Massive Goals

Kanji - An intellectual Problem with a Creative Solution

Anyone who has ever tried learning Japanese will tell you that the toughest part is learning the Kanji.  Kanji is the largest of the 3 character sets that Japanese uses.  Hiragana and katakana are lightweight problems because they only contain about 46 characters each.  While Kanji is the heavyweight champion, weighing in at several thousand useful characters, about 2000 of which are in general use.  This creates an interesting dilemma for the student of Japanese.  How on earth can the average person expect 2000 individual characters to stay in one brain without total and permanent intellectual melt down. 

It is not a problem that I am even contemplating.  Just the thought of plodding through these characters one by one, memorizing them by repetition and sweat, just drives me cold.  Most people who eventually gain a useful mastery of Kanji, say it took them years to get to the stage where they could read a newspaper.  The average foreigner will never get to this stage simply because of the sheer quantity of intellectual work required.  Many try but most give up, claiming it is impossible.

I am not interested in these sort of intellectual heroics, so I am taking an alternate route to most.  I am learning how to read the primary meaning of 2042 kanji in approximately one month of extremely part time study. 

I am doing this with the help of a classic text called Remembering the Kanji 1 by James Heisig.  In this text he explains and lays out a technique for using what he calls imaginative memory which is simply an interlinking of the kanji that you wish to learn with a vivid image.  I am not doing this system justice with my brief review, however you may grasp the importance of this approach if you understand that he claims that most people, if they study full time, could memorize the reading of all of the 2042 kanji that he presents in just 4-6 weeks.  This is surely remarkable because most students would find it difficult to learn that many in several years of study, let alone so few weeks. 

This prompted me to push the boundary of this progress even further and see how fast I could make it work.  I did a short time trial and discovered that with uncommon preparation and focus I could study and memorize one kanji in under one minute.  I then decided that I could realistically devote one hour a day to this study (in 2 half hour blocks)for a relatively short period of time.  This gave me  little over 60 Kanji in a day.  From this I quickly decided that I would try and master all 2042 in a month, working very part time at it.  In 31 days I will emerge from this challenge with the ability to read the primary meaning of 2042 Kanji, and this memory will be permanently fixed into my mind.

So far I am at day 5 so I have managed 300 Kanji which I think is impressive enough by itself.  In another 26 days I will have completed the lot and will have done so in about 31 hours total.  From this it could be assumed that the course could be taken over a much shorter time still, but I can’t vouch for the long term health consequences of such rapid progress.

The main point in me writing this article is to help you understand that what many people will tell you is impossible is often just difficult.  Learning Kanji may not be your thing, but next time you are standing before a daunting goal, look closely at it before you begin and you just may find that by using your mind creatively, you are able to slash hours, days, or even months off the time it will take you to reach success.  All of this will help you to stay on track and motivated because instead of grinding away for years at a goal, you can reach success in just weeks.  I am not talking about cheat your way to success, merely taking the shortest, most direct route to your goal and doing it much faster than anyone else will tell you is possible.

What does this mean to you?  What goal can you bring closer by some careful and creative treatment?

Thanks

Tom