We’ve been wanting to learn Kanji.   Everyone thinks it’s impossible.  It’s not impossible.  Difficult yes, but not impossible.   We’ve tried different methods of trying to read Kanji and look them up in the dictionary.  The problem is that to use a dictionary, you must understand the radicals and be able to count strokes.

The Kanji Starter books explain the “base” characters and their radical forms.  The characters are shown as the “base” and it’s variations.   For example, there’s a character for “man”.   The character “man” with a square around him and another “man” is a prisoner.   Or, let’s assume a tree character (which really does vaguely resemble a fir tree).  Two of these “trees” next to each other means “woods”.

We’ve read several books on Kanji where they organize the words by topic – which weren’t easy to memorize from.  However, this method where it explains the words through the evolution of the characters is far easier to remember.   The only regret we have is that the series of 2 books only covers 500 of the approx 2000 “daily use” kanji.   What about the other 1500???   We want to learn those too!!!