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I may be wrong, but I suspect the “toe” being straight instead of slanted is because of stroke order. The “toe” is written right before the horizontal line at the bottom. It feels more natural to write them parallel. In 下 the toe is the last stroke and comes directly after a vertical line, so it feels more natural to have it slant just like it does in the radical. A lot of the shifts in how radicals appear seem to make the kanji easier, and faster, to write. Again, this is a guess, but it has seemed to hold true as I’ve been learning the kanji.
For me personally, slowly adding in new resources has worked best over time. Mixing too many methodologies gets confusing. When you decide to add in more, there are some great threads people have started where you can get a fairly good idea of which resources people find the most useful. I think kanji is where TextFugu will take the longest to become truly useful (as in, it’ll take a long time before sufficient is added to the site).
TextFugu has been really great for the basics, imho. It’s a good place to start.
@Noah: I tend to agree with people who have said, here and elsewhere, that the 2nd book isn’t as effective as learning the readings through vocab and such. I’ve tended to replace hirgana with kanji in my vocab decks as I learn the appropriate kanji. You can also add the readings to RTK flashcards as you go along. If you can, I suggest looking at a copy or a sample of the 2nd book before committing to buying it. Everyone learns differently and it may work for you.
I think whether RTK works depends entirely on people’s learning style. For me, the 1st book has been extremely useful (I’m not quite halfway through) because I could never remember kanji from simply encountering them unless they were fairly clear pictographs or were extremely common with very few strokes. It’s helped me figure out words I don’t know via English keywords, which then lets me look things up in dictionaries more efficiently and then add that vocab to a flash card deck. I’m more focused on reading and writing at the moment, so what I’m doing would likely be less useful for someone whose focus is speaking and listening.
For those of you considering trying RTK, check out the sample chapters online and check out koohii. Even if I’d known about all the awesome free stuff earlier, I’m enough of a luddite that I would probably have bought the book anyway.
I studied Japanese a bit when I was about 17 and really into anime. I gave up studying mostly because I found it so frustrating, but also because my obsession with anime faded. Once we reached college, I lost touch with most of the friends I watched anime with. I continued reading manga here and there, and always intended to one day learn enough Japanese to read a few volumes I had that were untranslated.
I assumed Japanese would stay on the list of “things I kind of want to learn, but will probably never get to” until last summer, when I was about to enter my last semester of grad school (AKA, the dreaded thesis semester of doom, because everything is more fun when “of doom” is added to it). I started watching a fair number of Asian dramas again, and enjoying those renewed the idea of maybe-possibly teaching English abroad. I’d though about it after getting my BA, but had ultimately chickened out. I looked into my options and decided I wanted to apply to the JET Program.
I started studying Japanese again at the end of last summer, and I was kind of surprised how much had stuck with me all those years later. I really enjoyed studying while finishing my thesis (which was somewhat grim creative nonfiction, as it was a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing). For all that my progress has been slow, working on something as stuctured as Remembering the Kanji is really kind of soothing (as I said, thesis was kind of grim).
To cut a rambling story shorter, I was rejected from the JET Program in February. I’ve continued studying because I like it and do want to get to the stage where I can read those volumes of untranslated manga I’ve had for a decade, as well as be able to research some of my art related interests without having to search for translations (I write a lot of nonfiction).
I may reapply to the JET Program in the fall, but I don’t know that my chances will be any better on round 2. I’m also considering applying to some of the other companies that place teachers in Japan, but I’ve heard the pay isn’t nearly as good and I will still have expenses in the US. So in the fall, I’ll be applying to teach abroad as well as to teaching programs where I currently live.
Sleep has a lot to do with firming up recall for new information. It’s part of why staying up all night studying for a test isn’t as helpful as staying up half the night and still getting a few hours of rest. That I know from reading about scientific studies. I’m not as sure about why taking a day off helps, but I would guess it also has to do with how long term memory is formed. I remember finding that with algebra courses more so than anything else I took in college. If I waited a day or two to start on the homework, it all made sense. If I tried to do it the day of the lesson, I struggled to get it right and had to refer to my notes.
I live in Boston. I’ve spent more than half my life in Massachusetts, though I lived for a bit over a decade in Colorado. My only experience with life outside the US was a semester in London, UK.
Zeldaskitten: Ah, Rhode Island. I have friends who fled from there to Boston. I guess an hour from home is just far enough, especially since their families think an hour trek is far enough to make visiting a hassle :P
Thanks for pointing this out. Korean is the language I want to learn once my Japanese is strong enough that I won’t completely confuse myself. Some vocab is just similar enough to be frustrating, especially Chinese loanwords.
From what I’v read on some game sites, there are definite nuances that get lost in game translation. I think it’s cool that playing games is one of your reasons. Hobbies are so important for keeping our sanity.
