becoming fluent in Japanese is hard and learning kanji is considered to be the biggest obstacle to learning the language at least that's what some people say but I think they're wrong learning any language is an incredibly rewarding Journey from being able to connect deeper to a song you love to being able to watch your favorite shows while enjoying an extra layer of nuance or comedy it's definitely worth it and if you haven't started yet by all means give it a shot if the language you want to learn is Japanese that's awesome it's completely possible especially learning its characters hiragana Katakana and kanji today I'm going to present to you how I learned those highly useful sets of characters more specifically I want to show you how I made it automatic and easy and how you can too hi I'm josen I passed the Japanese language test jlpt at the N2 level which is kind of crucial for finding work in Japan and I've also memorized all 2000 or so regular use kanji so you can trust what I have to say here now I was 14 when I started learning Japanese and I'm not sure what your reason for language learning might be but when I was younger I was absolutely enamored by anime specifically one piece but hundreds of episodes in I hit a wall kind of like how you should hit that subscribe button you see at the time the show only had half of its episodes with English voice acting and I simply refused to watch anime with subtitles so I did the only rational thing I started learning Japanese now if you're just getting started learning the Japanese language I congratulate you but that begs the question exactly what kind of language learning material should a beginner use well there are a few options and out of all those options I chose Rosetta Stone now say what you want about Rosetta Stone but it did do one crucially important thing right it made language learning fairly interesting with its unique approach it basically doesn't give you any translations and instead has you match Japanese words with pictures and if you're going to do this language learning thing day after day you better make sure it doesn't bore your brain out of your skull and I think that's a key takeaway if you're just beginning your language learning journey I would heavily prioritize resources that make learning fun and easy to maintain now through my time with Rosetta Stone I learned something incredibly important that you should probably know as well I learned the importance of the three sets of Japanese characters hiana Katakana and kanji for those who don't know there's hiana which is widely used and should be learned first then there's Katakana typically used for lone words or anopia and then there's kanji the terrifying Beast hovering over all new Japanese Learners at least that's how you might see it and that's how I saw it at the time too in fact I was so overwhelmed that I just stuck with English letters I mean look at this you're seriously telling me you're not quivering in your boots but first what even are kanji kanji are special characters used in Japanese that originate from China they're kind of like little pictures that represent different words or ideas they have Japanese pronunciations but many of them also have a pronunciation based on how they're said in Chinese today there are more than 2,000 kanji used in everyday writing or joyo kanji which is what I learned these are going to be the most important for you to learn cuz they make understanding and reading Japanese a whole lot easier so how did I overcome that fear conquer Japanese characters and defeat the final boss kanji we'll get into that but the first crucial point is knowing how I got there I spent a while on and off studying Japanese I'd study some get frustrated with Rosetta Stone or whatever new program I was trying and give up and that begs the question how do you beat that kind of inconsistency well I'm sure some of you can relate to that but my answer to that inconsistency was simple I took college classes you might be surprised but being in an environment where my Japanese language ability mattered and I was rewarded for my Improvement absolutely skyrocketed my motivation there's just one problem with this environmental strategy you're mostly locked in at whatever Pace the class you're taking is at and my college classes were slow no offense to my teachers they were great but still it bothered me because deep down I just wanted to be able to watch One Piece in other anime without Subs so I knew I had to increase the amount of language learning but how not to mention I was still extremely hesitant to take on kanji well again this is when my classes came into the picture you see they were helping me in another way without my knowledge they were forcing me to face the Beast that is kanji and the thing is in class it really wasn't that crazy to learn when we broke it down into occasional sets of new characters it started to make sense and with each new set we learned I started to realize wait a minute kanji is an a beast each of these characters are like little allies joining up to finally help me understand the language that is Japanese all I need to do is recruit the most important kanji then I'll be able to learn Japanese at a supercharged rate and finally watch One Piece without Subs so it was simply a matter of asking the question how can I or You Learn kanji as quickly as possible and that's probably what you clicked on this video wondering well if you've looked into it for any amount of time on the internet you've probably heard of this book High sigs remembering the kanji and here's the thing I you sit in a way you're probably not expecting if you don't know remembering the kanji is a reference book for a Japanese kanji based on the idea that if you break down each character into its individual pieces and attach meanings to each part you can build stories out of each combination for example take the Ki for bright it's formed out of the radicals for Sun and Moon so your story might be the light from the sun is so bright it reflects off the moon making it bright too you'd be surprised at how well your brain can remember stories over rope memorization bonus points if you visualize the different elements of each story with this strategy in mind I had a powerful tool to Aid me in my quest but soon after I got started I had a simple realization just having that book wasn't enough there had to be something that I could use to help me get through the book and there was you see I combine the book with another tool that you may have heard of Anki which is essentially a beefed up flash card app you can also use it for regular vocab if that's your speed but it's not just an's built-in capabilities that got me there see ani has public Decks that you can use and tailor to your preferences and there are two particular decks available for download that I used and will get you learning kanji at lightning speed there's a remembering the kanji de for reading SL recognition and another for writing SL recall the beauty here is that each cards flipped side already has a story made for you to Simply read and visualize along and if the story on a specific card doesn't match with you then you can just edit that card and make up a new one that does so cool there's a book in an app that can help you learn kanji but what exactly did I do here that made this method so powerful simple I made it a habit I woke up an hour earlier every morning and before I did literally anything else I crushed out 15 new kanji and Ani and you might be thinking that's cool for you but there's no way I can apply this to my life but I have a framework that I use to solve that problem and I think you'll be surprised at how well it could work for you my framework comes from another book I found incredibly useful James clear's Atomic habits I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to start a habit and keep it consistently but for now I'll distill the important parts of what I did to help you jump start your process the author states there are four key elements to any habit first is the que it's what you see smell or experience that Spurs your brain into the Habit cycle an example might be your alarm that wakes you up getting you to start your day or for me start my kanji the next step is called craving craving is when you desire for some sort of State change to optimize this you can join a culture where your desired behavior is a Norm that's what I did with my Japanese class the next step is response which is essentially the action part of the Habit you can optimize this by making your habit smaller enough that it can be done in less than 2 minutes lastly there's the final stage which is the reward here is where you want to make the Habit satisfying you optimize this by giving yourself some sort of treat after your habit is complete if you do this you'll probably want to mix it up with a few different treats so you don't end up getting sick of your favorite thing in my own case I would eat maybe an apple or a cookie after I was finished and there's one key point that aided me in my process above all else that something was called habit stacking it's when you set out to do a new habit immediately after one that's already formed and I connected Kani with the one habit that's most prevalent in life waking up in the morning admittedly this is a very powerful position to put any Habit in so I'd be careful with what you do during this time but if you really want to learn kanji this is exactly where I'd place my study habit you should probably know why the book is called Atomic habits too it's founded upon the idea that small habits compound over time to have a massive impact so please don't feel ashamed or guilty if you start out with one kanji a day I'll let you in on a little secret that's how I started too I just found that the Havoc got easier over time so I gradually increased the difficulty to 15 new characters a day and kept that going until I hit the eventual 2,000 plus Mark for Al joyo kanji and before I knew it I finally did it I completed my kanji memorization journey and that meant I could finally do what I stood out to I could finally watch One Piece with Japanese Subs oh