well the first two strokes are 点 I hope they look fine! lol but yeah 弓 always gives me trouble, especially when it’s part of a larger kanji.
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Yesterday, I finished the level 5 kanji on WK, which means I’m 1/3 through my backlog.
I had a pretty hard time trying to write 考 lol
(Yesterday’s pratice starts at 兄）
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I went down the rabbit hole on kanji writing around this time last year. Really fun but I still couldn’t remember anything afterwards!
Anyway something that helped for me to improve was changing how I hold the pen and my sitting posture. I would hold the pen tightly and slanted on a diagonal in the direction of writing left to right. I loosened my grip, changed the angle so its more vertical, made my posture more upright. All tips I got from watching some youtube videos and a magazine I got from Japan by this beautiful handwriting guru whom I have a massive crush on…
Haven’t written any kanji ages, I did love it but it’s such a timesink
But be warned, you start seeing how it’s properly done with the brush pen and then you’ll realise what good really looks like compared to your own efforts.
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Yes, but that doesn’t mean a literal dot. See below. I agree, 弓’s balance is a bit hard to get.
Your 何 is 
! 
Too late, I already know how bad my kanji looks!
It’s surprising how those little details make such a big difference. When I get more time, I’m going to go to real classes so I can get an instructor to help me with those things.
Thanks for sharing a good resource. She’s a babe!
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2024-03-06T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級
No new kanji
My day was off from the beginning… didn’t get the timing right and I couldn’t get my mind in the right place to study what I wanted. I was able to do all of my reviews and the step exercise section, but I wasn’t able to review the ones I got wrong and research words that came up that I didn’t know.
This is yesterday’s kanji, so today I will do my reviews and then review the ones I got wrong from yesterday (look at all of that orange 
). I may have to carve out two hours of time and slow down a bit. First hour for reviews, second hour for the day’s task (learning new kanji or doing and reviewing practice problems). I need to be in a state of mind where I feel like I have all the time in the world to do the task. Rushing and trying to squeeze it in during the workday doesn’t do me any good.
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Had some quite interesting kanji yesterday.
- 後: This is probably the first kanji that I ever tried to handwrite, even though I wasn’t doing any handwriting practice back then and probably got the stroke order terribly wrong lol
- 国: I found an awesome pun (?) regarding this kanji on the WK forums!
- 死: This kanji is the reason why Japanese fear the number 4: It’s pronounciation as a word is し, just like it is for 四 (homonym)
I had some serious struggles with 地 
In fact, I have struggles with all kanji that have the 也 radical lol
I might need to slow down, because now that the kanji are getting more strokes, my handwriting sessions are getting longer and longer, so I might adjust my pace to 3 days per level.
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Between this thread and several other kanji threads on here, I might have to get back into regular handwriting sessions! Not that I was regularly practicing to begin with… But still, I do have a few special Campus notebooks that I’m using for kanji practice.
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I didn’t do any handwriting practice yesterday because I participated in the weekly Atomic chess arena on Lichess. Got a pretty good place though, I ended in the top 20 with just one hour of playing!
I love how I have the same rating and the same score like the 20th place, but played way less games
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(Ignoring the obvious one) 夜 is clean AF! Wow 
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2024-03-10T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級
New kanji
存，尊，退，宅，担，探，誕，段
Missed quite a few days. Finally got to it this early morning. Reviews + new kanji.
Tomorrow will do reviews + exercises!
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2024-03-11T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級
No new kanji
Back down to exactly one hour for this morning’s review. It doubles my time to get through a book, but I prefer it this way right now!
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whoever suggested that “Learn Kanji!” app, thank you. It’s actually far better than I anticipated. It doesn’t have that frustrating 2 hour wait after first learning it. (I always forget way before then, personally I would prefer a review 10 minutes after, 20 minutes after, 1 hour after, then what bunpro does as of now)
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2024-03-12T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級
New kanji
暖，値，宙，忠，著，庁，頂，腸
Thoughts
My study time is definitely back down to an hour, so I made a good choice to split up learning kanji and doing the exercises for each step. One session for each is slower, but it’s plenty. I could come up with so many reasons and excuses, but whatever the case may be – I definitely make consistent progress when I keep my study time to one hour. I’m hoping that I can increase this to two hours when I get more free time later in the year, but right now I must keep the study time within an hour. The key is keeping the time and energy high enough to actually learn something and make progress, but low enough to virtually guarantee that I can do it every day without feeling overburdened. Even if I had more time to put into this, I’m starting to sense that keeping the amount of new information low might be better for my overall retention. I stay more relaxed while studying and can focus harder on a smaller amount of things. And this style might be better suited for kanji study because it involves a ton of memorization.
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2024-03-13T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級 (ステップ18 - 問題）
Thoughts
I knew the answer but couldn’t produce the characters (著，値) with confidence, so I missed four questions. It’s a little bit annoying when that happens, but ironically these types of characters tend to burn into my memory much easier later on. When I first started studying, that would get me down. I’d be tempted to cheat the review, saying “Ah yeah I knew that.” But it’s actually a learning opportunity and a chance to improve so skipping would only hurt me in the long run. And it’s all about the long run.
2 Likes
2024-03-14T15:00:00Z
Studied
- Anki reviews
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級 (ステップ19 - 漢字）
- 潮，賃，痛，敵，展，討，党，糖
Thoughts
I love when the last review of my deck is something I have absolutely no clue about. It happens to me surprisingly often. Today’s was a 四字熟語 completion 言語(道断). I had zero idea and no chance to practice it again. In these cases I’ll mark fail then mark it again as hard or good so that I see it sooner.
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2024-03-15T15:00:00Z
Studied
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級 (ステップ19 - 問題）
- Anki reviews
Thoughts
Today’s difficult kanji was 装. I couldn’t produce it for the life of me!
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2024-03-16T15:00:00Z
Studied
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級 (ステップ20 - 漢字）
- 届，難，乳，認，納，脳，派
- Anki reviews
Thoughts
Slow, sleepy day for me today. Working two jobs 6 days a week takes a lot of energy. That’s why I’m glad I figured out how to study effectively for an hour. I seriously didn’t want to do any studying today, but it’s just one hour. I was able to convince myself quite easily – just go to the net cafe, get some tea, and do an hour. Just. One. Hour.
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2024-03-17T15:00:00Z
Studied
- 漢検漢字学習ステップ５級 (ステップ20 - 問題）
- Anki reviews
Thoughts
Some days I get exercises where I’m on fire and it doesn’t matter what comes my way, I can intuit any kanji / word and I feel unstoppable. Other days it’s the opposite and I feel like I’ve never studied this language before in my life.
Luckily, today was the former. I somehow only missed two problems and got everything that I had to intuit, or found difficult, correct!
Reviews on the other hand… 
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