What is the best way to learn kanji? - A question about Japanese

In My Humble Opinion
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Hey y’all,

I can speak Japanese well, but my kanji skills are horrible. I can read around 100 and write around 30. This is abysmal. I’ve decided it’s about time I get my kanji skills up to par with the rest of my Japanese ability. How should I go about doing this?

I’ve researched it a little bit, and there seem to be 100s of different methods of learning kanji. I found a book called “Kanji in Context,” which so far is my favorite choice. Unfortunately it’s hard to find and therefore super expensive.

So I ask, IYHO, what is the best way to learn to read and write Japanese characters?

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto,
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I studied by getting a book of kanji (P.G. O’Neill’s Essential Kanji) and then making up flash cards for them. I’d memorize a batch of ten cards, then put those ten into the larger batch of the most recent 100 cards I’d already done, and keep practicing the larger batch whenever I was on the train or had a free moment. I was able to get up to 1000 in about 6-12 months that way.

The only problem is that I was studying single kanji only, which in retrospect was a very bad idea. Kanji usually don’t appear alone, so now when I read, I can often see how a word should be pronounced, but not know what it means. If you used the method I did, but studying actual words rather than just individual characters, you might have more success than I did. It may not be as fast or organized, but you’ll learn more useful information.

You’re not in Japan yet, are you? If you are, you might try picking up a textbook for the Kanji Kentei exams. It’s a set of tests given three times a year, intended for native Japanese speakers, to test how well they know their kanji. There are ten levels (twelve if you count the two really elementary levels for kids just learning to read) ranging from early elementary school to post-graduate level. They test vocabulary, stroke order, readings, etc., and the vocabulary lists in the study guides include a lot of everyday terms.

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I use Heisig. People have a lot of complaints about his system, so keep that in mind. It is good for a certain method of learning and a certain type of learner–not everyone and not every situation. For me, what it came down to was that if I had to drill myself endlessly on kanji I knew I was never going to get anywhere. With Heisig, I write the kanji twice and it is in my memory banks. I can recall it 5 minutes later, an hour later, the next day. Right now I can write about 500 kanji and my recall is about 90%. The obvious problem is that I don’t know the readings for most of them but being in Japan does help with that. Plus there are ones you can figure out yourself just by knowing Heisig’s “key words”–like the kanji for fire extinguisher, heh. The other funny thing is that Heisig teaches you the roughly 2000 joyo kanji in an order that is designed to help you remember things, not in the order that a Japanese person would learn them. So I know some bizarre and obscure kanji. Once I was reviewing kanji in the teachers room (I work at a Japanese classroom) and one of the teachers wandered over and looked at my flashcards. He looked amazed and went to go confer with another teacher. They looked it up in the dictionary and discovered that the kanji he had seen did in fact have the meaning list on my flash card… they had no idea before, because it was so obscure and archaic. Heh.

Anyways, you can read the first 200 pages or so online for free (linked to in the wikipedia article) so you can give it a try if you like.

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I do think the kanji kentei is a good exam but it is for native speakers, and the problem is that all the materials are entirely in Japanese. The first six grades from 10 (the lowest) to 5 are aimed at elementary school kids and follow the order the kids learn them at school. The next levels go up through JHS and SHS level to university and level one is for pretty serious studiers only.

We actually went to the kentei last week as my 7 year old was taking level 9 (second grade level) and my 11 year old was taking level 7 (4th grade level.)

I have been in Japan seventeen years now and can correct my younger boy’s stuff without referring to the book but the older boy’s work - fergeddubadit! It’s sort of like expecting EFL kids to be able to read American kids picture books; there’s not much writing in them but what there is is very complex.

On the other hand it is a GREAT way to learn the jukugo - the combinations that actually produce meanings and phrases. On the OTHER hand, they are aimed at the average age of the kids taking the test, so there are a lot of school type words to learn, like “school lunches” “homework”, “class rep” etc. There are a lot of really relevent to every day stuff words too.

I really would recommend you beginning from the beginning and starting at level 10 if you are going to go for studying with the kentei books, even though that covers hiragana and katakana, it does it from a native point of view.

The other way to go is to study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Texts are available, they have English translations and the study order is possibly slightly more relevant to the non native student. Their vocab tends to business and university stuff which in my days of toddlers, nappies and pregnancy was totally unhelpful to me and I gave up after level 2. The JLPT is a good qualification to give to a future employer - recognised out of Japan too, as the kentei might not be…

Either way, the only way to learn kanji is to write them again and again and again and again. I like Heisig’s method of applying a story to the shape of the kanji and have taught my kids a lot of those little mental tricks (for example ani - older brother - is 兄 - a mouth 口 on legs! Which is exactly what an older brother feels like sometimes!) However you can make these tricks up for yourself, and the more kanji and kanji bits you learn, the more stories you can apply so it gets easier with time.

Finally the only way to learn kanji really really deeply is to USE them. I stopped formal study of kanji, including writing them when I had my elder son who is now nearly 12 and my kanji writing skills have almost completely withered away. I can read at about 4th grade level but writing, no. It’s a handicap with me having to deal with all the school notes etc, not to mention me having my own English school - I have to hire a secretary to do a lot of my stuff that really after 17 years I ought to be able to do on my own. So my laziness is now costing me a salary!!