I'm Blogging A Lot Lately

I think this can be attributed to my thesis and other "important" things. The more I have to do, the more likely I am to distract myself with the internet. I haven't updated my blog very consistently this year, anyway, so I'm sort of making up for it.

Anyway, today I got some kind of bad news from home. Apparently, my family's dog, Max, has developed a degenerative retinal condition, so he's losing his sight. It's not something that can be treated and it's just one of those things that happens sometimes to older dogs. The vet said that it's not preventable and it isn't due to anything we did, so it's not anyone's fault. He also said that it could stop at any time, which means Max might be left with weak vision, or it could continue until he's completely blind. So that was hard to hear. It could be worse, like cancer or something, but it's still sad.

So I'm finding things to do that don't involve brooding over things that can't be helped. Like reading for fun and studying kanji. Exciting stuff, I know.

Actually, on the kanji front, I said I was going to try Heisig's method, yeah? Well, after hearing a few times about my friend Katherine's success with it, I really did get his book Remembering the Kanji 1 off Amazon and I'm pleasantly surprised. I admit, I was a little sceptical at first because it's a kanji book with no Japanese at all aside from the kanji themselves (no readings or use explanations or anything), but it's a really good method. His idea is that you should first learn how to write all the characters, with their meanings (so all English), and then learn the readings afterward to apply them to what you already know. It sounds kind of weird, because it's totally different from every Japanese class ever, but I'm doing really well at it so far. Each kanji has a little story (sometimes silly) attached to use as a mnemonic device, based on what the character looks like. The kanji for "old," for example, looks like a tombstone (it's a box with a cross on top, basically), so that's how you can remember it.

I don't know if it works this well for everyone, but I at least am already retaining more than I did by the traditional method of learning the stroke order, meaning, and readings all together. When I finish the book I'll get the follow-up to work on the readings. So, if you, like me, struggle with internalising kanji, check out Heisig.