Kanji Stroke Order

Kanji stroke order can seem complex, but it all comes down to a few simple guidelines. As I promised in the post "Never be stumped by kanji again!" here is an overview of those guidelines. All of the images used in this post are taken from Jisho.org, so try searching kanji on there if you want to be sure of stroke order.

-Start at the top or left-most part of the kanji and work down.

Never be stumped by kanji again!

If you've ever come across a kanji that you couldn't read, but that you wanted to look up, then you've probably had that moment of “how the heck do I type the word into the dictionary to look it up when I can't look it up to see how to type it!” Yeah, that feeling sucks. Luckily, there are several ways to work around this problem that don't involve pulling out a print dictionary and spending ten minutes trying to find the kanji.

Use the Asterisk:

How to Learn the Kanji

One of the greatest hurdles in learning Japanese is finding a way to learn the kanji. If you've already made some attempts at learning kanji, then you're probably familiar with the I'll-write-it-down-a-few-hundred-times-and-bang-my-head-against-the-desk-until-I-remember-it method. Yeah, surprisingly, a mild concussion doesn't really help with learning the kanji. But luckily for all of us, there is a book that does help. That book is...

Handwriting Kanji

When it comes to learning kanji, it's easy to be overwhelmed. For most of us, the days of learning how to write our alphabet are far behind us, so we can't really remember what it's like to have to learn symbols. Add to this the complexity of many kanji and it's no wonder that foreigners shy away from learning Japanese, or at least from learning how to write kanji. This article is all about why you should overcome that fear and start writing.

Learn faster, remember better

Life after Remembering the Kanji

As one of the first steps in the road to learning Japanese, completing Heisig's book is a major milestone achievement. Unfortunately, when we finally reach these kinds of achievements there is a sense of loss and a feeling of being lost lurking behind the excitement. This post will hopefully remind you of how far you've come and give you somewhere new to go.

Learning the Kanji - A Second Look

In the first post about learning the kanji I didn't get very in-depth about the learning methods, so I would like to correct that error now by making a second post that focuses entirely on using James Heisig's book “Remembering the Kanji” to memorize the writings and meanings of the core 2000-ish kanji.

To begin with, the concept behind the “Heisig method” is simple – break every kanji into smaller parts, name those parts, and then bring them all together in a story (mnemonic device) so that you remember it. It probably sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is, so I'll do some simple examples.

In the first few lessons, most of the kanji are presented as is – meaning they are as basic as they come. Things like the numbers (一、二、三、四、五) and simple pictorials like mouth (口), eye (目), or sun (日). As the lessons progress, these basic kanji are then combined to create more complicated kanji. For example, the “elements” of sun (日) and eye (目) combine to form the kanji for risk (冒). Heisig gives a simple story along the lines of risking burning your eyes out by looking up at the sun. In the story, not only are all of the elements (sun and eye) named, but also their relation – eye looking up to sun. The name of the kanji itself is also given, so that you can identify it – risk.

Another early example is the kanji for bright (明). The two elements used are sun (日) and moon (月). The story is extremely simple – according to biblical myth, two bright lights watch over the planet – the sun by day and the moon by night. The placement isn't really an issue, because there are only two elements side by side, so simply putting the two together is good enough.

The entire book goes along in this manner, although the kanji do become bigger and scarier. The wonderful thing about it is that if you can learn those simple kanji in the first few lessons, then you can learn the later ones as well. Making stories can becoming tiring – because eventually the book stops giving the entire story and instead only lists elements – but as long as you use your imagination and get help from Reviewing the Kanji when needed, you'll have no problems.

In addition to learning the elements and stories for each kanji, you need be practicing writing the kanji. With each new kanji, aim to write it at least five times while reciting and thinking about your story. The power of the method is the story, so don't breeze over it. Try to draw the kanji only from your story, so that you can recall it later and truly master the kanji.

You'll also need to get a good review system going. Luckily for you, there's a fancy post all about reviewing the kanji!

Related Articles:

• How to Learn the Kanji
• Reviewing the Kanji 
• Handwriting Kanji
• Tool Pack Part 1
• The Secret of Language Learning is Retention 
• Never Stop Reviewing

Reviewing the Kanji

While thinking more about Heisig's Remembering the Kanji books I realized I haven't talked all that much about reviewing methods for the kanji, so I wanted to talk a bit more about that. In learning with the Heisig method, you'll be associating each kanji with a single keyword. This keyword is rather important for tying together all of the elements into a mnemonic story, so when you're first learning the kanji you'll be focusing a lot on that keyword.

As it turns out, the keyword truly is the key to remembering and reviewing the kanji – but the keyword is not important on its own. This means that while it's important to be able to see the keyword and recall the kanji, there is nothing to be gained from recalling the keyword from the kanji (aside from being able to piece together rough meanings). So how exactly should you study? It's simple. A flash card system with the keyword on the front and the kanji on the back is all you need.

There are many ways you could make the flashcards, using actual pen and paper (probably not worth the effort), Anki, or the website Reviewing the Kanji (highly recommend). Studying should go something like this: look at the keyword and try to recall the mnemonic story associated with it, which should then remind you of each kanji's elements, then draw the kanji out (using one square on a piece of graph paper to keep the size uniform). Flip the card – if you drew it correctly, then good job! Hit next and keep going! If not, then hit fail and try again in a few minutes. Don't be discouraged by failure, it's the key to learning.

I actually kept all of my old kanji practice pages, so I'll upload a few so that you can see how it goes. It's important that you actually write the kanji each time, because you're not likely to get much writing practice outside of these reviews (because typing is so prevalent). By continuing to write each kanji as you review, you'll strengthen your knowledge and make it effortless to write them later on. The longer you review, the less you'll rely on the mnemonic stories. Eventually you won't even want to use the keywords, which signals a new phase in kanji review (which I will detail in another post).

A final note: If at any point you begin to feel overwhelmed with your reviews, simply cut back. If you have hundreds of reviews per day, set a cap of 100 or 50 reviews, and then stop when you hit that number. Your reviews will eventually come back down as long as you continue to steadily work through them.

And now, here are some of my kanji pages:

They're all a bit old, which means they are both better and worse than my newer pages. The top two are from when I was actually learning the kanji, the last one is all review from various sources. The easier it is to recall the kanji, the worse my handwriting gets. Oh, and because my scanner is so high class, it didn't scan the lines of the graph paper - but you should be able to see where they'd be.

Related Articles:

• Handwriting Kanji
• How to Learn the Kanji
• Learning the Kanji - A Second Look  
• The Power of Limits
• Never Stop Reviewing 
• The Secret of Language Learning is Retention
• How to Learn Japanese in Five Minute Blocks