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Rating: 
Summary: Essential Book for Essential Kanji
Review: Like many others learning Japanese, I struggled with the system of writing and rewriting. This is of course necessary, but it did not give me any glue with which to commit the characters to my long term memory.
Having bought both the books from the Tokyo Uni group, I was able to enjoy the process of learning. The mnemonic system is just what you need. It allows you to create links to the components of the complex Kanji. That is, to identify what makes up the meaning of the characters. With a mental picture cemented, it is quite simple to make the associations when you are presented with new kanji.
I found this invaluable and a pleasant reading experience. The pleasant and interesting experience part was especially necessary trying to learn kanji after the average 12 hour day at work here in Tokyo.Ganbatte kudesai!
Rating:
Summary: Sensible explanations for unsensible Kanji
Review: This book lists 250 "essential" Kanji, along with drawing strokes *and* an explanation as to what the heck it is you are actually drawing; not just the radicals, but explaining the historical meaning. Sometimes the explanations don't make a lot of sense, but they really try to come up with acceptable explanations (and remember that Chinese characters themselves don't make a lot of sense anyway. For example, why isn't the Kanji for "round" a circle. It isn't, but they explain it as someone with rounded shoulders as they crouch to go into a cave.) As a reviewer of Vol2 noted, Vol1 is filled with lots of photos of everyday usage and some cute manga cartoons. I've tried to learn Kanji from a dictionary (forget it; after the first 150 they all look the same). "Let's Learn Kanji" is ok; It does discuss brushwork, but doesn't give you any really good mneumonics (other than the radicals, which are only of limited use). Bottom line is if you're learning Kanji 250 Essential Vol1 is damned fine. I'm damned glad I got it. Damned glad.
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