What is Ashiba 足場?
Ashiba is an app and an approach for learning Japanese to fluency for busy people. While many programs and tools out there promise to offer a path to fluency, Ashiba is the only one designed for people who don’t have a lot of spare time to pursue their interests (i.e., normal people). Ashiba’s proven approach will get you to start reading Japanese with only 15 minutes of study each day. The only requirement is that you have a foundation in basic 日本語 and a growth mindset (get ready to look up a lot of words along the journey).
To learn more about the history and philosophy of Ashiba, keep reading. If you want to get started studying Ashiba flashcards, click here. If you have questions about how to use the Ashiba app, click here. And if you want to understand why studying flashcards is even a thing, satisfy your curiosity here.
Why Ashiba 足場?
Don’t have an hour each day to study? Unable to find time to speak with native speakers? Can’t take a year off to live in Japan? Sound like you? There are a lot of great Japanese language learning programs out there that just require too much commitment of time (and money!) for normal people. “Experts” selling these programs will tell you that their program is the only guaranteed way to get to Japanese fluency.
Sure, following their approach might have worked for them, but what about for you—someone who is highly motivated but has a few more contraints?
This is the reason I created Ashiba 足場: To share a simple and effective method for reaching language mastery that works even for the normal person who has serious constraints on their time. And I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to go to Japan or listen to these experts’ advice. By spending only 15 minutes a day for a few months, you can learn enough to start reading native Japanese content. Sure, it won’t always be fun, but you’ll make steady progress, even while you lead a busy life. And when you start reading manga (漫画), you’ll find that your language skills will progress faster than you thought possible (unless maybe you took that year off to live in Japan):
Don’t lose sight of the goal.
The goal of Ashiba is not to keep you stuck in a fake Japanese language learning program. The goal is to get you the foundation you need so you can start learning to read Japansese through 漫画. Why 漫画? Because 漫画 allows you to start reading native Japanese earlier than any other type of Japenese content. That’s because 漫画 uses images that give you context and make it easier to understand what you are reading. And perhaps more importantly, 漫画 will also keep you reading because the stories are great. By getting you started on native 日本語 sooner and keeping you motivated, reading 漫画 is a powerful and effective way to take your Japanese skills to the next level.
So how do you get to the point where you can start reading 漫画? And how do you get there as quickly as possible? You guessed it—with the Ashiba app. Ashiba works by getting you familiar with the Kanji (漢字) and the most common Japanese vocabulary (単語) just enough that you can get a foothold and start engaging with 漫画. And once you get started, Ashiba helps you remember the words you are encountering so you can build your understanding as quickly as possible.
In short, Ashiba gives you a foothold to get started and a scaffold to help you build your language skills more quickly when you do. That’s why the program is called Ashiba, which means “scaffold” or “foothold” in Japanese:
あしば | 足場
- 高い所で作業をするために、丸太・鋼管などで組み立てた仮設構造物。(scaffold)
- 足を踏みつける場所。(foothold)
Note: For those of you in the know, reading 漫画 is just an application of Khatzumoto’s 10,000 sentence approach; for those of you not familiar with Khatzumoto’s AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) method, a good one-minute summary explained by Matt vs Japan is found here.
Also Note: For the Refold/MIA community, Ashiba is a hack for getting through the slog of Stage 2
Ashiba: Moving Beyond Anki
The Ashiba app may sound novel, but it is actually designed to replace another app that can serve the same purpose: Anki. So why did Anki need replacing? As anyone who has used Anki knows, the app leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, there are a lot of barriers to just getting started with Anki, such as the user interface, configuring the app’s default settings, and finding quality flashcards to study.
But more fundamenally, Anki is not designed to help you understand, it is designed to help you memorize. As a tool built to test recall, Anki will help you attain perfect recollection—even if that recollection lacks understanding.
Still, Anki has been an effective tool for many students, primarily when used by test takers who need to pass exams by memorizing the answer right (think med school anatomy tests). For self-guided language learners, passing a test is not the goal. Instead, the goal is building cognitive associations to make engaging with real Japanese endurable and efficient (and eventually, quite enjoyable).
Because Anki was not designed for language learning, the Anki app can be overwhelming and boring as it shows too many cards and the same cards over and over, even if you have spent your precious time to customize its settings. Anki also requires you to create cards for new words you encounter, which is ultimately counterproductive for the busy learner, because creating cards slows your progress down too much and will eventually cause you to stop.
Despite these shortcomings, I’ve found no other app to be as good as Anki. Most new flashcard apps don’t work well on mobile phones, often have paywalls, and always seem to require you to start at the beginning and force you to study cards you alread know. As a busy person, these small issues can make the difference between studying or quitting a daily practice of studying Japanese. Trust me, I know since I’ve quit and restarted my study of Japanese multiple times for more than a decade. I created the Ashiba app to solve the problems created by Anki so that you, the busy language learner, can finally benefit from a spaced repetion system.
Ashiba was built from my experience using Anki and improves upon its core functionality. Ashiba comes with:
- preloaded decks so you don’t have to make your own cards
- a set study cadence so you don’t have to worry about organizing your own study
- a set order that is designed to prioritize the most useful 漢字 and 単語 first
- hand-picked examples to ensure quality studying
- the ability to set cards as learned so you don’t have to study what you already know
- the ability to prioritize cards you want to learn, so they are next in the queue
- an improved user interface, to make studying more intuitive and pleasant
- a responsive interface that works well on mobile phones and tablets
- me(!), an active developer and user of Ashiba you can reach directly at any time
Note for beginners
As you might have gathered from above, Ashiba is not a complete language learning tool. For complete beginners, a foundation in grammar and familiarity with hiragana (ひらがな) and katakana (カタカナ) must be acquired elsewhere. Completing the Japanese course on Duolingo is a free way to build foundational Japanese skills. And for those that just need a refresher on Japanese grammar, Tae Kim’s got you covered.
Note: I don’t get paid for any of the references that I make to other study options out there. I only recommend those that I’ve tried using and have found to be pretty helpful. If I don’t recommend something that you’ve found to be useful, it’s not because it’s bad, it’s because I didn’t use it 🤷♂️.