Remastering Japanese Curriculum

In 2009, I began creating what started out as a small blog-like page for helping students study Japanese. Several years later, what started out as a handful of useful explanations has become a full-fledged curriculum viewed by hundreds of people every day at www.imabi.net. 2016 saw the doubling of its traffic and a total membership count exceeded 2500 people. However, 2016 was also a lackluster year in curriculum development. Personal circumstances have made it almost impossible for me to devote the amount of time and energy needed to ennsure that the curriculum continues being the best it can.

For my goals in 2017, this is what I hope to accomplish.

1. The formation of a new server to finally rid the site of frequent lag and downtime. Through the creation of a new server, I hope to offer new services and basic services that I have never been able to offer (typing Japanese in forum titles, etc.). I would also like chat services and a hotline service to have questions answered in a more prompt and professional fashion, but this would require the implementation of some payment system and a considerable amount of funding.

2. The completion of the core curriculum. By doing so, over 100 lessons will need to be created. To my chagrin, many users and past users have stated that this curriculum requires a considerable amount of prior knowledge to read through. My intent is for this site to be user friendly for people with zero knowledge from Lesson 1 up. By continuously making lessons smaller, more concise, and topic specific, I hope to achieve this goal while still maintaining the level of accuracy that the curriculum is known for.

3. The proofreading of the English and Japanese content by experts/professionals. The entire site has been proofread by close native friends of mine, some lessons multiple times. However, just because sentences may be correct, they may not necessarily be best suited in illustrating a grammar point effectively. The analyses of each grammar point also need further scrutiny. Although I continue to be my greatest critic, it wouldn't hurt to have the English and Japanese scrutinized (fairly and in an academic fashion). I would also like to have experts/professionals/natives (of any dialect) to send constant feedback and stick around to revitalize the forums to offer in-depth conversations regarding anything about Japanese.

4. Offering the curriculum in multiple languages. Due to the immense amount of information that this curriculum offers, translating it into other languages cannot be done without professional help. I would need a staff per language to consult with me and a staff of my own specialized in the English version to make this possible. Furthermore, a server per language may be necessary. As such, the cost to make this possible for just one other language like Spanish would have to cover the creation and maintenance of a separate server/URL, paying the translation staff appropriately, and ensuring that they get just proceeds from any publication of their translations.

5. Publishing the curriculum in textbook/e-book form. Publishing the curriculum as a textbook can only happen once goals 1, 2, and 3 are achieved, but by this point, I hope that it would be possible to publish it other major languages as well.

Even if all these goals aren't met this year, by just accomplishing one of them, this place will become an ever better place to learn Japanese. If you yourself are not able to help, I ask that you  spread the word to those who can fund these endeavors. My hiatus from working on the curriculum has largely been due to harsh economic circumstances. いまび continues to be a financial burden on my part, and this reality directly affects my ability to improve it.    


ご支援の程、何とぞ宜しくお願い申し上げます。