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Your thoughts on the app Satori Reader.. by Null_sense in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Great introduction to reading. I used to read stories and then listen to the audio on repeat in the background constantly. The voice acting is good, the explanations are clear, and the stories were interesting.

I think it’s the perfect gap between starting out and just knowing vocabulary and sample sentences, and reading actual native content.

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USD to Yen just hit 140 again... (self.japanlife)

submitted by lee_ai to r/japanlife

What would make this app look way better? (be harsh i'm job hunting) by jasoncheladyn in iOSProgramming

[–]lee_ai 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yeah, a programmer is probably the last person you'd want to go to for design decisions lol

Anyone else hit a brick wall in terms of dating? by [deleted] in japanlife

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a common experience. Japan is notoriously one of the most difficult countries for a Westerner to do well in largely due to large cultural differences and the language barrier.

If you stick to places where foreigners gather then the Japanese people who are interested in foreigners will naturally show up.

Confess your runescape sins by ghhgdgh in 2007scape

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This comment made me laugh way too hard

Person who hacked my credit card emailed me asking why I canceled his flight. by AshesfallforAshton in mildlyinfuriating

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is the funniest response in the world if this is actually the scammer 🤣

Bars/Places to meet people? Also: Gym recommendations? by ORDER-in-CHAOS in Osaka

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any Irish themed bar is probably your best bet since most Japanese people do not speak English. Murphys is usually a good vibe

And this guy here is BANGIN’ A DOG! by TicklishDingleberry in americandad

[–]lee_ai 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Another excellent delivery from Scott Grimes.

I swear so many of his lines live rent free in my head.

How to deal with classmates B.O. by Trafford3Devil in japanlife

[–]lee_ai 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Interesting. I’ve been in Osaka three years and have only had one “smelly incident” and it was someone from a Western country.

I hope it’s not the diet. I like Indian food a lot 😱

How to deal with classmates B.O. by Trafford3Devil in japanlife

[–]lee_ai 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I think an issue is that when you are around a smell all the time you get used to it. Sometimes when I go on vacation and I come back to my home I am surprised that my home even has a smell.

There’s probably no good way to go about this without offending someone and even if you do it’s unlikely everyone will change their lifestyle to accommodate because it is a sensitive area. Sorry I don’t have a good solution. Maybe you can spray something on the inside of a mask and wear it all the time. I hate being around people who smell bad (bad breath for example). I don’t think I’d be able to tolerate it if I were in your situation and would try to discuss a solution with the school

How to deal with classmates B.O. by Trafford3Devil in japanlife

[–]lee_ai 68 points69 points  (0 children)

I just want you to know OP that I am dying of curiousity about which country it is.

Is N1 doable in 7 months? by [deleted] in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's within the realm of possibilities for sure considering the test is something you can specifically study for and is multiple choice.

If I was a betting man I would say that nearly everyone would fail in the given timeframe however.

How important is it to be able to write down the kanji on paper? by jelszog in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Handwriting is fun, I would encourage it even if you don't plan on writing by hand in the future as it adds another way to connect the material you're learning. The brain is very good at remembering things with lots of connections, it's very bad at remembering information that exists in isolation.

However it is definitely very low on the list of priorities if you want to maximize your time usage.

Best way to start learning *conversational Japanese? by funyun1 in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The best way is to listen to lots of comprehensible input :)

I advanced far more in my tutoring sessions with speaking when I shifted my focus from intense studying of things like memorizing phrases, Anki, reading grammar, etc, to just tons of hours of listening things I understood, often again and again and again.

Kanji by YUKI_MATATABI in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai 13 points14 points  (0 children)

My best advice is to learn the components of what make up common Kanji first, and once you have a good feel for being able to distinguish Kanji, then to start learning Kanji by learning new words.

It's important to remember that language evolved organically which means there aren't any set rules that will always apply. In the case of languages like English, you have tons of irregular verbs. In the case of Japanese, you have Kanji that have multiple pronunciations with many exceptions.

While there are definitely patterns like onyomi and kunyomi, I found that I largely picked up on these intuitively as I learned more and more words, rather than the other way around of studying them to pick up words.

Do you think such a Paywall design is gonna to convert well? by yccheok in iOSProgramming

[–]lee_ai 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At the end of the day it depends on your target market. In my honest opinion as someone who has worked on many, many paywalls, this probably would not convert well. My suggestion is to look at high earning apps on the App Store and draw inspiration from their designs.

This is not something that you need to reinvent from scratch and also it's not exactly a well-kept secret either. It's all in the open for you to look through.

Use other app's as a starting point and then personalize it so that it is unique to your app.

Once you have a baseline design, just add AB testing to test any changes you want to make so that your decisions are driven by data. I use this strategy for big-picture initial design and then refine with AB testing various changes.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Jpdb.io is good for finding novels sorted by difficulty.

辻村 深月 has lots of simple books aimed at teens and I found them interesting so I read almost all of her books.

住野 よる also has pretty simple books I liked.

Haruki Murakami's books are critically acclaimed and I think they are surprisingly simple although definitely harder than the other two authors I named.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The following is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

My takeaways were that there were two important factors to see good results:

  1. Constantly pushing and challenging yourself in a domain, ie forcing the brain to not become stagnant.

  2. Picking a domain that had a decent amount of carryover to other domains (practicing music vs getting really good at balancing a pencil on your finger)

I would imagine that if you are already at a high level then casual practice would mostly maintain your current results.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

YMMV but I could actually "speak" and survive in conversations pretty early on but I found that my progress heavily stagnated until I started reading much more. Eventually I got sick of having extremely basic conversations like why I started learning Japanese, where I'm from, etc, and wanted to express myself more.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

30 minutes of Anki every day is extremely solid practice! Honestly I feel the same way as I sacrificed a lot of my other hobbies to learn Japanese which now has me playing catch up in other areas of my life.

I can't say but I'm willing to bet that art is quite good for the brain haha. At the very least I find it quite relaxing and there is good evidence that stress impacts the body in lots of negative ways.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I recommend Refold and TheMoeWay which are both free resources. They aren't perfect but now that I'm "on the other side" so to speak, looking back most advice I found online was garbage and overly optimistic.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the well-thought out response. I can't access the article you linked so I can't comment on it directly but I do as a principle encourage everyone to think for themselves as well as seek out counter-arguments.

A lot of the points you mentioned I feel like were properly addressed in my original post (what "smarter" actually means in concrete terms, bias from socio-economic in data gathered, transfer effects to other domains) so I won't reiterate the points.

I will say that from my own personal experience I did not feel like learning Japanese made me any smarter and in fact made me "dumber" in a lot of ways because I had to devote so much time to it at the cost of other activities.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure what your intent is with posting this article but it seems to reinforce all the points I made.

Most importantly that most "brain training" doesn't have any "transfer effects". That article seems to reference a study with crosswords which is exactly the kind of "brain training" that does not have significant evidence of having transfer effects.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, I've linked all of the studies referenced in my original post above their contents.

An Effect of Bilingualism on the Auditory Cortex

Reshaping the Mind: The Benefits of Bilingualism

Everything under "Neuroplasticity" came from this book, specifically chapter 6. If you own the book you'll see that I mostly restated what was already in the book and you can find any sources/studies mentioned in the book at the end of the book.

If you can't be bothered to get the book, you could also try googling to see if you can find the source. For example searching "2004 study using voxel-based morphometry bilingual" seems to show results that are related.

Language Learning: Scientifically Proven to Make You Smarter by lee_ai in LearnJapanese

[–]lee_ai[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Funny that you mention that because that's the exact example that was referenced in the book, right after language, exercise, and athletics.

I generalized it in my post under point 3, "Expertise in a domain, achieved roughly by at least four hours of training every day for around 10 years.".

Very cool coincidence!

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