Tuttle Learning Japanese Kanji: (JLPT Levels N5 & N4) The Innovative Method for Learning the 520 Most Essential Japanese Kanji Characters

Having explored several approaches to learning kanji, I highly recommend this one as your first choice. It not only makes learning characters fun, but will enable you to read 80% of written Japanese (as found in newspapers and magazines).What distinguishes his research-based approach is not just his sense of humor. It's also the use of two different mnemonics for each kanji: one for the visual design and one for the multiple "readings" (i.e. pronunciations). This two-step process enables you to learn the visual form first before shifting your attention to the phonetics for each character. The only thing he left out is the importance of implanting in the phonetic mnemonic (1) the meaning of the character and (2) a key word from the visual mnemonic. Without these cues, it's all too easy to forget the visual mnemonic. With them, your visual memory functions in parallel with your auditory memory.In regard to an earlier criticism about the "weird" names used for the kanji, I actually started with Henshall's etymology-based book--"A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters"--and found his mnemonics so esoteric and prosaic that it was torture to remember most of them. That's why I started over from scratch with Grant's book after scanning it in a local bookstore. I did this in spite of the fact that I'd already read and annotated almost 600 of Henshall's history-based mnemonics!As an example, Henshall explains how a square became the kanji for mouth (his kanji # 20; Grant's kanji #8). The original design is included in Henshall's book and looks more like the smile you'd expect. His mnemonic is "Open mouth." Duh! Grant, by contrast, associates the same, little square with a vampire's mouth--sometimes even identifying it as Dracula. (Of course, you're perfectly free to choose the Cheshire cat instead!) The result is a fascinating series of stories about vampires.The very next kanji, for example, is for the word "rotate." It's represented by a square within a square. Because the outer square is what Grant calls a "prison" (as opposed to the unimaginative, traditional name--"enclosure"), the vampire inside suffers "some nasty dizzy spells" when he turns into a bat and flies around and around in an effort to escape. The result reads like a children's book with a whole host of recurring characters like the hilariously bug-eyed Cyclops (#15) and the charmingly overweight sumo wrestler (#17).Henshall's book, however, includes almost 2,000 of the General Use Kanji. After mastering the skill of memorizing (520) kanji using Grant's recurring-story approach, I recommend turning to Henshall for the other 1,500 kanji. At that point, you can easily pick up the visual history of kanji (because Henshall scrupulously cross-references them all). What you'll quickly discover is that Grant has given you the names and characters for twice as many "components" as there are "radicals" in the traditional system. In Grant's system, every part of the kanji receives a separate name. (That's not the case in Henshall's book--not even close!) He has actually prepared you for the daunting task ahead by developing a more comprehensive, user-friendly system.By combining Grant and Henshall in this way, you'll end up with the best of both worlds. As you can probably tell, however, you'll be burning the midnight oil for the next year...at least! This is not a shortcut. There are none! All it does is make the task a little more fun. Best wishes!

Significantly better than anticipated. -1 star for not perfectly aligning with my interests/desires. Highly recommended.

I actually know how to speak Japanese but I don't understand Kanji so I bought this book. The book is really good but there are some minor mistakes. If those minor mistakes will be corrected I would definitely give 5 star.

I have a lot of Japanese language books. This is one of the best. Informative, easy to follow, and honestly fun. How often is a language book fun? I enjoyed doing the exercises. Two caveats, alas. One, the Kindle version had a lot of typos. Two, example sentences are a bit repetitive -- I lost count of how many times something was described as "utsukushii" (beautiful).All in all, very glad I made this purchase.

This is a good book to get when you are first learning kanji. The pictographs are nice to helpnyou remember if you are a visual learner. It has about 520 Kanji which is about 4th grade level when you finish the book. It also has cute ways to memorize pronunciations in both chinese and japanese readings of the kanji.

One of the hardest things to do, in any craft, is to make something difficult seem easy. Japanese characters are daunting to westerners such as myself, used to only 26 letters. The author has managed to distill the most important essence of a complex system into a way the lay person can understand. I am a musician by trade and here is something I have learned. One can spend a lifetime learning the intricacies of an instrument but at the end of it all you only need three basic chords to play 90% of all music ever written. This is analogous to what this book accomplishes.

As title. Still worth getting. Hopefully, a corrected version will appear soon. The following gibberish is to meet the stupid required word count.

cool

Il volume riporta i primi 520 kanji della lingua giapponese divisi in gruppi di 20, con degli esercizi riepilogativo al termine di ogni capitolo. Per ogni kanji è riportato l'ordine dei tratti, le letture on e kun, una breve storia per aiutare a memorizzare svrittura, pronunce (scritta sia in romani che hiragana/katakana) e significato, le parole con pronunce irregolari e le parole più usate. È compreso il cd, che però riporta solo ordine dei tratti e permette di ascoltare le pronuncia. Speravo contenesse anche altri esercizi perché quelli riportati a fine capitolo sono davvero esigui. Però nel complesso lo consiglio.

Franchement, j'ai acheté pas mal de livres de ce genre. Et c'est le meilleur avec ses moyens mnémotechniques. Mais, il est un peu moins bien que l'équivalent du même éditeur pour le chinois. Un must have !

the book Learning Japnese Kanji arrived on time and is a great way to learn Kanji

The book itself is very good, extremely good, the best that I have seen so far!- Good stories and tales to remember each kanji- Several examples and combinations for each kanji: These examples help you to remember various reading of a single kanji, meanwhile little by little broaden your understanding of the whole language and vocabulary structure.BUT why so many typo in KINDLE version? I had the paper version which is very clean and clear. I purchased the kindle version and I was astonished to see so many typo in the hiragana and katakana!

More work could have gone in to making this book.The book gives you "one example" one method of how to remember the kanji and expects u to come up with the rest.I paid a lot for this book expecting the author To have done the work so I did not have to, that is not the case here.