J-J Branch Annihilator
Your Level
This is it. Your big boss battle of epic scale. Some of you are slowly drawing near. Others of you are already in deep over your head. The transition from Japanese-English to Japanese-Japanese is without a doubt the number one trial you will face during your entire Japanese adventure. It is what separates those who will work their way towards fluency in record time, and those who slow down and may face unfortunate failure. This is your turning point.
And as all brave travelers before you are aware of:
This important and decisive challenge is hard.
Really hard. It’ll test your ability, your endurance and your will power. You will not win easily. You will be beaten down repeatedly and must keep picking yourself up.
Now a large amount of posts on this site have tried as hard as possible to aid you in this area. They provide you guidance on what you need, where you are going, and how to get there. But I’ve come to a realization over the past months thanks to a lot of reader input on JALUP.
The switch from J-E to J-J often requires a guiding hand
Yes, of course you can do it on your own using the basic guides on the site. But I feel this is an area for most people that isn’t great for solo training. It is a place where you want a master sage watching over you and making sure you are following the proper path, right from the beginning. Otherwise it is too new, too foreign, and too much too fast. You need the proper support for your fierce fight awaiting. You need a weapon of unfathomable destruction.
Introducing: The Branch Annihilator
This is the official and final guide to help you blast through the J-J branching process with efficiency and speed. You thought the posts on this site were helpful? Those were nothing. This is everything.
New secrets and strategy behind branching
A strange thing happened while I began writing this guide. When I wrote all the original posts on this site on this subject, it had been a long time since I had trouble doing branches. However, with this guide, I approached a branch like you would. Someone who is just fresh out of J-E and starting J-J for the first time.
And it all started to become clear again. The original methods that I had used when I knew so little and got stuck on branches that extended endlessly started to return to my memory. These are methods that have not been included anywhere on this site because when I first started writing on the topic of branching, I forgot that I had phased out of these original methods when they became unnecessary.
Some of these new branching methods include:
– Sentence Assessment
– Strategic Branch Cutting
– Short Slicing
– Sentence scavenging and how to use a pre-made deck (such as The One Deck)
My hope with this product is to finally clear up all confusion and make the branching process more easily accessible to everyone.
Who is this for?
Anyone who is having trouble creating their own J-J sentences.
Are you overwhelmed? Fear the transition? Unsure of it all? Feel hopeless or like giving up? Then this is for you.
What is inside?
This is a 65 page PDF file which contains:
A. 3 pages of this intro repeated.
B. 22 pages that break down the entire branching process into 16 phases. We work together through a sample sentence from the first phase. Each phase slowly takes you through the process of mastering branches and should make you fully ready to journey on alone.
This guide is loaded with graphics and screenshots, diagrams and charts and very easy to understand step by step instructions simplified so that even the lowest level learner can comprehend and follow along.
The one thing it doesn’t (and can’t) do is actually go through all the complex branches with you. This wouldn’t be realistic because there are so many variables based on your personal knowledge and understanding. However, it does set you up and tell you exactly how to proceed with the sample sentence, and prepares you for all possible outcomes.
C. 40 pages that take all the relevant published posts on Japanese Level Up and groups them together for you to easily have at your disposal for reference.
Buy Now
It’s time to face your fears. Step forward. Fully equip yourself and get ready to challenge this behemoth.
Buy Branch Annihilator: $24.99
Refunds
Didn’t find it to be of use? Not quite what you thought you needed? No worries. Send an e-mail to adshap (at) japaneselevelup (dot) com within 30 days after your purchase date to ask for a 100% refund, no questions asked.
This is your game changer
J-J? Branches? Don’t just destroy them. Annihilate them.
*Update: Branch Annihilator refers to use with the Yahoo Dictionary (which doesn’t exist anymore). Use Goo dictionary instead, which is an improved version of the original Yahoo one.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
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.
Thanks for letting us stand on your shoulders a bit!
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.
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.
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.
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 ¥!
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!
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
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.
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!