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I've been learning Japanese for ~3 years and tried a variety of methods. Of course there are better and worse ways to learn, but to me the most important factor

I've been learning Japanese for ~3 years and tried a variety of methods. Of course there are better and worse ways to learn, but to me the most important factor is keeping my motivation up. Without having read this book, congratulations on putting it out. Making anything is hard. It's nice that you're trying something new (at least to me) with the embedded kanji in English. As part of my learning process, I decided to make a mobile app for learning kanji. It was quite a technical challenge for me to figure out how to let users draw kanji based on SVG in Unity -- I had to write my own SVG parser + renderer. Sourcing quality data for ~2000 kanji was also tough. If you want to check it out, it's free on both iOS [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kanji-book/id1532844605 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kanji-book/id1532844605] and Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bmalicoat.kanjibook&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bmalicoat....]

throwntoday 4y ago
Having taken a quick look at this book I have to say it seems incredibly dumbed down for no reason. The example of showing a ferret to remember the sound of れ is hilarious. For anyone wanting to seriously learn Japanese I recommend passing on this strange magazine formatted pseudo textbook and just buy the tried and true Genki.
- PaulsWallet 4y ago
  You may disagree with it but mnemonics are very helpful for remembering information that has no relationship to things you already know. I used my own set of mnemonics to learn hiragana and katakana when I first started.
  - throwntoday 4y ago
    I don't see the merit in using it for Hiragana/Katakana which are far easier to pickup with something like rote memorization. That said for Kanji I certainly see the benefit of using mnemonics.
    - PaulsWallet 4y ago
      That's fine and you're welcome to think that. I would throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume the book is trash because it uses a technique you don't approve think is most efficient.
- bsder 4y ago
  Different people learn differently. I always found mnemonics useless, but some people preferred them. The most important thing is to use whatever keeps you motivated. "Keeping on" is 90% of the battle.

throwntoday 4y ago

Having taken a quick look at this book I have to say it seems incredibly dumbed down for no reason. The example of showing a ferret to remember the sound of れ is hilarious. For anyone wanting to seriously learn Japanese I recommend passing on this strange magazine formatted pseudo textbook and just buy the tried and true Genki.

PaulsWallet 4y ago
You may disagree with it but mnemonics are very helpful for remembering information that has no relationship to things you already know. I used my own set of mnemonics to learn hiragana and katakana when I first started.
- throwntoday 4y ago
  I don't see the merit in using it for Hiragana/Katakana which are far easier to pickup with something like rote memorization. That said for Kanji I certainly see the benefit of using mnemonics.
  - PaulsWallet 4y ago
    That's fine and you're welcome to think that. I would throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume the book is trash because it uses a technique you don't approve think is most efficient.
bsder 4y ago
Different people learn differently. I always found mnemonics useless, but some people preferred them. The most important thing is to use whatever keeps you motivated. "Keeping on" is 90% of the battle.