よし、行くゼ Kosuke's Method (a.k.a overkill)

Hello and thanks for the invite,

This semester at school we were asked to write down our goals for the semester. I wrote, amongst other things, learning the jouyou kanji. I'm not good at sticking to my goals so when I saw this challenge I thought it would be the perfect motivation. The timing also fits in nicely as the semester ends somewhere around mid September.

I need to learn alot of stuff besides Kanji for school so this period will not be a brute kanji effort, I simply intend to pick up the pace. However, like Keith, I also have a bit of a head start so it all balances out nicely.

留学試験(university enterance exams?, for which I enrolled simply to keep my pace up) and school require being able to write kanji, so as part of my challenge knowing a kanji will require being able to write it also.

My SRS of choice is Anki.

To tackle learning to write a Kanji I use a 4 field card. A typical card would be formatted like so:

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Expression:
経費

この不景気では、中小企業のみならず大企業でも経費を削る必要がある

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Meaning:
ある事を行うのに必要な費用

この不景気では、中小企業のみならず大企業でも～を削る必要がある

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Reading:
[Omitted for brevity]

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Additional:
「のみならず」の形で「～だけでなく、範囲はもっと大きく他にも及ぶ」と言いたい時に使う。硬い（かたい）表現
後の文には「も・で・さえ」などがよく使われる。

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As you can predict, a Production card would show the definition of the word to be placed where the "~" symbol is. I gernally tackle one word per sentence. If an example sentence has word in it that doesn't have a card of it's own I generate a new card. If that card contains a word that doesn't have a card of it's own the process reiterates.

We often have to writte essay's in class so for me word recollection is important. Atleast thats how I justify all this overhead in my study.

My current stats according to Anki are:

• 1631 total unique kanji.
• Old Jouyou: 1491 of 1945 (76.7%).
• New Jouyou: 55 of 191 (28.8%).
• Jinmeiyou (reg): 50 of 645 (7.8%).
• Jinmeiyou (var): 2 of 145 (1.4%).
• 33 non-jouyou kanji.

Tools of the trade:

Electronic:

• Anki (The kanji stats will point out what remains)
  
• My Casio EX-word Dataplus4 XD-SP6700 electronic dictionary. It has
  明鏡（めいきょう） and 広辞苑（こうじえん） J-J dictionaries and Progressive (J-E). I also
  bought the Kodansha kanji learner's content for it.
• As much as I love my electronic dictionary it falls short in many places. Examples are sometimes garbage or not even present. I often prefer to use 三省堂（さんせいどう）'s 大辞林（だいじりん）for simplier more concise definitions and 研究社（けんきゅうしゃ） dictionary for examples and usage. These are the paid PC versions not the online versions.
• 今昔文字鏡（こんじゃくもじきょう）A nice Kanji dictionary but in all honesty I rarely require it.
  

I generally just add new words/kanji as I come across them. These have primarly been from the following text books:

• Kanji and Kana: I bought this along time ago before I started seriously studying Japanese. Its a simple Kanji dictionary and I don't recommend it (apologies to authors Hadamitzky and Spahn but honestly, what were you thinking? No seriously, post a reply to this if your reading this post because I want my $30 back).
• 文化中級日本語(ぶんかちゅうきゅうにほんご): The kanji I've learnt to date come from this text book (I and II). We used this in my school. I love these but I'm sad to say we've just finished them and started the book below. I'd say they contained about 1400 of the Kanji learnt so far.
• 上級で学ぶ（じょうきゅうでまなぶ）:This semster's text book for school. Just cracked it open, yesterday, yet to form an opinion.
• 日本語文型辞典（にほんごぶけいじてん）:I think this book has every piece of Japanese grammar ever thought up with a variety of examples. Unfortunatley no English so not recommended for beginners. I think they had a goal of not using the same word twice in an example sentence and for that reason provides a great resource for new words and usage.
  
• どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型辞典（どんなときどうつかうにほんごひょうげんぶんけいじてん）:This book is awesome, sometimes grammar gets pretty convoluted and it explains it a little more concisely than the above 日本語文型辞典(and also in Enlgish, Korean and Chinese) . Me and my room mate (Taiwan) love this book.
• Past 能力試験　(JLPT): This is a necessary evil. I plan to smash level 1 in December.
• Newspaper： I didn't even read the newspaper back home but I like to torture myself and use them for sentences. Mining newspapers crushes my soul. Kanji is used a little differentley in newspapers, thats about the only interesting thing about it.
• A dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar: English explanation, English translation. As I mentioned above grammar gets convoluted and this book sometimes helps. This book also contains alot of different kanji words in their examples. This is my failsafe if I just can't comprehend what the heck is going on in a sentence.

I think I'm probably the complete opposite of Keith(I guess that's why I like his blog.), I don't really opt for natural aquisition. My goal is to read not converse and I study as such. I'm not a big fan of TV or Movies. Memorizing a Kanji is usually done using brute force. Harder Kanji are rembered through my own stories. Heisig did not invent this. This was invented long before him. I disagree with his method of learning one meaning through a bunch of stories (tried it, didn't help me, didn't like it).

I've probably bored you all enough (I'd be suprised if your even reading this far). There's my goals, my tools and my method. Lets kick this off ASAP.

よろしくお願いします。

Kosuke.