Going on to Grade 2... And Multitasking

Actually, I have two cases of multitasking.
One happened, and the other is a long term plan.

Tonight I watched TV for a few hours, and during that time I had my 日本語 out on my lap.

I decided to write out the grade 2 kanji. It's helped me tremendously already.
As laborious as writing them can be, it allows me to see them in my mind.

That's necessary if I'm ever going to be able to write Japanese - also, it improves recognition dramatically.

The second case is my long-term plan. I plan to sit down and work at Smart.fm / iKnow as weel as writing. After I get done with grade 2, I'll probably write the iKnow vocab Kanji.

My vocabulary should begin to increase considerably.
That's provided I don't give up and slack off...

If you're curious, I just did the first 16.
They're:

引く - hi(ku) - (to) pull, draw
羽 - ha; hane - counter for birds&rabbits; wing, blade, feather
雲 - cumo - cloud
園 - en,sono - suffix for place, farm, garden, park
遠い - too(i) - far, distant
何 - nan, nani - what
科 - ka - dept., section, family (taxonomy)
夏 - natsu - summer
家 -　ie/uchi - house/home
歌う - uta(u) -(to) sing
画 - kaku - stroke, element (of art, kanji, etc)
回 - kai - occurences, innings(baseball)
会う - a(u) - (to) meet
海 - umi - sea,beach
絵 - e - picture, drawing, painting, sketch
外 - soto - outside

Finally Finished!!! (With My Writing Practice)

I've got to stop writing these so late at night. Also, I need to actually go to my blog and post them... I'm falling way behind...

Anyway, I finished with my Kanji writing and I'm going to do some examination on what I've learned. I can't write all of them a million times each... there's literally thousands of them. It would take years at this rate.

I need to learn what I've learned, such that I can improve my overall, rather than each individually. maybe there's a place online with guidelines for determining the stroke order or something.

I am going to re-write them beneath a place where I wrote them all beforehand. That way, I'll be able to compare how much I've improved.

I may start writing Grade 2 ones, but there's twice as many. (exactly... 80 vs. 160)
So... yeah. I don't know. It'll be a lot of work. I really need to get back to iKnow/Smart.fm.

Next time I might post some stuff I've written down that I learned there recently.

Continuing to Write

Nothing new to report in the Japanese department.
I am still writing the grade 1 kanji over and over... how tedious.

I know many of them by memory.

一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八，九、十、百、千
日、月、火、水、木、金、土
子、人
大、中、小、出、右、左
赤、白、青
学、校、本、先、生、年
天、気
足、手、見、
山、
早、空、
円

These are some on the list I know how to say without looking.
Most of the ones I can't I know how they look and mean, just not a word with them off the top of my head.
If there's any you wanted to know, once again you'd find them in The First 80 Kanji.

Dragging through the Kanji

In my last piece on 日本語, I showed you the old grade 1 kanji I've been learning to write.

I'm still working on that. Not much has happened of late, though I am beginning to face some difficult realizations.

First off:
-Kanji have right to left strokes , it seems. And all kinds of other strokes.
(are you kidding!? I'm a cursed American. I wasn't taught to do this before!)

I'm learning to write correctly, as far as I can tell. Rather than look up online how to draw them, I'm just figuring it out by looking at the details. I draw them all kinds of ways, over and over until I get it right.
It's very slow and monotonous work, but I hope to see an increase in my abilities as time goes on.

There's not much to report on, other than I feel like a kindergartner. Well, I can only handle one column on that list in Writing the Kanji at a time. And yes, I'm going right-to-left. Lol...

So, yeah. That's all I got to say 'bout that.

Smart.fm Habits and Writing the Kanji

Lately I've had trouble with Smart.fm/iKnow always wanting to be down. They have issues to work out - having moved their servers from Japan to San Fran in a day, and I'm not mad... still - it makes it hard to maintain my habit of practice when I don't know when I'll be able to.

Today had a ridiculous amount of review.
All that was new was 2 each time. I covered these:
始まる - hajimaru - to begin
食べ物 - tabemono - food
ゲーム (ge-mu) - game
十 - juu - 10
天気 - tenki - weather
暑い - atsui - hot, warm

Desperate for for new material, I identified these along the way.
かゆい (kayui) - itchy
海 - umi - sea, beach
窓 - mado - window
ビデオゲーム (bideoge-mu) videogame
近所 - kinjo - neighborhood
皿 - sara - plate, dish

Hopefully next time I'll see more new.

These are the 80 Grade one Kanji I've been working on writing. I've done the first four columns so far. I'm writing them repetitively kindergarten-style. I've seen marked improvement in my ability to see them in my head - recognizing and reproducing are two different things.
I'm learning to "write" better now!
You can find the meanings in my First 80 Kanji Post.

Credit for these goes to http://www.learn-japanese.info/

Not Much Left...

Today's iKnow sessions had all old stuff. Review is important, though.

I'm stumbling over buy/sell:
売る - uru - sell
買う - kau - buy

I get them switched sometimes...

I dealt with a rather unfavorable
変える - kaeru - to change
帰る - kaeru - return/come home ...this is the homophone I hate most.

I got 22 new ones to 100% !!! That's considering I only study 30. I probably have as little as 14/15 sessions left.
Considering I do at least 3 every time I'm on, I'll be done in week or two.

I do need to produce a chart of kanji to study - I need to learn to write them better.
Part of learning Japanese is learning to write. Reading is far easier. It takes a lot less effort to read than it does to write.

Next time is the last pre-V-Day post.
I'll have Valentine's Day phrases in a few languages, for fun. Be sure to check back after Wed. the 11 - I'll include some Spanish, French, and German, with 日本語, of course.

Kanji Confusion - Reading/Writing

I didn't do much with Japanese today.
I did run into a bit of confusion with some kanji today,

and I'm trying to set some things straight.

the kanji for "to read", "to write", "writings", etc. have me all scrambled.

ok...

to read is
読む - yomu

to write is
書く - kaku

but, to write down (for the purpose of being remembered)...
to write down is 記す - shirusu

to write down/ compose (song/poem) is
詠む - also yomu !!!

so...
write=yomu
write down=shirusu
compose=yomu
read=yomu

confused? I am... but writing all this down has helped.