Those are two really good words. It really has you think on what Kanji is supposed to be there. Maybe you should quiz yourself by getting a whole list of 交ぜ書き words with the Kanji in question missing. Then, it would be your job to show what Kanji goes where. With it being out of context, you may want to put in contexts of an example sentence...working on grammar and vocab at the same time.

For example

Here are Kanji that I've been looking at in the past hour. 乖、云、于、也. There's more, but these are the easiest ones. I've known them for some time, but I wanted to learn or refresh myself on vocabulary with them.

So, what I would do is find words that have them in it. Some that I have found include

単于
云為
乖離
可也　　← FWI...I knew this one at list.
于蘭盆会　　← The unabbreviated origin of お盆
云々
乖（そむ）く
乖戻

I really wish I could find more words with 乖. Something tells me the one word I don't know with it in it is going to be what I face on the Kanken in the not-so-distant future.

Anyways, whether it be a definition or sentence, I would wait a while, maybe an entire week before actually doing this, take out the pre-made sheet of these words and the context without those said Kanji. If I can figure them out, that's good. Review anytime before that wouldn't be a bad idea, but it would be really good for you to find out what your limit of instantaneous memory can last you. Eventually without ever seeing a word like 云々 for months, you may end up forgetting it.

I don't know if this tactic would be helpful, but it's worth a shot.

When do you plan on taking the kanken and have you taken any of them before?

I haven't. So, I'm giving myself by the end of college to have taken it. So, I have plenty of time. I've printed out several scans on their site of the other levels and the one I'm aiming for, and the only ones that give me trouble are 準1級 & 1級. But I'm not completely clueless on the content of the former though. So, I might as well aim for the top. It's a good goal to have, and it's allowing me to learn a lot of cool Japanese. Why not then, right? It sounds like a good plan to me.

If you had to sit down and take a 2級 test right now do you think you could pass it?

Probably. It would be maybe around 80% I think. I'm the kind of person that can look at 23 different entries for こうりょう and go to a white board and write them all out just from looking at them for a matter of a minute. So, Kanji is just a niche of mine.

That's pretty impressive. Most university educated Japanese people couldn't do that.

Well, foreign language is my main hobby, passion, and talent. I struggled through calculus and flunked the ap test for it. It didn't surprise me though. I find Korean to be extremely easy. I can go days without studying it and still know just as much as when I left off. I really need to start studying more of it though...

I try studying at least 50 different Kanji per day now. I especially like rare ones that I might never have to use. 杇 for example.
By the time I do, which I hope is at least in the 22nd century--I'm aiming to live that long--I want to have learned or attained at some point a knowledge of at least 20000 characters and thousands upon thousands of words. Studying Japanese is very relaxing for me, a stress reliever.

My day normally comprises of 2 hours working on my site. Here I get to review and refine my own knowledge, which is always a good thing.
3 hours are normally spent on looking up words and characters. I read a lot of Japanese online. I normally don't read that much into books, but I have plenty kept up for a rainy or snowy day.

I thought it would be interesting to do this "Joyo test" for one of the materials I'm reading, a Genji commentary written in the late 16th century. Here are the non-Joyo kanji on the first page of the first chapter. This includes some passages of classical Chinese as well. (This edition I'm using converts old-form kanji to modern forms for kanji on the Joyo list, so that won't be included.)

於 (kanbun particle)
廂　（ひさし, a building part)
禄 (ろく, gifts)
鷹 (たか, falcon)
臥 (used in 副臥　（そひぶし）, a man's first sexual partner/first wife)
葵　（葵上, one of the characters in the Genji)
淑 (used in 淑景舎, one of the buildings of the Heian palace)
桐 (桐壺, first Genji chapter and character names)
謬 (from 謬説, an incorrect theory, this has furigana even in the Muromachi-period manuscript)
仍 (kanbun particle)
猶 (なお)
伊 (used in 伊勢, a female poet)
也 (なり, classical copula)
云 (云う, say, and 云々 -- "etc." or mark quoted material)

That's not bad for a full page, given that you see ridiculous claims about needing 10k or 15k kanji to read "classical literature".

imabi Wrote:I'm the kind of person that can look at 23 different entries for こうりょう and go to a white board and write them all out just from looking at them for a matter of a minute.

Do you have Asperger's syndrome and/or a photographic memory?

By the way, how is your Korean hearing comprehension? That's the most difficult thing about Korean for me.

imabi Wrote:Those are two really good words. It really has you think on what Kanji is supposed to be there. Maybe you should quiz yourself by getting a whole list of 交ぜ書き words with the Kanji in question missing. Then, it would be your job to show what Kanji goes where. With it being out of context, you may want to put in contexts of an example sentence...working on grammar and vocab at the same time.

If I understand you correctly you basically mean the writing/production part of the kanken tests? If that's the case then I do get that kind of practice when going through my kanken book.

@yudantaiteki:.do I get a cookie for knowing those things? That sounds really good right now.
@toshiromibaliza: Idk what that is. Somewhat photographic perhaps, but it could all just because of my immense desire.
I actually understand more Korean than I can actually output.