new edition with all kinds of sweet extensions and freebies attached, drenched in awesome sauce and looking at you with bedroom eyes.

That’s right, it only comes out once a year. In 2011 only long-time AJATT Plusers could get at it. In 2012 it was only available for sale on Valentine’s Day itself. And this year…(get this)…

If you sign up on the early reservation list ↓ before January 25 ¹, then you’ll get yourself a Super Secret Surprise Bonus Freebie in addition to your Moë Sentence Pack and its already-ludicrously-amazing freebies when you do buy the MoëSP. What’s in the Super Secret Surprise Bonus Freebie?

Well, it’s a surprise…

Idiot.

Duh.

Effing…

No, really, though

Offer not valid outside of Sol system. Batteries not included. Khatzumoto, AJATT, its partners and affiliates cannot be held responsible for the wanton sexiness of the Moë Sentence Pack. Must be over 18 (21 in some juris-my-dictions) to purchase and view. Void where sexiness is prohibited.

Instant gratification is the only type of gratification there is. I think. There. I said it. If nothing else, it’s the only type I care to work with. The question, then, is not whether (or not) you’re getting instant gratification, but what you’re going to use as your instant gratification.

If the term “instant gratification” still rubs you the wrong way, then call it “substituted gratification” ¹.

Either way, it needs to be instant. We never truly delay gratification — I don’t think we even can – we just substitute it with something else.

Don’t be a hero. Don’t try to delay your gratification. It’s too hard ². It won’t work. Replace it. Substitute it.

That’s how all those apparently “disciplined” people ³ do it. They, we (if I might be so bold) are not motivated by some nebulous future gain ⁴. No, we have some other game that we’re playing, some other thing we’re getting off on, some other drug that’s giving us a hit.

Find that other drug.

It’s Valentine’s Day season, yo! That’s right. Singles Awareness Day…season. The season of the day when single people become painfully aware of their singleness. Or not. Whatever. Anyway. Yeah. Valentine’s Day. VD ¹. Sex, chocolate and…sexy sentences. What more appropriate time of year to release the latest version of this, the single most inappropriate AJATT product ever created.

The Moë Sentence Pack

The Moë Sentence Pack will be available only until February 14, Earth time at the very latest, and may get pulled of the market before that. It’s that dangerous. It’s that hardcore. It’s that sexy. And it’s that sinful.

This is not your father’s sentence pack. Your father would blush at its content. Yeah, it’s so bad that it’s the one your mother bought, owns and keeps in secret, at the back of the closet, behind the good shoes she never wears, in the circular Louis Vuitton box ². This thing is dynamite. And so it will not be for sale for a limited time to a limited number of people. Because I can’t just have content like this just flying around AJATT.com.

Truth be told, I’m actually not a prude — I laugh a little too hard at Quagmire in Family Guy for that to be true – but I do have a carefully constructed, clean-cut, prudish image to protect. Think of me as your local priest or politician: lascivious things are happening, but we’re certainly not advertising the fact. I don’t go around talking about how I’m constantly involved with hookers and blow, because talking about that kind of thing is just in poor taste. So, hypocritical as it may seem (read: is), I can’t just have content like this just flying around AJATT.com.

In fact, I’m so image-conscious that I actually didn’t even make the Moë Sentence Pack. I didn’t. Some chick I know ³ — Momoko — did. It was her idea. She made it. She had the moral degeneracy to come up with the idea, did the research and compiled it from raw Japanese sources. And then, despite advertising it briefly (and under protest), I totally put a lid on it. It was too risqué, too ヤバい, too raunchy. For the longest time, I simply couldn’t bring myself to sell it. Because it’s that raunchy. Because I can’t just have content like this just flying around AJATT.com.

Because I cannot, will not, must not go down in history as the man who sexualized Valentine’s Day.

It ain’t raht.

…

The MoëSP continues in the illustrious tradition of My First Sentence Pack (MFSP), giving you real Japanese as it’s used by, for and among actual Japanese people. No Japanese for foreigners here. No whitewashing here. This is…this is 玄米, baby. Brown rice. Raw. This is wholewheat Japanese, not the wonderbread kind they try to shove down your throat in so-called institutions of learning around the world.

This is not that kind of website. But the MoëSP is that kind of sentence pack. It’ll be available only until day’s end of February 14 at the latest. If I get too many compaints about how hardcore it is, I am pulling the plug, and it might never be released again. If it gets too popular, I am pulling the plug because I will do whatever it takes to safeguard my chances of becoming the second Kenyan President of those United States. Khatzumoto 2020 for the win! Assuming news of the contents of this sentence pack doesn’t leak out, that is. Momoko’s hippy liberationism be damned: some of us have a priestly politician image to protect. I can’t just have content like this just flying around AJATT.com.

I don’t want too many people to get their hands on the MoëSP. It’s too dangerous.

So let’s say you’ve come this far, you’re adventurous, you like it a little…you know…titillating….a little prurient…a little Quagmirey, and you want a copy of the MoëSP. Now what? Well, just to be nice, I’m giving away not one, not two, not three but five free bonuses with each copy of the MoëSP:

• 1 free month of AJATT Plus — premium multimedia AJATT content combined with access to the AJATT+ Forum: The Most Intelligent, Civilized and Trolless Forum in the Multiverse (for free!)
  • Your AJATT Plus subscription will automatically continue beyond the first, free month unless you cancel it.
  • If you don’t want the subscription at all, you may cancel it at any time (even right after you purchase) and still keep your free month of AJATT Plus anyway. Aren’t I awesome?
• 1 free copy of the MCD Revolution Core Kit (for free, yo), so you can learn how to get the most out of your MoëSP. This alone is worth $24.95 (and that’s just the price — it’s worth infinitely more if you think of the value you’re going to get out of it ).
  • The original “10,000 Sentences” method is long dead, but sentence packs remain healthy and delicious fodder for MCDs. If this were a complete breakfast, they’d be a part of it.
• 1 free copy of ARES-3: The Science Fiction Sentence Pack
  • Ever wanted to know how to say those Star Trek and Star Wars and Stargate and pretty-much-anything-with-robots-or-”star”-in-it lines in Japanese? Want to have fun and learn how to talk about math and science at the same time? You’re gonna with this bad boy.
    
  • This guy alone is worth $29.95. Look at you go — you buy one sentence pack and you get one free. You’re just getting drenched in awesome sauce here. Look at you, all wet — can I get you towel?
• 1 lifetime (yes, lifetime) of free, instant access to MoëSP extensions and updates (for free, playa!)
• 1 free smile…not in real life, but in my heart, where smiles and other wanton emotional displays belong (for free, son ⁴! a free smile for free! ← WOW ⁵).
• All 100% DRM-free. No DRM whatsoever: I hate DRM. I trust you. You’re a good person. I know you’re not going to screw me over. I believe you should and must have the right to remix (copy and paste, etc.) information for your personal, educational use. I believe that information is for fiddling with, not just looking at. I believe that you, a paying customer, should and must not be treated like a freaking criminal and subjected to ludicrous, draconian restrictions on how you manipulate data you paid for for you own consumption. The MoëSP is easy to copy and paste and otherwise manipulate digitally for your personal, educational use, so that you can get the maximum possible value out of it. That, and, you can do all those little things like resize the text to a size that fits you exactly, not to just one of three lame presets.

And so it came to pass that you buy 1 big thing (the MoëSP), but you get five big things (and that’s not even counting the free smile! ⁶). Win, win, win, win right?

Oh, who am I kidding? What a load of bull. I lied. I’m lying. It’s all a lie. I’m not giving away those premo freebies ⁷ because I’m nice (I’m not nice). I’m doing it to kind of ease the shock of how hardcore the MoëSP is. I want to mitigate its effect a bit. Because it’s that shocking.

So, just in case the MoëSP is too real for you, too much for you, which it may well be, at least you have these nice, tame freebies to ease the…psychological trauma of what you’re about to read.

The Moë Sentence Pack: The Most Dangerous and Sinfully Sexy Sentence Pack Ever Created. Available only on until February 14 (Earth Time) at the latest, because I can’t just have content like this just flying around AJATT.com. Enjoy. And. Happy VD ⁸. Giggity, giggity, giggity.

Get Yours Now, While You Still Can

PS: Technically, the Moë Sentence Pack isn’t 萌え (moë). I’m afraid it’s nowhere near that tame. The MoëSP is, in fact, エロい (eroi). I just couldn’t bring myself to call it the Eroi Sentence Pack. I…yeah. We’ve discussed this already. Image and stuff. Can’t just have…etc., etc.

PPS: For your safety, there are no images in the MoëSP. The text is wild enough. And extremely NSFW.

PPPS: Seriously. If you want to have any innocence left, don’t buy this. And if you’re under 18, definitely don’t buy this. In fact, let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist and close this chapter of AJATT history, shall we?. We can just act like this whole thing never happened, huh? How about it? It’s probably sold out anyhow. The Internet’s probably down anyhow. Don’t you have dentist’s appointment today? Huh? Why not just go tidy your room or something? It could use a good tidying. You’re not exactly Captain McClean of the USS Hygiene lately. Yeah…and what about that novel you’ve been planning to write? You know…^{that novel?…With the protagonist and the characters and the narrative arc? The little novel…}

Fo’ Shizzle Refund Guarantee

Buy it. Try it. No likey? No payey. Hey. I don’t even want to sell this sentence pack. It’s too hardcore. As far as I’m concerned, the world would be a better place if this thing simply didn’t exist. Plus, I mean, I can’t just have content like this just flying around. If you don’t like it, keep your copy and ask me for a full refund. Just send an email to refund at ajatt dot com with the subject line: “I love you, Khatz. You’re the best I’ll ever have. I just want a refund for the MoëSP. I promise I’ll be back.”.

Rather than crash, try failing gracefully. If you can’t do 100%, your next option is not 0%. There is (literally, mathematically) an infinite number of numbers, and therefore options, between 0% and 100%. ¹

OCHR (Other Choices Helicopter Rescue) @ Guiltback Mountain

There’s 90%, there’s 70%, there’s 50%, 30%, 25%, 10%, 1%, 0.01%, 0.00001%, 0.0000000001%, 0.0000000000000000001%. And you’re like, “that doesn’t count”. Doesn’t it? It’s a number. Surely we count with numbers, not flippant three-word putdowns?

Your options are not “suck it up and do it this painful way” and “do nothing”. Those are certainly two of your options, but to simply say they “are” your options is like saying that the contents of that glass of water in front of you “is” the ocean. There’s more where they came from; there are other choices.

There are other choices. Choices you’ve never even considered. Choices no one’s ever even heard of. Or imagined. Or if they did imagine them they immediately said some dumb sheet like “that doesn’t count” and talked themselves out of a genius idea.

How do you think this website came about? I took what I liked from other people, threw out what I didn’t like, made up some crazy stuff on my own and just mixed it altogether like a smoothie, then I add lots of sweetener in the form of bad jokes to mask the fact that it’s probably not that good; that’s how this game is played. ² And anyone who tells you otherwise, even me, is either lying to you or misinformed themselves. That, or they’re just saying what’s most convenient for them: I know; I’m a jerk; I do it all the time.

So you  didn’t do your reps today. Yes, yes, bad you, slap on the wrist. There’s a helicopter standing by, waiting to take you off Guiltback Mountain and its name is “other choices”.

In dumbed-down movies, robots invariably blow up and catch fire (in that order) as soon as one tiny thing goes wrong. The thing to realize is…them robot movies ain’t about robots.

OK, so, we’ve let down our pants and gone and taken a collective #2 on a New Year’s tradition. So what now?

Well, I like to think that every day is New Year’s; I really do; every day is a chance to start again. But if that’s too much for you, try this instead. Try…

• New Month’s Resolutions, or
• New Fortnight’s Resolutions, or
• New Triplet (or whatever a 3-week period is called)’s Resolutions

Every month, set a goal for, say, how many:

• L2 movies to buy
• L2 movies to play
• SRS reps to do
• Et cetera

And then see how you’re doing at the end of the month. Rather than judge your performance yes/no (goal reached or not), judge it on what % of the goal you completed. In other words, judge it proportionally. Also:

• Be sure to set the goal to be something that is 
  • Fun
  • Directly within your control (you can control how many emails you send, not how many friends you have)
• Less is more. The fewer goals you set, the better. I think…maybe…or not, I dunno, I mean…I would never try to inflate the number of goals per se, and I would prune the useless ones, so…it’s not like I’d get anal about it, I’d just only have the goals I care about, no more, no less…

You don’t have to wait till M/1 (the first of the month) either, you could just pick any arbitrary 30-day period. Say, 1/10 through 2/10.

Another option is New Week’s Resolutions, but…I personally tend to find that stressful, actually. The week has always been an awkward unit for me. So, yeah, no more on that from me .

You could also split the difference and make New Fortnight’s Resolutions for every 2~3 weeks ¹, that way you’re really marching to your own tune, really spinning on your own axis, as it were. Pivoting on your own fulcrum, if you will. You get the picture.

You wanna know which is my favorite? Well, I especially like the 3-weeks-at-a-time deal because it has a beginning, middle and end “triplet” structure. It’s long enough to be significant (and, if the 21-day “rule” is to be believed, habit-forming), but short enough that you don’t waste time. You get 15~17 triplets a year, not just 1 new year’s day. Also, because it’s not bound to the calendar, you don’t find yourself procrastinating (waiting for a new month/year to begin) or self-flagellating (“Oh sheet! Today’s the first day of the month and I still haven’t started!”). You can also take a day or two off after each triplet, for analysis and reflection, before going at it again.

To tell you the truth though, personally, I’m not the biggest goal-setter. I just try to do my best in the moment, each day. I tend to just GLOAF it a lot. Which is not to say I don’t set goals, I do, and but I also change them quite often. Some people will tell you this is a bad thing, but I’ve personally found that it’s a wonderful thing. And I’ve been pleased to find that the great productivity author and speaker Brian Tracy is on my side of the issue. In fact, if I recall correctly, he’s the one who turned me onto this whole goal-changing thing; he gave me the courage to be a goal-changer and not just a goal-setter. He “made it OK”.

Ultimately, goals, targets, resolutions, projections, whatever you wanna call them, are just tools. The point is to use them and not be used by them. You shouldn’t be taking orders from your tools — your tools should be taking orders from you. Ideas are the biggest tools of them all. They’re for using, not worshipping. Short of a steel-booted kick in the nuts, nothing’s more painful than doggedly continuing to go for something you don’t even want any more just because it’s something you thought you wanted, that you thought mattered, back in the past. But now you’ve said it, you said you wanted it, so, like a proverbial lemming off a cliff ², you’re grimly marching to the bitter end. So, yeah, I’m constantly changing — refining, tweaking, modding and even discarding — goals as new information comes in. And yes, that information includes new personal preferences and desires. ³

Does that make me a flip-flopper? ⁴ I suppose it does. But then again, so what? I’m not a political monkey here for your entertainment, right? We like things and people who don’t change, not because stasis is good but because it’s convenient for us. Mercurial personalities are much more difficult to deal with than even consistently negative — violent, surly, cruel — ones. You know what, though? If you want something that doesn’t change, get a stone (oh, wait, those change, too! ). If you want something straight, get a needle (they taper a bit, but, whatever). If you want to hear the same thing over and over again, put an mp3 on loop. Human beings change. ⁵

We’re constantly admonished by others and ourselves to “get outside our comfort zone“…s and “think outside the box” and “think outside the ‘thinking outside the box’ box“ ¹ and…”innovate”.

And that’s stuff’s great. It’s toadly awesome. Go for it.

But I think that lost in the fog of good advice and good intentions is the fact that, all of us, every single one of us, already does something right, does something well.

We often look for success outside ourselves, as if it weren’t a part of us already. But looking back at the things I’ve made work, one of the things that worked best was to look inside myself. I’m not gonna be one of these hippies who tells you to never read another book again and don’t listen to other people. I think that’s naïve and a little self-contradictory given that we would never have found any of their advice if we weren’t reading books. Kind of like when Tim Ferriss recommended reading less in 4HWW (an amazing book and Tim is one of my life heroes; he’s one of the few people in the world with the courage to call a spade a spade and do so in a book while quoting effing Seneca…how boss is that? ² He’s changed my life…ssshh…don’t tell him I said nice things about him, though; it would make things awkward between us), I was like: “Dewd, are you kidding?”.

So, my tip for you today is to look inside yourself. It is very well and very good to look outside as well, but I think that, often enough, implicit in this eccentric, exophilic, other-centered action is a total rejection of who we are and were. And that can’t be good. I mean, there’s being “素直” ³ i.e. open to new ideas, and then there’s thinking you’re an incorrigible pile of compost. Facebook photos and other outward appearances notwithstanding, I think most people are on the compost side; most people think very little of themselves and this very thought impedes their progress. Or maybe I’ve been in Japan too long and I’m just surrounded by pretty girls who think they’re ugly ⁴, I dunno…I do know that I like the “surrounded by pretty girls” part of that sentence; it’s a nice take-home image.

Certainly I looked outside myself for a lot for figuring out how to get used to Japanese. I mean, I googled hard…or whatever search engines I was using at the time…can’t have been Altavista…it’s weird…all I remember is using Google once and then never looking back. But I also looked inside. I looked at my childhood and what I had liked. I looked at what made me happy and what came easily to me (playing with computers, watching cartoons; I am a genius at watching cartoons…oh, and sitting on couches; if sitting on couches were an artform ⁵, my black belt would have so much gravity that light and other black belts could not escape it). I looked at what I could, would and was doing right and consistently already. And then I just expanded it: I blew it up like a balloon. I knew I could learn one word right, so the SRS was just a tool to repeat that process.

Basically, all I did was industrialize the good things I was already doing. ⁶ I mass-produced them. It’s like when you tell a girl a joke and she likes it so you keep telling the same joke over and over and over again. It always works. Haha. No, but…I bet you’re worried that “oh, no, I can’t just do more of…”. Sure you can. It’ll work. Think of yourself as being full of seeds ⁷. And you take one of those seeds and you water and fertilize the heck out of it until it grows into a massive…I dunno…let’s go with oak tree. A massive oak tree. So you do that.

The moral of the story is: less self-flagellation. You’re not a racehorse. You can’t whip yourself into running faster, only a jockey can do that and I’ve never liked short men riding on me. Or tall men. Or men period; it makes the friendship awkward. Less self-flagellation, less blame, less-self-fulfilling prophecies about what a POS you are, more looking for what’s right and how you can supersize that with ease.

Today, don’t go looking for something else right to do. You already have a lot of right inside you. You already have a lot of good inside you. So double it. ⁸

And this is why I hate New Year’s Resolutions, because it’s basically saying: “Last year was a washout, and I was a homophobic faggot, but this year, this year I’m gonna be awesome; this year I’m going to deserve to live; this year I’m going to earn the title of ‘human being’!!!!”. No, you do amazing things and you did them last year, too. ⁹ So just do even more of them this year.

You don’t need to wait until you can talk to get a language exchange partner. They don’t need to be able to speak to you (or you to them) in order to be “useful” in terms of learning (getting used to) a language.

Before you can actually talk to each other, your language exchange partner can still be your media pusher.  One very important thing you can talk about with a language exchange partner while you still suck is: L2 music recommendations.

Ask him to tell you his favorite bands and songs and stuff. But you say: “I can just search YouTube”. Yeah, good luck with that. You can’t just say “Japanese music” on YouTube and really get the good stuff. That’s not how it works. That kind of vague search won’t bring you Rip Slyme in the middle of the night; it might work for movies (and even then, only the gay ¹ arthouse ones that become popular overseas; you know what I mean). You need band names.

Language exchange partners can be like parents in that you can use them to shape your early L2 tastes and exposure. So a language exchange partner is more than just a well-trained mouth. He’s also a cultural conduit of sorts. That being the case, a good idea might be to choose language exchange partner not based on gender, age or even personality, but on musical taste. And you want someone who enjoys the music actively (seeks it out, knows who makes it, etc.) not someone who merely doesn’t mind that style of music.

Anyway, yeah…that’s it…just an idea.

Dude.

Got an idea?

Do it.

It’ll work.

“But…But…”

Jus’ dew it!

“Wait, Khatz, you’re handsome, not clairvoyant, how do you know it’ll work?”

Because I just know. It’ll work.
And even if doesn’t work…it’ll work.

Why?
Because when you do it, you become a doer, a tryer, a player ¹. You become the kind of person who:

1. Has crazy ideas, and
2. Actually acts on them

And that kind of person always makes it work somehow, someway, somewhere, sometime. Eventually. That kind of person is actually quite rare. Everyone’s born this way — insane. But between the ages of 6 and 23, most people undergo a process of social conditioning that rather violently beats their self-efficacy (and thus any chance that they would trust and act on any of their own ideas) out of them. And just to make sure they don’t grow some Spanish eggs on the sly, there are refresher courses given from ages 23 through ∞.

Ralph “Where’s” Waldo Emerson knew this:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within…Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility…when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

So try that new card format. Try writing with your left hand. Try only allowing yourself to text in English if you use katakana. Try your idea out. Because I know you had that idea before me. But now you’re listening to me give it back it you. And nobody wants that.

Dude.

Do it.

It’ll work.

So…I’m still not sure whether this Internet thing is going to catch on or not, but…yeah…there’s a new AJATT Facebook page. Feel free to drop by and say hi.

Which SilverSpoon do you qualify for?

SilverSpoon 7.0 is the new SilverSpoon and is codenamed “Neutrino”. It includes access to the Old SilverSpoon (1.0) for free. Which Neutrino you qualify for depends, among other factors, on your target language and level.

Japanese:

• Join Neutrino Vanilla: If you’re a (serial) beginner, then this would likely be the best fit for you.
• Join Neutrino BigBoi: Alternatively, if you already know kana and 2000+ kanji, then you might qualify for entry into Neutrino BigBoi.
  • Note: if you’re between Vanilla and BigBoi (i.e. you know, say, X number of kanji and kana, but not 2000+ kanji), then Vanilla is the best fit for you; if you manage to get a place, then you can have your status customized (“boosted”) so that you don’t unnecessarily retread old ground.

Mandarin:

• Join Neutrino SinoSpoon

Couldn’t get a place this round? Not able to join just yet? Want to be the first to know (and get a chance to get in) when, say, new rounds and new language versions (e.g. Cantonese, Korean, Finnish) and sub-versions ¹ of SilverSpoon come out? Get on the waiting list.

Speaking a language is like an open-book test. In fact it’s better. Because not only do all the answers exist out there already, but you’re also allowed to see the test before you take it. And you can carry notes.

So don’t be clever. Cheat.

Boldly going somewhere you’ve never gone before — a new place or situation? The post office? The bank? A brothel ¹? Take a cheat sheet! ² Look up some domain specific terms or phrases (not too many — your cheat sheet needs to be big enough to be legible but small enough to be portable and therefore useful, like a 3″x5″ index card).

Have you ever watched an interview with an actor you otherwise respected and been struck by how dumb they sound? ³ How uneloquent? That’s because they’re not using a script. At all.

Stick to the script. Cheat if you can get away with it (which is almost all the time). And then, if the worst comes to the worst, just B.S. your way out of it.