So I just realized Khatzumoto is back with AJATT on Patreon. I was wondering if there’s anybody here who actually is his patron. The tier descriptions basically tell you nothing about the rewards and I’m kinda curious what he’s offering. Anyone?
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No, nobody here is paying for that.
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This is likely a better use of both time and money.
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Welcome, chillimuffin!
I doubt you will find (m)any people here who are willing to give Khatz another shot.
In my experience, there is nothing he offers that you can’t make yourself within a reasonable effort or get somewhere else for free.
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Glad you’re here Chilimuffin! 
I’m not supporting him on Patreon, but I did notice a while back that he got rid of the required password on a bunch of his posts, so I can read them now. I re-read AJATT mostly for the pep talks now.
EDIT: Looks like AJATT’s Twitter account is posting stuff again.
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Long time no see Bokusenou 
Good to see you here! I looked up his Patreon yesterday and it seems that now everything is behind at least a $5 paywall - and I’m not going to pay that, I’m not THAT curious 
Sholum - yes, this is pretty much what I think. I was just curious if he’s basically still offering the same thing or if there were any improvements.
Splatted - thank you! Looks like a valuable resource. I’ve also just subsribed to his YouTube channel.
fkb9g - yeah, that’s pretty much what I expected but doesn’t hurt to ask 
Yeah, it looks like he started updating his YouTube channel and posted clips from all his Patreon videos. I went through some of them and if you’ve read a lot of AJATT articles you can probably guess what his views are on certain topics. I’m also kind of embarrassed at how hard to understand I found his accent to be at times. I turned on automatic captions in Newpipe (unofficial Android youtube app) and the captions were pretty decent except for misrecognizing Khatzumoto as “candy meadow”. 
Thank you, I’ll have a look! While there are certain problems with some of his theories and a lot of what he does is just trying to reach into people’s pockets, there was quite some valuable stuff in his articles and the MCD flashcard model he proposes is something that works best for me. Haha candy meadow that’s a nice contrast to his “badass” attitude
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Welcome, chillimuffin!!
Yeah, fool me once, etc. etc.
In the time he’s been gone, people like Dogen have managed to swoop in and do what Khatz was trying to do with a lot more personal humility.
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I’ve been watching some of Dogen’s videos even yesterday. His Japanese is amazing! O.o
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@chillimuffin
Yeah, I like his pep talks, and I try out his language learning methods every once in a while to change up my language learning routine. Although I don’t agree with every single thing he says and his humor can be a bit too crude for me sometimes, I still find his articles can be really motivating. More so than other language learning blogs I’ve seen.
@unseenjapan While Dogen’s Japanese skill is good, does he include unremovable English subs on each and every single video he makes? Ughh. They were on every one I looked at. He could at least have the decency to make them the type of subs people can enable and disable at will. 
And I can’t just listen to them while doing something else because he includes text-only parts of the video. 
Maybe it’s just me, but English subs tend to knock my brain out of Japanese mode and make it hard to immerse myself in the language, so I like to avoid them at all costs.
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Unrelated to the rest of this topic, I’ve been wondering if an active approach swapping between listening and reading subs would help with switching my brain from Japanese to English.
I remember a couple of times in Japan when I suddenly had to switch to English and I couldn’t get myself to switch back to English smoothly.
I honestly don’t watch many of his videos. I respect what he does but I have enough trouble keeping up with Japanese media. I’ve caught a few snippets on Twitter. I don’t know what portion of his stuff uses hard-coded subs - I imagine he does that for platforms that don’t support them. (E.g., he does a lot of short excerpts on Twitter.)
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Hmm, I wonder… Usually switching my brain to English mode happens near instantly, but Japanese mode takes a little more effort. I usually listen to fast-talking Japanese youtubers for a few minutes before if I’m going to chat in Japanese to force my brain into Japanese mode quickly. Otherwise if I try to talk in Japanese while my brain is in English mode it comes out really odd. Same if I try to speak English while my brain is in Japanese mode, which I haven’t done since I tried it once and got mistaken for a foreigner in my own country. (Don’t try this! Seriously don’t try it.)
I’m in the US though, which means I have to work at making a Japanese language environment around me then I did in Japan.
When I’m watching something Japanese subbed in English, my brain switches to English mode each time I see the subs, and keeps getting knocked out of Japanese mode before I can fully get it to go into Japanese mode in the first place. I wonder if you wanted to practice switching between language modes quickly if something like a podcast with one paragraph worth of text read in Japanese, and then the next in English, and then back to Japanese, etc, would help… I don’t think I’d really need to switch between language modes fast unless I decided to become an interpreter or something, but if you want to get good at it I guess there must be some way to practice it. I’ve set myself challenges to only think in Japanese for a day or so, and it’s been useful, but I need to switch back to English if I’m talking with people in English or else I get weird looks and strangers think I’m a foreigner.
Oh ok, yeah I can see why he might have to use hard-coded subs for sites like Twitter. I wish he would make unsubbed (except for the types of subs people can enable and disable) versions for youtube for the sake of advanced learners, but it’s probably more work for him, and at this point I’m probably better off returning to reading novels and watching Japanese media anyway. I am interested in learning more about pitch accents though. I never really know if I’m messing up words like 紙 and 神 or 雨 and 飴, even though I have the old NHK Pronunciation Dictionary android app. If his videos on it are paid though, then I’d have to find another resource anyway. I’m not buying anything I don’t absolutely need during the pandemic lockdown.
Does anyone here happen to know any good free resources on studying Japanese pitch accent, by the way? Preferably in Japanese, but
English is ok too.
Bokusenou, to be honest, I didn’t even notice any subs, I was watching a short video regarding pitch accent and one more, can’t remember what it was about exactly but something more theory than actual Japanese so it definitely wasn’t immersion and my brain didn’t even switch to Japanese properly. I’m planning to do more listening immersion. I’ve spent too long just reading Japanese.
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I’ve been doing some “Listening-Reading method”, part of which involves listening to an audiobook in Japanese while following along lightly with English text. When I watch Japanese videos with English subs, I glance at the subs quickly and keep listening in much the same way. I’m certain that I hear more of the Japanese with the English than without it. There’s the obvious thing where if I already understand the Japanese structure clearly, the English fills in the meanings of the words I didn’t know. But there’s also a much weirder thing sometimes where structure is snapping into place once I have a vague idea what it’s getting at.
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Not to stir the pot but what exactly happened with AJATT screwing over the learning community? I am too new to know the story he was out of the picture by the time I finished RTK but so many RTK stories referenced AJATT as something to do after.
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Others have more detail than I do but basically he offered a money-back guarantee for his Japanese learning programs…except many who canceled never got their money back. You can find some details on this Reddit thread.
The programs he sponsored were expensive and, from what I heard from multiple people, not that good.
Personally I never understood how people were promoting the site. I went there and it’s a crazy mess. I was a super newb at the time. If there was something that discourages one to learn Japanese, that must be it. So I guess I can’t understand how these people thought the paid programs were going to be any better.
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I think because despite the poor presentation his approach was reasonably effective and completely new to the majority of readers. It wasn’t necessarily efficient given the massive personal investment it required, but anyone who tried it would see their Japanese improving, which was huge for those feeling discouraged by their progress after completing classes or textbooks. Even if they were content with what they’d learned, they still often didn’t know how to take the next step. The writing style was a problem, but the mixture of jokes, encouragement and personal anecdotes was still more enjoyable than textbooks for many people, and the actual concepts were simple enough that they survive the presentation. Especially in the early years when there was simply less content adding to the confusion.
Also bare in mind that the monetisation was gradual, so you had lots of people recommending AJATT as a reliable free resource as it gradually changed into something else. I think the poor writing may have actually worked in it’s favour here, since new learners kept hearing the site credited by the people they looked up to, but found themselves confronted with a sprawling mess that was hard to understand, let alone implement. I can well imagine some percentage of those people being willing to pay to make things a little easier. It’s a tactic often used in game design, so it does work, though I think Khatsumoto is just a bad writer and the effect was coincidental.
TLDR: They believed the AJATT products would be good despite the bad presentation because AJATT was being credited for the achievements of people they respected. Your reaction was probably also common, but doesn’t show up in the same way.
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