I can never remember which of Koichi’s groups is which, but I learnt it as う-verbs, る-verbs and irregular (which consists only of する and 来る). I’m sure you can match those to Koichi’s types well enough. Japanese for Busy People uses Regular I (= う-verbs), Regular II (= る-verbs) and Irregular, but personally I prefer group names that are actually descriptive of the verbs in the groups.

Japanese names are 一段 (いちだん = る-verbs) and 五段 (ごだん = う-verbs). Don’t know the etymology behind that, but the way I remember it (which could be correct) is that there’s one way to form the plain past tense with 一段 verbs (stem+た), while there’s five ways to form it with 五段 (～った、～んだ、～いた、～いだ and ～した). Can’t tell if there’s an actual group name for the irregulars, but hey, there’s only two of them.

Welcome! You’ve certainly been around. Going to be teaching high school on Japan as well?

I’m living in Australia, but I’ve stayed in a hotel in Machida, and crossed the Odawara line tracks several times. Is that good enough? =D

I got hiragana memorised in an afternoon, basically, and further solidified it over the following week.

And it looks to me like Crunchyroll’s drama selection is a bit better than it was before, but not by a great deal. Basically, it’s three-quarters car shows, which is not drama at all…

Aye, I agree. I managed to function on just a phrasebook and a few words gleaned from anime when I went in 2010, and whatever I couldn’t get across in Japanese, charades worked fine.

Downside: I wasn’t really able to ask anyone questions, because I couldn’t understand the answers. =P

It’s a perfectly reasonable question, ForceInfinity, it’s just that I’m annoyed so many people have asked about it yet nothing’s been done on Koichi’s part.

It’s a 100% reasonable question – given the order in which Koichi has chosen to introduce kanji. Namely, he introduces 一, 二 and 人 separately, then promptly tacks them together and slugs you with all of the unique exceptions in one go, so when you hit the ones that aren’t exceptions, you get caught by surprise.

Oh? Last time I checked Crunchyroll their drama selection was pretty dismal. Have they started to improve things in that area?

Ah, well then – with context, it’s easy. Same as with ～すぎる, the conjugation is “V-ます stem + まくる”. する -> し(ます) -> しまくる.

Can’t find it in the grammar dictionary, but the regular dictionary says “verb suffix to indicate reckless abandon to the activity”. Never actually encountered this verb before, though.

正しすぎる, incidentally, means you’re been too correct. =P