What is the difference between MIA (Mass Immersion Approach), AJATT (All Japanese All the Time) and Refold?
YuzuLingo · 9/27/2026
AJATT is Khatzumoto's take on Antimoon for Japanese: mine sentences, review them in Anki, and learn kanji fast enough to start reading. MIA is MattvsJapan and Yoga's staged version of that, with pitch accent added, and Refold is what MattvsJapan kept after the two of them split.
All Japanese All the Time
Khatzumoto started AJATT, short for All Japanese All the Time.
Antimoon and sentence mining
He adapted Antimoon, a method Polish learners had used to pick up English. Sentence mining is taking real sentences from Japanese shows and books and putting them into a spaced-repetition deck.
Anki and n + 1 sentences
Anki is a spaced-repetition system you can use to make n + 1 sentence cards. Each card is one sentence with a single new word or grammar point.
Remembering the Kanji
To start reading, he pointed people at James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. Lazy Kanji meant learning a keyword so you can recognize the character, and picking up the readings later from real text instead of memorizing them first.
Mass Immersion Approach
MattvsJapan and Yoga created MIA, the Mass Immersion Approach, as a rework of AJATT.
Stages instead of all day
AJATT had meant living in Japanese all day. MIA split the work into stages, Stage 1, Stage 2, and so on, built around comprehensible input and a study habit you could actually repeat.
Pitch accent
MIA also pushed Japanese pitch accent early. Learn the pitch before you start speaking, so you are not stuck with the wrong melody later.
MattvsJapan on YouTube
MattvsJapan laid this out in YouTube videos: how the study ideas fit together, how pitch accent works, and how to run the Anki cards.
Refold
MattvsJapan and Yoga fell out over how to run MIA, and that project ended. MattvsJapan continued the method as Refold, for any language and for about 2 to 5 hours a day, and Yoga went on to work on Migaku.
