#An average Japanese adult can read many thousand kanji. How can you tell the difference between 持　待　時　侍　etc plus many more lookalikes? The three main ways are through study of radicals, learning of stories using the radicals and flashcard work. Funnily enough this isn’t exactly how Japanese people learn kanji, however just because the native speakers do it a certain way is not determinative and if you showed this way to a Japanese native they should be able to see that this is an effective method. This is a contentious topic and I will deal with it in another post.

Effective kanji study is done through study of radicals (部首)　

部首 ぶしゅ radical (of a kanji character)

The below is taken from Wikipedia.

常用漢字 じょうようかんじ

The reference to “Jōyō kanji” is to the “guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010 … The list is not a comprehensive list of all characters and readings in regular use; rather, it is intended as a literacy baseline for those who have completed compulsory education, as well as a list of permitted characters and readings for use in official government documents”.

In other words, you basically need to know the 常用漢字 to be considered literate in Japan and of course they are very common, useful kanji. From the chart above, you can see that 20 radicals and their associated key word means that you will recognise something about over 50% of the 常用漢字. This is because knowing a radical can lead you to putting several components of a radical together to get to the kanji stories, which is the next tip.

Kanji stories

The basic concept of a kanji story is that every single part of a kanji can be accounted for in a short story, normally one sentence. I generally recommend the website kanjidamage.com to teach you all these. For more on kanji stories, check out my video linked below or the kanjidamage website.

Flashcard work

Finally, there is some kind of repetitive work needed to try and remember all these pieces of information. Firstly its best to do this via flashcards, preferably with SRS. I would recommend Anki which you can learn about here.

I was in Japan when I first learned kanji, and that is a big advantage as I was having my writing checked/corrected by many native speakers. However I used to go through my Japanese textbook and do the tests. I would also watch a lot of TV with my host family which are basically all subtitled plus I was in a normal Japanese high school trying to read Japanese.

It was only when I got back to Australia that I found out about flashcards and particularly with the introduction of smart phones around the late 2000s was I carrying a flashcard app in my pocket which I would run through every day on the bus etc.

I also purchased a Nintendo DS ‘game’ for the 漢検. This game is really only a revision tool, so I would need to do work in my textbooks etc and then use this software to practice reading and writing but I found it a very useful revision tool.

Bonus

Let’s look at that word itself. It’s really two words, 常用 and 漢字.

The definition of the first word:

常用 じょうよう habitual use; daily use.

The individual kanji are listed below:

常

usual, ordinary, normal, common, regular, continually, always, long-lasting
音: ジョウ 
訓: つね, とこ-
JLPT: N2

用

utilize, business, service, use, employ
音: ヨウ、-ヨウ
訓: もち（いる）
JLPT: N3

if the 音/訓 concept is new to you, check out this video (42:00 timestamped) I did on kanji:

So what happens in my head when I see 常用? I basically think in terms of keywords associated with kanji. I think common, usual, normal + use; Chinese+characters.