It’s nice to see that anyone who puts forward a rational, well-reasoned arguement against your ridiculous and poorly thought through claims will be censored. Yeah, your blog, do what you want, but don’t expect readers to keep coming back when you make strong claims and then sidestep any serious debate. And like another commenter said, who you also deleted, I think a lot of this is just traffic bait. I mean, tagging it with “AJATT sucks”? And then you claim to respect khatzumoto…

Actually I agree with your post! I’ve never understood the use of RTK. I mean, what’s the use of first learning how to character looks like (by some dumb story) and not know its reading and meaning (or a vague meaning) and than when finished, you still need to actually learn the character. Waste of time. Now about AJATT, I also think it’s not all that. The concept is interesting, but by no means it can sustitute as a way to learn Japanese. Even Japanese people who are surrounded by All Japanese All The Time, need to learn Japanese from a book just like how you and I learned English (and not by countless reruns of Friends). In my opinion it should be used to a certain degree and just to spice up your Japanese studies. Ofcourse, the more you pick up the better, but believe me, nobody will learn a complete language by watching Naruto 24/7 and living on instant Ramen (puliez). And yes, I do believe Khaz (no offence thous) is a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to studying Japanese. Cus he DID in fact study before(and during) that whole AJATT thing. That being said, I do respect that whole idea and the level of Japanese he achieved. But AJATT should definitely not be put up a pedestal because it is not all that.

> “I don’t understand how someone could watch a movie or ‘read a Japanese book’ and just instantly pick up how to pronounce Kanji. It’s impossible.”

I don’t remember where the author said anything about anything being instant. The entire blog is littered with the idea of putting in the time. In fact, it’s all about putting in the time to learn the language starting from its title “all Japanese all the time”.

> “Most of the posts on the blog are long and winded. Each post could easily be condensed into five or six brief bullet points, as opposed to five or six paragraphs, and a lot of the information is repeated with each post.”

His posts are indeed long at times, but does this even make a difference when you’re talking about the “method” itself? This sounds more like jealousy than a any kind of critique about the “AJATT method”.

> “Khatzumoto is also a hypocrite when it comes to Japanese. He studied before he began to immerse himself.”

Studying is part of immersing. Immersing is about being exposed to your L2, and studying is part of that.

> “Also, he says that everyone should read Remembering the Kanji. Over the past month or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that RTK is far from the best method to learning Kanji. In fact, I don’t use it at all. I think that someone who progresses through RTK will come out with a extremely vague understanding of Kanji and no practical uses of it. In my opinion, Kanji shouldn’t be studied, vocabulary words should be studied with Kanji in them.”

If you don’t use Remembering the Kanji, then how do you know what kind of understanding a student who has completed the book has? I finished the book a while ago, and what I learned from it still helps me today. Besides, it’s just a way to begin your study of kanji, not an end. A primer, not the paint. The rest comes later when you can predict word meanings with less effort because you’re familiar with the character’s fundamental meanings. (i.e. 声門閉鎖音 (glottal stop) = voice, gate, close, chain, sound. If you know what a glottal stop is (and even if you don’t), this makes perfect sense (voice+gate = glottis, close+chain = closing/closure, and sound = sound)).

> “Khatzumoto had lots of time on his hands when he learned Japanese. And I mean a lot. I’m pretty sure when he started studying, that’s all he did. If someone had the time to spend all day sitting at their computer or TV watching J-Drama, they’d definitely learn Japanese.”

Khatz actually described what a typical day was like for him when he was learning Japanese in one of his recent posts. I don’t know if you’ve been to University or not, but school+three jobs+social life is already quite a load, so, this “loads of time” thing is, again, not something I ever remember Khatz claiming that he had. Besides, time isn’t something to have to spend on things, you simply make time for things if they’re important enough to you.

> “Although you can learn Japanese through this synthetic immersion, you aren’t really learning the roots of the language, as you would with a formal textbook.”

Roots of the language? When does Genki ever mention 万葉仮名 (man’yougana) and classical Japanese?

> “In my opinion, Japanese study should be learning all the grammar basics and basic vocabulary (everything from Genki 1) and then they should start to watch movies and read books. This is what I’m doing at least.”

If that’s what you think is best, i.e. the most fun for you, then it’s still AJATT.

> “Most of my favorite learners love it, but everyone I’ve talked to uses an ‘altered version of AJATT’ to fit their needs.”

That’s the whole idea. AJATT isn’t a method. It’s more just a bunch of bunch of advice, tips, tools, and such to help readers get a handle on learning Japanese. Sure, the “method” of using an SRS to learn sentences or whatever is there, but even that has been pretty much discarded (pun intended) in favor of what is essentially just active reading in the form of MCD (Massive-context Cloze-Deletion) cards. (Though, you have to have an AJATT+ subscription to read about them). In short, it’s just “do what’s fun for you and what will give you the results you want in learning Japanese.”

> “The main conflict I have with AJATT is how extreme the methods are.”

What’s wrong with extreme? I mean, if you really want something, then Khatzmoto’s advice doesn’t seem extreme at all. It seems more like common sense. Want to be good at something? Put in the time. Spend every waking moment (and sleeping moment) moving forward toward your goal. If you don’t want it as much, then you can afford to have English (or whatever your L1 is) here and there. In the end, you’re responsible for your own results.

And, remember: Have fun.