My last post was about printing full-sheet labels so that I can now make flashcards with actual kanji on them, in fonts big enough for me to read. And that's why I haven't posted in a few days: I've just been going wild printing labels and making my flashcards. Now instead of just being limited to romaji flashcards, I can have the flashcards I really need now that I am fully committed to learning how to read in Japanese, which means learning the kanji.

So, I now have a nice big stack of haiku flashcards, proverb flashcards, and kanji flashcards. The haiku and proverb cards have the Japanese on one side and English on the back. The kanji cards are even more fun: they have the kanji on the front — nice and big, showing the stroke order, so I can use them for copying — and then on the back, I have written in romaji the haiku and/or proverb(s) that include that kanji, along with English for the keywords (but not an actual translation). I can fit 2 or 3 examples on the back of each card, so if a kanji shows up in more than that, I just pick my 2 or 3 favorites. 

Here's an example: 風 kaze:

There are the two poems on the back (my cards just have the romaji, but here I can copy-and-paste the actual Japanese text from the spreadsheet where I am compiling everything):

秋の風鷄の見るもの我に見えぬ
[by Shuson Kato]
aki-no kaze
tori-no miru mono
ware ni-mienu
Autumn wind: a bird sees something I cannot see.

秋風や眼中のもの皆俳句
[by Kyoshi Takahama]
akikaze ya 
ganchū-no mono 
mina haiku
Autumn wind: everything I notice is haiku.

I also have a kind of printed "dictionary" (currently 2 back-and-front printed pages) that contains all the words I am learning via haiku on the same line with the haiku that they come from. Those 4 pages represent the vocabulary from 30 haiku, which is how many haiku I have studied word-by-word. Currently that print-out uses just romaji, but as I get better at the kanji, I will be able to do a revised version later with the actual Japanese for the haiku I have really studied and learned. I'll also confess that the vocabulary does not include any verbs. That's because I am saving my study of (the very intimidating) Japanese verbs for when I feel 100% confident about reading the hiragana without any romaji for support, since I will need to use an actual Japanese textbook to study the verbs. But for now, I'm just relying on English translations to understand the verbs, and that's working just fine.

I have always believed that to learn something, the single most important thing is motivation. Then, you need tools (books for sure, perhaps teachers and perhaps classes, and also things like pen, paper, etc. — a whole range of tools). And then it's just a matter of the time and effort. But I am convinced that motivation is the most important thing: without that, even with all the tools and time in the world, you won't necessarily learn anything. Or, if you do, you will not retain it.

And by a lovely coincidence (this whole Japanese-learning adventure has been marked by some great coincidences), I received a substack newsletter today from Brandon Hendrickson at "Science Is Weird" (one of the most fascinating education projects I have ever seen), which has a great section about what he calls the "memory box" — here's a link that should take you straight to that section. And here's a quote:

Flashcard vocabulary can go terribly wrong if (like an educational traditionalist) you try to stuff reams of random words down a kid’s throat. The way to make it enjoyable is to include the context of something your kid wants to better understand in the first place.

Of course, as you probably know from my previous posts about flashcards and flashcard-inspired games, this is exactly my preferred way to learn. So, yes, I am learning Japanese entirely in the context of "something I want to better understand" — haiku and proverbs. And that also means that every single word which is part of my vocabulary so far is associated in my mind with one or more haiku and/or one or more Proverbs, which makes all the words so much easier to remember! It's all one big memory box filled with things that I care about.

So, that's my learning update for today – plus I've got another great coincidence to share thanks to the latest newsletter that came from Clay and Yumi at Makoto, but I'll save that for my next post! Because now........ I want to get back to studying!