In the last 36 hours I've gotten e-mails from people from:
Sweden, China, Holland, Israel, Ireland, Puerto Rico, USA, Japan, England and Portugal.
Not gonna lie, I thought like 10 of my friends might e-mail me after for requests after I posted the video, but it's actually been 1 person I know and 36 people I don't know. The point of the video was to make sure I stayed motivated after I finished up all my family members and this has definitely worked. It's barely after 2:00 here and I have a solid 4 hours of studying already under my belt today and probably going to do another 4 or 5 before I go to bed.
<3
Thursday, February 23, 2012
So...many...questions!!
This is absolutely fantastic. Seriously I would say my favorite thing to do is answer questions and help people understand things. That's why I became a teacher. I freaking love answering questions. And wouldn't you believe it, I've gotten a lot of questions in the last day or so and although I love answering questions, answering them over and over isn't the most fun, so I'll put a compilation here.
Q1: I was also wondering, when you write the kanji, do you know the pronunciation for them, or are you just writing for practice?
When I write the kanji, I am either listening to a sentence and then trying to write out the sentence, or just going through Remembering the Kanji, where I just read the English meaning and write the kanji. So to answer your question, around 50% of the time I know the pronunciation.
Q2: What kind of graph paper did you use? Have you changed your methods since you started with this (for example, found certain pens that are more useful etc)?
I use 8mm and 10mm graph paper. 8mm when writing sentences, 10mm when writing just kanji. I haven't changed much, but I started out just picking out two random pens with no reason, and now I at least check the color wheel to make sure I'm choosing either complementary colors, or at least not two colors next to each other. As for pens, I started with a 10 pack that cost me a dollar and it was a waste of a dollar. I had to press down so hard on the paper and my hand got tired really easily. I tend to like easy writing pens, I got about 10 erasable pens and they were great, but they ran out very quickly. I actually just went to the store today and got a bunch of .5mm pens in hopes they'll last a little longer.
EDIT
My .5mm pens aren't going down very fast, but I don't like the thin lines they make, they make my kanji look much more messy. The fatter the better as far as looks. However, I got a 1.1mm pen once but it didn't even last me 2 days (maybe 5-6 mosaics) so it was fun while it lasted. I think these .5mm pens will last a while...not sure if I'll go back and buy some .7mm ones or not, I miss my fat kanji.
Q3: Do you know all of the kanji you wrote down by heart, or did you use a book to write some of them. If you know 100k kanji, you're a beast!
I know the stroke order and English meanings of about 2250ish. I know the pronunciations of about 1000 or so.
Q4: You took one of the kanji from a person's family name, and filled it in large on one page. And the other, smaller kanji on the same page are...what, exactly? All possible combinations you can make with the larger kanji? Do the smaller ones go before or after the larger one?
Ok so I have a sheet of graph paper that is 15x22 squares. Say I have a teacher who's name is 田中, I will draw the 田 on one side in one color, maybe using about 100 or so of the squares. Then I will fill in the others with different colors. On the other side, I'll do 中 the same way. All the little kanji are the same size. It's like making a mosaic of pictures, each of the little pictures is the same size, but they combine to make a bigger picture.
Q5: What was your strategy for counting these? Did you count the squares that the big kanji would require, or did you count them after you wrote the kanji?
The graph paper A was 15x22 (330 boxes) or graph paper B was 19x28 (532 boxes) so I just had to count how many sheets of graph paper I had of each and then multiply.
Q6: How do you feel this approach has helped you? Do you think it is an effective / efficient way to study these kanji?
I can't think of a better way. If you know a quicker way to learn kanji, let me know :) I started with Remembering the Kanji, but I think Kanji Damage would have been better. Right now I just listen to sentences and try to write the kanji. I usually take sentences from One Piece or movies so they stay fresh and aren't as bland as textbook example sentences.
Q7: Can you tell us what the song was?
If you do not know Jonsi, I suggest listening to the entire "Go" album before doing anything else.
Q8: Do you find that hand-writing the kanji noticeably increases your retention rate? Have you always practiced writing them, or is that something you only started to master after learning their readings/meanings first?
I don't think it makes too much of a difference these days for the easy kanji. I mean by now I've written all of the elementary kanji well over 100 times each and so writing them any more is probably a waste of time, but for the newer kanji I don't know well, if I really focus as I write and think hard about the pronunciation, it'll stick in my head for maybe an extra 3 seconds. I have pretty bad ADD so if I didn't write it, each kanji would probably only be in my head for a second or so.
I'm fairly certain I have never written a kanji incorrectly. When I first learned their English meaning I practice the correct stroke order and it always just makes sense, except maybe for 右 and 左. I don't know why the first two strokes are different, but I learned them from the start so I never gave myself the opportunity to write them wrong.
Q9: What kanji in particular do you use to make up someone's name? Is there a pattern or significance, or do you just fill it with random kanji to fill the grid?
The kanji that I write are just whatever comes up on my anki deck. They have no meaning other than helping me learn.
Q1: I was also wondering, when you write the kanji, do you know the pronunciation for them, or are you just writing for practice?
When I write the kanji, I am either listening to a sentence and then trying to write out the sentence, or just going through Remembering the Kanji, where I just read the English meaning and write the kanji. So to answer your question, around 50% of the time I know the pronunciation.
Q2: What kind of graph paper did you use? Have you changed your methods since you started with this (for example, found certain pens that are more useful etc)?
I use 8mm and 10mm graph paper. 8mm when writing sentences, 10mm when writing just kanji. I haven't changed much, but I started out just picking out two random pens with no reason, and now I at least check the color wheel to make sure I'm choosing either complementary colors, or at least not two colors next to each other. As for pens, I started with a 10 pack that cost me a dollar and it was a waste of a dollar. I had to press down so hard on the paper and my hand got tired really easily. I tend to like easy writing pens, I got about 10 erasable pens and they were great, but they ran out very quickly. I actually just went to the store today and got a bunch of .5mm pens in hopes they'll last a little longer.
EDIT
My .5mm pens aren't going down very fast, but I don't like the thin lines they make, they make my kanji look much more messy. The fatter the better as far as looks. However, I got a 1.1mm pen once but it didn't even last me 2 days (maybe 5-6 mosaics) so it was fun while it lasted. I think these .5mm pens will last a while...not sure if I'll go back and buy some .7mm ones or not, I miss my fat kanji.
Q3: Do you know all of the kanji you wrote down by heart, or did you use a book to write some of them. If you know 100k kanji, you're a beast!
I know the stroke order and English meanings of about 2250ish. I know the pronunciations of about 1000 or so.
Q4: You took one of the kanji from a person's family name, and filled it in large on one page. And the other, smaller kanji on the same page are...what, exactly? All possible combinations you can make with the larger kanji? Do the smaller ones go before or after the larger one?
Ok so I have a sheet of graph paper that is 15x22 squares. Say I have a teacher who's name is 田中, I will draw the 田 on one side in one color, maybe using about 100 or so of the squares. Then I will fill in the others with different colors. On the other side, I'll do 中 the same way. All the little kanji are the same size. It's like making a mosaic of pictures, each of the little pictures is the same size, but they combine to make a bigger picture.
Q5: What was your strategy for counting these? Did you count the squares that the big kanji would require, or did you count them after you wrote the kanji?
The graph paper A was 15x22 (330 boxes) or graph paper B was 19x28 (532 boxes) so I just had to count how many sheets of graph paper I had of each and then multiply.
Q6: How do you feel this approach has helped you? Do you think it is an effective / efficient way to study these kanji?
I can't think of a better way. If you know a quicker way to learn kanji, let me know :) I started with Remembering the Kanji, but I think Kanji Damage would have been better. Right now I just listen to sentences and try to write the kanji. I usually take sentences from One Piece or movies so they stay fresh and aren't as bland as textbook example sentences.
Q7: Can you tell us what the song was?
If you do not know Jonsi, I suggest listening to the entire "Go" album before doing anything else.
Q8: Do you find that hand-writing the kanji noticeably increases your retention rate? Have you always practiced writing them, or is that something you only started to master after learning their readings/meanings first?
I don't think it makes too much of a difference these days for the easy kanji. I mean by now I've written all of the elementary kanji well over 100 times each and so writing them any more is probably a waste of time, but for the newer kanji I don't know well, if I really focus as I write and think hard about the pronunciation, it'll stick in my head for maybe an extra 3 seconds. I have pretty bad ADD so if I didn't write it, each kanji would probably only be in my head for a second or so.
I'm fairly certain I have never written a kanji incorrectly. When I first learned their English meaning I practice the correct stroke order and it always just makes sense, except maybe for 右 and 左. I don't know why the first two strokes are different, but I learned them from the start so I never gave myself the opportunity to write them wrong.
Q9: What kanji in particular do you use to make up someone's name? Is there a pattern or significance, or do you just fill it with random kanji to fill the grid?
The kanji that I write are just whatever comes up on my anki deck. They have no meaning other than helping me learn.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Kanji Project!
At long last, I'd say somewhere around 1000 hours of studying and video editing, I have finished the biggest project of my life.
For those of you that just want to see the video, here it is On Vimeo On Youtube
For those of you who want to hear the story, read on (be warned, if you don't know much about Japanese, it might not make sense. And it's pretty long and boring.)
What the Mosaics Are
Each single mosaic is made up of 532 or 330 individual kanji. I start by writing out the kanji for my coworkers names, usually one big kanji per side, then fill in the other squares with a different color.
They're kind of hard to explain, but basically if you want one I can make one for you and so you can see for yourself. Anyhoo, if you are reading this then you are clearly an awesome person and so please don't hesitate to ask for one. Just send your mailing address to corcorantm28@gmail.com along with your name, and if you have any favorite colors I'll do them. English names are fine also, I already made them for most of my family members so no worries. I can translate any English name to Japanese (although since Japanese lacks a R, L, V and TH sound, some of the pronounciations will be off, but it's so cute to hear "Bahbahla" instead of "Barbara"）
How They Came About
I arrived in Japan not knowing the difference between hiragana and katakana and kanji but I was absolutely fascinated by the thousands upon thousands of mysterious little pictures that Japanese and Chinese people use as their written language. I began my time here as a JET (August of 2010) with a strong motivation to learn, but no idea how to learn. I thought you just show up in Japan and you learn Japanese, right? Oh how wrong I was.
So I went though August and September basically learning nothing and not knowing how to learn. It became worse because I was constantly meeting people who have been here for 3, 5 sometimes even 10 years and still didn't know anything besides a few basic greetings and then it hit me that I actually have to study and work hard if I want to learn this awesome language.
Around November I started learning the hiragana and by the middle of December I had a decent grasp of hiragana and katakana but kanji was a whole different story. Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets of 40 or so characters...Kanji is like 20,000 (but only around 2500 or so are used frequently in Japan) So I was starting to get to the point where I thought I wasn't going to learn kanji since by December I had been here 4 months and barely got the basics down.
My wonderful fiancee Heather came to visit in December of 2010 and it was a changing point for me. She asked me what everything meant and after living here for 4 months, I couldn't answer a single question she had, I knew nothing. It sparked a fire that has yet to go out.
She left on January 7th, 2011 and I immediately went to work studying kanji. I went through all of the book Remembering the Kanji by the end of January and learned all of the meanings of kanji in English thanks to a great program called Anki and 10 hours of studying every day for 20 days or so.
Then comes the hardest part, learning the Japanese readings for them. I went through February trying to keep up with my Anki reviews and constantly falling behind and lacking motivation. I knew the English meanings of the kanji, but there are so many compound words (words made of 2 or more kanji) that when I went to the library to read children's books, I couldn't understand anything. It was soon March and I had gotten very discouraged that my Japanese was still terrible despite putting in all that effort for learning all the kanji. I had a strong desire to learn the readings, but I lacked motivation necessary to do such a task and I didn't study nearly as much as I should have from mid February to April.
When I would get around to studying, I would just write kanji in these little dollar store graph paper notebooks and hammer out a few reps of anki before getting bored and quitting. Despite Khatz's best efforts to keep me motivated on AJATT I still couldn't get get myself to study very much.
Then one time I was around half way done with a piece of graph paper when I lost my nice 3 dollar black pen and had to resort to using a red pen that I use for grading papers. After I finished it with the red pen, I was like "whoa this is kind of sweet with half red and half black, maybe I can make other pictures with these sheets of graph paper." Then before you know it, the teacher sitting next to me, her name was 金野先生 and so I was like "what the heck, I'll make her name" then I finished it super fast and had a great day of studying and boom, next thing I know I'm making these for everyone in the office and I couldn't wait to open up anki and study Japanese so I could finish these pictures.
So now that I have been studying pretty hard since around April of 2011, I have gone from not being able to understand children's books to being able to get most of the details out of newspapers. I have somewhere around a 6th to 7th grade reading level, so I still have a long long ways to get fluent, so this is where you come in. Now that I've finished making them for most of my family and friends, I am worried I will start to lose motivation again, so if you shoot me an e-mail and ask me for one of these, you'll help me stay motivated to keep learning, and you'll be the recipient of a piece of paper with your name written in 330 Kanji.
Thanks for reading!
For those of you that just want to see the video, here it is On Vimeo On Youtube
For those of you who want to hear the story, read on (be warned, if you don't know much about Japanese, it might not make sense. And it's pretty long and boring.)
What the Mosaics Are
Each single mosaic is made up of 532 or 330 individual kanji. I start by writing out the kanji for my coworkers names, usually one big kanji per side, then fill in the other squares with a different color.
They're kind of hard to explain, but basically if you want one I can make one for you and so you can see for yourself. Anyhoo, if you are reading this then you are clearly an awesome person and so please don't hesitate to ask for one. Just send your mailing address to corcorantm28@gmail.com along with your name, and if you have any favorite colors I'll do them. English names are fine also, I already made them for most of my family members so no worries. I can translate any English name to Japanese (although since Japanese lacks a R, L, V and TH sound, some of the pronounciations will be off, but it's so cute to hear "Bahbahla" instead of "Barbara"）
How They Came About
I arrived in Japan not knowing the difference between hiragana and katakana and kanji but I was absolutely fascinated by the thousands upon thousands of mysterious little pictures that Japanese and Chinese people use as their written language. I began my time here as a JET (August of 2010) with a strong motivation to learn, but no idea how to learn. I thought you just show up in Japan and you learn Japanese, right? Oh how wrong I was.
So I went though August and September basically learning nothing and not knowing how to learn. It became worse because I was constantly meeting people who have been here for 3, 5 sometimes even 10 years and still didn't know anything besides a few basic greetings and then it hit me that I actually have to study and work hard if I want to learn this awesome language.
Around November I started learning the hiragana and by the middle of December I had a decent grasp of hiragana and katakana but kanji was a whole different story. Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets of 40 or so characters...Kanji is like 20,000 (but only around 2500 or so are used frequently in Japan) So I was starting to get to the point where I thought I wasn't going to learn kanji since by December I had been here 4 months and barely got the basics down.
My wonderful fiancee Heather came to visit in December of 2010 and it was a changing point for me. She asked me what everything meant and after living here for 4 months, I couldn't answer a single question she had, I knew nothing. It sparked a fire that has yet to go out.
She left on January 7th, 2011 and I immediately went to work studying kanji. I went through all of the book Remembering the Kanji by the end of January and learned all of the meanings of kanji in English thanks to a great program called Anki and 10 hours of studying every day for 20 days or so.
Then comes the hardest part, learning the Japanese readings for them. I went through February trying to keep up with my Anki reviews and constantly falling behind and lacking motivation. I knew the English meanings of the kanji, but there are so many compound words (words made of 2 or more kanji) that when I went to the library to read children's books, I couldn't understand anything. It was soon March and I had gotten very discouraged that my Japanese was still terrible despite putting in all that effort for learning all the kanji. I had a strong desire to learn the readings, but I lacked motivation necessary to do such a task and I didn't study nearly as much as I should have from mid February to April.
When I would get around to studying, I would just write kanji in these little dollar store graph paper notebooks and hammer out a few reps of anki before getting bored and quitting. Despite Khatz's best efforts to keep me motivated on AJATT I still couldn't get get myself to study very much.
Then one time I was around half way done with a piece of graph paper when I lost my nice 3 dollar black pen and had to resort to using a red pen that I use for grading papers. After I finished it with the red pen, I was like "whoa this is kind of sweet with half red and half black, maybe I can make other pictures with these sheets of graph paper." Then before you know it, the teacher sitting next to me, her name was 金野先生 and so I was like "what the heck, I'll make her name" then I finished it super fast and had a great day of studying and boom, next thing I know I'm making these for everyone in the office and I couldn't wait to open up anki and study Japanese so I could finish these pictures.
So now that I have been studying pretty hard since around April of 2011, I have gone from not being able to understand children's books to being able to get most of the details out of newspapers. I have somewhere around a 6th to 7th grade reading level, so I still have a long long ways to get fluent, so this is where you come in. Now that I've finished making them for most of my family and friends, I am worried I will start to lose motivation again, so if you shoot me an e-mail and ask me for one of these, you'll help me stay motivated to keep learning, and you'll be the recipient of a piece of paper with your name written in 330 Kanji.
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Sooooo close!
So first of all, somehow over the past 3 months of never updating this, I have gained a faithful reader. There seem to be three people that check this every day, so I'm very sorry mom, pop and Heather (I'm pretty sure it's you three?) that you guys keep checking and finding nothing new. Well that is about to change.
I have almost finally finished this stupid kanji video that I've been putting off so much. You'd think after a year of working on something that it would be fantastic, but whatever it's finally done. I stayed up until 2am last night putting the finishing touches on the video and so all I have to do tonight (I'm at school and can't edit here) is change one little part that will take about 10 minutes then render it and upload it then tomorrow I'll write a longer blog entry devoted just to the video.
My next project now will be going through the like 1000 pictures that I have on my computer and writing stories about them. That will hopefully not take me too long since I can go through a few at a time and then when I want a study break, instead of checking Facebook, I'll post a picture and write the story behind it. I have a year's worth of adventures that I haven't been blogging about because I thought that I should be working on the kanji video instead of blogging, but what ended up happening was that I would not work on either. So anyhoo, this is a pointless entry and all I want to do is say sorry for never updating but you'll find out the reason in about 16 hours or so.
I have almost finally finished this stupid kanji video that I've been putting off so much. You'd think after a year of working on something that it would be fantastic, but whatever it's finally done. I stayed up until 2am last night putting the finishing touches on the video and so all I have to do tonight (I'm at school and can't edit here) is change one little part that will take about 10 minutes then render it and upload it then tomorrow I'll write a longer blog entry devoted just to the video.
My next project now will be going through the like 1000 pictures that I have on my computer and writing stories about them. That will hopefully not take me too long since I can go through a few at a time and then when I want a study break, instead of checking Facebook, I'll post a picture and write the story behind it. I have a year's worth of adventures that I haven't been blogging about because I thought that I should be working on the kanji video instead of blogging, but what ended up happening was that I would not work on either. So anyhoo, this is a pointless entry and all I want to do is say sorry for never updating but you'll find out the reason in about 16 hours or so.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Typical Trip to the Grocery Store
Today as I was deciding which of the 10 varieties of Natto to buy, I caught a 5 year old boy staring at me and we locked eyes for a solid two seconds while I gave a little bow. He ran super fast across the produce section to his mom, tugged her coat and screamed (in Japanese) "MOTHER TALK TO THAT MAN IN ENGLISH!!!"
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
December!
Holy cow time flies by.
So I was partially successful with my goal of completing all the pictures in November...I finished the actual work of making all the mosiacs last night at about 8pm, leaving me a solid 4 hours ahead of schedule. But when I tried to take pictures in my apartment, I couldn't get anywhere where there wasn't a massive glare from my lights, so I think I am going to have to wait until Saturday to take some pictures since I am never home when there's sunlight during the week.
1) Finish mosaics for every Japanese person I know.
2) Take pictures of said mosiacs. (saturday)
3) Make a video of the adventure. (before Heather comes on the 27th)
So yea, I hope you are having an excellent day. Thank you so much for reading this. You are fantastic.
Also, I recommend you go out to the store right now and buy some fresh Mandarin oranges, they are at the peak season right now. Super cheap. Super delicious. You won't regret eating 6 of them for breakfast.
note: Apparently my blog is on Central Standard Time, so even though this post says it was posted November 30th, I promise you that right now it is December 1st.
So I was partially successful with my goal of completing all the pictures in November...I finished the actual work of making all the mosiacs last night at about 8pm, leaving me a solid 4 hours ahead of schedule. But when I tried to take pictures in my apartment, I couldn't get anywhere where there wasn't a massive glare from my lights, so I think I am going to have to wait until Saturday to take some pictures since I am never home when there's sunlight during the week.
2) Take pictures of said mosiacs. (saturday)
3) Make a video of the adventure. (before Heather comes on the 27th)
So yea, I hope you are having an excellent day. Thank you so much for reading this. You are fantastic.
Also, I recommend you go out to the store right now and buy some fresh Mandarin oranges, they are at the peak season right now. Super cheap. Super delicious. You won't regret eating 6 of them for breakfast.
note: Apparently my blog is on Central Standard Time, so even though this post says it was posted November 30th, I promise you that right now it is December 1st.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Just a Warning
I'm going into pretty heavy Gotta-Finish-This-Kanji-Thing before Heather visits in December so I will likely not be updating for a little bit. I had originally planned to finish in November sometime, but it's looking more like it'll be December. Now the goal is to finish the pictures in November and then the video in December.
Love,
Tom
Love,
Tom
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