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Jalup Group Challenge 3: The J-J Sentence Siege (Final Update) — 77 Comments

  1. Man, I really want to do this challenge, but fall semester just started and I don’t know if I have time to make 1000 J-J cards from scratch… Plus, there’s NaNoWriMo in November… どうしよう (;▽;)

    • You know what, I think I’ll give this challenge a try. I’ve been meaning to start J-J sometime, but haven’t gotten around to it. I have a study hall last period every day, and I guess I can use it for Japanese.
      I’m somewhere between levels 20 and 30 (maybe like 23 or 24); is this a good place to be able to handle J-J?

      • Yeah, you can totally do it at that level. It’s hard, but well worth the trouble. Worst case you might lean on the J-E-J Bridge approach for a bit-
        http://japaneselevelup.com/using-anki-master-japanese-5-j-e-j-bridge/

        But after you’ve done a few hundred and gotten used to it, things get a lot easier. In the short term, you’ll find that your reliance on English to make sense of new words decreases rapidly. In the longer term, (closer to level 40ish) just diving straight into a native JP dictionary will start to feel completely natural and (almost) totally painless =)

  2. The challenges are getting better!
    Although this one is a pretty sadistic one Ψ( ●`▽´● )Ψ, once you complete this, a whole new world awaits you.
    I used this as a motivation (https://goo.gl/N5t3H7 , you will get the joke someday ;) )

  3. Hey, I’m ready to take the challenge! I tried to get into J-J before but only got about 150-200 cards in before being peer pressured back into J-E by other people cause it was easier. This time, however, I’m ready to kick some J-J ass!

    I’m not sure exactly what level I am…maybe somewhere in the 40’s? But I’m waaaay late to the J-J game so I figure now’s a good a time as any to transition!

    As for a gameplan, I’m planning on waking up around 6am each morning and cranking out the new cards in addition to reviewing old ones. I have my novel and a ton of manga lined up! Wish me luck! ^o^

    • Currently a bit behind as I just hit 300 cards today. The hardest part for me is trying to block out the amount of time it takes each day to add new cards, as I feel like it takes me forever to add my daily cards. Also, I find it difficult to find good sentences for the words that I take from dictionary diving. I’ve tried using twitter, but usually the words I have to look up from the dictionary are only the very difficult words, which leads to very complicated tweets with several words I don’t understand and this just adds to the already lengthy process of adding new cards for me.

  4. Level 27

    On track to complete Jalup Intermediate by August 31st, so I will use Advanced for this challenge.

    I want to do this challenge because it’s the exact thing I planned to do anyway! And it would be nice to see my name in lights.
    I found Intermediate very hard. I will probably need extra motivation to get Advanced done in three months.

    Getting up at 0600 and doing a couple of hours before work has been working well. But I need to raise my game here. I will try 0530. The biggest obstacle has been poor recall leading to exploding reviews. If I can get everything done in the morning I will try doing a refresher review session in the evening too.

  5. Level 17

    I have never attempted J-J

    I am 4 days from being finished with the beginner 1000 and I have been adding 10 cards a day, so with one more I will be on pace for this challenge.

    Between my morning and afternoon college courses I have about 2 hours of free time every day to devote to reviews.

    • 344 completed so far.

      The first 100 sentences were brutal, but after that it got pretty easy. I was doing 11 cards a day up until this week. Life got way too busy and I took a few days off adding cards. To compensate, I will just do 12 new cards a day.

      A year ago I got half of the RAVE manga series and couldn’t read it at all. After doing part 1 of intermediate, I can read enough to follow along and enjoy it now. There were even a few times that I forgot that it was in Japanese. :>

      • 637 completed.

        I have missed a lot of days, but its really more because I’m trying to balance too much non-japanese stuff. When i actually do my sentence reviews, it goes super quick. I’m doing 15 new cards a day now to keep ahead of the pace.

        • Game Over. Ended at 745.

          I had a week where I had to move my computer over to a relatives place, and school got hard at the same time. I didn’t get around to doing reviews and am still buried under about 1200 reviews. This is the last week of classes, so i’m gonna let it go for now and focus next week on knocking out the backlog. I’ll comment again as sort of a pseudo-success post for getting back on track :)

          I definitely was capable of completing this challenge and will continue to aim for 1000 sentences every quarter. Thanks for arranging it Adam!

  6. Level 22

    I should be 300 cards into Jalup Intermediate by Aug. 31st.

    I was planning on going into J-J much slower than this, but getting 1000 cards in 3 months would be awesome.

    I’ll do Anki whenever I can like always (even sometimes past midnight). I was hoping to just go into the One Deck after Intermediate, but I may back down and buy Advanced.

    • 347 cards into this challenge, right on track. I’ve been adding 12 a day to stay slightly ahead and plan for days I don’t get to Anki.
      I won’t lie, it’s been difficult due to school being busier than ever, but I’m very glad I’m keeping at it. I was not going to keep this pace at all otherwise. It’s those darn reviews that make me hesitate to add this many cards per day. The time hasn’t been too bad though, 50-80 minutes usually. I remember when I started Anki a year ago I was doing 70-110 minutes, but I don’t think that learning was as effective as what I do now.

      I’m definitely getting better at J-J. Some words continue to allude me day after day, but it is very worthwhile for those awesome moments when it just clicks. Sometimes I just need to actually process the definition to get it.
      I think the highlight so far though is me going to camp for a weekend and still keeping up with Anki. I climbed into the forest away from people and did Anki on my phone for about an hour sitting on a rock.

      • I’ve done 700 cards, and that means I am done with Jalup Intermediate woo hoo! It’s still quite difficult at times, but I’ve gotten used to this pace as a whole. I’m not sure if I’ll keep it after the challenge, but it’s nice to know that I can do it. I’m definitely going to finish this challenge.
        I love it when I see the words I’ve been learning elsewhere.

    • Well I’m at 1030 cards now so it looks like I finished! I actually finished on the 27th but didn’t think to comment until now.
      I very glad I did this challenge, I’d probably have done ~600 cards if left to my usual routine. I thought for sure this pace was too difficult as I struggled starting out but now it seems quite manageable. There’s plenty of cards that continue to escape me but it’s all good. I was going to slow way down when I got to the end of this challenge but now I think I’ll just keep it up. Hooray for habit forming!

  7. Life got in the way of my studies (in a bad way) and I’m trying to claw my way back. It was only a couple of weeks, but a very stressful couple of weeks. In the past these roadblocks of life would completely halt my studies, but I’m too far in this time. I’m almost done with intermediate so I don’t know if this really counts or not.

    Level: low to mid 20’s.
    I’m 790 sentences into intermediate deck.
    I have a backlog of about 400 cards to catch up on, but I will try to maintain at least 30 minutes of anki time per day.

  8. -Level 43

    -Completed Expert stages (1-4).

    -The reason is a bit stupid. I want to participate in a group challenge. I also think mid level blues are setting in (again) and I will be needing something to keep me going for a few months. With each stage of expert (hopefully) coming out every month, this should work out. :)

    -I’ll try to complete each (future) stage by the end of the month it is released in and focus on “fun” aspects of Japanese rather than reaching a goal (1000 cards in 25 days etc.)

    • At the rate I am progressing, I’ll be completing 5000 cards on 9/30/15. So, I completed a ~1000 cards this month :P

      • At the rate I am progressing, I’ll be completing 6400 cards on 10/31/15. So, I completed a ~1400 cards this month :P. Just 1100 cards to business level (50).

        • At the rate I am progressing, I’ll be completing 7100 cards on 10/31/15. So, I completed a ~700 cards this month, due to the fact that I am taking a 2 week break :P. Just 400 cards to business level (50)(going by the cards).

  9. I’m down to do this! I’m 70 cards into JALUP intermediate and my progress has been terrible lately (haven’t been studying much…)! I guess I’m around level 20? Anyway, I’m off to burn through some reviews so I can have a fresh start on August 31st!

    • this month went by too damn quick lol. I caught up on my reviews and I’m now 140 J-J cards in, but I have a long way to go still. The Japanese definitions got a lot easier to understand after around 100 so hopefully I’ll be able to really pick up the pace.

  10. I would say Im around level 40 (low 40’s). I have started J-J(900). I want to drive into J-J by myself this time. I want to get better at reading as well this December I am planing on taking the JLPT N2. I have take a little break from adding anki new material to anki and I am hoping this challenge can help me get back on track. I am going to try and add at least 15 sentences a day. In addition read 15 minutes of manga a day without stopping. Read more articles online, watch more Japanese media.

  11. – Level 46

    – So far I’ve completed 3325 J-J cards (all 3250 from the JALUP set, plus 75 self-made)

    – J-J is pretty much second-nature at this point, but I wanted to jump in for two reasons.
    1. As a show of solidarity with all the brave challengers here who haven’t yet conquered monolingual learning. It’s a huge challenge, but the benefits are enormous.
    2. To put some more pressure on myself to stay consistent with adding new cards.
    Since I’m now ahead of the JALUP decks, any new cards I add have to come from other sources. I’m not a fan of procedural dictionary cards, so I’ve been pulling sentences from my own media (mostly games) to use as source material. This makes for some really awesome cards, but the creation process is extremely time-consuming, especially since the average card has 2 unknowns instead of just 1. I want to make sure I don’t fall behind too much.

    -In light of the above, I’m going to base my goal on the # of words or phrases introduced in the new cards, rather than the raw # of cards themselves. With 250 JALUP cards coming (Expert 6) and 375 of my own cards (averaging 2 unknowns each), that should get me to the 1000 mark by the end of November (and a solid Level 50 ^_^).
    My current plan is to focus entirely on active immersion during the week, jot down all the new words/example sentences I want to add, then create cards for them on weekends. I should be OK if I can get ~30 cards/week done in this way. Once Expert 6 is released, I’ll chip away at that daily ’til it’s clear (probably over the course of a month or so).

    皆さん、ご武運を!

    • Progress so far:
      -Expert 6 (250 cards) done
      -115 self-made cards created in September

      Since we pulled together and funded Expert 7, I could technically hit my goal with just 250 of my own cards. However, I’d still like to shoot for 375 self-made by the end of November. As much as it’s a lot of work, the benefits are substantial.

      Also, having Anki cards made up of dialogue from the stuff you’re watching/playing is really fun =)

    • -Expert 7 (250 cards) done (for 500 premade total)
      -222 self-made cards in October (for 337 self-made total)

      That puts me at 837 so far, and I feel like I’ve really got the hang of doing my own branching and making my own cards now. If I can create another 200-odd cards in November, plus finish Expert 8, I should end the challenge period at ~1300. Would be nice to get a bit more done than I expected =)

    • -Expert 8 (250 cards) done (for 750 premade total)
      -128 self-made cards in November (for 465 self-made total)

      So it looks like I’m actually finishing at ~1200ish – a little short of where I imagined last month. Work ended up being super busy, and honestly I still got a *lot* done, so I feel pretty good. Yay for getting used to making my own cards.

      Now I’m looking forward to hearing how everyone else did. Even if you didn’t hit 1000, I hope you had the chance to get more comfortable with doing the whole J-J thing and understand why it’s so effective =)

  12. I respect those who have the dedication and time to do their own J-J decks, but I just can’t afford that sacrifice right now. Are there any good J-J decks online, or are there any users that would be willing to share their own?

    • These are the only two options I can think of:

      1. The JalUp Intermediate (and subsequent) Decks. I cannot recommend these enough. First 100 cards might seem hard, but it smoothes out after that.

      2. There is a FREE “Tanuki Deck” going around…(you can find it on koohii). Give it a try if you are an advanced user. (I tried it but it didn’t work out for me…)

    • No need to feel bad about that. I think almost everyone here used a pre-made deck for at least their first 1000. To echo Manan, I also can’t recommend the JALUP Intermediate deck enough. It’s a phenomenally well-made introduction to monolingual study. You will probably struggle a bit for the first 100-200 cards, but beyond that it’s smooth sailing (and even fun!).

      • Yeah… I’m living in Japan on a tourist visa right now and looking for work, so I cannot afford to spend money on such a thing.

        • Ha, I feel you!

          I came to Japan last August on a tourist visa as well to find work and so I had to spend my money wisely. But, as encouragement, I did get a job out of that experience and am now a full time employee in Tokyo! So good luck with your job search!

  13. – My level is really hard to say because my ability to read Japanese is much much higher than my ability to speak it. I can understand a very high percentage of a lot of reading material, but I can barely hold a conversation. I’ll say around 30 just as a guess though I think my reading ability is higher.

    – I’ve created J-J sentences before but I get lazy when I want to make a lot of sentences and very quickly go back to J-E.

    – I’m gonna use this challenge to finally push myself into all J-J territory. My Anki sentence deck is nearly at 15000 cards now so it’s about time I forced the switch and stopped being lazy.

    – I spend a lot of time making sentences as it is so I just have to keep doing that but in J-J instead. In order to count how many cards I’m making I’ll make a separate deck and then merge it at the end of the time period. Atm I prob create about 900 usually J-E cards a month so if I slow down to focus on J-J I should be able to get to 1000 in 3 months.

    • I don’t think you should limit yourself to “30” with those stats (It’s a bit demotivating/misleading ^_^ to many of us). You can be a 65 in reading and a 30 in listening at the same time (a good way to check reading is the Test Your Might series). In fact, many of us are using our reading levels only. (BTW how does it feel at 15k sentences? Can you describe your milestones?)

      • Ahh, sorry about that >_> My speaking ability is bad compared to my reading level and I didn’t know I could have levels for the different skills so I was trying to average it. I guess if I separated the levels out I guess maybe a 50-55 or so for reading. Then maybe 15 or so in speaking and maybe 25-30 in listening.

        I don’t usually think too much about milestones actually -_-‘ I just gradually learn more and more each day. I more or less understand all the sentence structures I come across now, so for the last few months it’s just been cramming more and more words into my head to improve my comprehension as well as lots of reading practice. All reading comprehension, of course, I can’t think of the right words or structure to use when I want to talk in Japanese, haha.

    • A couple of days early posting but here goes :-) I reviewed 15 new cards a day for sept, so my number will be 450 come end of September.

      At the beginning of this challenge I did find it very difficult not using the crutch of English definitions. It was slower and I got frustrated sometimes wanting to check the English definition. But now I can feel myself thoroughly getting used to reading definitions in Japanese. Not only am I getting a better understanding on what words mean, but reading the definitions in japanese is further practice for reading. I’m also now remembering the words I learn more easily. Overall I am very happy I have switched to JJ and don’t think I could ever go back at this point haha. Thanks for making this challenge Adam~

      For Oct and Nov, as it stands I will go down to reviewing 10 new cards a day. Not because I am having trouble with the reviews, but because at over 15000 sentence cards my natural encounter rate of words I don’t know is getting smaller.

      • Going swimmingly this month with this challenge. 10 new cards reviewed a day, which makes for a total of 760 done by the end of Oct 31.

        At this point, J-J is now natural, and I have no desire to use English definitions anymore. The Japanese definitions are so much more detailed ^.^

        • All done. 1060 cards total made and reviewed. J-J is now natural.
          Overall great challenge. I look forward to seeing more challenges on this website in the future :-)

  14. I will try the challenge. I’m currently level 10-15. I just started the intermediate deck a few days ago and have only gone through about 20 cards. It seems very difficult so far so not sure whether I can do the pace to get through 1000 in 3 months, but from what other people have posted it seems to get faster after the first 100 or so cards. I got through the beginner deck at between 6-10 pace per day (however I had taken a semester of Japanese before so some was review). I will start at 3-5 cards a day and see if I can pick up the pace to complete the challenge once I get into it.

    I was planning on starting J-J anyway now so this is a good opportunity to try to push myself. I will try to review the cards from JAL beginner and old cards from the intermediate deck in the morning before work, go through the JALUP RTK mod during lunch break at work (usually have 100 cards despite having worked through them quite a bit usually miss a few by mixing up the order of the elements). In the evening will try to learn new J-J cards but the amount of time I have to study is variable as I’m married with small kids so have less control over my time in the evening. I printed out the excel spreadsheet to study the new cards from first as I realized they were too difficult to try to learn from anki first. I often need to look up so of the old words that I didn’t remember perfectly or even if I remembered the meaning didn’t remember the reading.

    • Did 180 sentences for the month, at 220 total in the JAL intermediate. Hopefully can still finish in time over the next 2 months. Had to continue to use the J-E-J method after the 100th card, not stopping there due to the difficulty on some of the explanation sentences.

      • The faster you get rid of J-E-J, the better :). One thing you can do for practice is to re-read the definitions of the first 100 cards and try to make them fit with English definition. Good Luck!

        • Unfortunately only 115 new J-J cards this month, although I did reviews everyday. Won’t be able to complete the J-J challenge but hoping to finish in 6 months, instead of 3 months.

          • Sadly failed the challenge — only 500 cards total for the 3 months. However I felt it was overall worthwhile as it pushed me to go faster in starting J-J then I would have otherwise done. I’m hoping to finish the next 500 cards within the coming 3 months.

  15. I am EXCITED by this!! I have been failing super hard at transitioning, so to the group effort! WOO!!

    Level: 30~40 Proficient-ish
    Attempt: This is probably my 3th or 4th attempt. I managed to make it through JALUP Intermediate once but my lack of consistency left me confused and overwhelmed in the end.
    The Why: I am overdue for a MAJOR breakthrough in JP in fully going J-J is the ceiling I still need to one-inch punch my way through!
    Game Plan: Before, during breaks/lunch, and after work, I will re-learn JALUP intermediate and work through the Theme Deck. I will do 10 cards a day for JALUP since I already have a dent in it and do 3 cards a day with the Theme Pack since it’s kinda J-E-J and I kinda need to make an accompanying Branch deck for it. The main goals are to study for 30 minutes a day with Anki and do Branch cards on the weekend; I more so care about completing JALUP Intermediate, not too concerned with completing Theme Pack for this challenge. Yet again, I wanna try and break into the One Deck at the end of all this!!

  16. Level 35

    I’m 340 cards into JALUP Advanced already, and I plan on doing the JALUP Expert decks, so I will make up the difference when I get there to equal 1,000 cards.

    I’m used to doing 20 cards a day because it gives a nice round number to look at and keep track of, though I’m considering doing 15 cards a day, which would still put me ahead of the 11 cards a day here.

    I’m a bit of a flake when I comes to studying with Anki sometimes, so I’m taking this on as a challenge to keep myself consistent.

    • It’s not going at all how I hoped it would go. Sadly, I’m only 200ish cards at doing 15 cards (five cards less than usual for me) a day when I’m supposed to be around 400ish cards. But I’m not giving up. I think I’ve finally found a balance between Japanese and work. Surprisingly, school isn’t what is giving me a lot of trouble.

  17. Level: 20~22

    I have attempted J-J once, but I struggled on the first 200 or so cards and lost motivation rather quickly. I am taking this challenge in order to regain motivation to attempt J-J again.

    I am planning to use JALUP intermediate from the beginning and the battle plan is to do at least 5 cards every morning and an addition 10 cards after I return from university classes. I think I really have to be patience with the first 500 cards in order to succeed.

    • I managed to get 303 cards done this month. I got a little busy with schoolwork so I went a week and a half without adding any cards. Fortunately, I was able to get back to it 2 or so weeks before the month ended. I’m a little behind, but if I stick to adding 15 cards a day, I’ll still make the challenge.

      I still found the first 200 cards to be quite challenging, but I feel like it does get easier after that. It is a really great feeling when a card just “clicks” and I am able to completely gasp the meaning. Especially when it is a card that I only had the slightest guess to what the meaning was for weeks.

      There were some words that I was completely unable to gasp like 事柄 and 内容 even after reviewing them for a month. I decided to look up the English for these words however, I found that the English actually didn’t help much at all. I’m guessing that only immersion will help me with these.

      This is actually the longest I have studied Japanese without losing motivation and taking a long break. It took me almost 2 years to get through JALUP beginner. Hopefully I will be able hold this pace for another two months.

      • I got extremely busy with school and other distractions, so I did not make very much progress this month and only got around 440 cards done.

        I encountered several difficult cards that I was completely unable to understand around 400 cards in. It was a bit demotivating when many of cards that came after had definitions which contained the words that I haven’t grasp yet. As I result I greatly reduced the amount of new cards I added and focused primarily on reviews.

        I am hoping that month will go better for me.

        • I got 560 cards done!! YAY YAY!!

          Although I didn’t manage finish the challenge, I am actually really happy about the progress I made these past three months. Coming from someone who took nearly two years to finish JALUP Beginner, 560 cards in 3 months is not bad at all.

          I definitely feel much more comfortable with J-J 500 cards in. Occasionally, I run into J-J cards that I can’t figure out at all. I found that the best way to deal with these is to pass them as long as I can get the reading and deal with them later. Usually after a week (or even a day), I am somehow able to vaguely understand these cards.

          I think losing motivation really held me back the most. At some point adding cards became a real drag for me, so I either just did reviews some days or didn’t use Anki at all. I found that two weeks ago I was able to re motivated myself by doing immersion. Yeah… I actually haven’t done immersion in a long time and just doing it again really motivated me to add new cards.

          I am really glad that I took this challenge and I will definitely undertake other challenges in the future.

  18. level 30-50ish somewhere
    at 7800ish cards as of now. Would like to get to 10,000 by november 30 if possible. Haven’t added in a while so this should be a good bit of motivation to keep me adding. Will probably add at 30 a day until September starts, then add an additional 10 from JALUP expert for as long as that lasts. I’d really love for it to continue up to 5000 minimum, partly because it’s a nice round number, and mostly because it’s a good benchmark in learning (Halfway to fluency?)

    at 40 a day (which will last me minimum 25 days=250 expert cards) Should give a me a cool 1000. Even if I have to drop to 30 a day from there on out, should be able to finish it by the end of October/early november hopefully. Should give me a month to let reviews calm down before I fly out to japan 8th nov.

    • update: embarrassingly I thought this ended at the end of october, so I was rushing to get the 10,000 done. On returning to the article I realised this goal is for the end of november…

      Anywhom, since the start of october I’ve been adding 50 a day (30 from one deck, 20 from JALUP expert) and have reached 9695 cards as of today. I only have 3 days left of JALUP expert, so it’ll probably take me around 8 days to reach 10,000 cards. At that point I’ll probably stop adding all together, and let my reviews drop down dramatically. With the exception of finishing any branches I may have missed and tidying up my deck all around.

      From then on I’ll be mostly focusing on immersion for my trip in early December. If I start adding again it’ll only be for words that I feel are super important like 付ける 込む、掛ける、切る etc. Other than that my adding will go down to near zero, and I’ll just try and pick up new words through immersion and dictionary lookups.

      Anyway, that’s all from me. Hope everyone’s doing well with their goals.

      • I am at lower level, so you might already know this, but I feel I have “mastered” the Kami verbs. Use sanseido definitions and their sentences +1 bait definition for each and I think you will get a pretty good intuitive feel for them. This would cover 95% of Kami verbs (commonly used) and would be over in under ~10 cards each.

        • do you just mean 掛ける 付ける and 出す or all of the verbs that have heaps of compound usage. Like 回す, 巡る、込む 切る 張る etc. Sanseido as in this website? http://www.sanseido.net/User/Dic/Index.aspx?TWords=+%u3064%u3051%u308b&st=0&DORDER=151617&DailyJJ=checkbox

          It doesn’t have even a fraction of the definitions Goo ne has, no example sentences and lack a lot of the nuance with almost 1 word definitions. Sorry if you meant a different source, please link if otherwise:)

          I haven’t added entries for many of these (though I did create like 20 entries for 付ける along while ago but never added the cards), i’ve encountered some by coincidence in the one deck, created some and also in the JALUP series. On top of that I’ve created a lot of cards for compound verbs thanks to goo and another site that kreeb posted.

          I definitely need to go back at some stage and add all the entries for these verbs so my understanding can be a bit more comprehensive.

          EDIT: I see that their are many dictionaries available on this site? Though I imagine you have to create a free(?) account to use the other dictionaries. Which dictionary were you specifically referring to?

          • I was actually referring to that dictionary itself. Keep in mind that to know 付ける you must know 付く. I normally use Sanseido definitions with goo sentences (Ctrl+F), and I think this is the best combination.

            (Something I’ve been wanting to say for a while, so I’ve got a chance now to say it)
            I think less definitions are better (simply because someone took out all the fluff, and they are easier to store in mind). The definitions in goo are comprehensive, but many are useless and can be derived. They also distract you from the “real” meaning of the word. We are advanced learners, so we don’t need definitions to hold our hand every-time. 仕込む is 訓練する or 仕入れる. It is a lot easier to store in mind and connect to sentences than like 2-3 lines of Japanese each for 4-5 definitions. Goo, sometimes, actually shows you all the tress and hides the forest. As for a comprehensive list, I don’t think there is one here.

  19. I’d say I’m about a level 25 give or take 3 levels
    I’ve been off and on with the JALUP Intermediate deck. Right now I’m at 558 J-J sentences. I’d finished the deck before, but I took such a long break that I reset all the cards.
    Accountability has been the biggest issue for me in terms of doing Japanese as a whole. And with J-J (a step that I never thought I’d make it to honestly), things have become a lot more difficult, making it harder for me to stay on track. I think a sense of community will really help me out :O)
    I’m utilizing Evernote this time around, taking note of the words and kanji that I have problems with, as well as something to review outside of Anki. Otherwise, until I complete JALUP Intermediate, I’m just going to be adding 10 new cards a day. I’m not sure how many total cards I want to get up to. Maybe 3000?

    • First Update

      I’m a little over halfway, currently @ 516 cards (over halfway ^^). Feels pretty good to be able to be a little lax in terms of how strict I am with adding new cards. Right now I’m doing 9 new cards a day, which I’ll probably continue with until I feel like I can pick up the pace a little.

      The only problem I’m having is a lack of retention of some words (and sometimes a lack of understanding of some definitions) , but the constant adding of new words is sorta draining. But I know this’ll probably just fix itself over time with immersion.

      • Second Update

        Didn’t do AS much this month as I would have hoped (kinda slacked off the last week or so), but I’m still at a good place @ 789 cards. Which puts me at 273 cards this month and 211 to go :D

        Completely doable~ (Currently switching between 15 and 30 new cards a day, depending on how much time I have)

        • Finished today, November 27th.

          Reflecting on the challenge:

          I started off with a bang in September, plowing through the cards from between 9 and 40 cards a day. Which, got me off to a good start. However, I think it caused me to be a little more lazy knowing that I’d done so much of the challenge only 1/3rd of the way through.

          There are a lot of cards that I still don’t know, but I’m just going to keep working at them. Overall this was a good challenge for me and I’m glad I took it on.

  20. I’d love to do this challenge, but realistically I’ll be unable to add new cards for most of October due to travel, &c., so I’m not going to “officially” enter.

    That said, I’m still planning to get through as many as I can and to use use this challenge as motivation. Good luck everybody!

    • Damn! Turns out I should have done this challenge, travel or not. At my current pace I will be at 961 learned sentence cards by 11/30, which I could easily bump up to 1000 given that it’s Thanksgiving break right now. Oh well, lesson learned :'(

      Possibly-interesting side-note: I was unable to determine how many cards I had learned since 9/1, since I’ve been adding from a few different sources (Jalup decks, my own past decks, newly made cards) and I have also been deleting lots of crappy older cards from my early Anki days. I tried eyeballing it from the Anki graphs, but it definitely wasn’t precise enough. Then after digging around the Anki documentation, I found this section:

      http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#manual-analysis

      …which explains the Anki database structure. With that, it was pretty easy to come up with a query to get the number of learned cards since 9/1. Here’s the query if anyone else needs it:

      select count(distinct cid) as learnedCards
      from revlog
      where id > 1441090800000 /* 9/1/2015 */
      and type = 0; /* learned cards */

      Just bust open the Anki DB in an SQLite browser and there’s all kinds of goodies in there!

      • Well the fact that you totally owned it still has the same benefits! Definitely join future challenges.

  21. Hope the challenge is going good for everyone 3 days in. So far (surprisingly) I have learned 11 new cards each day for the past 3 day. What has worked so far is printing out the 11 cards that I need to learn that day on a speadsheet and writing out the readings.

    Thanks to Adam for setting up this challenge. I was otherwise planning on going at a rate of 3 new cards per day due to the initial difficulty.

  22. Question for people when they have very little idea of the meaning of the new word — is it okay to rely on just the Heisig keywords for memorizing and hope I’ll get a better idea as I progress further? I’m through the first 100 so not looking up the English definition. There’s a few that I have little idea of the definition, and google images doesn’t help.

    For example 1163 勝る I was memorizing the reading of まさる and associated with victory. I was having trouble understanding the definition but seems somewhat to fit with the definition. Also 長所 I was memorizing as long place from the Heisig keywords even though it doesn’t seem like the correct definition and then try to remember the ちょうしょ reading. Good idea to keep me moving forward, or bad?

    • You CAN use Heisig’s keywords as “hints”, not as a substitute for the definition. Doing so will defeat the purpose of J-J.

      Keep in mind that the keywords are really, really abstract.
      長所 essentially means “A place where you are better than others”. The heisig’s keywords still apply, but more abstractly. It roughly means “Strengths” as in “Strengths and Weaknesses.

    • Heisig keywords are good for providing hints, but shouldn’t be used as a substitute when the definition itself doesn’t make sense.

      That said, it’s OK if a word just straight up feels hazy the first time, or even first few times you see it. Just keep marking it as Hard if you struggle, and keep looking at it each time it comes up. It’ll click once you’ve made a bit more progress and come back to it a few times, or learned more words related to it. Avoid associating words directly with English equivalents as much as possible (this is a tough habit to break, but you’ll get better at it with practice).

      As for your specific examples-
      勝る and 長所 are both closely related to the word 優れる. I forget the order that these are introduced in, but once you have all three it may help you to think about how they’re related when the cards come back up for review.

      One more useful thing to consider for this case:

      Just like in English, Japanese uses many expressions figuratively. For example, you might know ところ as “location”, but it’s not limited merely to locations in space. You can use it in a figurative sense, like this-
      「いつも頑張っているのはあの人のいいところだ。」
      「あの店は悪いところがありますけど、安いからよく行きます。」

      Hope that helps! =)

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