I studied kanji for 2.5 hours every single day for one year

Japanese
#113

The improvement may come from freeing up the time and energy to spend on other aspects of Japanese. In terms of memorization in the short term, WK will probably be better since you are literally being tested repeatedly multiple times for each kanji. In my opinion, doing it this way will help develop a more visceral bond with the kanji. Plus, being able to physically write Japanese is a lot more impressive than just being able to read it :grin:

Your writing looks pretty good, it’s balanced and it’s consistent. It may look a bit robotic but that may have more to do with the font that you are copying from. I am going to second Asher’s recommendation of paying attention to stroke order, not just for the muscle memory but it will also help with making your writing more beautiful.

A pen recommendation that is fun to write with, not necessarily just for kanji
Pentel Brush Sign Pen Pack of 10

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#114

Oh yes, most definitely follow the stroke order. The app teaches it, but I usually kanji search on jisho and follow that as it has the helpful grid structure too. If I do it wrong on my drills, I usually just tut at myself and imagine a strict Japanese sensei looking over my shoulder and frowning. He’s holding a cane too so I quickly correct myself.

I can almost start to predict what it will be for new kanji now as it’s usually logical, there’s a radical in 写す and 考える (the beggar in WK) where one stroke is left to right in one and right to left in the other, EVERY SINGLE TIME it catches me out.

I’m not sure the SRS in the app is amazing, I feel like there is only a few stages, but I think it’s tweakable.

The worst is when I forget like a two stroke kanji, usually 八 or 七. I mean honestly. But it’s incredible how a kanji you’d recognise reading in milliseconds, close your eyes and try to visualize it and … nothing… :man_facepalming:

@ThousandJP pens look amazing, I did buy a big box of great pens from Japan but I found it makes writing on the reverse side a pain - could be I was pressing down too hard. I’m using the 0.7 mechanical pencil that was recommended. I love it and if it’s not where I’m expecting it to be when it’s kanji time, I’m raging around the house looking for it. I think the rest of the family have learnt not to touch dad’s special pencil from japan on fear of death. :laughing:

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#115

If you don’t mind using a mechanical pencil, I highly recommend the kurutoga series. The barrel spins as you write, so it always stays sharp, never creates weird curved lines and never catches on the paper. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to write with them, they’re amazing.

The pen. A slightly fatter version cause I find them more comfortable.

For some reason I just don’t enjoy writing with a pen as much cause I can’t erase mistakes. Seriously though. Kurutoga is great. I have like 5 unopened spares in case there is a worldwide mechanical pencil shortage. :sweat_smile:

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#116

It’s what I use too. They’re great. I’ve got a 0.5 and 0.7. A pen is really satisfying until the occasional flow issue (generally on the reverse side of a page). For a while I was writing the first seven attempts in pencil and the last 3 in pen. I just use a pencil now as it was a faff to change.

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#117

A fellow faff avoider :+1:.

#118

I really should invest in some kanji notebooks. I like writing things out when studying foreign languages, especially if it had a different writing system than English. I’m pretty sure that’s how I memorized kana. I’m currently taking notes on regular notebook paper which is…not great for Japanese.

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#119

I bought those successfully from the UK. Both are good.

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#120

Cool, thanks for the recommendations!

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#121

@jrmr50, glad you found a method that works for you :slight_smile:

I guess I’ll give an update myself, in my writing deck I’m at around 1300 or ~59% of the Jouyou kanji. Definitely noticing more kick back failures on the later SRS levels at this point. Last few weeks the review piles have been getting higher but trying to keep 3 lessons a day to finish the deck this year if possible, if not I may need to slow down. On a brighter note, reading hand written holiday cards felt easier than years prior, some nice real life progress. And I think reading speed has improved as well, I think the writing exercises has been the credit to that. Most everything in the first 1000 ~N2 realm seem relatively straight forward using meanings along with readings as the front to write out the kanji, probably because of pure frequency in reading of most frequent, but after a 1000 it feel more challenging.

Like everything else I’ve encountered w/ language learning, the methods have to evolve to suit the content and phase. Particularly content and context need to have more relevance. For instance, testing a kanji like 弥 with meaning alone has very little relevance unless you have a vocab like 弥生 that has some reading frequency to make useful. Nanori readings is another example. And many times even vocab has very relevance alone in SRS too unless having exercising it in context, a prime example of SRS leech building. So I’ve supplementing my writing deck with the Jouyou Kanji Writing deck and converted it so use the Mazec keyboard for writing output. It’s a different testing method, instead of a full meaning/reading, it’s just using the reading/audio in a particular sentence to populate the vocab word via writing; I think this will provide a bit more rounded writing testing method and helps with some boredom burn out and provide context to the writing as I do both in tandem. Also my readings have been getting sloppy on some kanji, so I will run another supplementary reading/mean deck just a brush up a bit on certain kanji as well…will see how it goes.

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#122

Personally I just print out the worksheet, it saves on shipping cost!

For instance https://happylilac.net/kanzi-200-a4.pdf

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#123

In my Kanji drawing Anki deck I display all associated vocabulary (taken from WaniKani currently) specifically in order to make the process more organic than just remembering the English meaning for Kanji in isolation.

It also makes practicing the kunyomi more enjoyable, because otherwise without the okurigana you’re just memorizing meaningless word fragments:

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#124

This page has the best kanji grid PDFs I’ve ever seen:

https://www.risugakusei.com/copy-of-resources

The PDFs are US 8.5" x 11" size (!), the variety of grid sizes is super convenient, and the lines turn out nice and clear on my laser printer.

That site hasn’t been updated in 5 years, so I saved the PDFs to my cloud accounts just in case. Big thanks to Risu Gakusei, whoever you were…

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#125

Interesting idea for a card front on having a partial vocab list half hidden. I think this will be helpful for those that want that kind of practice and a WK companion to help their reviews.

From my own experience, extracting Japanese from English clues almost always bottlenecks. While I still use it as a way to build output independently, it is selectively and keep in mind its limitations.

I got to about 1400 kanji on my original deck I had for myself and I think I’ve reached that aforementioned bottleneck and time to reassess why I’m doing this…plus life is getting in the way recently to attack it like I did before so I’m enjoying it less.

I’ve been using the Jouyou Writing deck converted for input w/ Mazec more lately it at least keeps the entire exercise in Japanese and provides a contextual sentence w/ audio for the vocab kana. I also got an Apple Pencil recently and I enjoy the muscle memory process of not only kanji but build up useful vocab writing practice as well (instead just my finger to draw on screen).

Sample: Jouyou Writing deck converted for input w/ Mazec

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#126

Yeah using pure jp-jp practice is of course ideal. I’m not there yet unfortunately…

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#127

There are sorts of levels and approaches, which is great; it makes writing practice far more accessible to everyone. Wish I had your deck while doing WK, it would have helped sort various issues I had which I’m still sorting out. ‘Best approach’ is always relative to the individual and what they need at any given moment plus whatever motivates them best.

There is this Kanji Kentei deck that is JP/JP as well that just has a ony/kuny front and nothing else. That’s way too brutal for my purposes, really just for test preppers I think, which I am not. When you have card fronts like こう, ぐ(ony) ひろ.い (kuny) and don’t know if it is 弘, 宏, 広 or 滉 (and probably others?) and that’s just one example. I think I’ll stick with context sentences with a kana vocab clue for the level I’m at.

Honestly, my best writing practice comes from real world scenarios…which is not much given not living in Japan. Mostly it’s just hand written letters for birthdays and new years and that’s about it.

#128

Got some of these arriving today. Not going to lie, really looking forward to using them. Feel like such a :nerd_face: but loving it

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#129

Love the new pen! @ThousandJP

Struggling a bit to know which strokes should be thick and thin. Though when I do, I think, “I bet in feudal Japan if you wrote someone’s name with the wrong thickness on a particular stroke, it would be seen as a mortal insult” and chuckle a bit.

Also I watched a video (which is in Japanese) on the amazon link where the guy said to hold the pen in the middle. So I’m using more of a flicky brush action than a drawing one.

The new pen is so forgiving on those longer straight strokes that I struggle with - on the right in the 関 you can see the thinness of the other pen, especially when used on a reverse side of a page, is a bit bumpy.

Still can’t remember Kanji lol, but a new bucket list item is to go and do a kanji workshop in Japan.

Sorry for nerding out with all my pen chat.

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Yeah was supposed to be doing my quartet writing homework but I was having too much fun.

Thought I’d try a bit of hiragana/katakana as well as I’ve never really tired that other than one of my earliest genki homework class assignments. Definitely needs some work.

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#130

:slightly_smiling_face:

Screen shot from the video below showing how to do the 8 different strokes with a brush pen in detail. I think there are English names for them too but knowing the Japanese names help since pretty much any Kanji book/resource for Japanese kids will have information like whether there is should be a はね or not.

Practicing some 永 every day will get you more than ready

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#131

This is not directly related but I think this thread would appreciate this:

Coolest Kanji Video I have ever seen

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#132

Next level stuff!