1. i'm working on various memory techniques every day when i memorize words for japanese now. my goal is to be so good at them by the time i go to japan that learning any new words'll be super easy and i won't have to spend much time studying (or annoying people from forgetting words) at all. i want to just see a word one time and remember it forever, it's not impossible at all, it just takes effort to get my brain to that stage... i keep thinking, if only i'd learnt this stuff as a kid, i'd have saved SOOOO much time and frustration.

2. "read the kanji" is going well: i have 949 words left of N2 and 414 of N3. I finish 70-100 words an hour (the site gives me way more words to review than it gives me new words to learn) so that's another, let's say, 18 hours of study. today's wednesday, i could finish those 18 hours by sunday night, so that's my goal.

3. i bought large-print japanese novels from amazon.jp and they'll come in the mail in about 2 weeks. my goal is to know so many words by then that reading won't be a real problem. when i get them i'll write word meanings / pronunciations in the book so i don't have to re-look them up on a later reading, i've decided i have to stop caring about the "sanctity" of books or "wasting" money and instead just have the mindset that i need to do EVERYTHING possible to make it easier for ME to read or learn from them instead.

4. i've started learning how to make kimchi, the first time went wrong because i used the wrong kind of cabbage (it never got soft or really "fermented") and tasted kinda weird because i was lacking some of the necessary spices (red pepper flakes) but i'm trying again now... luckily cabbage is super cheap. i'm also trying to make fermented squid guts, you just chop up the squid and let it soak in its own guts for a week in the fridge along with a teaspoon of salt.

in general i'm going to start trying to focus on making my life "mine" again... think about the things you regret not doing every day, and do them the next day... stop doing all the useless stuff you do each day (chatting on skype etc) and instead focus on the things that will actually make you successful (studying japanese)... being productive usually makes you a lot happier than talking to people, because it's a long-lasting productivity rather than a temporary distraction. i just need to focus on the future, "what kind of person do i want to be in 3 months" "in a year" "in 5 years" and so on.

kanji were originally very logical in meaning. they have little parts inside them (that were originally very logical too), and if you're going to study kanji individually it's easiest to learn them according to which ones look similar. for example:

了子字学　牛午　十木本休体　木林森

usually parts donate either "sound" or "meaning", sometimes both. examples of sound:

中　ナカ、チュー、ジュー　middle, during, throughout
仲　ナカ　friendship
虫　チュー、ムシ　bug

寺　ジ、テラ　(buddhist) temple
時　ジ、トキ　when, time, hour

犬　ケン、イヌ　dog
献　ケン　contribute

EDIT: (...i'll keep writing this after class is done)

so here's the basic memory techniques i'm now using:

1. try to imagine every single kanji as a scene, something moving, SOMETHING. for example, 女 is "woman". now i actually imagine a fat woman walking funny. even if the scene doesn't connect in any way to either the word meaning or the pronunciation, i have to still make up a scene so i can think of the kanji as "alive" and not just "a symbol". editing that scene later to include the relevant info as i think of it is easier when i see it the second or third time, if i can't think of it at first, rather than trying to make a perfect scene in the very beginning.

2. replace the kanji using one of the same sound, if i can't remember it. 助 (help) and 女 have the same chinese sound, "jyo". so in a word like 助言 "help-speech: advice", if i can't remember the pronunciation, i mentally think 女言 "woman-speech" instead.

3. say the pronunciation aloud each time the word comes up. you remember it about 50% better that way.

4. make up hand and arm movements to go along with the meaning or feeling of the word.

5. when you can't think of anything else, make word-rhymes and stuff (ex. "kantou" sounds like "can toe" and then you think "in Kantou you really -can toe- the line").

for example 桜 cherry tree/blossoms, you might have your hands doing "branches waving in the wind" movements while you say "sakura" aloud and imagine that a woman 女 is standing next to a pink cherry tree in the wind 木 (tree) and looking up at the three branches or petals of leaves above her head (those three lines on top of 女). and i try to imagine the feel of the wind and everything.

it ends up sounding pretty crazy BUT i just did TWICE the amount of words in one hour as what i normally do, thanks to doing all of this. and it gets easier and faster each time as you go along because your brain gets better at it. AND suddenly, memorizing stuff seems like a game instead of like a chore. you just "played" for 3 hours instead of studied. basically i have to teach myself to become a kid again.

i haven't yet started doing "mind maps", basically you pick a place and say each step of the route or each place in the room is reserved for a certain memory. so say i pick the route from my house to the grocery store. every single view along the way becomes a slot for a certain memory, that i never reuse for something else. or i pick my living room. every piece of furniture, every windowsill, each spot on the wall, becomes a slot. when my mind map is full i create a new map with another place i know well, and that way things don't overlap. i'll try doing that when i start working on handwriting kanji again i guess.

anyway, this is how far i am right now on readthekanji:



i'll finish N3 today, do the 2 homework assignments that i'm late on, and hopefully get further into N2.