How I became fluent in Japanese Kanji

Hey guys, my name is Tokuyu and welcome to my first video. I'm gonna do a multi-part video series where I talk about how I became fluent in Japanese starting from absolutely nothing, as I get asked about this a lot. To give you some background, I've been studying Japanese for about seven years now. I took a couple of introductory Japanese courses through my university, but the majority of my Japanese learning has been through self-studying. And to further validate me as your new Japanese sensei, I've also passed the JLPT N1. For those you who are unfamiliar, the JLPT is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which is the official proficiency test recognized by the Japanese government. It is broken down into five different levels, starting from N5, the most basic level, all the way up to N1, the most advanced level. I'll get into the specifics later, but for now, just know that N1 is the highest level, aka I'm dope at Japanese. In all honesty though, I don't consider myself native level, but I do consider myself fluent, and I think there are a lot of things that I can share that I wish I knew when I first started studying Japanese. So let's jump right into it with the most feared aspect of learning Japanese. A lot of people despise kanji, and for a valid reason. There are so many kanji, and they look like hieroglyphics. And while kanji are harder to learn than an alphabet like in English, I don't actually think learning kanji is that bad, and drawing them can actually be kind of fun. But before I even get into kanji, let me first explain that Japanese sentences use three different writing systems. Each writing system has a unique usage, and the three that Japanese uses are called hiragana, katakana, and kanji. The very first thing you should do if you decide to learn Japanese is learn all the hiragana and katakana, because they're basically the alphabets of Japanese. There are 46 letters of hiragana that collectively represent all the sounds in Japanese. A, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc. Hiragana is primarily used to conjugate verbs and form grammar structures. Katakana is another 46 letters that represent the exact same sounds in Japanese. A, i, u, e, o, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, etc. But their usage is primarily for foreign words and onomatopoeias. To learn these letters, I used a lot of mnemonics to associate the shape of the For example, the letter wo to me looked like someone on a surfboard, so I imagined a surfer saying wo. If you're strapped for creativity, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that can help you associate each letter with a particular mnemonic. Also, be aware that these letters have a particular stroke order, so be sure to practice lots of writing when you learn them. Once you memorize hiragana and katakana, you can already read a lot of Japanese, and you can already understand a lot of borrowed words from English, such as restaurant, hotel, and burrito. Okay, now it's time to move on to the scary part. Kanji. Kanji are characters that originate from Chinese and represent the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more. There are over 10,000 kanji out there, but luckily, you only need to know about 2,200. It's less of a daunting task if you break it down. I like the breakdown that the JLPT uses. N5 is the most basic level, consisting of only around 80 characters, but they're also the most common characters. It's actually pretty crazy because Japanese newspapers look intimidating, but you can already recognize 36% of all characters written just by knowing the 80 most basic kanji. This is because the meanings that these characters represent are used to describe so many different things. When you add the 166 characters from N4, you'll be able to recognize 62% of all characters written in Japanese newspapers. In other words, almost two-thirds of all written Japanese. If you add the kanji from N3, you'll be able to recognize 85.5% of all written kanji. If you add the N2 kanji, then 94.4%. And finally, if you know all 2,200 kanji for N1, you'll be able to recognize 100% of all kanji written in newspapers. Well, almost 100%. It's actually around 99.8%. But luckily, the other 0.2% will typically have furigana, which is hiragana written above the kanji to show you how to read it. As you may have noticed, each level has an increasingly greater number of kanji with diminishing returns. However, a lot of the new characters are just compositions of the old ones you already know. I personally like to use the Kanji Study app to study kanji, but you can also use WaniKani, Anki, and of course, textbooks and kanji books. It all comes down to preference. When studying a new kanji, you should keep in mind the common words that use that kanji, as well as the kanji's stroke order and radicals. And yes, it does matter how you write your characters, as you may not think it makes a difference, but Japanese people can tell just by looking at it. Radicals are the components that make up a kanji. They typically have a specific meaning associated with them, but they're not always a standalone kanji on their own. And you'll begin to notice that a lot of these radicals keep appearing in different characters. I find that building stories from the radicals can help me better remember kanji. Sometimes, it can make a lot of sense. All right, so the left radical means day, and the right one means blue. So if the day is blue, then it's clear out. Easy. Easy. And sometimes, you're just gonna have to memorize the kanji. All right, so we got two trees here. And between the two trees is the radical for can. So that's a two-tree-can sandwich, of course. And right below that is the radical for hair. Yeah, okay. And beside that is the radical for... yeah, I don't know what the f*** that is. When I studied a new kanji, I would write down all the relevant words that use that kanji in hiragana. And on a separate piece of paper, I would repeatedly write down the kanji. To review the kanji later, I would look at the words that I had written in hiragana and try to draw the kanji from memory. If I couldn't, then I would repeatedly write the character again. Consistency in studying is important. For example, when I started studying the 1,200 characters for N1, I set up a schedule of studying five new characters every day. I would also review the characters from the previous three days of studying. This would take me about 30 minutes each day, and I continued this for eight months, until I had gone through all the N1 kanji. Now, by no means had I memorized all the characters, but it was enough that I could at least recognize a character if I saw it again. And when I looked it up, I would go, oh yeah, that's what that means. Which over time, reinforced my knowledge. Now, you can try to learn kanji through immersion, by just trying to recognize kanji from seeing them over time. But I strongly recommend studying the characters at least once on paper. This makes it a lot easier to pick up the characters when you see them. Japanese immersion is not the simple magic that a lot of people seem to think. I've spoken to people who've lived in Japan for eight or more years, and still cannot read Japanese, or speak it at an above beginner level. But once you have studied a kanji once on paper, there's no better way to practice than to read. I like to use my Kindle to read Japanese books, because I don't need to order a bunch of books to be shipped from Japan. And, I can look up words by just tapping and holding them. There are also easy Japanese news apps you can download, that are designed to help you learn the language. These apps have current news articles, written in Japanese, using a range of difficulties. This allows you to select an article that best suits your level. And finally, to practice reading comprehension for the JLPT exams, I use the Shinkansen series. They have all the kinds of passages you will see on the exam, with comprehension questions. This allows you to actually test your understanding, and practice your timing. Let me tell you a little secret. Before I passed the N1 exam, I actually failed the N2 exam. A big part of this was because I was too slow at reading. I could recognize most of the kanji, but it would take me too long to actually understand the sentences. And, it didn't help that I did no background research on the exam, before going into it. Which was really stupid, now that I think of it. So, if passing one of the JLPT exams is one of your goals, then I strongly recommend you familiarize yourself with the exam format, and the types of questions you'll see. And be sure to practice lots of reading. I sure know I didn't. Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn as an English speaker. And the character system is a big reason for this. But realistically, there are only a finite number of kanji, and drawing them can actually be kind of fun. Just remember to be patient. Learning kanji will feel really tough at first, because you probably aren't used to studying characters. But over time, you will develop study habits and techniques that will make the journey go faster, and feel more enjoyable. So, if you're thinking about learning Japanese, hopefully this video gave you a better idea of how to study kanji. So, go out there and start learning those hieroglyphics. Hey guys, thanks for watching my first YouTube video until the very end. If you like this video, please smash that like button. It really helps me out as a small channel. And if you have any questions or comments, leave them down below. I'll try to get to them all, but it might be hard to get to all... three of you watching this video. I'll be doing more Japanese language videos like this one, as well as life in Japan videos, since I'll be moving to Japan in two months. So, if that's something you'd like to see, then consider subscribing to my channel and becoming part of the TokyuTV crew. But for now, thanks for watching TokyuTV. It's actually pretty crazy, because Japanese papers look... Japanese papers...