how do you keep it up?

[Visitor K]

well, i know we are all getting older and there comes a time when men need that extra help in the bedroom, but i am not talking about ED here.. im wondering how any other formerly fucked gaijin keep up on their j-skills.
i never got into kanji, which makes it quite difficult to do any reading. i email japanese friends in using hiragana, which helps and someday i will get around to setting up a skype date, but i was wondering if anybody else here has a suggestion on keeping my japanese polished.

[Charles]

If you've got basically no kanji ability, you aren't at a level where it will stick permanently. Sorry. Study kanji more. Reading is the key to fluency for those of us not in Japan. In our home countries, chances for verbal interaction in Japanese are rare, but a book or magazine or website is always available whenever we want it. Even my nihonjin buddies here in the US say their native language skills deteriorate if they don't read a lot.

I recommend the Kodansha Basic Kanji series. Expensive but worth it.

[Visitor K]

yah, even while living in japan i could tell that my fear of immersing myself in kanji was getting in the way of fully learning japanese.. but i never planned on being a lifer, so i didnt think it was worth my time, but now i feel like i have reached a level where i can have conversations and whatnot so i dont want to forget it.
when i went to oaxaca city for day of the dead, i felt like i was stalking japanese tourists, but it was the first japanese i have spoken in months and it was a bit rusty..
it will be odd to start studying kanji only after leaving japan, but if i want to keep up on it, i guess that is what i will have to do.
thanks charles, any other recommendations?
-k

[GomiGirl]

but i was wondering if anybody else here has a suggestion on keeping my japanese polished.

I use this.....

[Charles]

yah, even while living in japan i could tell that my fear of immersing myself in kanji was getting in the way of fully learning japanese.. but i never planned on being a lifer, so i didnt think it was worth my time, but now i feel like i have reached a level where i can have conversations and whatnot so i dont want to forget it.
when i went to oaxaca city for day of the dead, i felt like i was stalking japanese tourists, but it was the first japanese i have spoken in months and it was a bit rusty..
it will be odd to start studying kanji only after leaving japan, but if i want to keep up on it, i guess that is what i will have to do.
thanks charles, any other recommendations?
-k

Well, it's hard to say, I usually try to customize advice to someone's level of ability, which I can only guess. I'm an advocate of the "four skills" approach, and you seem to have developed the two skills of speaking and listening, while avoiding reading and writing. My 4 Skills teachers would always spend extra effort tearing down 2 Skills students, so they could build them back up "the right way." I don't know if this works, I came in with 0 Skills so I can't judge from personal experience.
There's a ton of study resources on the web, you'll just have to find some that you can work with. I like the traditional flash card format, it's worked for years, and the computer-assisted flash card drill programs are a lot easier than making cards on your own. But there are other approaches, I like Rikai.com, I don't know if it would work for you, it might not be appropriate for beginners.
So anyway, if you have more specific questions, I might be able to give more specific advice, but my general philosophy is that more study is always beneficial. You will have to develop new skills that you have never used before, that is a bit scary, but hell, nothing worth doing was ever easy. I can't tell you how to develop skills that you don't currently possess, but I know from personal experience that it can be done. I'm not sure I can even describe how I did it.

[akatsuka]

i believe that kanji can help improve your japanese. it helps you understand the meaning of the word, it helps you understand words that you did not know the vocabulary for and I find it interesting...

I used to use kanji cards but found it hard to undestand the word without any context. But maybe as you already know the word the kanji cards will be fine. Read books with furigana beside the kanji to get yourself familliar with it without overwhelming yourself. Write down every new character you learn. There is a big difference between being able to read kanji and being able to write it my memory.

enjoy

[Greji]

.. im wondering how any other formerly fucked gaijin keep up on their j-skills.

Get a sleeping dictionary. Change frequently to keep up with the latest vocab used by the younger set.

[Blah Pete]

Get a sleeping dictionary. Change frequently to keep up with the latest vocab used by the younger set.

Yes, a Sleeping Dictionary is the way to go.

[String]

I recommend the Kodansha Basic Kanji series. Expensive but worth it.

Thanks for the tip, Charles. I've gotten the series and have been working with it for a few days and love it. $185 w/ shipping for all 4 volumes from sasuga.com...definitely not cheap.

[Charles]

Thanks for the tip, Charles. I've gotten the series and have been working with it for a few days and love it. $185 w/ shipping for all 4 volumes from sasuga.com...definitely not cheap.

Oops, looks like I misspoke, that's the Bonjinsha Kanji Book series, not Kodansha. Sorry for the confusion, but it looks like you found the right books with the link I provided.

Anyway, glad to hear you like the books. But I admonish you, don't even look at the Intermediate books yet, it will demoralize you. I didn't start using those books until I finished 4th Year Japanese in college. It may be a while before you get to those books. I remember when I was in 1st and 2nd year and asked some of my professors about kanji issues that are the kind of thing dealt with in vol 3 and 4, and they said "oh, well I could explain that to you, but it wouldn't make any sense, you aren't ready for it yet, it would just confuse you." When I got finally got to that level, I admitted they were right. But you're building a great base for understanding that well, by using the book series' gradual methods.

I didn't learn kanji from the first two books, but after using the Intermediates (which I would describe more accurately as Advanced) I decided I should do a quick review of the first two, and was surprised to find I learned a few things about kanji I thought I already knew well.

[String]

Oops, looks like I misspoke, that's the Bonjinsha Kanji Book series, not Kodansha. Sorry for the confusion, but it looks like you found the right books with the link I provided.

Anyway, glad to hear you like the books. But I admonish you, don't even look at the Intermediate books yet, it will demoralize you. I didn't start using those books until I finished 4th Year Japanese in college. It may be a while before you get to those books. I remember when I was in 1st and 2nd year and asked some of my professors about kanji issues that are the kind of thing dealt with in vol 3 and 4, and they said "oh, well I could explain that to you, but it wouldn't make any sense, you aren't ready for it yet, it would just confuse you." When I got finally got to that level, I admitted they were right. But you're building a great base for understanding that well, by using the book series' gradual methods.

I didn't learn kanji from the first two books, but after using the Intermediates (which I would describe more accurately as Advanced) I decided I should do a quick review of the first two, and was surprised to find I learned a few things about kanji I thought I already knew well.

Yes, I found it okay and didn't really notice the discrepancy since I took one of the authors' names from the link to search elsewhere. I was surprised that the second-hand editions on amazon and bn were more expensive than getting them from sasuga.com.

I did take a peek into the 2nd "intermediate" book and was slightly horrified but also pleased. It's PACKED page after page with dense info, diagrams, articles, etc. So far the first book is just review, but it's very much needed as I've been avoiding Japanese since I broke up with my state-side J-GF last summer. Hopefully my 6 month term at the wonderful Shibuya Gaigo Gakuin at the intermediate level 4 years ago provided a good basis for what I am to encounter later in the series... they drilled a hole in my skull and crammed bits of grammar and kanji in with the blunt ends of their hashi. A good school if anyone's looking for a place in Tokyo.

I've also contacted a potential conversation partner, so hopefully I'll be polishing that up again soon as well.

[Charles]

[quote="String"]Yes, I found it okay and didn't really notice the discrepancy since I took one of the authors' names from the link to search elsewhere. I was surprised that the second-hand editions on amazon and bn were more expensive than getting them from sasuga.com.

I did take a peek into the 2nd "intermediate" book and was slightly horrified but also pleased. It's PACKED page after page with dense info, diagrams, articles, etc. So far the first book is just review, but it's very much needed as I've been avoiding Japanese since I broke up with my state-side J-GF last summer. ]
Well you wouldn't want a secondhand copy, they'd probably have the answers all filled in, which would make them useless. I found the 2nd volume at the local library, someone filled in the answers. I wanted to review it, but even erasing wouldn't remove all the traces, so I scanned the pages, photoshopped out the answers, and put them away for a few weeks until I forgot them enough to get a fresh take.

The 3rd and 4th books really are amazing. They start to put together the rules behind kanji, so you're no longer studying individual kanji, you're studying whole groups of kanji with the same radicals. You start to pick up on the patterns, like some radicals represent pronunciation, some represent meanings, etc. But don't worry about that yet, you need to know a fair amount of kanji by rote memorization before you can see the patterns. Some teachers believe you will spontaneously notice the patterns, I sure didn't, so a few hints were really useful. This is why the Bonjinsha method is immensely preferable to other systems like Heisig, you're learning the real patterns behind the kanji that native J speakers learn, not just using arbitrary mnemonics that someone made up for the convenience of native English speakers. Systems like Heisig may be faster in the short term, but are counterproductive in the long term.
My only complaint with the Bonjinsha method is that you end up cramming your mind full of a lot of linguistic terminology that is absolutely useless in daily speech. But that's what it takes.

[Baka Chan]

Yep, reading what ever you can get your hands on. I been back and forth for 8 years now. Also, any animation you can buy from Amazon--- just keep the subtitles off an listen