Learning Japanese

In my last blog post I talked about trying to get some sort of similarity continuum for the "whole" Kanji (solid Kanji, or darn close to solid Kanji). Think I'm pretty close to a visually sorted set now:

木禾本未末来米釆朱束東乗果巣耒大犬太央夫天失矢夷爽入久欠人火...

So, I'm trying to work my way through learning Kanji. I've got a few resources- they're very useful, but... I keep getting frustrated by the order things are introduced. I understand why they're grouped the way they are- but it is causing me issues as similar looking Kanji keep popping up. In an effort to provide some visual continuity...

Getting a handle on what fonts are available and what the differences are wasn't easy. As I'm using Windows 7 I'll go over what is available on Windows. The fonts that come with Windows also come with Mac Office for those that do Mac.

"Mincho" or "Ming" style fonts are the "serif" fonts. They have thick...

I've always taught myself. Classes usually don't work well with me- either too slow or too focused on simple fact memorization.

My usual learning method:

• skim read once, deep read the second time
  
• get several books on the same subject and read them all
  
• some combination of the above

This time I started out pretty much...

I picked up the urge to learn Japanese about a year and a half ago. Snapped up a bunch of training material, started working my way through things, and...

Well, tragedy struck-- there was a violent death in my extended family. Dealing with the legal and emotional fallout was a little more than challenging. Not much brainpower left for Japanese- so I put...