My Japanese language journey update: I went ahead and did something I’ve been a little nervous about for a while - I’ve made a patreon account for Japanese learning resources that I create.
Recently, I’ve rarely been active over here and that’s because I’ve had to put my Japanese studies on the back burner due to various responsibilities. I want to focus more on my studies and keep up with posting about various Japanese things.
This lovely Japanese langblr community here made me realize that a lot of people are struggling with the same things that I used to and still do struggle with. So I want to share with you all what helped me with those things that seem to take forever to remember and even after they’ve been memorized, seem to disappear from memory if left unrevised for a while.
I have two points of focus with the art that I’ll be creating:
To make it easier to remember kanji that look very similar and are easier to confuse
To better retain that kanji in one’s memory after it’s been memorized so it’s less likely to be forgotten if left unrevised
Let me tell you a little about the patreon aspect of it:
What you get if you subscribe to my patreon:
Printable kanji artwork that will help fix them in your mind with focus on the differing radicals.
Vocabulary lists with those kanji.
What you should do with that:
Print out the kanji artwork and hang it up around the house, post it on your refrigerator, put it up where you’ll see it daily
Make it your laptop/phone wallpaper. Rotate in, a new kanji wallpaper every week.
Why would this help memorize kanji?
Well, it helped me. I’m a strongly visual learner and this is pretty much the only way I can remember kanji long term. All the rehearsing and practicing and reading only goes so far when you end up taking a long break from learning Japanese. After years of studying, I still sometimes have trouble even telling apart similar-looking kanji. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I make errors with reading kanji, and this is especially problematic in JLPT when they purposely give you a list of confusing words to choose from. The kanji that remain with me after not touching Japanese for months are the ones that I used this technique with of making distinctive, colourful artwork and posting it around the house.
Why am I making these resources?
Because I wish someone was making these when I first started learning Japanese - it would have fast-tracked my learning by a lot. When I first encountered the barrage of kanji while preparing for N5 and N4, I used to make them in a hurry on paper because there wasn’t enough time to make and study both. I always have enjoyed writing kanji, and creating art related to it; now I can share it with those who have been looking for the same thing I was.
The sort of posts you expect on my patreon in the near future:
Besides the usual posts, I often make season/festival/any major current event related content so one thing you can expect in the coming couple of weeks — Spooky vocab series on mythical creatures in Japan
Will I still be active on Tumblr?
Yes, very much so. I will still be discussing grammar points on here, answering asks, making random Japanese-related posts, etc. No way I’m leaving this awesome langblr community.
………………………………………………………………………………....
Here is the link to my patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sangetsuei
................................................................................................
So that’s all for now! I hope you’ll check out my patreon page and join me there if possible. If there’s anything more you wanna know, please feel free to talk to me about it - preferably in the form of an ask so I can post the answer on my tumblr, but you can also message me.
If you follow my blog over here on Tumblr and decide to subscribe to my patreon, you can also send me an ask here on Tumblr (anonymous or otherwise) with any kanji you’d like me to post. I look forward to hearing from you!
Edit: After worrying about making sure my patreon was perfect before I launch it, and reading and re-reading this post before posting it to make sure there aren’t any errors, wouldn’t you know it, I uploaded the unfinished image for that ‘kanji’ art. I’ve corrected it now so I’m afraid I’m gonna ask you awesome people who reblogged this post to delete the previous reblog and reblog this one instead because the kanji is incomplete (and therefore incorrect) in the previous one. I can’t even believe the irony of getting ‘kanji’ wrong in a post announcing my kanji-focused patreon. I’m gonna go hide in a cave now for several days, thank you.