Kanji study 漢字の勉強

[edit: added links and more footnotes]

Studying Kanji is perhaps the most inconsistent part of studying Japanese. As inconsistent as Kanjis themselves. But also the most fun, in my opinion.

I tried many books to study Kanji and none of them caught my interest for long. I tried textbooks that group Kanjis according to radicals and others that group by subject or pronounciation. I feel that textbooks are the worst way to study Kanji. In fact, most of my great strides in Kanji were by other means.

Once was during 3kyuu study, with "Kanji Power". The best thing about Kanji Power^ is its presentation. It's a browser based tutorial. The interface is clean and user-friendly; kanji's are grouped according to complexity and each kanji is broken down to its parts (meaning, on/kun readings and form/writing order). The best parts are the exercises; simple sentences for which you can hide furigana for kanjis in the current lesson, or for greater effect, hide them for all kanjis of previous lessons).

In the good old days I used to study 30-40 kanjis per week with Kanji Power. The free version available through bit torrent has 555 kanjis, I recall. So it is more than enough to cover 3kyuu material.

Even with Kanji Power, I got bored after the 300 Kanji run and I didn't go back to it. But make no mistake, it IS powerful.

During the last two years, I've tried studying from different textbooks to spice things up, but ultimately, my best friends were my DS and Kanji sonomama dictionary software combination. Really, I used it so much that I stopped playing games with my DS. The best part for me was that unlike ordinary denshi jisho, DS is backlit, so I could go on aimless exploration when I'm in bed at the end of the day. For the record, the success of Kanji sonomama* (meaning: "Kanji as it is") in Japan paved the way for the "denshi jishos with kanji/writing recognition" market.

The thing I hated most about Kanji textbooks is that they group far too many kanjis in each lesson. This made finishing each lesson a daunting task. Currently I do not use textbooks at all. For better or worse, I am studying from a reference kanji list for 2kyuu that I found on thejapanesepage.com. It is full of typos, but the best things about it are 1) it starts where 3kyuu stopped 2) it has five kanjis on each page. Having five kanjis per page breaks down your study into smaller chunks and smaller achievements, making the wait until the end of tunnel much more bearable.

Of-course reference lists are not for studying; they're just that: references. The one I use lists meanings in english, readings most often with typos and some extremely unuseful examples, all in a neat table format. To compensate the shortcomings of this list, I use my Sharp Papyrus (with writing recognition) and a big Kanji dictionary I found and bought in Kuwait.

Two other tools I use for kanji study are my whiteboards and markers. I have one on the wall behind me and a small portable one I got from Muji** in Japan. The smaller one has magnets so it is stuck on the wall-mounted whiteboard now.

I've added two sidebars to the left: one for kanjis I'm studying this week and another for kanjis I studied last week. Some of the kanjis I list are ones I already know, but have difficulty in remembering their meanings or some of their readings. In these cases, I will place the meaning or reading in yellow parenthesis.
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* full name: Kanji sonomama rakubiki jiten DS published by Nintendo （漢字そのまま楽引き辞典DS）
** Muji is the shortened English & Global brand name of "Mujirushi Ryouhin" (無印良品：literally "Unbranded Good Products"). You can think of it as the Japanese version of IKEA. Maybe I'll talk about it in another post.
^ Looks like Kanji Power is no longer up on Coscom's website (KP's creator), maybe it was replaced by Kanji Odyssey or something. I'm sure you can find it somewhere online though.