Tag Archives: kanji

He who tries to defend everything, defends nothing. –Frederick the Great Okay, so that quote doesn’t directly fit the title (or this article), but a modification of it does. He who tries to learn everything, learns nothing. This, however, does match my point. Many, many times there are great ideas that fall to the wayside because of a lack of focus. Many times I, too, have been guilty of this. It’s ever-to-tempting to bounce around in Japanese, not focusing on any one thing.{{1}} It’s an easy trap to fall into: you start Kanji, but then realize you need kana too. While jumping to hiragana, you realize you need to learn both sets of kana and how to read them. Soon after, that annoying little voice inside your head{{2}} reminds you that you need to be able to understand it, speak […]

“Kana”, collectively ひらがな(hiragana) and カタカナ(katakana) are what I consider the mortar which holds the Japanese language together. More importantly, they are what makes learning Japanese beyond simply speaking possible. After all, why learn a language at all if you’re going to remain illiterate? Before I dive too deep into that discussion, let’s take a moment and go over what kana are, and why they are so important. There are two types of kana, which are: ひらがな (hiragana) Hiragana is one of two Japanese “syllabaries” used in everyday writing. Each “symbol” represents a sound, or syllable of Japanese. These can then be strung together to form words. If you take a quick look at the kana tables, you’ll see that there are two sections – one for ひらがな (hiragana) and one for カタカナ (katakana). You’ll notice each of these have a […]

お盆 (おぼん/obon) is a festival held by the Japanese in the summer in honor of one’s ancestors. Traditionally, it is held over a three-day period in the summer. The event is intended to be celebratory as well as solemn. It generally includes dances by men, women and children called 盆踊り (ぼん　おどり/bon odori) folk dancing on a platform known as a やぐら (yagura). The one here includes drumming by 浮腫太鼓 (ふしゅ・だいこ/fushu daiko) as well. On the last night, it is believed that the ancestors depart for the otherworld. These departures are typically marked by illuminated paper lanterns adorned with the names of ancestors, as well as farewell messages. There is one held (somewhat) near me annually at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. The one here took place about 2 weeks ago. The photos in this post are from this year and last year’s festival. […]

Note: I originally intended this all to be one post, but it was becoming far, far too long. So, I’m splitting this up into a series. This is the first article in the “Japanese Writing System” series. To the untrained eye, Japanese writing looks like chaos. A friend of mine (who speaks fluent Japanese ^^) once told me her father refers to written Japanese as “chicken feet”, or the marks they’d make on a page if dipped in ink and turned loose. All of these symbols are mixed up all over the place in a seemingly random fashion (to the untrained eye, anyway). To top it off, there are no spaces between words! How is anyone ever supposed to learn that? I answer that question with another question: How did anyone learn English? It’s complex, too! Sure, there are only […]

Woo-hoo! I’ve finally gotten through RTK (Remembering the Kanji)! So, what does Graduating RTK mean, exactly? In this case, it means I’ve gotten through it. I don’t have all of them readily available from memory (though a good portion of them seem to be, amazingly), but I’ve been through all 2,042 kanji in it. This doesn’t mean I’m forever done with kanji, but I can just focus on reviews going forward (for now). I expect that the real benefit of this will show itself as I enter the next phase, Sentences. I’m going to write a whole series on sentences, and how I plan to tackle them. So, for now I’ll table that discussion. As I may have mentioned before, I actually mixed in learning the kana (ひらがな and　カタカナ) in with the Kanji. You may choose to do this, or […]

Ever noticed how you remember something better when you write it down? On the flip side, did you ever notice that not writing something down is pretty much like asking to forget it? I can’t stress how much learning Japanese requires this. Right from the start, you need to be writing down what you learn as you learn it, or consider it gone. A great way to force yourself into this starts at the Kanji phase. Heisig even recommends in his book (RTK) that you write out the Kanji, but I’d like to take that one step further. Writing it once will help, for sure. It’s certainly better than never writing it at all. However, what I started doing is writing the kanji every time I do my reps. This is a major part of engraving something in your memory. […]

Most of the SRS programs out there will handle the timing of your reviews. In the case of Anki, it’s really good about keeping them there for you, even if you miss your review date for kanji/sentence/whatever. However, if you’ve entered the cards ahead of time (or used something such as the Lazy Kanji Mod), new cards generally will be held back. To clarify, if you’ve told it to add 25 new cards/day, and one day you review 5, then only 5 are added the next day (for the total of 25 new). This is fine from the standpoint of not getting stockpiled, but terrible in the sense that you aren’t progressing with new cards. Enough about the new, though, let’s discuss reviewing the old. Each time you review, a “next review date” of some sort is set on that […]

As of yesterday, I’m at a little over  1,300 kanji. I’m at the part that sucks, the part where there’s still hundreds left, and it seems like it’s taking forever. It’s taking a bit longer than I initially planned because of recent time constraints. No matter, I press on. 1,800 is my current goal, and once I reach that I feel it will be finished sooner than even I think possible. Currently I’m hitting about 200 reviews a day, with between 20 and 30 new kanji a day (unless time is really short – then it’s like 5). Cool thing is I’m at the point where I can look at a web page in Japanese and recognize most of the symbols, or at least parts of them. I still can’t always make out words or sentences, but I can sometimes […]

Updated 7.12.2011. What is SRS? SRS stands for “Spaced Repetition System”, and works off the idea that you should stretch out the time in which you review whatever it is that you’re studying in order to keep it in long term memory. That’s the short answer, anyway. I first heard about SRS over at AJATT (All Japanese All The Time) in a number of his blogs. And I’ve got to say, it’s working damned well for me. One thing Khatz stresses is that drilling yourself repeatedly to try and remember something only utilizes your short term memory, and therefore it stays there – in short term memory. Take, for example, that kid in your class in high school or college that always aced his exams by cramming the night before. Ask him about any of it a week later: さようなら, […]

I’ve hit the 1/5th mark today. Retaining new kanji is beginning to get tougher now; not much, but it’s not as easy as the first couple 百。The reason for this is that I still review the ones I’ve already learned along with the new ones using Reviewing the Kanji. At the moment though, I’ve done about 1,200 reviews, with a roughly 96% retention rate (not bad in my opinion) overall. I have slacked a bit the last week though, and have only been averaging about 15 a day. I’d rather this be 25 a day (it was 28 yeasterday), so next week I’m stepping it up a bit. I’m more than comfortable with my current rate, so I don’t think 25 a day for me will be too fast. More updates soon!