I find it tedious to meticulously write out every stroke separately. Lifting the pen makes you lose momentum, which I don't want to.
So I've been experimenting with ways to shorten down the number of strokes I have to make for each Kanji. Simple primitives like those for state of mind, sun, moon, heart, St. Bernard's dog, person, can be made in a flurry. But often writing a kanji at high speeds renders it an almost inrecognizeable mess of criss-crossing lines.
Here is an image of what I've been experimenting with. The two middle lines. The first one has a handfull of primitives and the second line holds some kanji I tried to write really fast (犬、猫、園、飯、谷、私、日、本、人、無)
http://imageshack.com/a/img833/4679/qcxc.jpg

I just want to know if there's someone here who happens to know some "Kanji hax" to make life easier. I know I've seen Japanese people do some useful tricks to simplify kanji. But I can't find anything on this topic on the internet.

Here are some websites for you!

(click on the small pictures for examples)
http://daigotorena.moo.jp/lesson/gyosho.htm

this is more extreme, but some of them are good, for example the simple ones like 口 and 王:
http://www.kabipan.com/language/japanese/shodo/01.html

If you want more search for 行書 (or wait for other people to reply). As for tips I'd say pay attention to the stroke order (but sometimes the stroke order changes in the short hand forms!), and don't make up your own forms (if you want others to be able to read, hehe).

Good luck

Personally I use: http://www.yamasa.org/ocjs/kanjijiten/english/ and it has helped increase my speed and, more importantly, readability. I would love to hear the communities opinion on other resources though!

I guess it's fine if you're only making notes for yourself. It's mostly unreadable for me though.

Mostly I just try to draw each stroke a bit faster but still correctly. There are fixed places where I'll connect my strokes - the middle two strokes of 目 and the bottom two strokes of 日, for example. I try not to connect any strokes I haven't seen connected in native handwriting (grass script doesn't count for that, of course.)

I might worry more about shortcuts if I were handwriting text, but I almost exclusively write characters as practice. Almost all of my actual writing of text is typed. If I'm writing for practice I don't want to be sloppy or incorrect, because then it's not very good practice.

Helltrixz Wrote:I guess it's fine if you're only making notes for yourself. It's mostly unreadable for me though.

I have no problems reading printed text, but I've seen native examples that were far less legible than the OP's effort even though they were written neatly. Handwriting is a different beast, and you'll probably find yourself illiterate all of a sudden if you haven't had exposure to it.

I'd still recommend the OP follow "official" shorthand to get a more Japanese feel that natives will recognise more easily. The dictionary posted above is good, but there's one that has animations for the handwriting itself, though I can't seem to find it anywhere. I think there are even books on the topic.

It's something I've been half-interested in, but I only ever seem to write my address so it doesn't seem like a justified use of study time.

Thanks, kushiote and REH94, for the 行書 sites and the kanji dictionary. I have looked through them and taken notes of shortcuts I am going to try and learn.

Regarding the usage, I mostly am interested in this as a way of shortening my review times a little bit. I like to write each kanji out on paper, but as of until now I struggled to find good ways to write the radicals fast - as the best way would be to do it how natives do.

I think getting 楷書 down properly should come first... if you're struggling with regular character forms (which by the sounds of it is the case - otherwise you shouldn't have trouble writing at a decent pace), then any attempts at other forms aren't going to be particularly pretty.

Just keep writing with good standard form for a few years, otherwise you'll just end up with bad handwriting like me.

I think you may have misunderstood me. 楷書 did come first.
In short:
1. I have been writing out each kanji stroke by stroke. (seems this is called 楷書).
2. Writing out each kanji stroke by stroke goes rediculously slow (in my opinion anyway) ---> 3. I wanted to find faster ways to write.

Northern_Lord Wrote:I think you may have misunderstood me. 楷書 did come first.
In short:
1. I have been writing out each kanji stroke by stroke. (seems this is called 楷書).
2. Writing out each kanji stroke by stroke goes rediculously slow (in my opinion anyway) ---> 3. I wanted to find faster ways to write.

Just try to join up several strokes in your kanji, but don't try to simplify the form too much, because it'll become hard to read.

The problem with that, as people have pointed out, is that not all simplified handwritten versions of the kanji that you would come up with yourself are valid. There's a specific style to handwritten Japanese that most Japanese actually study in school similarly to how a lot of English speakers study cursive at some point. It's called 習字.

I've been looking for a good 習字 book because, thanks to KanKen, I can write longhand Japanese without breaking out a dictionary every 2 seconds, and now I'm primarily limited by how fast I can actually put the Japanese thoughts down on paper.

My English handwriting is pretty bad, though, too. I should concentrate on both.

Northern_Lord Wrote:I think you may have misunderstood me. 楷書 did come first.
In short:
1. I have been writing out each kanji stroke by stroke. (seems this is called 楷書).
2. Writing out each kanji stroke by stroke goes rediculously slow (in my opinion anyway) --

My point is it should not be that slow if you're proficient at it - I write full lecture notes in楷書 all the time. You should focus on improving the appearance of your regular handwriting before worrying about other forms.

I agree with dizmox. Don't try to do anything other than 楷書 until you're very good and reasonably fast at it. Trying to learn other forms too early is asking for trouble. I'm in grad school in Taiwan, and I take my notes by hand mostly in 楷書, as do most of the Taiwanese students in my classes. In fact, many of my Taiwanese friends would struggle to write anything other than 楷書, and they're impressed when I use 行書 or (only occasionally, because I'm not good at it) 草書.

Another thing is, 行書 and 草書 will probably actually be slower at first, because you'll be relearning how to write and you'll have to think about every little curve. Especially if your 楷書 isn't already really good.

Anyway, sometimes the slower way is the better way. Pick up a copy of Björksten's Learn to Write Chinese Characters to learn how to make really nice-looking 楷書 with a pen. It's focused on Chinese, but the principles still apply. There's a book by Fred Wang for Chinese cursive, but I'm guessing Japanese 行書 and 草書 might be a bit different, so I hesitate to recommend it. But at any rate, wait until your 楷書 is really good (really good!) before you try anything else. It's the base upon which everything else is built.