Kanji Study

Living in Japan can be tough, can be alienating, because there is so much kanji all around that my foreigner-self cannot decode. I just started reading Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig, and this book has really made learning about kanji a lot of fun. His strategy is to assign meanings to elements, pieces, of kanji, and then build stories to remember the meanings of the increasingly complex figures. You don't learn the pronunciation of the kanji, but only the meaning of the kanji. Anyway, the same kanji can have different pronunciations depending on what it is combined with, and this is what makes memorizing them so frustrating. However, if you know the basic meaning of the kanji you can start to understand what all the signs around you are saying. Then life in Japan becomes a lot more fun and interesting. I've actually started really liking kanji because, with their little story, they kind of come to life. It's weird too because sometimes they almost start dancing around, like animated emoticons, and I understand why Japanese people love to use emoji in their emails. So as I study I will try to post some of my favorite kanji.

First few:

口 : this is the kanji for mouth. It looks like an open mouth.

日: this is the kanji for sun and for day, it's pretty basic so I just remember it, and it can also be associated with a tongue in a mouth.

now check this out

晶 : this is the kanji for sparkle. See how it is three suns, like all the little suns in a diamond.

唱 : this is the kanji for chant or chorus. See how it is one mouth leading and then the other mouths with their tongues moving and singing.

I like these because they are so simple to remember; most of the stories are a little more elaborate. But anyway, learning the meanings of kanji can be fun with this method. There are about 2000 basic daily use kanji that the book covers and I am through about 100, in about two weeks casual study. It's a great goal to have to learn all these meanings, and since I will be here for one more year, it's achievable. And the nice thing is that I live in a learning lab where I am seeing these little guys all over the place.