Category Archives: Getting Literate (Kanji)

Ask Ryan: Going Monolingual and Trusting Yourself

By Ryan | Published: August 9, 2010
Today we have an e-mail from Alan, who has managed to get through what I think is the hardest part of learning Japanese: kanji.  Now Alan is kind of worried about where to go from here.  Here’s what he writes: Ryan, I’d be a liar if I claimed to be a long-term reader of your blog- I [...]
Also posted in Ask Ryan!, Japanese, Language Learning Techniques, Motivation | 59 Comments

Read if You’re a Heisig person!

By Ryan | Published: June 26, 2010
You must check this out.  The  supplement for the new Jouyou Kanji.  The amount of respect I have for James Heisig is fairly close to infinite at this point.  Those of us trying to become literate, and thus functional members of Japanese society, owe this man a huge, huge debt. Share
Posted in Getting Literate (Kanji) | 11 Comments

Ladies and Gents: Meet the New Kanji

By Ryan | Published: June 10, 2010
So thanks to Koichi I have learned that the general use (Jouyou – 常用) kanji will be increasing by 196 soon. I’m not too worried.  Of course, you can probably say something to the effect of “Well, duh.  You already know them.”  But what I also mean to say is that I don’t think you should [...]
Posted in Getting Literate (Kanji) | 12 Comments

My Odd Relationship with Heisig

By Ryan | Published: April 26, 2010
I used the Heisig method.  Except I also didn`t use it.  I`ll explain. My experience with Heisig was in fact a hybrid method that I used to memorize the kanji.  My kanji list in my SRS had all of the kanji of Remembering the Kanji 1 complete with the readings as provided in Remembering the Kanji [...]
Posted in Getting Literate (Kanji) | 7 Comments

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