Sometimes, it takes only one.

[elfs]

Studying kanji is a pain in the neck, especially since my practice material of choice is hentai manga. But sometimes, all it takes is one ideogram to make all the difference. Today, I learned one, and whole pages started to make much more sense to me. That one is 私, watashi, the first person singular. "For me," "to me," "by me," "I want," "I did," tons of meaning I'd never quite grasped. The other kanji that really made it easy to speed ahead that I experienced recently was 何, nani, meaning "what," but it wasn't nearly as effective as 私 in making manga make sense.

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

My favorite learning set recently was Love, Hina, an ecchi manga about an insecure young man who inherits a hotel that rents out only to college girls. You can find those at Kinokinuya. Hijinks ensue. It was especially useful because it had furugana (next to the kanji, the printer put the hirigana for the word). For the more outrageous and hardcore stuff, I tend to use http://tokyotosho.com, where you can find lots of fanfic (the Japanese fanfic is comics, the ways ours in written) and stuff not licensed in the U.S. (and hence, has no controlling legal authority), but downloading stuff there is painfully hit-or-miss. Fortunately, the loli and guro ("gross") mangas are usually clearly marked and easy to avoid, but the quality of the rest is a real mixed bag.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Neat, thanks for the info.