Here’s the quick and skinny on it: Each kanji narrative is taking a lot longer than I thought to write (good thing and a bad thing, I think. The more time I can put in each one the better they’ll be when they’re finished! … but at the same time they take longer to write, and I know you’re all very patiently waiting!). The more I worked on Kanji2.0, the more ways I found to improve on stuff (which includes both simplifying things down to a prettier core as well as working on some new things too!). I definitely have a good layout now for things, and I should have a preview version of the first 6-7 chapters for members of TextFugu sometime later this week. At that point I’ll probably put the new content up in a separate drop-down so that you can still use “Legacy” Kanji 1.0 as well as the new one, depending on where you’re at. From there, I’ll just add new sections as I have them done, probably catching up to Kanji1.0 a week or two after the preview is up (I’m on a roll, now, I think, partly thanks to my new “office”).

I also wanted to thank everyone for the patience. You guys are all really awesome and patient! I really appreciate it, and it helps me to focus on what’s important (getting good content out to you all!). Thank you very much!

P.S. I just found an awesome t-shirt making company in Portland. That can only mean one thing… hmmm.

The last few days I’ve gotten started working on the second iteration of the entire “kanji” section on TextFugu. The reason I decided it needed an overhaul was via lots of feedback from users (thank you!) as well as what I’ve been reading about TextFugu all around the web (I get alerts every time someone mentions TextFugu, and often go see what is written when I do). Time and time again, it seems like TextFugu’s biggest weakness is the kanji section. I’m not saying TextFugu’s kanji section isn’t good… I am saying that it’s not hands down one of the best, so I want to try and fix that.

Upcoming Kanji Changes

Unfortunately, the changes are so big that I have to finish changing all of the pages before I can put it live, which means you won’t see anything for a little while. There’s a lot of work to do (you’ll see why in the upcoming changes bullet points below), but I’m really enjoying it, so every free moment right now is spent writing the new kanji section. It will, however, probably mean a temporary slow-down with new lesson content going up, but I think it’s going to be worth it. I’m really excited about the new kanji section and what it will mean for anyone learning kanji. The end goal, I think is to make the kanji section so good that it could be its own section (and people on TextFugu could choose to pay just for the kanji section, if they wanted… don’t worry, regular members still get both). It’s funny – at first, kanji was an afterthought on TextFugu, integrated with lessons… then, it became its own section (what you see now), and now it’s becoming its own monster, and I think it’s going to be incredible.

Here’s what’s changing.

• Radicals will no longer be something you learn “all at once.” For example, you will only start with 1-2 stroke radicals before you move on to 1-2 stroke kanji, meaning radicals and kanji will be broken up more (which also means you don’t have to sit through all those radicals before you can get to the kanji sections).
• Radicals sections are also getting their own rewrites. I think there were some weaknesses with some of the radical mnemonics, and a second time through has really proven to strengthen those up a lot. Some time away from the radicals and coming back has helped.
• Each individual kanji will get its own page and “kanji narrative.” The idea is that you’ll have a list of kanji to learn on a kanji page, and you’ll click through to a particular kanji. On that kanji page, there will be a narrative, taking you through all you need to learn. The key part, here, is the word “narrative.” The idea is to help you avoid as much direct memorization as possible, and by taking you through a narrative on the kanji page, it should, in effect, allow you to read the text and come out on the other end knowing quite a bit about that kanji. After doing that, the memorization portions will be minimized a lot more. By putting a little extra work in on my end, I’m hoping it helps you so you don’t have to put as much work in on yours. There’s still going to be some work, sure, but hopefully you’ll be surprised at how much you retain by going through a narrative (rather than a list of things you need to know).
• Better integration of emotion / senses. I kind of started doing this in later kanji chapters, but I want to make sure the opportunity to utilize your senses / emotions (which help you learn things more effectively) with all the kanji. Making this consistent from the beginning will be a big help. The only reason it wasn’t there before is because I didn’t start doing this until later, which is why I’m happy to have the opportunity to go back.
• Opportunities to practice each kanji within the narrative (I’m asking questions and adding reminders about certain things as you go through). There’s also going to be questions at the end to make sure you know what you need to know about the kanji before moving on (sort of like the lessons).
• More audio. I’ve (finally) figured out how to do audio the way I want to do it. With the kanji sections (and soon, all the other sections), all you’ll have to do is mouse over (or click on) the ♬ symbol, and you’ll hear the audio play. I want to have audio for all the common words right in the lesson. This audio, in theory, is also compliant with non-Flash-loving devices (like the iPhone and iPad), so after the kanji section is done I’ll be replacing all the flash audio in the regular lessons with this so you can enjoy TextFugu on your iPad as well.
• Breaking up kanji groups into smaller sections. Even though we’ve broken things up into 1-stroke, 2-stroke, 3-stroke, etc., those kanji can be broken up further by grade. Right now, the kanji you go through starts you at grade 1 kanji and moves up to S-level kanji (all within one stroke group). I feel like it’ll be easier to break the kanji you learn up into these groups as well. Lists seemed a bit too long for my taste, and doing this (along with the tables) will help make things more bite sized and manageable.
• Things will be easier to edit and revise for later. Man, revising kanji things in TextFugu right now is pretty bad and difficult to do. Now that I have the chance to go from the ground up, I’m making it so it’ll be a lot easier to edit later on. That means improvements in the future will be easier and faster to do. Thank goodness.

I would normally go ahead and put out an estimation as to when all this will be done, but those estimations are never right. These changes are time consuming, but I’m putting lots of time into it too, so hopefully 1-2 weeks to catch up to where we are now with kanji? That’s just a guess.

And, I will still be working on new content and lessons along side of this, so even though it’ll slow down a little, I’ll still keep posting new content up, just at a slightly slower pace. After Kanji2.0 has to come Lessons2.0, though. Since kanji was added in later to TextFugu, lessons just don’t integrate as nicely as I’d like. I have a whole whiteboard of improvements and integration ideas to make the lessons so much more fluid with the rest of the content, worksheets, and so on that will make things work even better. Kanji2.0 is the first step to that, and I’m incredibly excited to make the kanji section way, way, way better (and then the rest of TextFugu as well!).

ガクランマン

The “Gakuranman” is a crime-fighting millionaire from Britain who follows and solves strange crimes around the world. Despite his riches, he’s found that the excitement of solving crime far outweighs the dangers of motorbiking in the Alps or financing a seat for himself on a Russian space rocket. Of course, nobody knows his real name (that would mean the end of him and his estate!), so he goes by the secret identity “Gakuranman.” A gakuran is a school boy’s uniform in Japan (fitting, since he’s in Japan right now, solving Mary’s murder), and “man” just means “man,” like Superman. Despite what you may think, the moment he puts on his gakuran, nobody is able to recognize him. What a tricky fellow this mysterious guy is. Oh, he also has a Japan-related blog, here.

マッギーちゃん

Maggie is a dog that has developed the ability to speak (through hard work and much practice). Although unbeknown to all of you, she was also at the crime scene and saw exactly what happened. In her spare time, she likes to teach children English, write about the Japanese language, and do the things that dogs tend to do best. Even though she can talk, she tends to keep to herself and not speak unless absolutely necessary (or if you give her a bone or treat).

So, go ahead and find out how they meet, and look forward to part 2 coming out in the next few days, I believe.

Those Loose Ends

So, there are some loose ends, from when I randomly decided to end Season 3 and start Season 4 (well, not that random, I actually think it was a good place to transition). Things I want to do anyways, though:

• Catch kanji up to the most current lesson (and hopefully get ahead of the lessons).
• Write a better ending to Season 3 (and two, for that matter).
• Go through and do revisions on Season 2 to get it up to snuff with Seasons 1 & 3.
• Do some layout & consistency revisions on Season 3 (on the lessons that were written before the format changes).
• Get some worksheets for a few worksheetless chapters that need them still.
• Catch up on bounties (sorry!)
• Figure out some neat things for forum-people to do to keep it interesting every day.

That should do it. I’m off to eat dinner now, I think!