Learning Vocabulary: jMemorize

There are many ways to learn vocabulary. One method I use is Flash Cards. Electronic flash cards. I like the Leitner System which puts cards into different boxes. When a box is full, you review the cards in the box, moving the ones you know to the next box and the ones you don’t know back to the first box. The idea is spaced repetition, the higher up the boxes the longer it takes to fill...

Reviewing the Kanji

Remember Remembering the Kanji? Well, there is this fantastic site I use called Reviewing the Kanji. It’s so good, I don’t think I would be able to get through this book without it. This site uses the Leitner System of flash cards (a system I also use to learn my vocab effectively) to remember the kanji from the keyword to the kanji. Learn more about the website here. Anyway, I am...

Remembering the Kanji

Remembering the Kanji, a book by James W. Heisig, is just one of the many methods I use to… well, remember the Kanji. I will talk about other methods some other time, but for now, let’s just talk about this method. I think it is fantastic. There are, however, some things I don’t agree with, only because it doesn’t suit my learning style. You see, I like to do a bit of...

Writing Hiragana – あ to お

Let’s learn ひらがな！ Although, if you need this post, you probably can’t read that. It says “hiragana” of course. I learnt hiragana through lots of writing – I preferred writing words rather than the characters in isolation. I also used the association method, where I pretended the characters looked like something else. This is from a hand out I got in...

Nobuta Wo Produce

Kiritani Shuji is the popular guy who gets along with everyone, from the jerks to the nerds to the just plain weird. He’s the one that everyone can count on. However, what they don’t know is that Shuji knows how predictable his classmates are and he plays off their predictability to his advantage. His day-to-day existence as “Shuji-kun” is just a facade he uses to play in the school...