How to read Visual Novels in Japanese in 2 years time (step by step guide). Learn to read visual novels through reading visual novels or watching anime.
- Aaeru
Introduction
Nowadays learning Japanese has become much easier thanks to the advent of text-hooking software. ITH can extract the Japanese text displayed in the game and copy it in real-time onto your clipboard. Then using software like Translation Aggregator you can parse this text through an electronic dictionary or Google translate. The meanings of the words pop up on the screen as soon as they appear in the game. No need to go looking up physical dictionaries. JParser also highlights syntax for you, a huge reading advantage for beginners. Most dialogue in visual novels are voiced. This is a great bonus to those people who grew up watching fansubbed Anime.
Learn to read by watching Anime
In fact, ITH is not limited to just visual novels. You can use it for Anime with Japanese subtitles too! (or even Jdrama + movies) Unfortunately very few anime released in Japan on DVD or Blu-ray come with a subtitles option (although funny enough it is available when it’s being aired on TV). Please see step 4 anime alternative.
The Kanji Factor (the greatest challenge)
If you want to learn to read Japanese, you must tackle 2000 Kanji. (updated to 2136 kanji in Nov 2010.) To do this – use Heisig’s Remember The Kanji method, the single most effective method in existence. (see kanji.koohii.com). The mechanic is: Mnemonics + SRS but the true challenge is your discipline.
Note: The methods documented in this article only teach you how to read. It does nothing for your hearing, speaking or listening skills. The objective is to fast-track your reading skills, enabling you to enjoy over 90% of all video games produced in Japan.
Steps
Step One
1)Learn 46 Hiragana and 50 Katakana. Use mnemonics. This will take 7 to 21 days.
- Hiragana http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~if2n-szk/mnemonics.html
- Katakana http://www.canyouchopstick.com/2011/01/katakana-mnemonic/
or Katakana for iPhone/iPad [iTunes]
Step Two
2) Learn 2000 2136 Kanji. This will take 100 to 365 days
- 2A) Download Anki
- http://ankisrs.net/ (also available on iPhone & Android devices)
- 2B) Open it up, click on File > Download > Shared Deck
- 2C) Select the Heisig’s Remember the Kanji (RTK) 1+3 and click OK
- 2D) Open the deck then click Settings > Deck Properties > then press the Edit button > then Card Layout.
- 2E) Press the Flip button. Done.
- 2F) Register a new account at the Koohii website.
- http://kanji.koohii.com/study
This site lets you read other people’s mnemonics! Absolutely indispensable! - 2G) Find yourself a copy of Heisig Remember the Kanji 1. (Try looking on thePirateBay.org or Amazon) then Read it. (or view it here http://www.booksbooksbooks.ru/download/Remembering_Kanji_I.pdf) ty Juraya
2H) Start reviewing. - I recommend using the definitions provided on kanji.koohii.com and the user generated mnemonics over Heisig’s because some of Heisig’s definitions are obsolete or incorrect.
- If you select 20 new Kanji cards per day, it will take you over 100 days to memorize all 2136. Adjust the speed of your learning to your own preference. You cannot take breaks. If you do, you will have wasted all your time. You must review at least once a day. When you reach 2136 Kanji, stop (but keep reviewing).
Step Three
3) Read all of Tae Kim’s Japanese Grammar guide. This will take about 2~ weeks.
- http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
- You will need to revise it several times to familiarize with it all.
Step Four
4) Start reading visual novels. Reading is ongoing. This will take the rest of your life.
- 4A) Pick a visual novel with extremely simple language such as anything developed by Union Shift: Blossom (i.e. Flyable Heart, Nanatsuiro Drops).Visual Novels by Language Difficulty
Start with something that has been fan translated and the English scripts have been made available somewhere online (such as on TLWiki). You can try asking the individual groups if they would be willing to distribute the scripts. - Next, Acquire the game and install it. Try searching on nihonmaru.com or anime-sharing.com (But Please see notice below!) Make sure you set your PC to Japanese Locale.
- 4B) Download ITH (Link)
- Hook the visual novel up to ITH.
- 4C) Download Translation Aggregator (Link)
- Set up JParser.
- 4D) Create a new deck in Anki and give it a name.
- 4E) Start reading and everytime you come across a word you don’t know, add it to Anki. (Which should basically be every single word when you first start)
Step Four Anime Alternative
4) Alternatively, you can start reading your Anime.
4A) First download ITH (Link).
4B) Then download Translation Aggregator (Link).
4C) Set up JParser.
- Method 1
- Visit anidb.net and search for a series you are interested in.
- Look for a group that fansubbed it into Japanese. For example, Lucky Star had 4 groups that releases their anime with Japanese subtitles in it. (or use the Advanced search feature and indicate Japanese fan-subtitled shows only)
- Download the anime via torrent (nyaatorrent.org or tokyotosho.org) or DDL (animetosho.com) or if unavailable, visit the fansub group’s IRC channel and download it from their bots.
- Method 2
- Visit http://kitsunekko.net/subtitles/japanese/
- Look for a .srt or .ass for a title you are interested in. (limited selection)
- Download the corresponding anime in raw or fansubbed (doesn’t matter as long as it is not hardsubbed)
- File > Load Subtitle.
- If the subtitle is mistimed, use Aegisub.
- Method 3
- Visit http://npo-masc.org/db/
- This is a database of all DVDs and Blu-rays that have Japanese subtitles.
- Search for a title that you are interested in. For example, Clannad Blu-ray box has Japanese subtitles.
- Acquire the title.
And Finally:
4D) Open ITH.
4E) Make sure: Options > Auto copy to clipboard is ticked.
4F) Process > choose: mpc-hc.exe > Attach > OK (please use media player classic).
4G) Run the video player until the first one/two lines of Japanese text has appeared.
4H) Click the large dropdown bar that should say OxFFFFFFFF:ConsoleOutput and change it to TextOutW.
4I) Every time you come across a word you don’t know, add it to Anki.
For JDrama Japanese subtitles, visit d-addicts.com.
Summary
The guide was designed to fast-track you to a point where you can read. Reading is important. If you have 30 minutes of study time, I would prioritize reading over anything else. If Anki is taking too much time I would suggest cutting back on adding new words and just go read. Read and read and read until the cows come home! In 2 years time (or 1 year if you are fast!), you should be able to understand 90% of what is being said in a standard visual novel. You won’t be able to read everything. You won’t be able to read Rui wa Tomo or Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa nai for example.
Also, you will reach a certain point where reading will grant you diminishing returns. Unfortunately Tae Kim’s will only take you so far. From here on you will need to find your own way to acquire more grammar. Jgram.org and Renshuu.org are places I found quite useful. Also scurry through all the resource found on Koohii forums. Good English explanations for all particles here.
FINAL NOTE
It doesn’t matter what age you are, as long as you can understand how to use my guide and can understand how to use mnemonics you will do fine. It only takes a person to be a human being in order to learn how to read Japanese. There are no other requirements.
I recommend supporting the companies once you are financially able to do so. I suggest starting with buying only the games you truly truly love.
Update: For the 2136 Kanji RTK method, the reason why we do it this way with Mnemonics is because it is the most efficient way to learn 10,000+ odd bits of very simple pieces of information. Heisig method follows two golden rules:
1. Simple is key (easy to remember)
2. It gets SRS’d (it goes into long-term memory)
Feel free to suggest anything else you have found helpful.
Fuwanovel
Hau~ Omochikaeri~!
Comments
Thanks so much for writing this guide. More people need to know about how much reading a new language can help you improve QUICKLY.
Hm… Interesting. I picked up japanese recently (mainly because of vn’s and ranobe) and I am currently learning kana. I’ll happily give a try to your method as well ^^
Aaeru-san, thanks for your guide; I’m sure it’ll help many people appreciate the value of Visual Novels. I do, however, wish to add in a few things.
1) Japanese to English translators are often incorrect with the grammar. Personally, they should only be used to translate Kanji, which are the hard parts. I also know that you can actually modify one of the Jap->Eng translators called “Atlas”, which will allow fluidity of translations. Of course, while Atlas is a shareware, you can always find a cracked copy somewhere on the interwebs
2) Experience with another Eastern Language makes everything easier. I am Korean, and I learned Japanese merely through anime and visual novels; no classes or tutoring. While I still have trouble with the harder kanjis and cannot necessarily write Japanese, I’m fluent enough to possibly visit Japan and have no trouble communicating with people there.
3) While regretful, I suggest learning programs if you truly wish to learn Japanese. Rosetta Stone is a good choice. It’ll be a worthy investment.
The mentioning of ITH is good, nonetheless; it is an essential tool for non-Japanese, regardless of whether they are fluent or not.
I want to re-emphasize that: Memorizing kanji is not a talent thing (you dont have to be special at language-learning). all it takes is time. It’s just time and energy.
Once you get your paces going and you utilize the method devised by Heisig you will understand what I mean. this is the fastest way I know for translating your time and energy directly into results. and no we are not learning Japanese. the guide just says how to READ japanese. your other japanese-related skillsets are simply left behind for the time being.
Wonderful post. This is one of the most informative posts I have read in regards to getting a basic grasp of Japanese. I will say that you would have to watch tons of anime to pick up on the language. But you do pick up words without even realizing it. Imagine making a concerted effort!
So I’ve been rereading this blog to understand the directions and I don’t see how I can do this AND learn Spanish. But to be able to watch anime without worrying about subtitles would be great. What to do? What to do?
Shouldn’t the answer be obvious? You can use Japanese to watch anime, play VN’s, and read manga. You can use Spanish to…. work at McDonald’s? Just joking, of course. ;)
How to learn japanese:
1. Learn kana
2. Learn kanji
Easy for you to say, lol.
You’d need to learn the grammar as well
I don’t think rote memorizing kanji is that necessary. As moogy said elsewhere, is a chore and not that useful without context. And in any case, I think better to learn vocabulary rather than individual kanji. Having a solid grasp of grammar (and while getting that you will learn some vocabulary) and then starting with VNs should work (though it’s true the first ones WILL take you an eternity to go through).
According to Heisig, our brains can do very little with squiggles and illegible moonrunes. If you can’t recognize the shapes then it becomes very difficult to allocate them into memory.
The Heisig method teaches only ‘One word per kanji’ – even though we know that there are many many more ways to use a kanji. The point is you are not learning the full word so much as you are tying the shape up to an english word so that your brain can reference it later down the track (in other mnemonics). of course it helps that the english word is supposed to be the main definition of that kanji. One word – and no more. The point is simple. Simple is key to this strategy.
and seriously to Moogy – this is not even fully learning Japanese. this is fast-tracking yourself to a point where you can play Japanese video games!
playing video games doesn’t exactly require a full-course treatment you know, as long as you can understand enough to play – who cares? if later down the track you want to build upon your existing skills then go ahead.
I already did steps 1-4. Does that mean I know Japanese?
No, that only means you can play japanese video games. You don’t actually know Japanese.
ショボーン~
But…But..I know all my kanji since I’m Chinese! And I took Japanese classes too. :(
Learning the Kana won’t take such many time (ô_O)
With a bit imagination and interest you can learn all rudimentarily perfect(read, write) in less than a day (so was it in my case)
IMO Anki isn’t that necessary. Kanji Koohii has it’s own flashcard system that works just as well. Even better I think.
Anki’s scheduling algorithm (SM-2, http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm) is significantly superior to the Leitner system (Koohii).
Hmm, can you help me on what should I do? I am fluent in speaking Japanese, but my reading is only elementary and my writing is near shit. So it’s really awkward how I can understand whenever their dialogue, but then I have to kinda’ve infer what the protagonist is saying/thinking because they are not voiced (usually).
I understand grammer fluently, I can read most, if not all manga with fluency, and I can speak and understand with fluency. But Visual Novels and Light Novels have so much more kanji then manga’s T.T
Hi I left a message on koohii forums. hopefully someone might see it and give some advice, because I honestly don’t know
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=164532#p164532
Thanks :D
One thing I found really helpful that I didn’t see mentioned above is the use of the “Japanese support” plugin in Anki. Using this feature enables the use of a Japanese card template which automatically repeats the Anki question in the answer section with furigana added (it’s fairly reliable, although it does have minor flaws, but it is possible to correct the furigana manually if need be). I found that seeing the furigana in every review automatically made the pronunciation of most words stick in my mind eventually without making any extra effort. Even if one decides to focus only on reading (which I am doing myself), I see no reason not to use this feature as learning the pronunciation for most words without any real effort seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Here’s a link to an example image I made to illustrate how it works (forgive my lack of paint skills). The circled lines are the lines I entered when creating the card, the other lines were automatically made by Anki.
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3636/examplewithjapaneseplug.jpg
I hope the link works; I’m terrible at uploading pictures and linking to them. =P
Or~
We can all be lazy and be like me!
1) Learn the Japanese Grammar + Katakana + Hiragana
2) Use translators for Kanji.
3) ???
4) Profit!
In the process of playing Visual Novel games, you pick up the easy kanjis really quickly, and it’s all about time.
Examples:
山 (Mountain)
分 (part)
水 (water).
You get my point. I’m not going to write up all 200 of the kanji I know simply by playing Visual Novels.
LOL, Kanji for Mountain doesn’t show.
(*#*($*@&#*(!
山
Looks ok in IE9 and bugged in Chrome. Both detect page as utf-8
Sounds too simple……..but also one that looks least like a prank
I guess I’ll give it a try……………
… Two years… (Picks up a calendar). Oh, who cares! I’ll just persevere! Let no Mayan prophecy stand in my way!
It’s one year only if you can do 1.5hrs a day.
2 years only because people are people. they screw up or they get lazy
about 1 hr a day for the 2 yrs option
wow, this is so great! I find it more easier to learn Japanese because of this
I am too excitied and I want to share this on forum in my country, can I? @_@
I hope on April when Mahoyo come out I’ll be able to read it without translation, though it may be really difficult to learn less than 2 years
yes it’s the same method I used to learn to read Japanese very quickly back in 2009.
yes of course you can. as long as you find it helpful
Thank you so much Aaeru-san I really apprecciate it. All my written there will be credited to you >,<
Oh my! How could this post pass by unnoticed under my nose?
I resumed my japanese studies on my own recently (no time to attend lessons due college), and I started by reading (and translating) LN and manga using pencil, paper and Wakan, so I can get used again to the language by understanding what the hell I’m writing xD It’s a tedious and slow, although somehow effective, method.
The thing is, now I’m going to check out all these new options to continue learning; specially through anime, since I find lack “auditive training” xD Anyways, thanks for posting this! Cheers!
Started on this about a month ago – already done with both kanas, and about 300 characters into the kanji, at a pace of about 20 characters a day. I can see this is gonna take a lot of frigging perseverance from my end, considering the fact that I have to restudy (on average) 2-5 characters every day. @_@
I hope it pays off in the end – There’s plenty of J-RPGs and manga that I’ve always wanted to play/read, but were never translated. Although the fact that I can’t really read (pronounce) the actual kanji characters themselves kinda bothers me. Guess that’s more of a secondary concern for now, though.
Still, I’ve gotta thank you for putting up this guide. I’ve always wanted to read/play Jap games & manga (without having to depend on localized releases that may or may not ever see the day of light), but the thought of learning a language as complex and daunting as Japanese always scared me off. And while I may not “know” Japanese by the end of this, I will at the very least be able to enjoy my favourite forms of entertainment in their native language.
wow 20 is a lot. careful you don’t burnout
Hello Aaeru,
first I want to thank you for taking your time and put up a guide for us people.
I also found myself in trouble where to start and with this guide I have at least somehow a plan which I can use. Personally, I am just at the begining, having just finished hiragana and now moving to katakana, since I cant take too much time for them atm since law exams are coming up :O
Well, about the other main point why I´m writing here. I have a few questions about some of the later steps, since I´ve decided to already take a look at anki and koohi.
My first question is whether one really need anki, at least for the Kanji study, since there is a flash card system implemented on the website?
Another conern that I have is, that with this I´m going to learn the meaning of the kanji, but not their reading. I know that this sometimes is hard, since there is at least a japanese and a chinese reading (at least as far as I have read about it so far), but isn´t that also an important part of it? Or will I learn about reading them through reading afterwards?
Oh, and the last thing I wanted to ask. As far as you said there are those 2136 Kanji out there. But on both koohi and anki the amount of flashcards is at about 3000. Do you know why that is?
That´s about my questions. Thanks again for taking time to answer my questions :)
Greets!
yeah with readings, as far as I’ve read, koohii forums doesn’t really recommend drilling through those. Heisig wrote a drilling program in his 2nd book in the RTK for the very purpose of remembering readings (probably wrote it back in the 80s) but people nowadays regard that as a very unnecessary step. It appears readings just come to you naturally as you expose yourself to lots of visual novels and lots of different mediums, as it has for me fortunately.
The 2136 is jōyō kanji
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji
In Japan a law says that newspapers and many many other written materials are not allowed to use more than the 2136 kanji specified. Basically 2136 is enough to get by but 3000 will help you read higher literature (e.g. fiction books for adults). hope that helps
About using Kanji Koohii or Anki – I’ve only been at it for a month, but I find that I’ve had best results when I make use of both.
Use Kanji Koohii to get the mnemonics and drill the kanji’s into your head. This is something that Anki doesn’t really provide, so really, it’s pretty much necessary to get it from Kanji Koohii (henceforth referred to as KK).
Treat Anki as a supplementary reviewing tool. The exact amount of days before a character becomes available for review again differs between KK and Anki due to the different options both present you when asking if you remember a Kanji character (KK: “Yes” & “Easy”, Anki: “Hard”, “Easy”, “Very Easy”).
Which means that a character you reviewed 5 days back may not reappear in KK for review so soon, but might pop up in Anki. Or vice versa. Gives you the chance to review characters sooner than you would normally have to. And I find that makes it easier to drill easily forgotten characters into permanent storage. Might be redundant for you, though.
If you’re using both the KK SRS and Anki for reviews, drop another and settle with just one. My kanji deck in Anki has 15785 reps over the past year. Why would anybody want to ~double that for nothing? I’m frankly quite sick and tired with just one SRS. ;)
Let the cards come when they do; it IS the whole point of the spaced repetition algorithm. Seeing cards “too early” is a total waste of time and defeats the whole purpose of SRS.
I downloaded the Heisig Anki deck, copy-pasted (perhaps with slight modification) stories from KK to Anki and studied that way.
I see your points there. It certainly would be difficult to juggle between the two as I add more and more cards to the decks. And it probably does defeat the purpose of a SPACED repetition system. I’ll probably drop one once it becomes too much to handle. Probably stick with KK, since I like having all the stories at my fingertips, and I can access the site from my phone.
Still, I find that I need a way to test myself, you know? To see if I actually remember any of the moonscribbles I’m shoving into my brain daily. Yeah, I can do reviews immediately after I add cards to my deck in KK, but it almost feels like cheating, since I’ve only just seen the character a few minutes ago.
With Anki as my backup review, I can confirm that I actually remembered the characters, and that I din’t just shove them into my disposable short term memory. And if it so happens that I do forget something, having it repeat earlier will give me a chance to restudy earlier, and hopefully not fail it the next time. I know that RTK isn’t exactly a test or anything, but whenever I see that I’ve failed 2 or more cards in a day, I feel like slamming my head against a brick wall.
oh yeah you can’t force it if it fails it fails, you hit the Fail button and then move on or you can tamper around with the story.
i find that sometimes there are some words that just Never.Make.it.into my brain, those ones i go the lazy route and just drill them over and over again until high heaven and pray that my brain will one day pick it up
http://www.realkana.com/ <- Recommended
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Kana/Lessons/Hiragana/Lesson_1 <- Also recommended
With those and some diligence I was able to master both kana alphabets in about four days.
I’ve basically been reading VNs using stuff like Translation Agreggator to help me look up words I don’t know (as in, 95% of them). I honestly think it’s been helping me learn, especially because I already have a good grasp of the grammar in general (of course, there are still sentences that I don’t understand, but still). I feel like I’m making progress.
(Also the tough thing is that I still think in English/Portuguese when reading, so that can be a little tough. orz)
Whoo~!!
I just finished rtk1! Doing around 100 kanji per day, i though i was gonna burn out fast, but for some reason this post worked really good on me and motivated me every time i felt like dropping rtk or uninstalling anki. That’s why i wanna thank you!
Now that I’m finally done with that hell, it’s time to enjoy the fruits of hard labor and get to the more fun parts of this guide. Hopefully, someday i’ll be able to read oretachi~!!
Thanks again~!!
Congratz!!!!! niceee! very nice. 100 kanji a day you are insane!
remember to keep drilling those kanji everyday. they need to be drilled for a while
It’s been 3 months and around 2 weeks since i started. So far I have over 3000 sentences in my deck. I’m confident that I know the most common readings of around 1000 kanji. I already read shonen jump in japanese and watch anime with Japanese subtitles and aside from an occasional word I have to look up in a dictionary, I pretty much understand everything.
As for visual novels, I am far from understanding everything, but I do understand enough so that I know what’s happening and enjoy playing them. Lately, I’ve been reading eiyuu senki. I can’t hook up ITH and some parts are unvoiced, so it’s kinda hard to look up words and add sentences, but I definitely understand most of what’s happening.
I’ve also made some Japanese penfriends. We chat occasionally and it’s fun. They say I’ve improved a lot for 3 months. I hope they are right lol.
And that’s pretty much it. I’ve been studying everyday around 6~7 hours, but in march I had many test so I could only spend around 3 hours per day on Japanese. I hope that if I continue I can read more novels and read them faster.
Hit the 500 mark, but I noticed that I’m forgetting more and more characters as I progress. These days, in a review of about 50 characters, I forget about 10 of them. That’s a whole 20% out of every review.
And the troubling thing is that the ones I forget are the more RECENT characters. I seem to have the first 300 or so nailed down firmly in my head, but I’m having trouble stowing the newer ones into permanent storage.
Is this normal? Should I just proceed and hope that the reviews one day permanently drill the characters into my head through sheer repetition? Or should I stop and try to master the ones I’m forgetting?
Oh that’s normal.
you’re supposed to be forgetting them. if you’re not forgetting the characters, THAT’s when you have a problem.
your brain only picks up a certain number of them supposedly cause it’s not very good at rapidly storing lots and lots of material like a computer.
you can either keep drilling them as is and let the repetition do the work (i did this all the time lol. cause im lazy) or you can try tampering around with the mnemonic until you find a better one that you think works better.
Oh yeah definitely don’t stop. just keep drilling. if you are running out of time per day, then add new characters slower. if reviewing itself is eating all your time, then yeah youll have to stop. but Never Stop Reviewing!
Noted. I’ll just soldier on and hope that the new characters stick. As for reviews – I’ve so far taken a total of two days off from studying new characters, but I have yet to take a single day off from reviewing. Mostly because I’ve heard horror stories about what happens when you leave your review deck alone for too many days …
i want to play TORADORA! and Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai VN on PSP.
and many more like it.
i stumbled across your website, subscribed and willing to give your advice a try. All i want to do is play all the VN i have been missing out. And of course import japanese video games for VITA or what not.
I figured if I take 1 year time, by 1 year the VITA prob will have tons of VN games out by then.
Anyways my question is. after I do your steps and completely finish it will I be able to play TORADORA! and Tomodachi Ga Sukunai?
oh it will be tricky. in 1 year you might be able to glance the meaning (esp if you know chinese) but in 1 year you’ll still be very much relying on your dictionary
so if you steer your reading skills to the console screen it will be… harder because now you dont have quick lookup. you can use a handheld dictionary if you like but heck… i dont even know how to use one of those and it takes a lot longer time. also you wont be able to add new vocab from the console screen as easily but it’s definitely not impossible.
but of course if you are going the 1 year route (1.5 hrs study AT LEAST, per day) i dont know how crazy youre going to drill your vocab so who knows, maybe in 1 year you can do 2 or 3 year’s worth. it’s up to you
Don’t worry man. Just skim through looking for the kanjis if you’re Chinese and you’ll be good to go at least half the time.
If you aren’t Chinese, sorry but can’t help ya. :P
Excuse me, i saw you write Japanese has 2136 Kanji. The problem is in Anki software, download Heiseig,i saw total at least 3000 worlds kanji in here.
I tried to download 2136 yoyo kanji by grade and it has more than 4000 kanji word ???
Can you explain the different about how i can study exactly 2136 worlds?
Until now, i guess i study around 800 words or more. Try my best to reach 1000 words before the end of New year Eve holiday :)
Yes. download the 3000 word Kanji list and only do the first 2136.
Make sure that the words you are studying are the exact same ones (and in the exact same order) as how Heisig’s book lays them out. There are some ‘additions’ which will not be in Heisig’s book because his book is old.
I’m a bit confused about how you’ve phrased a few things. Are you saying doing 20 kanji each day, or 20 kanji each day *in addition* to the ones you’ve done so far (so on the 5th day, you’re doing the 80 previous ones plus a new 20)? At first that makes sense, but when I imagine being 50 days in, it seems crazy to be going through 1000 kanji (and counting) each day. Secondly, what’s the point of having the book (or the PDF of it) if you’re using Anki to go through them, and koohii.com to check the meaning and memory method?
Oh, and also, how do you use koohii with the program and book since the order of the kanji will be different, and it just generally seems to work in a different way? The program goes through 20 a day (presumably in the order used in the book) but koohii does 15 a day, and probably not the same ones anyway.
Note: I gave up on using Anki awhile back, I’m only using Kanji Koohii at the moment.
I’ve been learning 20 new ones a day, in addition to doing the daily reviews. Right now, I’ve learned around 500+. My daily reviews consist of 40-60 characters, and I study 20 new ones per day. I also have re-study characters that I fail during reviews, and I generally fail about 20% (10 out of 50, on average) of my reviews.
It’s manageable so far, I would say. I took a break from studying a couple of times, although I’ve never stopped reviewing. There were a few days where I was too dead tired to give too much of a damn, and only studied 5-10 characters before calling it quits. 20 is a reasonable pace for most days, though.
Also, regarding the book – it’s useful for looking up on primitives. Many of the KK stories posted by users use primitives that come from RTK, but they don’t include them in the actual study deck since they (AFAIK) aren’t really characters on their own. So you’ll see somebody babbling on about how “the MIST clearing away from the MOON heralds the MORNING <<keyword" and not have any idea which of the moonrunes is supposed to be a "mist".
Since this is a reading-centric tip, did you study RTK from Kanji > Keyword?
I feel that keyword to kanji is taking too much time and I won’t be writing anyway.
This is a fair question. I’m up to 860 characters at the moment, and I have not bothered learning to write a single one of them. Since the method Aaeru describes makes use of KK/Anki decks and makes no mention of writing, the thought of actually writing the characters never even crossed my mind until very recently.
I’m only going through this so I can play/read unlocalized J-RPGs and visual novels, so I’m not really interested in learning how to write the characters themselves. Guessing it’s an optional step?
Hey guys,
I´m currently studying kanji with koohi and for those who dont know, there is a complete pdf of it for online view.
http://www.booksbooksbooks.ru/download/Remembering_Kanji_I.pdf
Maybe you want to add that to your guide Aaeru?
added to guide. thx for that Juraya ~
M’kay hold up, I’m missing something here, obviously. Once you have all the Hiragana down, how are you supposed to know what any of it means? like, the Mnemonics are nice and all, but not what anything actually means. Is the grammar taking them and turning them into words like english letters?
If that where the case, wouldn’t it still take a really long time? you’d basically HAVE to know how to speak the language in order to understand what everything meant. for instance I could know that ma-sa-ka is a phrase, but how am I supposed to know what the hell it means?
Sorry, I don’t think I was discriptive enough,
an example in english would be.
I could know the letters “f” “l” “o” “w” “e” and “r” and know that flower is a word, but how am I supposed to know what the hell it is without a picture or someone to tell me?
Also because my post seems so negative, I’ll post a really useful tool for committing hira and kata to memory :D
http://learnjapanesepod.com/kana-invaders/
Unless I’ve been a complete moron for the last 2-3 months (which, admittedly, is not unlikely), I believe the kana have no meaning on their own. They’re just syllables.
The Japanese combine hiragana characters together to form certain words – yes, sorta like alphabets in English. However, it’s normally only used to form words that have no kanji equivalent, which means that you’ll still have to learn up the 2k+ kanji characters to be able to read anything at all, since a very significant portion of any text would be in kanji.
As for katakana, it’s primarily used for foreign names/words. So, for instance, the character Berserker from Fate/stay night would be rendered as バーサーカー in katakana.
Hope that helped – good luck and god speed on learning up the rest.
That’s what’s the last step is for, when you start reading you need a dictionary to learn what it means and then add up those words you don’t know along with other sentences that contains those words to an SRS so you don’t forget. Or something like that… I dun’t know I’m not n that step yet.
I have learnt about 1000 kanjis.
I feel impatient and wanna read Visual Novels, pick up vocabulary :(.
Should I complete RTK1 first, or do both things concurrently ?
Hey, I decided to start learning from scratch 3 days ago. So far I have gotten a good grasp of all kana and am 2 lessons into Heisig’s (36 kanji). I was wondering about your comment that some of Heisig’s definitons are off. What exactly does this mean? Do I need to double check the definition(keyword?) of every kanji on kanji.koohii.com as I learn? Because it seems to me they use the same keywords, or perhaps some keywords are changed in later editions of Heisig’s book?
34*, not 36 kanji!
I am actually also trying to get the writing of each kanji down as I pass it. I figured that even if that’s not very useful right now it may help to spend a little time working with a kanji before moving on to the next. The writing is pretty simple anyway.
Some of Heisig’s definitions are out-of-date or just incorrect. If possible, use the definitions provided at kanji.koohii.com.
Actually you can use the desk with the koohi defintions instead of the basic RTK desk. Just search and download the desk with title “Heisig Remembering the Kanji 1-3 w/top 2 community stories”. It’ll save you a lot of time to go to kanji.koohi.com.
I assume by definition, in reference to the site, you mean the user mnemonics stories?
Ah, “deck” not “desk” :(
Well it might get you to the point for just watching anime but not for light novels.
because light novels are categorized as literature and mastering it will take years. you will encounter lots of new words, grammar structures, idioms, compound verbs in every page. even knowing the JPLT lvl1 10000 words could be considered the first step.
Hey, thanks for making this guide! I’ve been learning on and off but mostly with romaji cause I wanted to try to get the grammar down first and I’ve been trying DAMN HARD to get the grammar down, which is still confusing since they have the verbs at the ends always etc,
I end up trying to read the end first or something. I decided to start back up (I haven’t been studying for a while) and I do have a hard time memorizing things, I can only recall a few hiragana though I memorized them all in the past almost. I guess that’s what I get for not keeping up with it.
Anyway, I had a question. What if I wanted to learn to speak Japanese along with the writing? I know this guide is meant for the fastest way to read it but is there anything you would suggest to be able to speak it?
Not that I find speaking it hard, actually I find it easy and don’t even know if I need a guide for it, but I’m pretty unsure. I guess most kids started learning to speak japanese before even knowing how to write it, so that throws me off too. Would you suggest anything? Or would speaking it come naturally as you learn to read it? (I’ve been watching anime for 12+ years if that helps at all lol)
Finished RTK1 about two days ago, in about a total of twenty days. Took a ton of time every day, I’ll admit, but to be honest I think it would have been harder for me to do it over a long period of time.
What I could have done instead would have been to do RTK slow and methodically while learning grammar until I could read smoothly enough and just learn new kanji as I saw them. Either way I guess it doesnt really matter now that I’m through. I’m pretty excited to start reading some material in the original language. I’m reading through Ixrec’s grammar guide and I was looking on vndb and some other places for tips on easily read VNs and I got the impression that it might be a good idea to start with something which has a really simple plot. Do you have any opinions concerning this or any recommendations for individual titles? Preferably with VA!
W000 congratz! you did it in 20 days?? wow
if you just finished I think branching off to vocab so soon might overload your brain. I’d say start with something dead simple like what Mazyrian suggested or Little Busters or something that has been fan translated and youve got the scripts in front of u. those are good places to start
youll probably be drilling through kanji for months and months and months so I reckon hold off, bring your workload down a bit and then once it’s manageable, u can slowly add more vocab to your deck
thanks for the congrats, though I’ve got to say, it didn’t seem to matter really how many cards I added per day, whether it was 50 or 150 I stayed constantly around 85-90% on my reviews and all it really took was a lot of time studying and around 1½ hours review per day. I don’t think you have to be special to finish RTK quickly, you just need some dedication and a lot of free time :)
I was actually planning on reading Hanahira and Sono Hanabira, I got my hands on them but I ran into a problem in that I get a bluescreen on windows startup every time I try to change my system locale to Japanese. Then I have to revert to the last known functional settings, which is Swedish system locale. I solved it temporarily by using AppLocale for those two titles but I have a feeling I’m gonna have to solve the real issue sooner or later. I have Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, at first I thought my problem was simply that only W7 Ultimate can install additional language packs(such as Japanese), but then I found out my friend who also uses Home Premium SP1 managed to change his system locale to Jap no problem.
I haven’t really found any solutions simply searching around, have you heard of anyone having this problem before?
that sounds really weird.
I have no idea. in that situation sounds like I would have to reformat and fresh install of windows
Hanahira! has no difficult vocabulary and a very simple (read: nonexistent) plot. Warning: is so sugary it can cause diabetes.
Two doujin circles I’m partial to are Bouquet (Tokyo Alice, Norukasoruka) and Pancake (Hachi no Soko, Yugami Kairou – warning: they’re kinda dark). They have short, free games and the vocabulary is rather easy. They’re non voiced, though.
There’s also the option of untranslated fandiscs of things you have already read. If you liked Da Capo, for example, you’ll probably be interested in its fandiscs, which are rather easy too.
Wow, thanks for the info. I’m actually completely new to this whole VN world (I’ve only played Clannad and Katawa Shojo in english and I’m almost finished with them), but I really want to be able to play them in Japanese.
I know Japanese pretty well, except for the Kanji, I hope this method works out for me and of course, I’ll give my best to study every day. I’ll need to start looking for more VNs quite soon though.
Reblogged this on Violinrocker's Blog and commented:
Again with my daily browsing habits for content and this time this is where it lead me to, “Learn to read Japanese in 2 years time – by reading VNs and watching anime”
Sounds crazy. I’ll give it a try.
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