Unfortunately, our guest had little appreciation for Acer, a local Taiwanese brand. Not even these energetic Acer girls’ pitch about the “super super thin laptop line” had much success in repairing the damage all the crappy desktops they made in the 90’s did to their brand.

Acer girls by Mark on Zooomr

There was one bad-ass touch screen on display that gave him pause though:

This video is filming from the MRT on the way to Jiantan station while Nate talks about what they’re seeing:

Here’s a shot that shows off some of the greenification in the Dunhua area:

We’ve hiked all over the city, gone to the computer market a few times, hung out with some of my newer friends and eaten lots and lots of good food they can’t get in Michigan. One thing that’s been kind of surprising to me is that Nathan doesn’t seem to have lost much of any of his Chinese skills, where were always better than mine were back in the day. He seems just as capable as ever at getting around town, talking to guys in electronics shops about modding cellphones and video game systems, and just generally being entertaining in Chinese. In fact, when we went to a River Runners meeting last night, he ended up surrounded by about five Taiwanese women the entire evening seemed to completely entranced by his story-telling!

The Master Storyteller by Mark on Zooomr

Then today, under the pavilion by the guāngguá shàngchǎng, somehow he picked up a guide from out of nowhere who took us around to all the tea stands and taste tested various teas from à’lǐshān, nántóu and various other places.

Tea Tasting by Mark on Zooomr

Joel, on the other hand is a complete Asia newbie. Not only, did he decline to eat any of the traditionally “scary” Chinese foods such as intestines, cow’s tongue, duck’s blood, frog meat, etc, but he was unable to handle tofu!!! Or use chopsticks! I hadn’t realized there was anyone to speak of really who couldn’t, at least in my generation. His chopstick skills have improved noticeably, but Nathan and I still weren’t able to peer-pressure him into even trying a piece of it!

I guess Muskegon, Michigan must be quite a bit different from the Denver-Boulder area in Colorado. I think my grade school cafeteria had tofu and gave us chopsticks to use on occasion. I never really went through the jarring culture shock I saw him experience. Still, we managed to show Joel a great part of Taiwan, he loved the computer markets and I think he’ll be back with a bit more culinary daring in a year or two. Hopefully my apartment will be cleaner by then and I can be a bit better of a host.

Price

It was pretty reasonable, probably about 80% of the price it used to cost me to go to public sports centers in Colorado, back in 2001. It cost 110NT to get in, plus 10Nt for a locker key. The place had a weight room, which I didn’t look at, a pool, a sauna, and maybe some other stuff.

The Facilities

The pool wasn’t bad. It was 1.1 meters deep and 25 meters long, with several lanes. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a deep area. There were also a couple of hot tubs of varying temperatures.

The Experience

The experience was absolutely terrible. They insisted that I wear a swim cap. Supposedly this was for the reason of sanitation!!? I’ve been swimming since the age of four, and swam on my high school team and had never heard any sort of rule like that. Even if they’re just worried about long hair clogging their drains, it wouldn’t make sense. The hair on my head is shorter than my body hair. Having no other option, I bought a cap there. It was way too tight. I bought the biggest one, but my noggin is 61cm around and there’s only so much those things stretch.

Stoically, I put the damned thing on an headed out to the pool. Then some guy came running up to me and said I couldn’t go in because they didn’t like my swimsuit. It’s a completely normal pair of men’s swim trunks, with pull-strings, netting inside, etc. But it was against pool regulations. It had pockets. It wasn’t form fitting either. They only allowed speedos, or other form-fitting swimwear.

At that point, I just had to ask. Why, oh why, would swim trunks be banned at the pool? I asked politely, explaining that I’d buy their swimsuit, but that I’d been swimming all my life and hadn’t ever heard of these sorts of rules before. The answer? Other swimmers would be “shocked” if they saw someone in swim trunks. After changing into “acceptable” swimwear that resembled spandex shorts, I was a bit self-conscious at how blatantly the outline of each part of my anatomy was visible through the super thin and flexible fabric, but I guess if not seeing it would be “shocking” for all my fellow swimmers, then it was the responsible thing to do.

Aside from the rules and the fact that it was a bit crowded, the pool was okay. I really like swimming, and it’s close to where I live. If I can find a comfortable swim cap, I might go back. On the other hand, maybe I’d rather do some other activity that isn’t so highly regulated.

Simplifications of radicals and other components

The PRC simplified a large number of radicals and other character components components after the second world war. Very few Japanese radicals were simplified, though some of the less manageable ones such as “turtle” (龜) were. In complex components of radicals that are not radicals, the Japanese and Chinese simplifications were often the same.

Nothing in the above table was anything very new or interesting to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to be able to remember those kinds of systematic relationships between the different writing systems. But they’re not the kind of thing to make me say wow.

Simplification via the “tripler” component

This was, though:

I love that. Any time you see something tedious to write repeated three times, there’s a good chance that it can be written once with four sparkles under it, instead. It saves time, and unlike Chinese simplifications, it preserves all the original information. It’s like writing a function.

Notes: 渋 is a bit problematic.

Later, I moved to Taiwan. Unfortunately, by that time I had already forgotten quite a bit of my Japanese. I ended up struggling with characters once again during my brief enrollment at the Mandarin language program at Shida. Especially considering the large number of students coming from character backgrounds, it was hard to keep up. That meant more time writing out characters again and again. By the time I finished my 9 months of study there, I could probably recognize 1000 characters and reliably write 800.

Four years of full-time English teaching in Taiwan later, my Chinese speaking skills had improved quite a bit. On the other hand, my reading had gone nowhere. My writing had deteriorated to the point at which I was almost embarrassed to use it anymore. Last month it all came to a head, and I decided I had had it with “3rd-grader literacy”. It was time to draw a line in the sand and refuse to forget any more, regardless of how busy I am with work. Around the same time, maybe because of my renewed interest, I started noticing Heisig’s name pop up on some of my friends blogs. And then I managed to get my hands on a copy of Remembering the Kanji.

Giving it a shot

As I started the book, I felt a bit dubious about it. It seemed odd trying to visualize odd, stories or made-up scenes instead of the characters themselves. I also had concerns that I would get all of the stories tangled up and that it would take more work to keep them straight than it would to just memorize how to write the characters by brute force. I set those concerns to the side and plunged in.

Before beginning, I downloaded a set of vocabulary cards designed to go along with Heisig’s system and tested myself on the first 1000. Since I wasn’t yet familiar with which keyword he related to which kanji (e.g., did “genius” indicate 俊 or 才?), I counted any character correctly written with a meaning similar to one of his keywords as correct. Of the thousand, I only managed to write just under 200 correctly. There are definitely high frequency characters not in that list that I can write, but still, it was a humbling start. That was February first.

As I’ve progressed, I’ve followed Heisig’s advice and only written each character once during a given session, unless it came out particularly ugly. In other words, I’ve completely abandoned the “writing again and again” approach used in my college classes seven years ago. I’ve been using a spaced repetition review program to practice as needed. After going back to work, I’ve had less time and energy to put into learning and reviewing kanji, but they’re sticking in my memory and my motivation has never been higher. My perception of characters has already changed. The structural components are familiar to me and distinct from each other. I’ve found myself recognizing characters that I could previously only read in context within familiar compounds. Even more encouraging is that I’ve found myself able to occasionally correctly guess the meaning of compounds I come across in my phonetically annotated Taiwanese children’s stories.

My progress

Three days ago, I realized I’d gotten through eight hundred kanji this month and according to the stats on my review program, I was writing well over 90% of them correctly on the first try. Even those I made mistakes on were generally an issue of improperly arranged components rather than drawing a complete blank, which used to be my standard failure case. So, I upped it to 40 new cards a day. If this pace continues, I’ll have completed the entire book within a month of part time study. That’s far, far more quickly than I had imagined possible at the outset. I can’t say how much I wish I’d tried Remembering the Kanji sooner.

Pros

• teaches thousands of characters quickly
• doesn’t require writing characters over and over
• uses your creativity to help you learn

Cons

• some review is still necessary
• doesn’t teach how to read characters
• doesn’t teach any compounds
• doesn’t fit with traditional curriculums

Rating: 5/5

Level: Absolute Beginner to Intermediate

My interest in Japanese somehow became renewed. I think somehow, getting into Anki was the reason. Knowing I worked so hard learning Japanese for two years in college and then forgetting pretty much all of it in the 7 years since is pains me almost viscerally. Learning that the cost of remembering things wasn’t as high as I had thought was gratifying to say the least. Buying the Wii and realizing that all my games would be in Japanese buoyed my spirits higher, still.

I’m sad to say my Japanese is pretty much terrible, but I just keep putting stuff I don’t understand into Anki and playing on. Something about going from galaxy to galaxy, having the チコ stars talk to me in keigo, dealing with the tough-guy penguin surfing coach and so on makes it feel like much less work than it is. I may not have a chance to play it much now that the break is over, but it was fun.

Getting the Firefox Pinyin Converter done was nice, too.

• Standard Wii + 1 left controller + 1 right controller + localized version of Wii Sports: 7400NT
• Wii with mod chip installed + 1 left controller + 1 right controller + localized version of Wii Sports: 8500NT
• Extra left controller: 850NT
• Extra right controller: 580NT
• Wii Fit and balance board: 3600NT

To chip or not to chip

One thing that surprised me a bit is just how legit the Taiwanese video game market has gone. I have several friends, students and acquaintances who own Wii systems, and none of them have a modded system. The game store where my old coworker used to buy pirated PS2 games was shut down. People actually paying for the systems is the norm.

Of course modded systems aren’t nearly so underground here as they are in the US or Japan. There are a few normal stores that sell them discreetly if you know where to look. Cough, cough… maybe one of them is under the Main Station at the 台北地下街.

If you want to play any US Wii games, you’ll need a modded system. If you do go that route, I suggest you either wait a few months for the new mod chips or find a firmware-based solution. The current generation of mod chips works well enough, but most US games sold this year will contain an update that will completely disable your modded Wii.

All Japanese

Except for Wii Sports, which has been localized into Chinese, all the other games I’ve seen for sale here are the Japanese version. Taiwanese market isn’t big enough to warrant its own localized versions of most games, so Nintendo sells the Japanese version in Taiwan. It seems like this should be a big turn-off, but somehow it isn’t. Taiwanese gamers played enjoyed the Japanese versions of countless PS2 games, so buying a Japanese Wii is just natural. Several of my elementary aged students have students have told me they’ve learned all the hiragana and katakana just so they can play Wii games. Who said video games aren’t good for your education?

I’ve gotten interested in working on my Japanese again, and I’m enjoying the Japanese version of the Wii quite a bit. Super Mario Galaxy is far more fun than I had imagined it would be. It’s colorful, bright and creative and the complexity of the 3-D puzzles is far beyond that in SMB64. Oh yeah, and the Chiko stars talk to me in honorifics. How cool is that? I’m also hoping to try out Super Smash Bros and the new Zelda. My friend John in Shanghai has reported Super Paper Mario is worth checking out, too. If you’re interested in buying a Wii in China, check out his sister post.

Yeah, I’m pretty glad I picked up a Wii.

After installing the extension, a blue square will appear on the right side of the status bar at the bottom of your Firefox web browser. To use the tool, type some pinyin with tone numbers into any plain text field on any web page. Then highlight the text and click on the blue 拼 on your status bar. It will convert the tone numbers into the appropriate marks over the appropriate vowels.

For example, if you type in “zhong1wen2″, highlight it and hit the button, then it will be converted into “zhōngwén”.

Thanks to John for feedback on the design, and to Wayne and Andrew for testing on Mac and Linux machines.

Go to the download page to get it.

The value of spaced repetitions

Anki is a spaced repetition learning system. Unlike traditional flash card systems in which the user decided what to practice and when, spaced repetition systems schedule practice for you. The first time someone learns something, it will be forgotten quickly. The next time, it might stay for a day or two. The time after that, a learner can usually remember an item for over a week. The length of time increases exponentially. If an item is forgotten, though, much of the progress is lost. By scheduling review for each item right before the learner is expected to forget it, Anki makes it possible to learn material well enough to remember it for months or even years in just ten to twenty repetitions.

My own learning experiences have made me a big fan of spaced repetition review. I have been a reasonably hard-working student ever since my last stint in college, but a depressing amount of the work was wasted. I have entire notebooks full of things I’ve painstakingly learned, probably reviewed more often in the early stages and then forgotten because failed to go over them months later. As much as I like the idea of deciding when and what to review, following the algorithm is more effective.

Differences from Supermemo

As far as the algorithm is concerned, Anki is very similar to SM2. When answering correctly, you still get three options (easy, good and hard), but there is only one option for wrong answers. Anything you answer wrong is put back into the stack, to be reviewed after you finish your other cards for the day. One very good change is that wrong answers don’t really affect the card’s “difficulty rating” before you’ve really learned a card well, i.e. to the point at which you have about a month between intervals. In other words, you won’t keep seeing a card too often a year from now just because you hadn’t really learned it before putting it into your deck.

The biggest way Anki is different from Supermemo is the clean interface. It’s a nice, simple program and it’s a joy to use. You can also copy decks to the Anki site for free (up to 10MB), and sync decks after you finish with them so that you can review from other computers. This isn’t a very important feature for me, but it would be if I had a decent cellphone.

Other features

Anki has some specific features for learners of Chinese and even more features for learners of Japanese. There are “deck models” for both languages. Each card has a field for the “question” (the word), the “answer” (the English translation) and a special third field for the reading. Upon entering a Chinese word, Anki fills in the pinyin for you! For example, if I enter the word 嫻靜, Anki fills in xián jìng for me. This is a great time saver. Unfortunately, it’s still necessary to choose the right pronunciation in the case of 破音字. The recognition for Japanese characters is far better. Anki has automatically selected the correct hiragana for the vast majority of the Japanese words and phrases I’ve entered so far. It’s a good thing, too. Otherwise, it would be necessary to choose from half a dozen readings on a regular basis. On other feature for Japanese study is that the program tracks how many of the Jouyou and Jinmeiyou Kanji have appeared in your deck so far. It also tells you what percentage of the kanji for each grade of elementary school you have learned.

Graphs and Statistics

Anki’s charts and statistics are outstanding. You can see charts of when cards will be up for review, of how much time you’ve studied each day, of how hard your cards are for you, and all kinds of other things. Deck statistics are similarly impressive. Have you ever what percentage of the time you answer correctly on cards you’ve been studying for a long time? Or what percentage you get right in your first review session? Anki can tell you. In fact, the charts and statistics might be a little bit too good. I’ve found myself checking them more than I really want to.

License

Anki is free software. As a proud free culture supporting geek, this makes me very happy. On the practical side, it also leads to cross-platform support and it’s easy to extend Anki. In fact, I’ve taken advantage of this by getting the Traditional Chinese localization of the program started. Damien, the original author and maintainer, was very helpful via email explaining to me how to edit the localization files. I’m sure others, with native Chinese skills, will build upon that work. If enough Chinese students get interested in Anki, I bet it will start keeping Hanzi statistics, too. By virtue of its license Anki is certain to keep improving for as long as it’s popular.

Summary

Anki is great. I’ve been using it daily for most of this month and I’ve even put in some time localizing it so that I could give it to one of my students. He’s been hard working, but continues to struggle to build his vocabulary. I’ve put all the vocabulary from my first semester CDs into Anki decks for him and have high hopes. I wouldn’t be using it myself and I certainly wouldn’t be recommending it to my students if I didn’t think Anki was the best of its breed.

Rating: 4.5/5