Japanese Resource Review #25: Remembering The Kana!!

Most Japanese learners have heard the name "Heisig" before, but it's a name most often associated with Kanji... but what about Kana? In arguably his strangest publication, Remembering The Kana is an entry into the Japanese Learning Community that has raised a skeptical eyebrow since its inception. Is it really worth buying an entire book just for learning Kana? Is it worth it for you? Let's take a look inside!

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[ThatsMyChad]

Hey everyone! :D I'm glad to be back! I had such a good Christmas and New years with my family but I'm back home and had SO much fun making this!

I haven't see you all in so long! Tell me what you all got for Christmas XD

[sydneypreston]

I don’t even need to learn Kana, but will I watch all the way through? Yes 👍😊

[homerthompson]

I found RTK1 pretty helpful, especially for my first 500 kanji learning to recognize, but this seems like a LOT of work for learning something like 46 characters. I just learned hiragana recursively by learning the first N rows of the hiragana table so that I could write those first N rows from memory, then learn row N+1 of the hiragana table (since it's only the あ　い　う　え　お entries for the row, so only five things to remember per row) and then knowing how to write those first N rows, I'd drill on writing the first N+1 rows. Not fun at all but a small enough problem that brute force is probably the easiest way.

[Imninoite]

I’m not even mad that I’m not first this time. HAPPY NEW YEAR AND BELATED BIRTHDAY

[karl-ucbe]

I've used the German edition of this book. It took me about four hours over the course of four or five days of very casual study to learn hiragana, and then three weeks later two hours for Katakana. When I first got interested in Japanese, I found learning Hiragana really difficult and I put it on hold for a while. I suppose I've got a really bad visual memory. So when I bought my first textbook, I added Remembering the Kana to my order and didn't regret spending 15€ on it. I guess Heisig's style and method are quite devisive, you either love or hate them. I find his mnemonics generally a bit too verbose, so I''ve been significantly shortening and simplifying the stories in Remembering the Kana and RTK1. Other than that, I really appreciate Heisig's books.

[JamesDoane]

Hey Chad. As a quick note about the weird order... it does not cover the kana in order, which is why the lesson is at the end. At the end of the lesson 1 description, it tells you where to go next (you actually start on n not a). Then it tells you where to go next after that kana. It groups them by similarities... I guess. It is a little odd though. Learning them in his order is not really any better in my opinion. I also don't like the mnemonics he uses to try to help you remember them. I used an app but took a look at this later when I was doing RTK.

[zyhon]

Great video Chad! And happy birthday!!

[AeoenBeriatha]

Having never used apps or SRS for this purpose before, this book was pretty instrumental to me in learning the kana and was only $5 used. The "choose your own adventure" page-flipping to maintain dictionary order was a little annoying at first, but once he busted out the a-ka-sa-ta mnemonic, it really made sense. I used the words at the bottom of each page as sort of a self test to see if I could go in both directions, and the resulting little victory on each page and section was quite motivating to keep going. I'd recommend it as a "I've tried nothing else" method, but get it used/library it for sure, since it takes less than a day to get through it all and won't really be referenced after.

[derekmaggard]

I actually found this book and used it, but then lost interest in Japanese right after. A while later when I got back into Japanese I still had a lot of Kana preserved in my long term memory which probably wouldn't have happened if I'd used another method.. and that.. may have helped.. ? In all honesty I don't know if this book helped that much and frankly apps and repetition were more helpful. That said I still love the Heisig method (finished RTK1 recently), but would only recommend this book to people who want to try and give each Kana their own "personality".

[Froschpriinz]

I personally was struggling with Kana at the beginning of my Japanese studies and got confused about the characters very easy. I got this book in a german version and it literally saved my butt in that time. Within 2 days I knew all Hiragana and Katakana without any problems. I think it's definitely worth the money if you are struggling with remembering them, it also shows you how to remember the characters in an easy way, which can be helpful for the Kanji studies later. But how you said there are some good resources online nowadays for free. Still, definitely a recommendation!

[NebelungFlower]

Hi, thanks for the video! Could you maybe review "quartet - intermediate japanese across the four language skills" at some point? It's a new textbook by Japan times and I'm considering buying it, but I can barely find any opinions on it

[kendawg_mcawesome]

I forgot about the weird order, it's so that you can look them up for reference easily, you're actually not meant to go from front to back, each lesson tells you the next page to go to, the mnemonic elements he uses in the stories build up in the order of the lessons, not the order in the book. Honestly this was weird and although it makes more sense than it seems, I found it annoying.

I enjoyed using this book to nail down the last couple kana I was struggling with, but as a library rental; I don't think I would have been happy paying for it, especially with the price of books here in Aus.

[toastedtarts]

Does it have a way to help with mnemonics? It seems more like just teaching the kana. Also thanks for reviewing this. I was curious about this book

[aliekairaf]

I used this book, it came bundled with RTK, I did tried other methods, but this was the one that worked for me, I liked the stories (mnemonics), then started RTK and I was already familiar with the stories, for me was an easier transition from one book to another. But I didn't like too much that you have to jump from one side to another to learn the next kana, and in the end, it teaches you a "song" for reference and to help you with the order. But overall good ( for me at least)

[gamingbeast]

There's an app called Hiragana Quest. Costs only 6$ to unlock all the characters but is totally worth it

[kingo_friver]

Japanese kids generally learn Hiragana at the age of 5-10. I remember the days when I practiced handwrintings over and over. I used to hate letters that have twisted lines like よ ま む because I struggled to fix them written in the wrong way around.

[Leahsfilms]

Can your review the app “imina” I think is only available for iPhone tho. It’s a Japanese learning app

[mikeriley]

I personally don't see the purpose for spending the money on it. In mt experience, I literally learned in a couple days using memory games on the internet and writing each kana about 7 times each.

[KaijuKits-yoyp]

It starting to get younuse to how Japanese is formatted.

[Nestor]

I keep forgetting the katakana 😖 mostly because I don’t use them often