University of Tokyo Kanji Text Research Group

"The Japanese Characters Needed to Learn Japanese and Ace the Japanese Language Proficiency Test"
Having just finished a 'first pass' through the 250 kanji's (Japanese-Chinese pictograms) in this volume (and 250 in its companion Vol.I), I feel this is one of the better, maybe even the best, texts for learning the basic set. According to the writers, they have selected characters that one meets up with in real life situations, like offices, trains and buses, shops and supermarkets, buildings and road signs, and so on. The layout and approach is extremely helpful and informative: the character is shown in bold and black large size font, there are both the Chinese (on-) and Japanese (kun-) readings, given respectively in katakana and hiragana script. For each item, a fair number of compound words are given using, successively, the kanji characters, then the kana transliteration, the roman version (romaji), and finally the equivalent expression in English. The sequence of brush-strokes is also displayed for each of the 250 items. There are copious practice exercises, profuse indexes, and more. With its companion Volume I, this introduction to 500 basic and useful kanji's is best studied after going through a basic language book, such as the Genki I and II that I followed. After this basic run-through, I will be doing a second slog through all 500 but with the exercises, and really getting the characters fixed in the memory along with some study of the system of radicaIs. I feel that some level of competence in kanji is quite essential for any meaningful engagement with Japanese language and culture; this publication is an admirable introduction, before going on to a similar text extending to say the basic 2000 or so required by the proficiency tests.… (plus d'informations)