I’ve been studying Japanese on an ongoing basis for almost a year and a half now (wow!!) and I’ve recently been thinking about taking Kanji study more seriously. There’s a few reasons I’ve noticed this become more important:

  • So much of everyday Japan writing is in kanji! If I visit again I will want to be able to actually read menus, street signs, etc…
  • My textbook is starting to integrate more kanji into lesson contents more and more, at a rapid clip (we’re learning about 8 characters a topic)

I’ve been using Wanikani, which has been fantastic and I’d recommend it (I also bought the Kanji Learner’s course which I really wanted to follow but never got the rhythm of it).

I would love it if I could pick and choose the kanji I prioritise learning - I am not fast enough at WK to get up to what we’re learning in our textbooks, though I’m sure there will be overlap soon enough 🤞

In the interrim, I am often needing to look up particular kanji from the textbook (for those I haven’t yet memorised). I was perplexed for some time as to how to do that, as all the online lookup tools were perplexing. I asked my teacher and she linked me some great articles from Tofukuji - it turns out there’s actually standard methods of categorising and looking up kanji 😆 Because of course there is.

Anyway I’d recommend reading this one on finding kanji radicals, which are one of the easiest ways to then find the kanji you’re looking for.