The Journey Until Now - Part 2 (Tackling Kanji in 2012)

2012 was a big year for me.  It marked the end of my high school career and the beginning of college.  But what did I do with my summer break between these two life milestones?  I decided to start learning Japanese again, so I picked up James Heisig's book "Remembering the Kanji" and started learning the English definitions of 2,200 characters over the course of about 45 days.

How the heck is this even possible?

Well, to be fair, I didn't learn how to read these characters, and they were taught in order of simplicity, not by frequency.  So the character for bird (鳥) didn't show up until towards the end of the book because of its complexity.  And to give you another example, I learned the characters for tree, grove, and forest all together.  It makes sense once you see what they look like: 木、林、森

And then in the same lesson, I learned how to write oak tree (柏), which uses the characters for tree (木) and white (白).  White was taught in a previous lesson.

What I'm trying to say is that for the most part, new characters had some sense of familiarity by breaking characters up into manageable chunks or "elements."

So... spending about four hours a day studying these characters made it possible for me to learn them all in under two months.  I'd wake up by 6 or 7 in the morning, make some hot chocolate (because I hate coffee) and sit down at the kitchen table with my kanji book and my computer.  Kanji Koohii was a really useful site when I was learning these characters because a community of people studying the same way shared their stories for how they memorized them.  For instance, a lot of people turned the kanji for person (人) into Mr. T, but I decided to call it Dwight Schrute in my stories.

And then I came up with a story for "cook" which includes the kanji for fire (火) and lack (欠).  So here's my story: Those who set the kitchen on fire lack the skills to cook.  It's simple, but it worked, and I had hundreds of little stories like this... some that aren't necessarily "blog appropriate."

What I'm trying to say (in a roundabout way) is that learning the kanji characters was fun for me.  But then college started, and I quit reviewing them.  And when I stopped reviewing, I forgot how to write a lot of the characters.

Yes, this post is also ending at a point where I took a break from studying Japanese again.  But if you're interested in more about my Japanese learning journey, my trip to Japan as an American counselor at summer camps, or anything related to Japan, feel free to follow this blog and add me to your circles on Google+.

Until next time,

Adam
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