What is the most effective way to learn kanji?

[fishaada]

こんばんは、みな-さん！

I have been learning/familiarising myself with 3 kanji a day since January but now it is hard to absorb useful kanji/remember what ones I have looked at mean. I am travelling to Japan in June so my aim is to memorise/know how to use 500 commonly used kanji by that point in order to aid my trip. Is this a realistic target or should I stick to a lower number and practice using them more?

助かります、
アダム

[mwbeale6642]

I would have thought that you would want to be using some kanji study books. There is a great N5 level book (approx 100 kanji) from ARC Academy. Unfortunately they haven't published the level N4 one yet (which would get you to 300 kanji). They have a lot of vocabulary in those books as well as the kanji themselves. The Basic Kanji Books also seem pretty good to me (I'm studying the red one at the moment: it is good when you get used to it and you feel like you are studying a real Japanese book).

The thing I find really useful for learning kanji however is skritter.com (check it out). To get most use from it, you'll need a Wacom pen tablet (about £50). I think it is worth it. It works really well with the Basic Kanji Books as they've got all the kanji and compounds from those books in there.

It's cool when you go to Japan and see all the kanji around. I just want to go around pointing out all the kanji I know to my friends. It's really nice seeing something you saw in a book actually out there in the wild!

がんばてください。

マーティン。

[Javizy]

Check out this kanji forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php