OK, the best of times and the worst of times....
I've started "reading" . I put it in quotation marks because I am scanning my favourite manga, just seeing what I can find that I can recognize. I'm at about 350 kanji right now, so I'm missing a lot. It's not even as much as you might think, because the list of kanji I am working off of is based on Heisig's famous list, which is in an order that is easy to memorize not order of frequency or anything like that. I have learned the kanji for "Gallbladder", but I haven't learned the kanji for "Go."
Luckily enough numbers are early in the sequence, so I am getting those, and I have learned a bunch of radicals, "components" of kanji, so more and more of the print is looking familiar.
It's the best of times, the pictures keep me turning pages and I can see that I'm learning something.
It's the worst of times. As the kanji build up, I am starting to get a lot of interference. Many of them are starting to look like each other. I keep forgetting and confusing them. Several factors lead to this:
First, this is Japanese, and it is a hard slog to learn the kanji. As I understand, native speakers study kanji at least up through middle school.
Second, I am learning kanji from a list, not from a natural context. I have to go from zero to perfect in each lesson. Because of the nature of the task, there is no chance to "half learn" as one would with words one finds in context. (of course I can't learn from context very well since the context is also in unfamiliar kanji)
Third, I think that my mnemonics aren't working as well as they should. I hit a new kanji, and I see the mnemonic and I usually say, cute I see it, and then I recognize it when I see it in review... maybe I see it the next day and remember the mnemonic and remember the kanji...and eventually I just start recognizing it without running through the mnemonic.... Just like I'm supposed to.
But then, when I see it again, I recognize that I have seen it before, but I can't remember the meaning. It's frustrating. I think I need to pay attention to the mnemonic longer than I have been. I think I can do better than I have been doing. I can also just slow down my new cards, but where's the fun in that? I'm going to watch this, because I think I can do better...
All is well; it is an enjoyable challenge.
I mentioned my favourite manga earlier. I am absolutely in love with the
Children of the Sea, manga and anime, 海獣のこども Maybe I love it because the main characters appear to be about the same age as the kids I teach. There is beautiful artwork in the manga, and the anime is absolutely gorgeous. The anime is slow and luxurious in its pacing for an hour and a half, and then it starts moving fast and gets confusing for most people, as I understand. The teenage Japanese girl I was talking to in the Japanese bookshop, said that she thought it was beautiful, but that she didn't understand it. I think I understood it the first time through, maybe as a Carl Sagan inspired science teacher, or maybe because back in the day, Alan Watts made perfect sense to me (at least when I was stoned).
Anyway, when sweet, fiesty Ruka yells, "I want to see it!", opens her eyes, and then explodes into the entire universe, well it's cool.
I have a weird taste.