Day 3: Kana ka-ko

 Today we will be starting with Kana101's Lesson 4 from their 14 day course to learn Kana.

In my Japanese binder the lessons are pages 15-18 for lesson 4.

Lesson Plan for May 7th 2014:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 4

Flash Cards for Hiragana and Katakana a-ko (10 rounds)

Writing Hiragana and Writing Katakana

ka-ko 25 times each

a-o katakana 20 times each

a-o 15 times each

Listening board or the Hiragana song (version 2 of the song) to learn how to pronounce.

Tips: The writing sheets linked to "Writing Hiragana" will have 30 places to write the kana without help. You can change how much you want to write them based on this.

Second: The Hiragana Song makes it a little harder to sound them out without signing it. I'd recommend the listening board or an App found on the Android Market called Japanese Gojuon.

My Japanese Practice: 

Lesson 4:

Flash Cards:

As this would be hard to show you that I did anything, I will be leaving this one out of all future posts. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Writing Hiragana:

Listening Board:

As this would be hard to show you that I did listen, I will be leaving this one out of all future posts. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Update to my Hiragana/Katakana Binder

When I first started planning my binder out I noticed something, it got super full fast. I changed a lot of it around. First off I seperated it into two binders. One being a Hello Kitty binder for the 14 days of Kana101. The second being what I will call the "quiz" of the lessons.

The Hello Kitty Binder is now looks like this:

Page 1:

 Genki Japans' current May Calendar

Sign up and get the current calendar emailed to you.

Page 2:

Hiragana Chart from Textfugu.

Page 3:

Hiragana Stoke Order Chart from はじめまして's Blog.

Page 4:

Katakana Chart from Textfugu.

Page 5:

Katana Stroke Order Chart from はじめまして's Blog.

 Page 6:

 Because you just cant have enough Hiragana and Katakana chart from MLC.

DIVIDER: Day 1 May 6th

Pages 7-12:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 1

Pages 8-11:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katana Lesson 2

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 2 May 7th

Pages 12-14:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 3

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 3 May 8th

Pages 15-18:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 4

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 4 May 9th

Pages 19-21:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 5

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 5 May 10th

Pages 22-24:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 6

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 7 May 12th

This will be a review day over what we've learned so far. It will including working on any Hiragana or Katakana that you feel you are not 100% on. It will include working with some Drag and drop games and maybe some others. Its not 100% planned out and will be posted on the 12th on what to do. As Day 8 will have a quiz. :) Be ready! And good luck!

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 7 May 12th

Pages 25-28:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 7

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 8 May 13th

Pages 29-31:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 8

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 9 May 14th

Pages 32-35:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 9

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 10 May 15th

Pages 36-39:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 10

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 11 May 16th

Pages 40-43:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 11

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 12 May 17th

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 12

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 13 May 18th

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 13

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

DIVIDER: Day 14 May 19th

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 14

ANY HOMEWORK/WORK GOES AFTER THESE IN A PROTECTED PAGE.

THIS INCLUDES ALL WRITING EXORCISES AND ANYTHING IN THE LESSONS WE HAD TO WRITE DOWN.

Second Binder

DIVIDER: MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheets

Pages -:

MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheets

DIVIDER: My Quiz

The Answers I wrote for the MLC Hiragana/Katakana Worksheets

DIVIDER: MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheet Answers

Pages -:

MLC Hiragana and Katakana Answers

Who knows if this will stay this way. It made it a little easier for me. :) This way I can break the lessons up. The next binder I will be using will be for Yookoso. I am going to be using the textbook published in 1999. I bought mine from Half Priced Books for only 99 cents. It does cost an additional 3.99 for shipping within the us however. :) If you cant afford this stay toned anyways! As I will be dropping vocabulary, grammar, and other helpful info on the blog!

Day 2: Hiragana and Katakana a-o

Today we'll be starting with Kana101's Lesson 3 from their 14 day course to learn Kana.

In my Japanese binder they are pages 12-14.

Lesson Plan for May 7th 2014:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 3.

Flash Cards for Kana a-o (10 rounds)

Writing Hiragana and Writing Katakana

a-o (katakana) 25 times

a-o 20 times.

Listening board or the Hiragana song (version 2 of the song) to learn how to pronounce.

Tips: The writing sheets linked to "Writing Hiragana" will have 30 places to write the kana without help. You can change how much you want to write them based on this.

Second: The Hiragana Song makes it a little harder to sound them out without signing it. I'd recommend the listening board or an App found on the Android Market called Japanese Gojuon. Maybe even writing them out of order of the chard and pronouncing them that way. It should give you a nice little break and make it easier to learn.

My Japanese Practice: 

Lesson 3:

There isn't anything from the lesson to put here.

Flash Cards:

As this would be hard to show you that I did anything, I will be leaving this one out of all future posts. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Writing Katakana:

Writing Hiragana:

Listening Board:

As this would be hard to show you that I did listen, I will be leaving this one out of all future posts. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

Day 1: Hiragana a-o

 Today we will be starting with Kana101's Lesson 1 and 2 from their 14 day course to learn Kana.

In my Japanese binder the lessons are pages 7-12 for Lesson 1 and pages 8-11 for Lesson 2.

Before we start please add in the comments why you'd like to learn Japanese. As I am still learning myself I will post in the comments and add it on this blog itself.

Lesson Plan for May 6th 2014:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 1

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katana Lesson 2

Flash Cards for Hiragana a-o (10 rounds)

Writing Hiragana a-o 25 times each.

Listening board or the Hiragana song (version 2 of the song) to learn how to pronounce.

Tips: The writing sheets linked to "Writing Hiragana" will have 30 places to write the kana without help. You can change how much you want to write them based on this.

Second: The Hiragana Song makes it a little harder to sound them out without signing it. I'd recommend the listening board or an App found on the Android Market called Japanese Gojuon.

My Japanese Practice: 

Why do I want to learn Japanese:

I've been fascinated by the Japanese culture since I was a child. I've loved everything I've heard about it. It was one of the first places I've ever wanted to go. Bring this up, I was in the third grade when I decided this. Me wanting to go there was all based off when Sailor Moon was airing on Toonami. Ever since then I've been in love with both animation from Japan as well as the culture itself. I've found, and still find, it fascinating. One day I do hope to go to Japan and either visit there or move there.

Lesson 1:

I put this in a page protector and placed it behind lesson one.

Lesson 2:

There wasn't anything to post about for this lesson. :)

Flash Cards:

As this would be hard to tell you I studied with my flash cards. It will also be skipped in all future postings. If anyone has suggestions on this let me know!

Writing Hiragana:

I will update this a little later tonight. As I need to print the worksheet from here.

Listening Board:

As this would be hard to show you that I did listen, I will be leaving this one out of all future posts. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

My Hiragana and Katakana Binder

   

I made this binder a year ago when I was trying to learn Japanese then. I was studying a few days a week if not everyday. Until the Black Forest Fire broke out in Colorado. As I live in Colorado and lived right next to the fire, I had to get evacuated. I stopped my studies at that point and didn't have the drive to get back into learning Japanese right away.

Anyway back to the point. I went out and picked up some economy weight clear sheet protectors from Wal-mart. I bought three packages, since they were 25 sheets per package. They were $2.49 per package. I also bought a graph paper 5 star notebook with was around $3.49. My binder I picked out is one of these two. My Harajuku mini or Hello Kitty. As I only picked them since Hello Kitty and Harajuku are both from Japan. I already printed out Hiragana and Katakana practice and place them in the protective sheets.

The start of my Hiragana/Katakana binder goes as follows:

Page 1:

 Genki Japans' current May Calendar

Sign up and get the current calendar emailed to you.

DIVIDER: Hiragana + Katakana charts and Stroke Orders

Page 2:

Hiragana Chart from Textfugu.

Page 3:

Hiragana Stoke Order Chart from はじめまして's Blog.

Page 4:

Katakana Chart from Textfugu.

Page 5:

Katana Stroke Order Chart from はじめまして's Blog.

 Page 6:

 Because you just cant have enough Hiragana and Katakana chart from MLC.

DIVIDER: Kana 101s Hiragana and Katakana Lessons

Pages 7-12:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 1

Pages 8-11:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katana Lesson 2

Pages 12-14:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 3

Pages 15-18:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 4

Pages 19-21:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 5

Pages 22-24:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 6

Pages 25-28:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 7

Pages 29-31:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 8

Pages 32-35:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 9

Pages 36-39:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 10

Pages 40-43:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 11

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 12

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 13

Pages -:

Kana 101's Hiragana and Katakana Lesson 14

DIVIDER: MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheets

Pages -:

MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheets

DIVIDER: MLC Hiragana and Katakana Worksheet Answers

Pages -:

MLC Hiragana and Katakana Answers

Materials Used:

75+ Sheet Protectors*

1 set of 8 Dividers

150+ sheets of paper*

1 binder

**Guessed at this numbers for now**

 I also have the Let's Learn Hiragana and Let's Learn Katakana workbooks. I'd say its cheaper to buy some graph paper or a graph paper notebook and practice writing the characters down trying to fit in 2x2 square. The only part I found really cool is the word search at the end. Though I could make my own or google search for some already made Hiragana or Katakana word search.

I will be updating this blog, for lessons 3-14, as soon as we start the lesson they are involved with. As some of the links were not correct I had to resign up for the emails and they are sent daily.  The new links should be coming out within the next few days. We will also be starting with lessons one and two tomorrow!

NOTE: I was going to put some photos in on how I did mine, but I guess this will have to do for now. I don't want to keep this blog from being posted just from pictures not downloading to my computer.

Tomorrow I plan to start up with the lessons. As I wanted to have a day on Kana101. This way I can put lesson 1-2 added in for one day and be on track for days 12-14 at the same time. I would have started it  yesterday but the website wasn't working.

As for the rest of the day I'd suggest making your own Kana, both Hiragana and Katakana, flash cards. You can also download and print them off here. You can also study them a little bit with an app for your smart phone called Jalaga.

Happy Learning!

Best ways to Learn

Since I'm starting to learn Japanese with my friend Raven and she just ordered her textbook the other day. I decided to looking up the "best" way to learn Japanese. I also looked up advice from those who have already learned Japanese. They all really repeated the same things, but they did have some great advice. 

The way I'll display this is going by person to person about learning Japanese. I.E. It will look something like this:

Person

+ Advice

+Advice

+Advice

Ciaela (Youtube)

+Make mistakes!

Don't be embarrassed by them!

+ Copy a fluent Japanese persons pronunciations!

Don't copy Anime!

+Don't know a word in Japanese? Try to describe it!

+Keep up your practice!

Claire (Youtube)

+ Don't buy special pages for Kanji, Hiragana, or Katakana!

Use normal graph papaer!

+White board!

Buy a white board and use that. It will save you some paper and is great

for learning Kanji.

+Flash Cards!

Use flash cards to study your Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana!

+Set weekly targets!

Something as simple as 50 vocab a week!

+Textbook

Don't listen or buy anything that says "learn Japanese in x Days!"

+Use Pencil!

+Don't take offence to being corrected!

+Don't learn from Anime!

Use a podcast or the news!

+Don't be embarrassed  to try and pronounce Japanese!

+ If you don't know a word don't stop the conversation to look it up, work around it

and try and explain what you mean.

This isn't her video for advice but its another video she did do. Unfortunately I couldn't find the video where she gives advice to link it on blogger. As they do it by searching youtube. If I can figure it out I'll change it later.

Miss Hanake (Youtube)

+ Learn your basics!

Once you have the basics down you can "snowball" and be be able to learn more by using it rather

than studying it all the time.

+Don't focus a lot on studying rather than using it.

As you're using it you should be learning it.

+Learn some vocab!

+ Use the Internet to help you use and learn more!

Find out how to put your computer in Japanese using an IME to change it to a Japanese keyboard!

Also get a Japanese keyboard on your phone as this will help you as well!

+ Use the browser addon Rikaichan (firefox) or Rikaikun (chrome)

If you have it on and hover over a Japanese word it will tell you what it is.

Highly recommended!

+ Dictionary App (Smart phones)

Imiwa

Type in English or Japanese!

+Twitter

Has hundreds of Japanese learners, and has a cultre to help you get better!

+ Communication is Vital!

+Make sure you're trying to listen to some Japanese! Surround yourself with Japaneses. It will help you learn!

+ Having a hard time remembering Hiragana or Katakana? Try Mnemonic.

+ Keep a log of your Japanese!

When your feeling bad about how "slow" you think you're going look back on everything!

You'll be impressed!

Rachel + Jun (Youtube)

These two have their own videos. This said they will be divided by their videos!

Jun

+ Don't Just study, use it!

+ Try and have someone that knows Japaneses correct you!

 If you're not corrected you wont know you even made a mistake!

+ Don't listen to what people say about anime or manga. 

It CAN help you. As long as you don't use it as course work and only for your enjoyment!

Not recommended until you know the basics!

Don't use anime or manga as an excuse to learn Japanese!!

+ You need to practice and learn your Kanji!

+ After basics are down try reading manga in Japaenese!

+Lang-8.com

This site will help you learn Japanese, and you'll help someone learn your language!

+Most Japanese learners have an electric Dictionary.

These can be costly and go for around 200-400 USD.

It could be replaced with a good English Japanese Dictionary App!

Rachel

+ 3 Major Parts

- Listening

- Reading

- Speaking

(Writing is used for all three and you most likely wont have to draw out the Kanji as much as you would have to type or text them!)

+ Reading

- Kanji

- Vocab

- Grammer

(Hiragana and Katakana should be learned in a few days and are not inculded here!)

+Best way to get better is emerge yourself in Japan, or talk to people that are fluent!

If you can't there's a few ways to do it online!

Lang-8.com

or

Japan-Guide.com

+ Stay away from Google translate!

+ Keep going when things get tough!

Don't just give up!

These last two videos are by far my favorite for advice!

Matador Network (Youtube)

The last thing I did was from a website named Matador Network.

+ Practice stroke order!

It's considered lazy if you don't write them correctly!

+ Don't stop when things get hard!

+ Invest in some quality materials!

A nice textbook

+ Watch plenty of Movies, Dramas, and listen to music!

Don't be afraid to sing along too!

+ Settle on the one set of romanization!

Some methods change "fu" ふ to "hu" since "fu" take the place in ha/hi/fu/he/ho.

The only think I've never seen is the Matador Networks advice on romanization. I've only ever seen the one that uses "fu". I will be trying to post weekly on this blog and updating it for things I plan to do or am doing.

Thank you for reading! :) Good Luck on your Japanese journey!