Remembering the Kana

Okay, so I've been self teaching myself Japanese over the last few years in small doses, mainly because it's difficult to focus on it over an extended period time. Most learning sources I have come across ignore this and just encourage further reading. Here, though, they don't, and it helps you understand the wonderful value of breaks. I came across this when my friend told me about it after they had been looking for another book I've been using (Genki. Good luck finding it on English websites brand new. eBay tends to have them in sets) and they found this one. So I picked it up and immersed myself in lesson 1 and I haven't turned back. There are two 3-hour courses, one for hirigana and one for katakana, and each of those courses is split into 30 minute lessons. While you can, obviously, ignore the warnings, it will tell you to take a minimum of a 30 minute break, though in the introduction it suggests doing just two lessons a day and finishing each course in 3 days. What also makes this book interesting is it's linear yet unlinear design. In the book, the kana is listed in, as the book describes it, dictionary order. However, you do not follow straight through. Instead, it starts you with the last one in the book, N, then takes you back a fair amount to Ku, and so on. This book not only helped me develop a fine knowledge and understanding of kana, but also simple study skills as a whole. For any struggling student of the language, pick this one up!

This book is a really cute... if not sometimes corny little ditty that walks you through the entire Japanese syllabary by offering ways to remember the characters (i.e. mnemotics) - - for example, it gives you funny things to remember them as... While admittedly the descriptions at times are quite, as mentioned *corny*... kind of Alice In Wonderland meets the land of awful puns, and other times, simply right above my head, I've got to say... its a really good idea. I should mention that years ago when I first went to learn Japanese, I had a problem: All the letters looked the same or seemed like scribble. - - If, at present, you find yourself in this situation, I definitely say GET THIS BOOK... it'll save you time, and teach you to appreciate their shapes. As for me... I've been living in Japan for years - - never formerly studied Japanese, but can speak and read a little... problem is I suffer from Kana Dyslexia at times... for example, I know most, but suddenly I mix a few up and the panic leads me to not be able to understand some ridiculously simple words... ergo, I got this book to formerly tackle the entire syllabary - - and at the same time, have a book that might address the fact that although my memory per-se isn't so bad (not the greatest, but still not that bad), my attention span is virtually non-existent, hence sabotaging my ability to pay attention to things long enough to learn it - - The author's page turning methodology definitely serves that purpose (instead of reading through the book from front to back, the kana are laid out in order, but you skip around to tackle them from "easiest" to "most difficult" as he builds upon his pictographic imagery.) In conclusion... if you have trouble with conventional text books for whatever reason and need something to help you out, I say: give this book a try... on the other hand, if you are a really serious cut and dry type of person, or have a good enough memory that you don't really need mnemotic aids... move on. note: one criticism - - I wish the book were written in a way that when you turned the page you didn't see the English right away - - kinda sabotages a chance for self testing, doesn't it? Still a great book...! Definitely looking forward to getting his REMEMBERING THE KANJI book, that's for sure !

Although this is the only tool I've ever used for learning the kana, it definitely worked as advertised. I generally have a pretty weak memory, but the tricks used in this book allowed me to memorize and learn how to write the kana very quickly. Furthermore, because the book does not rely on simple brute-force memorization, I retained the information much better and was able to revisit it again after almost a year of not seeing it in just a few minutes. Finally, the memory techniques themselves have proved to be a valuable asset when memorizing other things. Although 15$ may seem like a bit of a steep price for such a small volume, it is well worth the cost.