Heisig-Anki Mashup and One More Really Good Tool

The desktop of a Japanese-studyaholic.

Non-Japanese studiers, my apologies. Hey, we'll have a youtube video up for you tomorrow to satisify your watch-Clay-be-dumb needs. But right now I need to show my ignorance to the world in my usual linguistic-related manner...
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I've become a big supporter of the Heisig method recently. I have a friend here at the school that complains it is too late to try the Heisig meathod. But I've found it to not be a problem to throw away my old mnemonics, or keep them, depending on how useful they are. It's quite easy. There are plenty of little things that I don't agree with about the books (mostly the adherence to Jyouyou of the first book, but occasionally mnemonic-wise too), but overall I find his methods to be best for memorizing, differentiating and being able to actually write kanji by hand. For instance, take 又, the kanji for "again". Now, conventional mnemonic making wisdom would have us use it as "again" in other kanjis and try to make our stories that way. But Heisig came up with a clever thing: he gives lots of kanji a different meaning when they appear as radicals. In this case, 又 becomes a crotch. As you can imagine (literally), this works much better for making outrageous stories. Outrageous or odd=easy to remember. Let me give another example: 池 is pond. The right part is given the arbitrary meaning of scorpion whenever it appears as a radical. But Heisig cautions to not come up with a dull story about how scorpions live in ponds. He suggested a pond being created, drip by drip, from a scorpion's stinger. Now that is an image that sticks. Here's one I thought up for alms (施):

Some people go to the four corners of the compass and recline in the streets to get pity money and alms. If you ignore these loafs, they may slip a scorpion under your door. Such is the price to pay if you scorn a beggar.

I doubled up on meaning for 方 in this one, and added a clue as to the placement of the scorpion radical. In fact, I try to make my story follow the drawing order when possible. In addition, I am sure to picture a gap-toothed miscreant pulling a scorpion out of his dirty coat. For more on the usefulness of vivid mnemonics, I recommend the Derren Brown book Tricks of the Mind. He's the guy that did the zombie-related hypnosis vid that was all over the net a while back, BTW, FTW, ROFL, A*.

Anyways, as the title promised, here is a link to an Anki decks one of which you can use to study kanji, using Heisig's keywords. It is tagged throughout according to JLPT level. I of course am using it to get the 1kyu kanji down pat. I'm studying 50 a day (via the settings I chose). My study method is as follows: read the "English reading", recall the story, draw the kanji, check and circle, with a red pen, parts that are sticklers for my memory (this circling-thing is not part of the Heisig method, but actually another method developed by a Japanese professor and made into a DS game I happen to own). If I can't recall anything, I use the Heisig number (shown automatically at answer time) to do a search in my PDF version of the books (really, a fast process with OS X).
There is only one side to these cards; if you can reproduce the kanji, you haven't much need to check the other; try reading afterwards and the kanji you have mastered should be salient. Also, I have tagged a few kanji with "p" for "primitive" (to which the deck is schedualed to give priority), but this deck was not originally made by me, and so there are tons of kanji that could potentially get this treatment (there are also a lot of annoying commas where spaces should be; I got rid of some). I also tag kanji that I don't want to bother with at this point in my kanji career due my suspicion that I won't see them on the test. If you download the deck, keep in mind x cards are automatically suspended from the schedules.
Feel free to modify those cards, especially if you feel, as I do, that the readings can be a bit off. I often check the kanji in the program that I am going to mention in a second:


On to that second tool I put in the title: a program which is, as far as I know, only for Macs. It's called JEDict. Recently, Deas mentioned a Mac app to help one see kanji better and thus illuminate stroke order, but I feel this is vastly superior (sorry Deas). For one thing, it will show you the stroke order and animate said strokes. It will show you the radicals that make up a kanji. It will let you grab those radicals and copy them or put them in the creation boxes to see related kanji. And that is just a small part to JEDict, because it is a dictionary. It's been invaluable during these internet-less days (heck, faster than a WWWJDIC search). It keeps track of your clipboard, so if you copy text anywhere on your computer, it is ready to search those words for you. JEDict is so dreamy... sigh... why haven't you downloaded it yet? I really like the feature that allows me to save terms. I save tons of yojijukugos. Gotta keep up with the neighbors.
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There are other things that have helped me with kanji a lot over the last year. I got used to drawing them in the first place thanks to Kakitorikun　and my DS dictionary, which is still super-useful--I haven't felt the need to upgrade to a "real" denshijisho. I also find my kanji textbook to be useful, but only because of the daily quizzes in class are on it, and I also have to write down all the definitions on a worksheet. So what can I say except, go to Japanese school. :/
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Next time: We'll make our own primitive!
*:A stands for acronym
Pics in case you missed the links to them in the text:

Super JLPT site

EDIT: Hmm, it looks like there may be a few mistakes on the site I recommend here, so proceed with caution. For instance, I just got:

(2)授業終了のラベルを聞くが＿＿＿、生徒たちは教室を飛び出して行った。
1.早くて
2.早いが
3.早くも
4.早ければ

Wherein the correct answer is listed as "早いが", but I am pretty sure they mean か, not が. Unless I am mistaken. Also, I think ラベル is supposed to be just ベル. I guess you get what you pay for. And now on with the post that is for some reason still offering the link to this site:
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If you are not subbed to my shared RSS bits, you may have missed this, but it's so impressive thus far that I could not just relegate it to there. Lucky you, Mr. too lazy to sub to my rss bits feed man. So I give those of us slaving away at JLPT studies this link. Seriously, click it.

So far, it serves as a grim confirmation of what I have been predicting. I am not ready. Last night I whittled my Anki deck down to just 1kyu terms (the others still exist somewhere). Anyways, I've improved it quite a bit from when it was simply a list I found on a website and converted it to an Anki deck. I will offer it for download here soon, as I have in the past. My advice to you is never be satisfied with fishy definitions, even from me.

I had more thoughts on the last post, and made a fancy picture-thingy to explain the ideas I had to help fix what I was rambling about, but forgot to bring it with me on the thumb drive. Perhaps next time as well. You might want to consider my RSS feed for this blog for your update needs. In fact, I have tons of RSS feeds for you. But putting the topic back to last post, someone was wondering agog about what the heck I was talking about. The problem is it would take a long time to describe it to you, and to study in the manner I outlined would take a textbook that only exists in my head as a book-amoeba. It may mitosisize soon too. Anyways, my advice at this stage, besides take all my advice with a grain of salt, is to buy (or torrent for the evil among us) the Remembering the Kanji books. Master the first two volumes. Well, actually, I think just getting familiar with volume 2 is enough at first, but master 1. Then read Tae Kim's guide all the way through. That's the best Claytonian system-substitution I can offer at this time. Anyways, I've revised my thoughts into a more holistic, staggered system-amoeba in my head zone. And there is always the approach that people mentioned in the comments last time: All Japanese All the Time. Thing is, there seem to be some gaps in his system I've never gotten to figure out. I am sure the problem lies with me. I just want to know where he got 10,000 example sentences, and how he made sure they are good and full of a variety of words. It sounds intriguing though. Maybe he should make a textbook.

Geeze, another long post about something only a few lingistics nerds care about. And my tone is odd; no doubt because I have been reading John Hodgeman's blog.

If You Want to Learn Japanese

Long post is looooong. And tautology cat is tautological.

If I could go back to the beginning and learn Japanese again... well, a number of things could have been better. No class I have ever heard of really teaches things in the right order. I'm not even sure what the right order is, but I think it might be something like this:

Though I know it would make Tae Kim bristle, I think learning the kanji by the Heisig method (assigning English readings to, and memorizing out of context (at first) all the kanji, plus learning to write them via mnemonic stories) would be best for a beginner of Japanese. It would probably take up a whole semester; a really intense one. However, I wouldn't adhere strictly to the "daily use" kanji, since we all know that list is a bit off; on that point I break a bit with Heisig, but as per Heisig, delaying the Asian readings a bit bring us to the next phase/semester:
Then the kana comes. After that, the onyomi and katakana words. Then lots of 2-character words (finally, context of how kanji work together!), maybe as many as 500 (I would write their readings, at this point in the game, in katakana to subconsciously emphasize the difference from what is to come later). But not one-kanji words, because most don't use a Chinese reading and we don't want to worry about that and conjugation yet, so only onyomi readings, no tricky words with kunyomi reading at this point (no okurigana!), to be followed by longer, multiple-kanji words and 4-character words/idioms (gotta have idioms for fun and a little history helps make things interesting). At this time, だ can be taught to let the students finally be able to make a sentence.*
Following all these onyomi (kango) words would be the one-kanji kunyomi words complete with okurigana and conjugation(also *--you'll see why when you get to the footnotes). Towards the end of all this (at the same time): the beginnings of grammar instruction.
And when I talk grammar, I think the order should be important too. First, the concept that a verb is a complete sentence (and that a copula is a very special verb with limited conjugations!); I wouldn't emphasize the pronouns for a long time (though they may know the kanji and readings for them, students wouldn't get the grammar to use them for a while). I want to make subject-less language seem natural to them. I would cover almost all the verb conjugations (this is during the kunyomi stage of instruction); really show how agglutinative this language is. At the same time, the suru verb concept gets good play.
Following right along should be na-adjectives, because of the special role that copulas play with them, letting you make adjectives (na is da). Then no-adjectives, which should be a short section. After that, i-adjectives, because if we learn them after other adjectives, we are less likely to get na-adjectives that sound like i-adjectives mixed up in our heads when we conjugate (so master those na-adjective+copula conjugations first! Not 綺麗くない！綺麗じゃない).

At each step, I would make efforts to master all conjugation forms (て comes latter though). Anyways, most of the other grammar would come after the base-work had been established. Things like te-form would probably come later in the game; I would incorporate it into keigo instruction because of how often it comes up there (ex: ～てください or ～てあげる etc.), but I would probably introduce the so-called masu-stem shortly after furigana comes around (since it is used for a lot more than just masu). Yes, that sounds good; pretend I wrote that in the appropriate place above. After furigana comes verb stems and kunyomi combo-words.

*: I might let the copula だ loose here, just so they can make a simple sentence, but desu comes much later (note that I don't believe だ is merely a plain です; Tae Kim wouldn't bristle at that). In fact, I would always teach the plain and/or dictionary form of everything first, and maybe even delay masu's introduction (it's a special verb IMHO) . Polite language may be, well, polite, but it's instruction too early is a major problem that 99% of teachers make. Most people learn masu form before anything else; it's a little silly.

The main problem with my curriculum is that it would be long before people had the tools to converse, and the majority of people that take it in college (anime nerds) would probably not be patient enough for it. However, part of the reason why Japanese is hard to learn despite being so simple is because we learn it in a pretty mixed up manner. With the kanji and kana, it can feel like learning 4 languages at once; and they all get crammed in your head, delaying those important realizations that help you through a language. If you master being able to read, however, then encounter how to conjugate and link words in an orderly manner, I think it will be a series of simple concepts building upon each other. Another problem with my system in this post is memorizing words without context could be a bit hard to do, so an earlier introduction of some grammar elements may be necessary to make sentences. But really, no sentences until after the kanji are mastered on the singular level.
A lot of people learn phrasal Japanese ("my name is x, it is nice to meet you"), and while that may get you through a brief business meeting where you have a translator at your side, it will never teach you Japanese. Avoid phrases until you have mastered everything I say. Phrases are the icing that make you sound good and teach you about culture, but you can't adapt them unless you understand them.

So, anybody interested in learning this way? I would like to know how it works. I can't go back and relearn (well, in a way, that's what I often have to do, come to think of it) in real life; I can only speculate from my proverbial armchair. Sometimes I get the crazy idea to write a series of textbooks, but I am far from that stage... The more I look at this post, the more doubts I get about it, but...

Adding Japanese emoticons to your Mac's dropdown menu

This is a pretty easy trick, but I have a Japan-bought computer, so your mileage may vary (all Macs are probably made in Taiwan anyways).
So open the menu on the finder bar up top and choose the following "register words" option:
At which point you should get the input options below. I wanted to have the word for dog, いぬ, come up as ▽･ｪ･▽, so I copy pasted it from a website and put いぬ next to the よみ input. Finally, I chose to have it listed as a 無品詞, because it's not actually a part of speech.
Then I click that button at the very bottom and check to make sure it now shows up as an option when I type いぬ. Low and behold:
Pretty easy trick. You can find more kaomoji here or here. This post was inspired by reading this blog post, which is how to do it in Vista in case you are not a Mac person. I thought, how hard can that be to do on a Mac? And a minute later it was done.