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J-J Branch Annihilator — 16 Comments

  1. This is just what I needed, the overwhelming difficulty I felt when I switched from J-E to J-J caused me to doubt the usefulness of J-J. Hopefully this will help out. Thanks Adshap.

  2. This is really quite perfect. I have just about made my peace with my J-E deck and was staring out at the vast lands of J-J with slight hesitation. Next month I will pick of these items and sharpen my blade–its high time to venture out. We all look forward to equal match with you Adshap.

  3. Ah, thank you Adshap!
    I recently plunged into J-J (at your reccomendation from a personal advisor session). I’ve pretty much been dazed and confused but I figured it would become clear so I was pushing through for the last week or so…

    I’m reading through this document now and have realized that I was doing it wrong. Despite having read all the blog posts, I was leaving out such a key step (getting sample sentences with unknown words in definitions and going to phase 1)… no wonder I was lost in the abyss. In hindsight, its clear… how could I have screwed up such a core part? Newb! Thus having step by step instructions for the entire process has been useful already.

    So thanks for this timely release… I’m much more hopeful now and I’m actually looking forward to flooding my weekend with J-J sentences.

  4. I’ve just finished my 500 J-E sentences so I still have 500 more until I start J-J, but when I do, I will buy this ^^ Thank you.

  5. I’ve been in the J-J forest for a while now, thanks to advice both here and at ajatt, though kind of camped just inside from where I can still see the tavern (or something like that…) Still, I found this useful and picked up some new ways of approaching problems and thinking about things. Well-worth the ¥!

  6. I had gotten into a bit of a mess with J-J sentences. I ended up with so many wide stretching branches that it grounded all contact with new material to a halt whilst I got through the 600+ new sentences in my Anki queue and I was beginning to get quite bored of the whole Anki process.

    I found the branch annihilator after completely getting through the queue, but I have gone back through every last sentence/definition and managed to tame it.

    I had 1191 J-J sentences I wasn’t on top of at all- in the process of refining them with the branch annihilator I found many words I had entered twice because the sheer amount of sentences had meant I didn’t remember them from the first time. I was cheating and looking up definitions in English, I was learning words I don’t even use in English and to be completely honest I was getting bored of the whole J-J process which I had made excessively laborious.

    I now have 528 J-J sentences that I understand along with word definitions (without having to resort to English) and the knowledge that I wasn’t branching properly and that it can be more straight forward has boosted my motivation. I have also retained words from the rejected sentences that won’t need to be made into cards of their own, so my original attempt was not a waste.

    Thank you for this, it has been a real life line and I definitely recommend it to others.

    • I totally agree. I was already adding J-J cards to my vocab deck, but I was making my answer side way to long with the full definitions. I bought this guide (and the one deck) and I have been making much better cards as a result. I really appreciate this site!

  7. Hi everyone,

    Could anyone tell me how they like the one deck? I am starting my 1000 J-E flashcards from Genki so will move to J-J soon (1 or 2 months). Does the one deck have audio?

    • The one deck is a repository of 10k J-J sentences in anki format.
      There are many dictionary sentences, but the deck is pre-formatted and ready to use so that’s convenient.

      I say the price is fair for the effort put into it, but its utility varies depending on your needs.

      (Current use of “the one” and anki. Ignore if you want to)
      I have custom decks for enjoyable content, but for ease and simplicity I search and unsuspend cards whenever I come across new words in uninteresting sentences.

      I use The One [and other decks from the anki server] as repositories for new, isolated words.
      (For reference, external decks used are “Complete Japanese Sentence” and “Core Plus”)

      Also, there’s no audio

  8. 町;住宅や商店が多く人口が密集している所。都会。
    In the process of branching,I can tell the meaning of this card from the actual kanji itself. However, I was was told i should add a card for it anyway. In the definition there are unknown words, I normally make cards for them but I don’t branch them because I want to get to my original root word. Does anyone bother branching the unknowns in definitions for a word (町) they already know the meaning of? Or should I just make cards for those definition unknowns and suspend them?

    • Sorry to be an absolute pest! Though if I could get a response on this it would be awesome.

    • Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you wanted an answer from me, or an opinion from somebody else, but I’ll answer (late!)

      Defining and branching the unknown words in a definition, when you have already figured out the root word (whether due to pictures, RTK, knowing some of the definition) is optional depending on difficulty and ability.

      You can start on some of those unknown words, creating their own branches, and see how it goes. It is always good to get a grasp of the repetitive dictionary words that will appear as you continue.

      But if you are finding them too difficult to branch at the current point your at, they aren’t necessary yet.

  9. OK, after doing about 150 branches, the branch annihilator makes a little more sense. I guess you only take those unknown definition words and define them when you aren’t branching, if you already know the unknown root words meaning from an image, RTK, the definition itself etc. Well, turns out my first branching exercise could’ve been a hell of a lot less complicated >.<

    Still, even though I’m not supposed to define unknowns in the definition when I understand the root word, should I branch the unknowns in the example sentence? Or should my example sentences in branching never have 2+ unknowns? Or should I just ignore the unknowns in branching example sentences (when I think i understand the root word)? Or, I only branch example unknowns when I don’t comprehend the sentence?

    • It’s better to always have 1 unknown, but sometimes it is unavoidable, and you have found a good sentence, that happens to have 2.

      By example sentence, you mean the original sentence with the root word right? Or do you mean the additional example sentences that are given at the end of a definition in the dictionary.

      If you are talking about the former, branch normally the first unknown, and branch normally (but separately) the second unknown. You never want to have an Anki card that has two different word definitions on it.

      If you are talking about the latter, as in the previous comment, it’s always worth a try to see how far you can go into getting the full definition down, even if you already now know the root word. Usually the words in a definition are strongly connected to the root word, so it gives you a bit of an advantage in understanding them. However, as I mentioned above, if the branching gets to crazy, you can cut them off.

      • You always answer everything I need so damn aptly. I’ll probably postpone branching now that you have released the premade (I’m incredibly lazy). But at least when I need to come back to it, my understanding has improved so much.
        I read the branch annihilator so many times, but only upon making my own branches and coming across the problems myself did it make any sense. And your guidance too, of course.

        You must be the most patient man alive! Sorry for having to put up with me! Haha
        Thanks so much once again!

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