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Summary: If you want to learn and memorize Kanji don't miss this book
Review: This book presents an easy way to learn and memorize Kanji. As a forigner who is living and studying in Japan this book can help to learn Kanji and presents a pictorial description of each Kanji. The philosophy of creation of each Kanji helps to memorize it as well as it's meaning. Introducing the Kanji Radicals to show the Kanjis of the same family effectively helps to learn the meaning and the method of writing. If, even, some one don't know how to read Hiragana or Katakana, using this book can read the Kanji
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Summary: Delightful! Turns abstract shapes into memorable images
Review: This clean pocket guide makes remembering kana easy by turning abstract shapes into memorable images. I find especially helpful, the hints on distinguishing characters that look very similar to one another. I highly recommend it!
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Summary: Kanji Comes to Life
Review: This is a good book for learning Kanji. There are lots of pictures and explanations which help you remember the way the charaters look and it helps you in forming associations with the images and their meanings. The book is packed with information and there is never a dull page with useless information.
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Summary: Reading Japanese Made Easy and Fun!!!
Review: This is a great book for anyone who has never studied Japanese but is still very curious to know what those "funny looking" symbols mean. It takes something that can be very intimidating for a Westerner (learning a non-Latin based language) and makes it simple, fun and memorable.I used to work a lot in Japan and stumbled across this book at a bookstore in the Ginza. Working in design and architecture for a U.S. company, I was immediately drawn to the cover the book. I had seen that symbol ("Stop") before on the streets of Tokyo and finally made the connection. I picked it up and couldn't set it down. I found the images fun and easy to undertand without "dumbing it down". I bought the book immediately and it quickly became my bible for understanding more of what I was seeing all around me on a daily basis (traffic/safety signs, advertisements, business signs, directional signs, food packaging, restaurant menus, business communications, etc.). Over time I was able to memorize symbols that I was seeing often, but the introductory section on Kana (basically a "sylla-bet" for spelling out words) proved indispensible. There are two types of Kana: Hiragana and Katakana. Essentially they are just two ways of writing the same collection of sounds (somewhat like cursive and printing). The key is that Hiragana is primarily used for things that are native to Japan and Katakana is used for things that are not (I'm paraphrasing). This was key to know, because many of the words written in Katakana (the one that looks more like printing) were simply Japanese phonetics of English words. I found that by "spelling out" the word and saying the sounds, I could often figure out what the word was: like "ice cream" (i su ku ri mu) or "milk" (mi ru ku) or "taxi" (ta ku shi). It takes a while to sound out a word sometimes, but you get better with it over time when you realize that certain sounds are approximated to work within the fixed sounds of Kana (like the fact that there isn't an "L" sound, it's approximated with an "R" sound). It became a game to figure out what signs or advertisements meant. It helped to make a sea of information more within my grasp of understanding and took away the mystery (and some of my dependence on interpreters). A highly recommended book for anyone that wants to learn more about the written language of Japanese and have fun doing it. A very visual and intuitive book that makes memorizing Kanji (and Kana) easy!
Rating:
Summary: Reading Japanese Made Easy and Fun!!!
Review: This is a great book for anyone who has never studied Japanese but is still very curious to know what those "funny looking" symbols mean. It takes something that can be very intimidating for a Westerner (learning a non-Latin based language) and makes it simple, fun and memorable. I used to work a lot in Japan and stumbled across this book at a bookstore in the Ginza. Working in design and architecture for a U.S. company, I was immediately drawn to the cover the book. I had seen that symbol ("Stop") before on the streets of Tokyo and finally made the connection. I picked it up and couldn't set it down. I found the images fun and easy to undertand without "dumbing it down". I bought the book immediately and it quickly became my bible for understanding more of what I was seeing all around me on a daily basis (traffic/safety signs, advertisements, business signs, directional signs, food packaging, restaurant menus, business communications, etc.). Over time I was able to memorize symbols that I was seeing often, but the introductory section on Kana (basically a "sylla-bet" for spelling out words) proved indispensible. There are two types of Kana: Hiragana and Katakana. Essentially they are just two ways of writing the same collection of sounds (somewhat like cursive and printing). The key is that Hiragana is primarily used for things that are native to Japan and Katakana is used for things that are not (I'm paraphrasing). This was key to know, because many of the words written in Katakana (the one that looks more like printing) were simply Japanese phonetics of English words. I found that by "spelling out" the word and saying the sounds, I could often figure out what the word was: like "ice cream" (i su ku ri mu) or "milk" (mi ru ku) or "taxi" (ta ku shi). It takes a while to sound out a word sometimes, but you get better with it over time when you realize that certain sounds are approximated to work within the fixed sounds of Kana (like the fact that there isn't an "L" sound, it's approximated with an "R" sound). It became a game to figure out what signs or advertisements meant. It helped to make a sea of information more within my grasp of understanding and took away the mystery (and some of my dependence on interpreters). A highly recommended book for anyone that wants to learn more about the written language of Japanese and have fun doing it. A very visual and intuitive book that makes memorizing Kanji (and Kana) easy!
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Summary: Fun, beautiful book. Not sure how useful a study tool.
Review: This is a lovely book and a recommend to anyone who enjoys collecting everything on the subject (like me!) get a copy. As a serious study aid it is lacking - it doesn't cover all recommended characters and is pretty limited on compounds too. Great to look at, great to review part of the subject, but not part of a serious study scheme. Heisig is more comprehensive, though for simple ease of use, and results I can't recommend anything more highly than K. Henshall"s "Remembering The Japanese Characters". I keep a copy at home on my desk and one at work for quiet moments too. Subarashii!
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Summary: The best kanji tutor available
Review: this is simply the best kanji tutor available. No better way to remember kanji than with these clever mnemonic
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Summary: Great introduction to Kanji
Review: While the number of Kanji is a bit small (the Toyo Kanji list was 1,850 when I was in college), and it is not always useful in remembering the Japanese onyomi and kunyomi, it is perfect for simply learning the meanings. Since this is the first step to learning kanji, and all many people are interrested in, this book is a very valueable learning tool. I wish I had it in college.
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Summary: Didn't help...
Review: While this sounds like a super-great idea, it really doesn't help. 90% of the picture mneumonics don't help very much, and are just crude picture forms of the radicals. And it helps nothing at all with the actual Japanese. While I applaud Micheal Rowley for thinking up a few good pictoral references, don't invest your money in this book. It's better to learn like the Japanese do: writing the kanji, meaning, and pronunciation over and over again.
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Summary: Featureless faces form firm figures from Fuji-land
Review: Why should a picture of a misshapen person, eye, heart and ear make you remember Kanji #549 "Listen"? Or one man beating another with a stick, Kanji #400, "Industrious?" For the same reason King Philip Came Over For Good Sax*, I suppose - who knows why and how mnemonics work, but in this cleverly (sometimes, fiendishly so) illustrated volume, Michael Rowley provides memorable mind-helpers for those learning Kanji, or just simply fascinated with the development of this writing system borrowed from the Chinese. The book aggregates kanji into thematic groups, determined by the radical, or root element, of each kanji, and makes for much easier comprehension than standard elementary Kanji texts. Each kanji is presented with its Japanese and Chinese reading (very, very roughly speaking, similar to the way we have the Germanic "sweat" and Latinate "perspire" to mean the same thing), a brainy icon system for indicating which part of the kanji comes from which other character, and a mnemonic. Rowley uses bold, strong graphic elements, and those lovable faceless "people-oids" you remember from 1970s government-issued pamphlets to illustrate the meaning, along with those odd quirks of literature - the mnemonic ("Our rice products earn a pile of money" or "the prisoner's hands are bound with thread"). Distinctive, odd, and, yes, MEMORABLE. This charming book is good for curious teens, the diligent Nihongo-phile, or the dedicate sensei's toolkit. Enjoy strongly! (p.s. My favorite Kanji is #96, "Snow") * The classic mnemonic from biology for recalling Linnaean taxonomy: "kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species."
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