Compare (比)

Use the image of a spoon (ヒ) to create your stories.

Here we see two spoons and if we “compare” the two, the one on the right looks like the normal kanji for spoon (ヒ) but the one on the left looks a little squashed.

Use this “comparison” to get this kanji firmly separated in your mind from “north”.

Just to mess with your brain – ヒ is also the katakana for “hi”. Don’t get them confused ^^

North (北)

The Heisig primitive for ヒ is “two people sitting on the ground”.

Your mnemonic here is to visualise two people sitting back looking up at the “northern” stars in the sky or two people sitting back to back to keep warm in a freezing wind blowing in from the Arctic “north“.

Beware not to confuse the left hand side with the Heisig “turtle” primitive, which features in kanji such as 兆 (portent). However, the stroke order is different and the look is slightly different – confusing I know!

Download a pdf of today’s kanji →

Remember that if these don’t work for you, think of another story that makes sense to you.

It’s no use forcing yourself to remember a story that just won’t stick. The idea is to make it work for you and your memory will take care of the rest.

The possibilities are endless.

• Similar Kanji: Special, Wait and Hold
• Similar Kanji: Person vs Enter
• Mnemonics: Learn Japanese Faster
• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later
• Learn Kanji: North, South, East and West

Special (特)

Use the images of “cow (牛)” and “Buddhist Temple (寺)” to create your stories. The most popular mnemonic for this kanji is the use of “Cow” as a sacred or “special” animal in countries like India where, in some places, a person can be jailed for killing or injuring a cow!

Picture the religious image of a cow to remember that “special” “cows” roam freely in the “temple” grounds.

Wait (待)

The Heisig primitive on the left of this kanji means either “column”, “going” or “line” – in this instance we’ll use “line”. Again on the right hand side we see “Buddhist Temple (寺)”.

Imagine going to a well-known tourist area such as Nikko, in the height of the Japanese summer, and having to “wait” in “line” to see the “temples”. No-one likes to wait – use that image to make sure you remember this one.

Hold (持)

This time we have “finger” on the left and “Buddhist Temple (寺)” on the right.

At most temples you’ll see one or more large bells that are struck with a large wooden log or smaller bells that are rung by hand. We’re going to use the smaller bells as our story for this kanji.

The monks each “hold” a bell between their “fingers” and ring them at important times throughout the day at the “Buddhist Temple”.

Download a pdf of today’s kanji →

Remember that if these don’t work for you, think of another story that makes sense to you.

For example we could have used something like – “At a Buddhist temple, the monks hold their fingers together during prayer time” or the image of a monk holding himself up with one finger at the Buddhist temple.

The possibilities are endless.

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What can be really disheartening though is the realisation that after studying kanji for months or even years (depending on your daily kanji diet), you still cannot understand your favourite Japanese Facebook page or read the subtitles of your favourite anime.

It’s a vicious circle – you get frustrated because you can’t read enough kanji and stop studying. By not studying you never reach the point where you know enough not to get frustrated.

While nailing several hundred kanji is quite an effort and requires the sort of dedication and effort that not everyone possesses, I found it wasn’t until I hit the magic 1000 mark that everything started coming together – it’s what I call the lightbulb moment.

My Lightbulb Moment

I didn’t suddenly wake up one day and yell out “Praise the Lord, I can now read all the kanji! Hallelujah!” but over the course of several months, I clearly remember being able to look at a normal Japanese sentences on TV or a website and work out what it meant. It’s an exciting feeling and a proud moment – at least it was for me ^^

Kanji compounds become far less daunting when you can look at each character and recall each of their meanings. It’s also a great motivator knowing that the 25 kanji you’ll learn today is only going to make things even clearer tomorrow.

So if you’re sitting on 200, 300 or even 500 kanji and frustrated by your perceived Japanese illiteracy, make sure to remind yourself that the lightbulb moment is just around the corner. Yours may come at 700, 800 or 1000 but it will come – that’s guaranteed.

Five or six kanji a day and you’re all done in a year. Simple, huh? ^^

Image Credit: Pixiv

• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later
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• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit
• Just remember…..
• JLPT versus RTK: It’s Your Choice

Not only are kanji difficult to read, write and remember in the first instance, when you gradually start to acquire more and more kanji, you’ll start to notice that there are many kanji which look similar to those that you have already learned!

This post will go over a few of the kanji that are frequently encountered at a beginner level, and therefore tested in the JLPT N5 and N4 exams.

It’s no surprise that there are lots of kanji that have a similar visual appearance. After all, many kanji consist of radicals and components which are themselves simplified versions of other kanji and carry a meaning of their owSo, let’s get started!

右 ・ 左 ・ 友

‘Left’ 左 and ‘friend’ 友 look the same as they share the same radical.

There is no real reason why ‘right’ 右 and ‘left’ 左 look similar, as they come from quite different origins. Both were originally Chinese pictographs, that have evolved to look similar.

This explains why the stroke order of the two characters is different. The Chinese 屮 evolved into 左 over time and 又 became 右. You’ll see how this change happened by looking at the original seal scripts…

Seal script example →

Understand that the only link that 右 and 左 have is their opposing meaning and you’ll be fine!

天 ・ 夫

I get the feeling that many people mix these kanji up simply because they forget how they are properly written, similarly to how ほ is mixed up with ま if you forget that the top stroke cuts through one vertical line but not the other.

As long as you remember that the sky/heavens have a limit above which nothing can extend, you’ll find that these two become more difficult to mix up.

時 ・ 待 ・ 持 ・ 特

These four often pose a lot of problems to beginner learners and even scare some of them away from learning Japanese.

This is because they are all taught very early on and can be found very frequently in all kinds of Japanese texts.

The trick to cracking this problem is to learn the right part of the kanji by heart. It helps that 寺 itself is quite a useful kanji meaning ‘Buddhist temple’ which you’ll need to learn for JLPT N2 anyway.

The first one, ‘time, hour’ 時, is really easy to remember. Think of the ‘sun’ 日 passing over the Buddhist temple.

In ancient China, not unlike in Medieval Europe, a gong at temples was sounded every two hours to tell the time.

The other three are more abstract and so require a little bit more thought:

You’ll notice that the left radical of ‘to wait’ 待 is also found in 行 which is not a coincidence. 彳can often be found in characters pertaining to waiting, loitering and all kinds of movement and I like to remember it as the international symbol for ‘pause’ ❚❚.

The left radical of ‘to hold, to have’ 持 is in fact a simplified version of ‘hand’ 手. It too is frequently found in all kinds of useful characters and thus worth remembering by itself. In all four kanji, the reason for the presence of 寺 is purely phonetic, but you can think of monks holding something in their hands.

The left radical of ‘special’ 特 is ‘ox’ 牛. Especially if we take into account that many Japanese monks are vegetarian, a scrumptious piece of grilled beef at a temple must be really special!

火・水・氷

It’s a shame that ‘fire’ 火 and ‘water’ 水 look somewhat similar, as they are both used for days of the week.

When I was learning, I made a real point of thinking that for 火, the outermost strokes aren’t at all connected to the ‘body’ (pun intended) of the kanji, just like flickering flames of a fire.

As for distinguishing between 水 and 氷, why not think that that first extra stroke that you must add to write ‘ice’ is representative of that first extra bit of effort you must undertake to turn water into ice? A little abstract, I know, but I bet you’ll remember the difference now!

目・日

I don’t think that people usually have difference with these two, as they’re usually introduced in such different contexts. That said, in the pressure of the examination room, it’s all too easy to make a quick error. Which is more visually complicated at first glance, an eye, or the sun? This is why the kanji for eye has one extra stroke.

古・土・上

To distinguish between ‘old’ 古 and ‘soil’ 土, remember than in the former the cross is on top of a tombstone, where as in the latter, it’s planted in the soil.

As for ‘up’ 上, it can be easily remembered when paired with ‘down’ 下. In neither of these kanji does the smaller stroke extend all the way through the vertical stroke.

大・犬・太

These kanji are extremely similar, but they don’t usually present problems as they’re rather simple and are usually learned in different contexts. I’ve included them here for reference – particuary because ‘wide’ 太 and ‘big’ 大 can easily be muddled up as their meaning is so similar.

There are plenty more kanji that I could have included in this short run-through, in particular the various kanji that use the ‘gate’ 門 radical.

But, getting this lot right will stand you in good stead to become a kanji master! Which kanji do you think I should have included? Are there any that you have difficulty distinguishing between?

This is a guest post by Ollie Capehorn who’s part of the team that creates NihongoUp, the online Japanese textbook. You can read more at the Japanese blog and Twitter @nihongoup.

• Similar Kanji: Special, Wait and Hold
• Review: Kodansha Kanji Dictionary
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• Similar Kanji: White vs Day
• Similar Kanji: Noon vs Cow

In this article I’ll discuss how I got started learning kanji using the Remembering the Kanji system by James Heisig, and my results after a year of study.

Remembering The Kanji

What is Remembering the kanji?

In Remembering the Kanji (RTK), Heisig describes a method for learning kanji based on breaking each character down into component parts he calls primitives (separate from traditional kanji radicals) and then giving each of them a meaning.

The meaning of each primitive is used to construct a story, otherwise known as a mnemonic, that serves as a memory trigger for the keyword of each kanji.

Read more about Mnemonics →

By having enough parts put together in increasingly fantastical stories, the kanji and its keyword is firmly implanted in your brain.

Note that the primitives of each kanji used in the book are mostly different from the traditional kanji radicals and except for a few instances, the meaning assigned to the primitives has absolutely no relation to what the meaning of that ‘part’ might be as a singular kanji; the sole purpose of these meanings is to aid in constructing stories to learn their composing kanji.

It sounds like a complex system, but after the first hundred kanji or so, it becomes quite intuitive. You really start to ‘get’ it – the kanji begin to unravel from a seemingly random pile of strokes in to something surprisingly simple.

Why I Used It

The way I see it, there’s a scale of Japanese reading ability.

On one end you have absolutely no knowledge of any of the kanji whatsoever; this is where everyone starts.

At the other, there’s a complete understanding of the 2000-3000 most used kanji and their readings. This, along with a solid knowledge of kanji compounds and all of the requisite vocab and grammar, will allow you to reach native fluency.

The goal for me has always been to inch along the scale until my reading ability in Japanese is equivalent to that of my ability in English.

You only need to have been studying Japanese for a while to realize that knowing a few kanji in a sentence or word is not particularly useful.

If you’re reading a sentence and hit a kanji that you don’t know then you stop dead in your tracks. You really need to have an awareness of all the main kanji to read without constantly having to consult a dictionary.

While the Heisig method doesn’t take you to the other end of the scale, it gives you a solid grounding in all of the kanji you’re going to come across in day-to-day life in Japan. In this way, it acts as a very good start.

The goal by the end of the first RTK book (Remembering The Kanji Vol. 1) is familiarity with all the general-use kanji, known as jōyō kanji. If you go in to studying the Heisig method with this mindset, you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration later.

It’s also important to bear in mind that the first round of RTK (Remembering The Kanji Vol. 1) does not teach the readings at all.

So unlike most of you who are probably studying kanji by rote and learning everything about each character at once (readings, stroke order, English meanings etc), in RTK you will be learning just the stroke order, the kanji itself and one English keyword per kanji.

Volume 2 of RTK teaches the readings.

My Version of the Heisig Method

I began simply by reading the first few chapters of RTK and then set up a system of flashcards using a spaced repitition system (SRS), which was well before I had even heard of SRS software such as Anki.

Needless to say this lasted about a week before I lost motivation.

I then discovered a website that focusses solely on the Heisig Method – [Reviewing the Kanji][4]. It provides a free system where you tell it which kanji out of RTK you have studied up to and it gets you to review them at spaced intervals.

If you know the kanji well, it schedules the next review further in to the future. Not so well and it asks you to review it earlier. In this way you work your way through the entire RTK book, focusing on exactly the kanji that you find difficult.

This is a great little site and even better that it is provided as a free service. One of the great features is the ability to share and upvote other people’s mnemonics for each kanji, which keeps the quality of stories usually very high. Of course if you don’t like them you can always add your own.

I would review daily where possible, writing out each kanji that came up as a review. I normally had to do around a hundred reviews a day. Miss a day and this doubles up.

Admittedly, there were some days where I found it difficult to plough through my reviews (I drew the line at 300 in a single day) but I managed to stay on course through the entire book.

I worked through the entire book using the Heisig method and added cards only sporadically, fifty here, a hundred there. Eventually, I was stuck in Japan on a holiday and had a lot of free time on my hands, so I added the final 500 or so over the course of a week. From start to finish, it took me about eight months to add all the joyo kanji to the system.

The Results: One Year Later

I know for a fact that I can write every single one of the jōyō kanji. I no longer use the Review the Kanji website so it’s quite possible that my recognition is getting a little rusty, however there is one huge, life-altering difference between the way I am now and the way I was before studying kanji via the Heisig method.

I now have a vague sense of security in my kanji ability. Given an unfamiliar kanji, I probably know three or four that look something like it, form compound words with them, share radicals and probably readings etc. They are now a known entity, not some alien language and I feel a lot more comfortable when confronted with them than I did before.

Importantly, I still cannot read the vast majority of written Japanese text. There are other methods to achieve that goal, and it wasn’t something I was aiming of achieving entirely through the Heisig method.

What I got instead was confidence. This is something that’s is lacking when you first start out with kanji. At that stage, all you know is that they’re hard, there’s a lot of them, and it’s going to be a long and winding road before you’re even a little bit good.

After studying with the Heisig method though, I have a better understanding of the problem. I know I need to read lots of examples, see the kanji in a lot of different contexts and start practicing with real Japanese text.

The point is that after working through the book, you know it can be done. This alone was invaluable for me, and I recommend the RTK method to anyone who is seriously interested in learning to read Japanese.

More Reading

• Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1 →
• Download a pdf sample of Remembering The Kanji – Volume 1 →
• Japanese Mnemonic Blog →

I’m Ali, a software developer based in London, UK. I went to Japan for two years teaching English, and am currently planning my escape back to the promised land. In the meantime I write about studying Japanese at the Japanalicious blog.

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Do you know what konkatsu means? Could you name the traditional Japanese art in which a person sits on a stage and tells a funny story? What does the phrase, “Shiranu ga hotoke,” mean?

Challenging the applicant’s knowledge not just of Japanese language but also of Japanese culture, the first ever J-CLUE test will be held in October 2011. From AKB48 to Mount Fuji, questions deal with both modern and traditional Japanese culture.

Launched by J-CLUB (The Japanese Culture and Language Understanding Board) and the Hiragana Times the test takes a revolutionary approach to language learning by focusing of cultural aspects of Japan

Depending on your fluency, you can take the test in either English or Japanese.

Over 260 academic institutions, including universities, colleges and Japanese language schools, in Japan have now signed up to support the new J-CLUE test. To find out more about the kind of questions the test will cover please visit the J-Clue website.

The first test will be based in Japan and applications for the first test are currently being accepted.

The cost of the test is ¥4,500 which compares favourably to the fee charged for the JLPT (¥5,500) and profits will be donated to the East Japan Disaster Fund.

Source: Hiragana Times

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I’m always looking for different kanji practice paper online and while there’s several pdf downloads available, they’re often hard to find. So I thought why not make some myself ^^

Kanji practice paper is for anyone wanting to get started or improve their kanji writing skills. Each practice square is divided in to quarters to help with alignment.

Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve or add to the graph paper list.

Downloads

• Download Kanji Practice Paper (A4 pdf) →
• Download Kanji Practice Paper (US Letter pdf) →
• Download Kanji Practice Paper (Small Grid pdf) →

Handwriting image courtesy of ~Meli-ichigo

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If you’ve ever undertaken the arduous (and yet rewarding) task of learning the entire Jōyō kanji then you probably have, at some point along the way, had enough of it all.

The daily grind of learning new kanji, stroke orders, readings plus going over the old ones to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything is mostly exciting but occasionally just plain old boring.

When that feeling starts to hit you again, try a few of the following quick fixes that should help keep kanji reps from being – well – repetitive. ^^

Go Old School

Forever staring at a computer or phone screen doing your reps?

Why not try going old school for a day a week and printing out a set of flashcards on good old-fashioned paper. Yes, you’re helping to kill the planet but it’s time to be selfish as you have 1,681 kanji left to learn and they’re not going to learn themselves.

Physically holding the kanji in your hand on flashcards is a surprisingly different learning experience and you should find the change helpful. It worked for everyone before 1995 and I’m guessing it’ll work for you too.

There’s a great set of RTK flashcards to print out at www.polarcloud.com and tons of JLPT flashcards available for download at all the major flashcard sites.

Ask A Friend

Many of us choose to sit in solitude while studying our kanji reps. However, once in a while it’s a good idea to invite a friend, mum, dad, housemate, lover, wife, husband or even your pet dog* to help you out.

Using the flashcards that you printed out above, pass them around to your mates and let them quiz you. They don’t need to know any Japanese – anyone can hold up a kanji card for you.

You simply give your answer and they can see on the back of the card whether you’re right or wrong. Simple and fun.

* Pet dog not recommended for long term use

Mix It Up

If you always use a textbook to study kanji, try using an online resource for a day a week.

Sites like www.jlptstudy.com (JLPT) or kanji.koohii.com (RTK) are just a few examples to get you started. Make your way through the kanji on-screen as you would in your textbook.

You’ll find that a simple diversion from the daily textbook grind can really help keep things fresh.

Kanji Drinking Game

Now I don’t condone binge drinking (^^), however if you’re of the correct drinking age in your country and you’re looking to put a new twist on kanji reps then listen up.

Using the flashcards you printed out for RTK or JLPT, line up your beverage of choice eg Redbull and Vodka, Jägerbombs etc and form a circle on the floor with a group of friends (preferably other kanji nerds like yourself).

Every correct answer gives you a pass and every incorrect answer means another shot down the hatch. It will quickly become apparent who hasn’t been studying as much as they should have ^^.

So there’s a few ideas to keep from getting bored. If you have any of your own suggestions please leave a comment below.

Good luck!

• Learn Kanji: The Kanji Starter Kit
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• Remembering the Kanji: One Year Later

Kanji is obviously used everywhere in Japan from shopfront windows to neon signs, menus, books and magazines, TV and much more.

Some are easily recognisable after all those hours of study you’ve done but others can seemingly look like a random bunch of squiggles.

It can be intimidating and also a little depressing after learning kanji for a year or two only to find out how much you still have to learn.

This is particularly true for the more calligraphic font styles, which can be like starting from day one all over again.

To highlight the huge differences in kanji styles, I’ve chosen three distinctive fonts in the image below.

The first is a classic calligraphy style, the second one is a bit more fun, which I’ve seen on the likes of menus, restaurant signs and some drink bottles (like green tea) and the last one is a clean, modern style.

If you can’t read any of the first two lines of kanji, there’s no need to panic, it’s just a matter of practice and eventually it will all become much clearer. By viewing kanji in may different styles you’ll start to see the patterns and become much better at deciphering the “squiggles” ^_^

As with your own alphabet, once kanji becomes second nature to you through further study and immersion, the basic form of the character will be much easier to recognise, no matter what style it’s in.

So where can I practice with different styles of kanji?

Online Fonts

A quick google search brings up plenty of websites with kanji fonts available to download or purchase.

I’d suggest you try WAZU JAPAN’s Gallery of Unicode Fonts as they have links to heaps of free fonts.

So go ahead and download what you like and crack open Word or whatever your favourite text editor happens to be and start fiddling around with your new found kanji fonts.

Copy and paste kanji from anywhere on the web or, if your system allows it, just go ahead and type them straight in.

Try a few lines of the same kanji (let’s say 4-5 per line at 72pts or something nice and big on screen) and then go through and highlight different lines with different fonts. You’ll be surprised how different they can look.

Before printing them out, remove the lines with the easy kanji font and test yourself with what’s leftover.

Rinse, wash and repeat ^_^

BTW the kanji used in my first example are 運 福 漢 紋

Flickr

Head over to the Japanese Signs pool for thousands of examples of kanji (plus hiragana and katakana) on various signs across Japan.

The images are an invaluable resource for immersing yourself in “real Japanese” plus it’s all totally free so you have nothing to lose. ^_^

Best of luck and happy kanji hunting!

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Okay so maybe you won’t learn them all but perhaps a few kanji will sink in subliminally while watching this amazing video.

It features every unicode character from 0 – 65536 but fast-forward to 5:30 for the kanji to start.

Each kanji is grouped by radical, which makes them a little easier to view without going into some kanji-induced fit. ^_^

Grab a coffee – you’ll need it!

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