Mina-san, I know we promised this series a long time ago, but it sort of got lost in the shuffle. Parts 2 & 3 will be released at a later date. And Miki’s blog will return next week!

皆様「Mina-sama」, we’d love to hear as much feedback as possible on this lesson!
If you like this type of lesson, maybe we could work something in to the schedule!

I really love the moto “do it for fun” and that the fun is important. That’s a very nice way to put it やの先生！

Me myself would like that you slice up what yano says and let someone sum it up in english.

This really made me interested in taigo drama… I have never heard about that before.

Finally, let me stress this, Stop Practicing Writing 漢字! It’s an archaic skill that isn’t necessary !

While the need for handwriting kanji has certainly decreased with so much more communication being eletronic, I would hardly call handwriting an archaic skill. I don’t handwrite much in English anymore either, but I’m sure glad I know how. While it may be less important to communication nowadays, I also think that being able to reproduce a kanji from memory shows a deeper level of understanding than only being able to recognize it. Also there may be people out there who would find writing them, dare I say….fun! Technology is wonderful, but it is fallible. It’s not good to rely completely on it if you don’t absolutely have to. You never know when you might need to do things the old fashioned way.

So I would tell people that being able to write kanji is not as vital anymore, but I would still encourage them to at least be able to write some fundamental kanji and to also know the general stroke order rules (they’re really not that complicated). I find knowing the rules actually makes writing more complex characters easier as you have a structured guide in mind that you can follow and tackle the kanji in discreet sections rather than just randomly picking what line to draw when.

hahahaha, this thread took a twist i didn’t see coming!

BUT

maxさん、 i have to say, when i want to take a note or sign a document or write my address on something…. well… writing kanji and hiragana and katakana is essential. if i want to give a note to my japanese co-workers… should i print it out on the computer? that’s a colossal waste of paper and ink when i could just jot down a note. so i assert that writing kanji is not an archaic practice.

jockzonさん and neilさん、 as for the english, everything is included in the PDF! we didn’t omit it!!!

jockさん、about 大河ドラマ (taiga drama), it depends on the show, but if i may make a suggestion…. start with the 30 part 「新撰組!」

Henryさん、

i was just about to go to bed…. but i think you hit on the most interesting aspect of this whole issue.

i threw out my old keyboard-style dictionary for a ninteno ds-lite, because it accepts written input on its touch screen. even better… it reads them off of stroke order, so you have write it correctly for it to read correctly.

It should be news #53, can someone correct it? Thanks you.

ジャブちゃん I have trouble thinking of usernames, so when I was signing up to the Java forums I just made the word Java sound more stupid

Interesting stuff, I couldn’t understand all the Japanese but the PDF filled in the blanks (you should really set it to one column though, it’s a massive waste of paper). I agree with Max, it’s great to hear natural Japanese being spoken, you can learn a lot from it. I’ve thought about suggesting some sort of “lesson commentary”, where the hosts just have an unscripted conversation about the lesson content in a premium bonus track. It wouldn’t require any real preparation or write ups, just an extra bit of studio time, which I know all the crew loves

For people who can’t remember kanji, you need to know only three words: Heisig, Heisig, Heisig. I know the meaning and writing of hundreds of characters that I’ve only ever written once. All it takes is a bit of imagination, and a bit of disciplined review. Most characters are made up of a number of other characters or radicals, so if you learn them in the right order, and are able to recognise the different forms some characters take, you’ve got the right building blocks to put together the more complex characters (unfortunately the JLPT does the complete opposite of this).

Take the character for substance 質, it could be a confusing mess of 14 strokes, or it could be two axes and a shellfish 斤斤貝. You just put the three elements together and make an image which screams the word ’substance’. When I came to learning this character, I already had an image for axe (pretty straightforward), and one for shellfish (Dr Zoidberg from Futurama), so I just thought of a scene from Metal Gear Solid: Substance, and put in Zoidberg swinging two axes about. You can think of anything at all, as long as it encompasses all the elements, the more vivid it is the more it will stick.

I think anybody who wants to learn kanji quickly should at least give the method a go, what is there to lose?

Zoidberg!!!!

Javizy! You are my new best friend here. I LOVE FUTURAMA!!!!

great lesson today
i watch a lot of japanese dramas , first i watch reading the subs and
i watch again without reading ,it really helps me to pick up words
as for writing kanji i try write five or more everyday and is really helping me

The stroke order for left （左）and right （右）is easy- For left, you go over first (”leftover”) and for right, you go down first (”downright”) !

I don’t see how anyone could think learning to write Kanji is a waste of time. It just boggles the mind. The idea is absurd.

sorry maxiewawa, but I think you’re on a diferent wavelength.

I enjoyed hearing Yano-san! It’s quite a challenge for me to understand everything and I am now pouring over the kanji in the pdf, comparing it to the English translation and the audio. (Now, that’s ironic, isn’t it? — poring over the kanji, I mean)

As a former teacher, I will say this: the more modalities you use to learn something, the better you learn it. Writing kanji is a kinesthetic activity, which helps to form traces in the brain. So, writing, speaking and hearing are all important modalities for learning. The kanji that I drew in a class I once took are the kanji I remember the most. We wrote 後、曜、前, etc.

so much has been said.. well writing kanji always never easy for those who don’t have the foundation… but learning to pronoun in japanese always difficult for me ..I can understand the written form in Chinese but not in Japanese.. need alots of hard work .. Ganbatte ne…

Thank you to the slave at J-Pod who typed out the transcript for the interview - quite a task.　(Or maybe you trained Taro to do it?)

To throw in my two cents’ worth: everybody has a different learning style, so perhaps there’s little point arguing over whether physically practicing writing Kanji is a waste of time or not. Personally, I enjoy it. It can be almost meditative. But also, I find it helps me enormously in recognising differences in kanji that look similar to my brain. When I first started, I thought 乗る and 来る looked similar, and I confused 験、険、検 - until I tried to write them.

The book “Let’s Learn Kanji” by J.Y. Mitamura and Y.K. Mitamura was extremely helpful, I found. It has an approach of introducing radicals and components, including their meanings where there is one, and even how the components can sometimes help you guess the pronunciation. Now when I look at new kanji I can break it into parts, instead of seeing a mess of lines that mean nothing.

Am I the only one who is disappointed by the content of this lesson? Where are the answers to our questions?

Yes, it is great to have a long dialogue to practice comprehension but I was expecting some practical tips. How does hearing that ‘kanji are difficult’ and ‘ I don’t teach kanji to people until they are ready’ or look at the kanji on the stations ‘ help me (a non Japan resident)? As for the fact that a language has to be understood in the context of a culture any sensitive language learner will know that: it applies to any language!

It is no use telling us we do not have the advantage of natives because we are, well, …foreigners[why else would we learn Japanese as a foreign language?]!

I find that after finally arriving at the top of the beginner level there is a gap - a big gap - until the advanced level is reached. This is true for a lot of foreign languages but in Japanese the gap is huge. Mainly because one becomes totally dependent upon the natives teaching you and they seem to teach you what they want to teach you and not what you want to learn. You can study for years and still not get a single word of an anime dialogue or a soap meant for the general public in Japan.

I would have expected the Japanese, of all people, to be able to come up with a method for making the learning more EFFICIENT- through looking at how the language hangs together, the frequency of the expressions/vocabulary (if I have been taught the most common expressions why do they not come up in soaps and everyday news? ) and translating it into a METHOD to beat all methods! Remember Peter’s Swiss Army Knife expressions for the very beginner? Well why can’t we have the same skeleton key approach once we get to more sofisticated subjects?

JPOD101, you are the best around and I am sorry to have to come out with some frustrated words but you asked for feedback. Let us have some more practical advice from now on.

Mikuji

PS: Maybe there is a hidden agend here. Is learning Japanese supposed to be hard work so that the faint hearted can be kept out of interacting with the natives? Sometimes I wonder…Any sensitive student of the Italian langauge will know that a touch of paranoia is in my culture..