This is just a techno-post about a fun breakthrough I have had to help me in studying haiku in Japanese! I'm really motivated now to learn kanji, but I am not confident in copying them by hand, and I also need them REALLY large in order to see the tiny strokes. So, what to do? I can copy-and-paste the text of a haiku on my computer, blowing it up as large as I want in a document, in a slideshow, etc., but I really like having index cards and flashcards to study from.

Then, I had a brainwave: I got some full-page label sheets for my printer! The label sheets arrived today... and it worked! I made a document template with a 4x2 table, so that means 8 haiku on a page. Then I pasted the text of some favorite haiku into the document, printed the page on a label sheet, cut the poems out, and stuck them on index cards: haiku on the blank side of the card, with the lined side for notes – romaji, translation, and key vocabulary.

Here's a photo: the haiku goes on the unlined side of the card, and the notes on the lined side.

I'm so happy with this solution; I really need the tactile cards to practice from, and now I have my own Japanese haiku study cards. Plus, because I saved the haiku document that I used for printing, I can reprint later on any cards that I mess up — like if one of my cats decides to destroy a card when I am not looking (one of my cats in particular is obsessed with paper products), or if I spill coffee on a card, etc. I really don't know how I would manage to study Japanese without all these great tools to help me with the writing system.

Next step: print out a page just with the kanji I want to study, making the kanji EVEN BIGGER, with one gigantic character on each index card. Do I have literally thousands of index cards in a big box in my closet just waiting to be used? Yes indeed I do! And of course I love the fact that each kanji will be associated in my mind with a haiku or proverb (I'm also studying from proverbs). Yay technology!