Well, I've spent some time on the "Reviewing the Kanji" website, after seeing it linked on Dustin's blog. I was gratified that, after some review, I can still write about 43 of the first 52 kanji when prompted by the keyword. Well, it's a start.
I am still somewhat cold on these "stories," though. I can buy into the keywords, and I can certainly see the usefulness of breaking down the kanji into "primitives" or radicals or whatever one should call them. But for now, I've decided to put the time I would have spent into writing the "stories," into learning the main
readings of each kanji instead. If this makes it take a little longer, so be it.
I will worry about the compounds later. That will also be a good time for me to worry about irregular readings. So for now I think I may go with a set of paper notecards for the on and kun readings, and the electronic ones on "Reviewing the Kanji" for actually learning how to write the kanji. (I noticed that I can put the on and kun readings in for the "stories," but they show up that way in a different section, which isn't as helpful.)
In the meantime, I'll try to get some grammar in on this website, and also from my "Japanese for Busy People" textbook. I have been doing some studying of song lyrics too, which I know in what low esteem they're held around here. (Just to avoid undue repeated criticism, I am already working on "Hotel California" for Tony, and once I have that figured out for him, I plan to do some really groundbreaking work on "Louie Louie." But I digress.) Still, I've noticed a lot of really interesting grammatical constructions that I have to think are used in real speech. I'm beginning to get how few "noun-y" things are used in Japanese, and how you can go through an entire rather lengthy phrase, only to find the whole thing is a modifier for a noun which finally comes along. Also it is interesting how one seems to run into certain words and phrases in almost every anime theme song, which I'm sure is one of the reasons they're criticized as study tools. If I had a nickel for every use of
jibun wo shinjiru ... well, you can guess the rest.
