Joe In Japan

It’s really been a while since I last attended a class. I finished up my last semester at my home school in December of 2007 and have since been working and now traveling before settling in for my spring semester which starts tomorrow. I’ve made some choices about what I want to take for classes, including some really interesting sounding culture and business classes.

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I promised a few posts back that I would give everyone a little bit of a review of the book “Remembering the Kanji” by James Heisig. The method for studying the kanji outlined in this book is quite unlike any other that you will probably run across. The core of the method relies on imaginative memory, which I will expand on in a bit. The reason I came to try this method of kanji study over others is because of my great luck with Heisig’s other Japanese writing study book, “Remembering the Kana.” With that book, I was able to achieve fast proficiency in both the writing and reading of the characters that comprise the kana. It uses a method similar to the one in “Remembering the Kani,” although it is not 100% the same. I can say up front that I am having an equally good experience with Heisig’s kanji book as I did with his kana book.

First things first, though: this book is not designed to help you “read” the kanji. Unlike “Remembering the Kana,” you will not find the slightest reference to the way the characters are verbalized or read in Japanese. Instead, this book serves to familiarize the reader with the 1850 base kanji required by the Japanese government that all high school students must know upon graduation. By familiarize, I mean you will be able to write the kanji with perfect stroke order and be able to recall their meaning. All of the meanings given in this book are in English, so it won’t help you expand your Japanese vocabulary either. But the ability to write and comprehend meaning in any language is half the battle, especially with a writing system as verbose as Japanese has. So now you know what you are getting into. Clearly, if you wish to use this method, it must be complemented in some what that you can come to learn the readings. For me, I have found that I already know many of the kanji’s readings (or at least one) and by using this method I have been able to proverbally “put a face to a name.”

So how does Heisig’s method work? Like I mentioned before, this method relies on what Heisig refers to as imaginative memory. For each kanji he presents in the book, a story with a strong associated mental image is given. The idea is to see the image in your mind’s eye when looking at the kanji. In this way, you can remember a kanji by drumming up a scene in your head instead of relying on rote memorization.

Heisig creates this images through what he calls primatives. Throughout the course of the book, especially in the early lessons (which is where I am), he takes the simple, basic kanji consisting of few strokes and correlates them to an object, which usually has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the character by itself. These include shellfish, fire, tools, nails, drops (of anything), St. Bernard dogs, etc. The use of imaginative memory by the reader is important at these points, so that future kanji can be more easily broken down into parts.  The kanji in RtK are delivered in such a way that the primatives you just learned are combined together to create new kanji and sometimes even new primatives.

For example, 目 (eye) is learned early on. This one is pretty easy because you can sort of imagine if the kanji was rounded you would see an eye, albeit sans iris. Later, you come to learn 貝 (shellfish). How do you remember that this character means shellfish? Heisig has you imagine a shellfish with one giant eyeball on two little legs, skittering around a beach. This character is also given the primative meaning of shellfish, and goes on to appear in many, many more kanji, in which the stories involve shellfish in various situations.

I have so far made it through 130 kanji. If I was to see these kanji on a sign, I would have some idea of their meaning, and if asked to write them, I could reproduce them. But like I said, this book cannot stand on its own. You will need to learn the readings to complement the writings and meanings that you learn in this book. I would say that this book is a great method  to use for beginning students of kanji (which I am one myself). The writings and meanings of the kanji I have so far learned have stuck better with me than any other method I have tried. Ultimately, I recommend giving “Remembering the Kanji” a shot.

If you do decide to pick up the book, I highly recommend that you check out the website Reviewing the Kanji, a community-driven site that includes tools to create and organize flashcards and study the kanji after completing a lesson in Heisig’s book. It even has a section for people to submit their own stories for the kanji, many of which I have found to produce even more powerful images than the original prescribed by Heisig.

I hope that this was helpful to all you kanji learners out there! With any luck, I’ll be able to get few a couple hundred before I go to Japan. Then, the real learning begins!

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Lots of good stuff has been going on in the past couple days related to me an Japan! It’s getting exiting for me, as I only have a month or so left to go before. Being such, I’m starting to feel it creeping up on me. I’m getting more and more into Japan-mode, ready to pounce on those preparations for departure! Today, I took my first step towards that by informing the factory that I’m currently working at to get some last minute money that next week will be my last. That means that I will have the entirety of March to study Japanese and make my final arraignments. It will be study-study-study like a madman for me! :) I really want to be as proficient and at the top of my Japanese game when I go to leave. I’m going to try and get ahold of some of my Japanese acquaintances up at school, too, and see if I can do some Skype conversations. I really enjoyed practicing speaking with Hitomi-san, a graduate student at UMaine, while I was taking classes last semester. My comfort level with Japanese skyrocketed in a scant few weeks. For anyone studying Japanese, don’t be afraid to approach people to practice conversation. You probably do know a lot more than you think you do.

Also, if that wasn’t enough, some exiting news for the site! Edward Chmura, who I mentioned in my post on Japan-related podcasts, mentioned me on his show and linked to this site this past week. Edward, if you are reading, I am once again greatly humbled that you took the time to notice and mention my site on the show. I’m glad that my comments did not go unappreciated. :)

Finally, my book “Remembering the Kanji” came today from Amazon. I will be delving into this book later tonight probably after dinner and of course, throughout the weeks ahead. Time to learn some kanji!

[Photo by pats0n, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license]

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I have been a student of Japanese for a nearly two years now, and I felt that today I would share the various websites, podcasts, programs and books I have found useful in the learning process. To be sure, there is an abundance of material out there, for free, that can be used to learn Japanese (or any other language for that matter) online. I’ll start with those.

• JapanesePod101.com - The most complete site on the net to learn Japanese with. Its foundations are the podcasts that Peter Galante and crew produce every weekday. You get great audio lessons with native Japanese speakers, and a helpful community through blog comments and the forums. For a little extra money, you can get access to the “Premium Learning Center,” which includes additional study materials like lesson notes and flashcards.

• Yamasa Online Kanji Dictionary - I really like this dictionary for one reason alone: every kanji has an animation of the stroke order. It makes learning to write the kanji a breeze.

• Remember the Kana by James Heisig - Ok, now for the stuff you have to pay for. This book is well worth it. Instead of relying on rote memorization to learn the hiragana and katakana, Heisig associates each character with an image relating to its sound. For example, you remember け (ke) by seeing the image of a CApe and dagger.

• Visual Language Learning Cards - Once you get the kana down, you are going to want to consolidate what you have learned. These are good, sturdy portable flashcards that include both a hiragana and katakana set.

• Yookso! by Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku - This is the textbook that we are using in my Japanese class. I wouldn’t recommend it by itself, but it is good in a classroom setting. This is a good resource for learning grammar as well.

• Rosetta Stone - This set of computer software is a bit pricey, but it’s a very different way to learn from the other tools I have shown so far. At no point do you do any translating or hear any English. It is immediate immersion. You learn vocabulary entirely by listening to a native speaker, and then try to match what they said from a selection of four photographs. I can testify to it working very well, but it does require a more time if you are not fast on picking up on the sounds.

A few more hints and tips: Learn the kana right away. It is important to not rely on the crutch of “romaji” (Japanse written with roman letters) when studying. You will need to learn the kana anyway if you want to attain any degree of literacy in Japanese. If you can manage it, take a class on Japanese, preferably through a local college. Being able to interact with other people and speak to them conversationally does a great deal to help you retain what you learn. It is also the most fun way to learn if you have a good instructor. Also, listen to as much Japanese as you can. Get your hands on Japanese music, watch anime with subtitles, do what ever you can to hear it everyday. By doing so you learn the natural patterns in the language and this helps you to speak more fluenly and increases your comprension.

Finally, if you have a Mac, I would recommend you download Provoc and Genius. These are two wonderful pieces of software. Provoc is a neat way to create vocabulary lists and study them in any variety of user-defined ways. Genius is primarily concerned with memorization of vocabulary and works by using a special algorithm that adapts to what you know and what you don’t.

Well, I think that will do it. Hopefully for all the new students of Japanese out there, you will have found this to be helpful.

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