I will try immersion with Visual novels, in combination with RTK for several months to see how it goes. Visual novel is much better for immersion then anime, as I can replay specific dialogues several times and see what kanji's are what in the dialogue box.

How about reading light novels and novels with rikaichan? You can easily switch between kanji and word dictionaries, it should help to solidify things...

EDIT: just in case you don't know what i mean, Rikaichan is a pop up J-E dictionary. If you try to read the word and are not sure you're getting it right, you can mouse over to see the hiragana. You can also use a key to switch to see the kanji dictionary for any kanji with a bunch of keywords and english meanings.
To find novels and light novels you can read on your computer, search this forum for "totally innocent books", and use cb4960's program (found in the developer's showcase sticky in the learning resources section) to convert to html.

Last edited by IceCream (2011 December 21, 3:24 am)

How about using Japanese books for learning Kanji... the ones people use in  Japan... They are in many cases much better structured than non-japanese equivalents..

Shinichirou wrote:

How about using Japanese books for learning Kanji... the ones people use in  Japan... They are in many cases much better structured than non-japanese equivalents..

Is there any specific method you're thinking about like RTK or Kanji isn't That Hard or something, or are you just referring to traditional ones? He didn't want to study them like most Japanese students do.

Here's how I learned English: I learned the language itself, first by traditional means (textbooks, in school), but mainly by reading and watching a lot of TV.

However, as it turned out, English is an especially difficult language to spell properly. I was at a point where I was reading James Joyce novels without a dictionary, but I still couldn't spell. When all you do is read, eventually you reach a so called plateau in learning, precisely because of the problem mentioned by gbatemper: once you figure out what something means, you move on, you don't pay attention to any further details like how it's written exactly. In general, repetition that isn't challenging doesn't lead to significant learning.

The way I learned to spell was not by reading, but, and this is gonna come as a surprise: SPELLING. As in writing. Not by hand, by typing, on various forums on the Internet. Obviously, typing in English is the same as writing in English, while typing in Japanese is not the same as writing. But still...

I barely speak and I definitely don't read or write Kanji, so I'm not going to pretend to know how one should go about this, but wouldn't writing (by hand a little, maybe, but mainly at a keyboard, to communicate with people) solve the problem of the plateau in learning a writing system, that one inevitably reaches by only reading? (I understand that the Japanese don't type the way I typed English - that's why I'm asking someone who can type in Japanese if this would be helpful, instead of stating that it would be - though I'm pretty sure it would be helpful to some extent).

P.S. Using Anki on reading sentences would result in the same plateau. However, if one were to be feeling especially masochistic, one could do it the other way around ( listening to audio or looking at the kana, writing out the Kanji by hand and then verifying if it's correct). I know that would work.

Stansfield123 wrote:

The way I learned to spell was not by reading, but, and this is gonna come as a surprise: SPELLING. As in writing. Not by hand, by typing, on various forums on the Internet. Obviously, typing in English is the same as writing in English, while typing in Japanese is not the same as writing. But still...

I barely speak and I definitely don't read or write Kanji, so I'm not going to pretend to know how one should go about this, but wouldn't writing (by hand a little, maybe, but mainly at a keyboard, to communicate with people) solve the problem of the plateau in learning a writing system, that one inevitably reaches by only reading? (I understand that the Japanese don't type the way I typed English - that's why I'm asking someone who can type in Japanese if this would be helpful, instead of stating that it would be - though I'm pretty sure it would be helpful to some extent).

While it sounds like a really good idea in theory, typing in Japanese isn't going to help much with learning how to remember how to write kanji.  When you type in a Japanese word processor, you enter in the kana and then are given a list of possible kanji to select from. 
I've heard that because texting and communication over the Internet is becoming so common, native Japanese ability to hand write kanji is slipping.  Keep in mind, this is something that I've heard, so there's a good chance it's bunk, but I know that word processors don't help my writing.  They do wonders for retention regarding reading though.
Recently I've switched to rote writing the kanji over and over again.  It's not popular or 'fun', but I like it.