Kanji Pict.O.Graphix: Over 1000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics (Zzz)

Buying and reading this book has been amusing. The covered kanjis are all illustrated wonderfully with funny, shocking and frank pictures. The layout is good and the book has some great mnemonic s for remembering kana.

But it is not a way to learn kanji, far from it. In fact, its nigh-on useless if you plan on going anywhere with kanji. The approach taken by this book is very unsystematical. You are not taught how to draw a kanji either.

For the same money you would be better off with a stack of flash cards really. This book really should be categorized as art or entertainment, since I find it of little to no use as a self-study tool. If you are serious about kanji, check out James Heisigs works instead.

Novel but no gain long term (4/4 people found this helpful)

I bought this book and found it novel and worth my time at first. But it is not a complete list, and the mnemonics are useless for teaching you how to write the kanjis. Also the selection is very random and there is no systematic approach to the learning proces.

For a long term gain of kanji proficiency I recommend you skip this book entirely and get James W. Heisig: Remembering the Kanji
A COMPLETE COURSE ON HOW NOT TO FORGET
THE MEANING AND WRITING OF JAPANESE CHARACTERS (volume 1)

A Very Good Book For Beginners (2/2 people found this helpful)

This book is great for beginners to the japanese language system because the pictures clearly show a representation of the kanji it's self. although it doesnt show the compound sylablles of the Kana they are easily found on websites. It contains 1225 kanji so about half to be literate in Japan today. it is very useful using mnemonics which also link a multiple kanjis together showing you how closely related they are.

Useful and fun, but not everything you need (13/14 people found this helpful)

This book is very good at what it tries to do: provide visual mnemonics to help you recognise kanji and remember their meanings. And it's very bad at the things it doesn't try to do: teach readings, compounds, or how to actually read the kanji in genuine Japanese text.

"Kanji Pict-o-graphix" is a fun book to browse when you're not feeling up to some serious study. But it's not a workbook. You can't just sit down and learn some kanji from this book, not in a way that will help you in the real world.

However, it is an excellent supplement to a more structured workbook like "Let's Learn Kanji" (ISBN: 4770020686). If you've got a proper textbook, workbook, or taught course, then "Kanji Pict-o-graphix" goes great by the side to help you associate meanings with the radicals you learn.

"Snow" is built from the symbols for "rain" and "hand": so remember "snow is rain you can hold". The kanji for "Left" and "Right" differ only in one component meaning "construct" and "mouth" respectively: so remember "work with your left hand, eat with your right". Simple mnemonics like this are a great assistant to a more formal workbook.

It is marred by a number of simple errors in the cross-referencing: printing "702" instead of "704", "100" instead of "653", and so on. This is slightly irritating, but only in the cross-references for kanji components and not a major problem, because you can easily find the correct reference yourself.

very funny, interesting, v. good for active writing skills (5/7 people found this helpful)

An extremely useful book for learning Kanji, in my opinion. I am an advanced student of Japanese and for me even though recognizing Kanji in a given text has become much easier over the time, writing on a blank paper has always been hard for me. I agree that the book lacks compounds, which I've always found extremely helpful for recognizing. Compound lists are not hard to find, though. This book has served me extremely well in the "active- writing-skill" department, it has very clever mnemonics and description of radicals that helped me a lot. One of the very few useful and extremely motivating kyoukashous I came across. I've been reading a few pages every day for the last 3-4 weeks now, and I still look forward to doing so every morning (and I'm not the kanji-addict-type).

Kanji Pict.O.Graphix: Over 1000 Japanese Kanji and Kana Mnemonics (Zzz)

Michael Rowley

Reader Reviews:

Good fun but not useful as study tool (6/6 people found this helpful)

Novel but no gain long term (4/4 people found this helpful)

A Very Good Book For Beginners (2/2 people found this helpful)

Useful and fun, but not everything you need (13/14 people found this helpful)

very funny, interesting, v. good for active writing skills (5/7 people found this helpful)

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