Learn Kanji in 45 minutes - How to Read and Write Japanese 

Learning Japanese be like: "This radical means dragon. And The kanji next to it means shoe. Together, they mean pancake."

Learning Japanese writing is like school: Romaji: Your best friend. Hiragana: Your crush. Katakana: The foreign student. Kanji: A fkn dragon with giant cannons attacking the school.

I am Japanese. (I'm using translation.) Kanji practice is still easier when you learn the radicals. When I was little, I was not good at kanji either, but once I learned the radicals and their meanings, it became easier to study them. Please try your best, even if it's just little by little! Japanese is fun. P.S. Japanese anime and manga are also great.

10:34 Recap of everything so far Kanji • Kanji is the incorporation of Chinese characters into Japanese writing • They are characters that represent an idea and contain meaning • Radicals are the building blocks of Kanji • Kanji can have multiple readings "On" and "Kun" • The "On" reading mimics the original sound made in Chinese • The "Kun" reading is a revised reading used to integrate the Japanese alphabet • The only way to determine which reading to use is mainly VIA the context • The "On" reading is usually used when multiple Kanji are grouped together in a compound word • The "Kun" reading is usually used when it's a standalone Kanji Radicals • Each Kanji character has at least one of them • Sometimes they can be a Kanji on its own • Several Radicals put together can be another Kanji • When placed together they can be in 4 different positions known as Left, Crown, Right, Foot Common Kanji Radicals & Characters • Person/Human 人 or 休 • Called にんべん written with 2 strokes • This character is commonly found in the left position • Less commonly found in the Crown position "On" Readings are on the left and "Kun" on the right • Alone its readings are ニソ and ひと • Paired with Tree it's キユウ and やす meaning to rest 休 • Paired with Trunk it's タイ and かやだ meaning body 体 • Paired with Word it's シソ meaning Trust 信

"Human + Word" Me: "Oh I got it, it's language!" "It's trust!" Me: How the f-

me: * has mastered hiragana and katakana * kanji: you really thought you did something there

For anyone learning Kanji right now or Chinese characters, its best to learn them through memory and making up a story. This video is really teaching you one thing, making a memory or a story behind each Kanji. When they claim Person and Tree is rest, its their way of memorizing the Kanji as rest. What I mean by that is, if that Kanji meant "to lean", you would have just remembered it as a person leaning on a tree. To Lean. Its all imaginative. That's the key take way here.

Kanji can be difficult at first. But it gets wayyyyy easier as you go on. It's a great skill to learn. :)

I'm Japanese. When you learn Kanji, I think the most important thing is imagination. (I'm sorry if I'm unnatural English because I use a translator!) ❌ Person＋Tree＝rest ✔︎ Imagine the scenery of a person stands still beside a large tree in the primitive age. Calm time flows and he/she become sleepy and lie down. =rest

*finally understands all hiragana and katakana and has the courage to learn more* Kanji: *I'm about to end this man's whole career*

I am Japanese. When I was in elementary school, we had homework to write Kanji characters every day. When typing on the keyboard, you may not know which kanji is the correct one to use. But nowadays, if you use voice recognition, it will automatically display the correct kanji. The trick is to speak in sentences. This sentence was also entered using Japanese speech recognition, and was translated using DeepL. 私は日本人です。私が小学生の頃は、毎日漢字を書く宿題がありました。 キーボードで入力するときは、どの漢字を使うのが正解かわからないかもしれません。 でも、今は音声認識を使えば、自動で正しい漢字で表示されます。 こつは、文章で話すことです。 この文章も日本語の音声認識で入力しました。DeepLを使用して、翻訳を行いました。

Finally an explanation for reading kanji! I always wondered how it worked. It always baffled me how Japanese people could read a kanji they’ve never or hardly seen and understand it’s meaning. The radical system makes so much sense! Yay no longer in the dark! Excited to learn Kanji now that I know how it works! 😄

12:53 don't fool me. Human legs combined with eyes can only mean one thing: Mike from Monster Inc.

Hiragana=friend Katakana=ok one Kanji=the bully

Me happily coming to learn kanji after finishing hiragana and katakana.... also me regretting the day i promised myself to learn Japanese 🥺 it will take me 1000 lives to learn Kanji! hats off to the people of Japan😭

For all new Kanji learners, if you are planning to learn Kanji through using stories, memorize your own stories. The issue that a lot of people don't tell you, like in this video or in books like RTK (remembering the kanji), is that memorizing thousands of different stories for Kanji is also just as ineffective. People claim, "Oh. Memorizing Kanji by itself is difficult and will take a long time." But when you memorize the stories for these Kanjis, you also STILL have to memorize the Kanji. The only difference is that you are memorizing an extra step to MAYBE make it easier for yourself. I think the best situation is mix and match. Some stories for some Kanji you find difficult but the rest should be learnt through meaning and context. We don't teach English speakers to learn words like Run through pictures. IE: We don't tell people. "Okay. The R is like a 2 legs and they are moving and the UN are the curves of a track. Thus running!" Also - in English we memorize thousands and thousands of words created by 26 letters. That means 26 letters have thousands of combinations. Not once we were thought to use stories. A prime of example of why some of these stories don't really work if you listen to other people is: take the character 問 (to ask). The video basically said: the department of mouth is to question or to ask. Why isn't it to smile? To talk? To chew? To etc... This is basically basically its not REAL meaning; its what they decided to make the story as. Just remember, if you do stories, do your own or you'll be confused.

Whoever made this language has good imagination, not gonna lie..

I’d like to wish every person trying to learn kanji including myself the best of luck, I sincerely mean that..

It’s two am, I’ve been writing very detailed notes on a lot of your videos. It might take some time but your videos have really encouraged me to keep learning

this is literally the best kanji lesson ever on youtube. it covers exactly all that is needed to be known.. from the meaning, different uses, to strokes and pronunciation. it's so hard to learn otherwise. Thank you so much. This was really helpful and i've been able to remember kanjis without much effort now. please make more of these

Me: so 見 is see, because of legs + eye, so 兄 would probably means talk, because legs + mouth, right? Kanji: O L D E R B R O T H E R

“Take a look at these kanji characters. Can you guess what they mean?” Nope. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

Kanji is hard for me to grasp and I'm kinda thinking of giving up sometimes. But I've come this far. I've already learned hiragana and katakana, and I have already bought reference books and study materials. And I still have my passion in learning this language. To anyone who's feeling the same, let's not give up and try and try until we succeed. It might take long before we master some phrases, characters, or words, but atleast we tried, and we're still trying. Ganbatte! ❤️ And thanks for Japanesepod101 for the free and fun lessons! Their videos are so helpful and enjoyable that it helps me maintain my will to study. Arigatou gozaimasu! 🙇🏻‍♀️

I learned Chinese characters since my schooling in kindergarten. However, Kanji is still one of the most challenging parts of the Japanese language. The writing is easy. The meaning of the words is mostly identical or similar, although approximately 30% of the vocabulary is uniquely used in the Japanese language and unintelligible in Chinese. The pronunciation, however, is often different from those in any Sinitic language such that we need to memorize them one by one. To be able to read Kanji words, we still need to memorize the pronunciation of more than a thousand commonly used words. Only a very small portion of the Kanji words have similar pronunciation to some Sinitic languages, usually the regional languages in South China which share common origins with Kanji from Middle Chinese. The pronunciation of modern Mandarin Chinese is almost completely different.

46 symbols (Hiragana) = learn in 1 hour 46 symbols (Katakana) = learn in 1 hour over 2k symbols (Kanji) = learn in 45 minutes

Me: "Learns hiragana and katakana in 1 week and proceeds to learn kanji with confidence." Video: "Person + tree = rest" Me: "This little maneuver is gonna cost us 51 years"

i’ve been recently trying to learn japanese fluently, and i’m doing pretty well with hiragana and katakana, but kanji had always scared me... until now. this video was super helpful and a great introduction to kanji! thank you very much!! 😅

It doesn't take as long as they suggest. In Japan they learn them all throughout primary and secondary school, but a motivated self-learner usually exceeds the capacity for learning that's required in school by a large margin. It is very possible to crank them all out in 2-4 months if you have enough caffeine.

We learn kanji in elementary school for 6 years with a sponge brain, still sometimes we search the characters that we don't know or forget how to write or read. There is even a quiz show that guesses how to read kanji. I want to say to all you guys who study japanese just keep it up, but I think it's best to learn step by step while having fun. I want to talk to you guys in Japanese someday! Greetings from Japan!!

Me 3 minutes into the video: *internal screaming* Me 15 minutes into the video: *external screaming*

This was so helpful. I just started learning Japanese, and am just getting a grasp on Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji had me completely confused. This helped me tremendously, because now I have a basis to learn Kanji.

This was incredibly useful. Thank you so so much! Can't wait to see if there's more to this Kanji series. 🤩

what i learnt from this lesson: one cannot simply guess the meaning of a kanji just by trying to make a connection between the meanings of its radicals.

so to learn kanji you have to remember what it means, how to write it, and how it is pronounced...simple enough I shall be fluent in Japanese by 2074

I am not going to lie at all i absolutely learnt a lot from this one single video! Thank You so so much i really appreciate how you made this video and explanations too! ❤

I love this video!! I would love more videos like this this was super helpful as I'm in the beginning stages of learning Japanese

The: "Can you guess the meaning of the word? It's the human radical plus the tree radical" Me: tree... person? They: "Of course it means 'to rest'! What about human and root?" Me: Well the person is now leaning closer to the ground (near the root of the tree) , so maybe sleep? The: "It's referring to the human body! Okay, then how about human and word?" Me: Oh, that's gotta be talking! They: "It means trust! Can you see how easily we can guess the meaning?" Me: Not really.

No one: Japanese: *ten plus mouth equals old*

It was really helpful ❤ and I'm looking forward to watching more kanji series videos. I love your channel a lot. You guys really helped me to learn Japanese in a very easy way. May Allah help you guys 😘

I love this channel. I can learn Japanese for free and they have some fun videos. Thank you so much!

there are japanese people of 40years+ living there that still dont know all the kanjis. Me trying to learn this quickly

Me:alright I learned hiragana and katakana time for kanji Kanji: の I haven’t checked back in a while and holy- was it that funny?!

This was brilliant!!!! Straightforward, clear and sequential!!! Thank you!

Love the lesson and the clear presentation!

Congratulations on learning hiragana and katakana, It must've been tough and you did a great job. Now prepare for everlasting pain.

Me: Alright so "人" means person, I feel like I can learn Kanji *MELANCHOLY:* I'm about to end this mans whole career

this was super helpful! for future reference, it really helps to put how to write it before the other info, since some students copy and it helps writing practice to have correct form from the start!

Keep the videos coming very helpful and I'm in love with Risa

The 4 way of kanji: 1). As a stand alone. Simply as is with 1 kanji character with 1 meaning. I.e: 女(onna) = women 2). Write it along hiragana but still 1 meaning. Here we use them together with hiragana scripts which usually used similarly as a conjunction. I.e: 女の子(onna no ko) = girl, consist of kanji 'women'(女, onna), hiragana の that mostly represented as 'ownership', and kanji child (子, ko) 3). As a radicals and combine it with other radicals to create 1 kanji character. I.e: 好(kou) = fondness, consist of 2 kanji as radicals, woman(女) and child(子), but for this one isn't to be used as is, like the 2nd ways, its used in hiragana to give a 'meaning' in its words like 好き(suki, means like) or 好く(suku, means 'to like'). Not to be mistaken with 透く(suku, means 'be transparent') which spelled the same but uses different kanji hence different meaning. You can also uses more radicals, i.e. 姦(kan) = noisy, with 3 kanji characters of women(女) as radicals 4). Combine it with other kanji but not as radical. I.e: 王女(oujo) = princess, consist of 2 kanji, king(王, ou) and women(女, onna). This time not as radical which to create 1 character, but as 2 character but with 1 meaning. And just like radicals, it can also uses more characters but still create one meaning

"This radical means person, and this radical means tree. Can you guess what this Kanji means?" Me, with confidence: *Treeman* I know, I'm not very bright.

It seems like artists created this language, it’s so cool! I’m a visual learner, and I love this so much

Being a beginner in Japanese language and starting to learn Hiragana at this time, my first observation of Kanji and the radicals from this video are not very obvious to me far as the end meaning of the complete Kanji Character. I feel I would still have to memorize each Kanji Character. Lets be real now!! I would have to have a very very imaginative mind to come up with the final meaning of the Kanji Character from its individual Radicals. Most I wouldn't even come close to guessing in a hundred years from the individual Radicals. Even the Radicals are not obvious what they are supposed to represent without you telling us. It is great to know the origin of Kanji and the basics of them. I still need to learn Hiragana and Katakana first before I tackle learning Kanji. I bet there are many many people still trying to learn Kanji if there are more than 1500 of them.

I'm not scared, I've already learned the whole Pokédex. My body is ready

Kanji are like ancient emojis if that makes it any easier A good tip is that there is no one certain reading （Example: Soda, Pop, Coke, Cola) and then u just use it as the 🥤Emoji

In the movement radical, I noticed how much it looked like a treadmill which can also relate to movement which helps me, so ありがと

Imagination of all sorts played a big part (if not all) in the creation of each Chinese character. Just like how the constellations were given names. Thank you for this tutorial!

me : a chinese kanji : hi me : I DO NOT FEAR YOU.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I said I was gonna learn Japanese 😳

Risa is such a legend. Thanks for all of your content

I learned Hiragana and just got done with Katakana from this channel, and now it’s teaching me Kanji. THANK YOU

I started learning Japanese almost a year ago... and really, the farther you come, the easier it gets. You start noticing patterns in Kanji, which makes it easier to remember them. My tip for new learners would be: write the characters down, and multiple times. I only started doing that recently - it really helps!

31:58 日 is a pictogram? Did some Chinese dude think that the sun was actually a glowing Ikea shelf?

Japanesepod101 is really a great tool for aspirants!! 😊 We are all fortunate to have it on RU-vid....

thank you for this One way to understand Kanji seems to be to deduct the concept of concepts put together rather than just knowing the words for them, at least at a first glance :)

The moment you finish hiragana and katakana. Oh that wasn’t that bad! Kanji: *i guess you’ve wondered where I’ve been*

You are tearing me apart, Risa!

I’m thai and my english skill is B2 but my Japanese skill is just beginner. This video make me know more kanji and make me practice 2 languages at same time! ありがとうございます。😊

0:32 how to know about kanji? 0:46 what is kanji? 2:21 how to learn kanji? 3:13 radicals 3:15 what are radicals? 4:34 the person radical 4:08 lesson recap 4:45 first radical 5:24 person radical meaning 7:08common positions 10:15 lesson review 10:34 human legs radical 13:04 common position

now that I know how to write "human legs" I will write it on an empty box and ship it to Tokyo and freak people out.

One advice from Native Japanese: Do not think about radicals, do not try to "analyze" kanjis with radicals. DO NOT THINK. MEMORIZE.

I almost learn all the kanji from this vid it means a lot to me and it helped me too it is a good lesson and these two r the good teachers thnx for letting us know it carefully 😍😍😍it really helped and i am glad hope i learn japanese fastly!!😘😘

Excellent way of teaching, very useful for new leaner, thanks a lot.

13:10 "Just remember where your legs are on your body and you won't forget it!" "Where are your legs?" "On the bottom!" LMAO. That enthusiasm melted my heart and made me laugh out loud.

Learning hiragana is like being able to read a text out loud but not understanding the meaning of it, while practicing Kanji is like being able to understand a written text but not being able to read it out loud most of the time xD

I am stuck in the kanji.your kanji video help to me come out.thank sooo much.

Extremely helpful video ❤️❤️ thanks a lot. I want to learn more kanji please make a second videoabout kanji

"Me finally learns katakana and hiragana" Kanji: "plays Giorno's theme"

Video: "The kanji for eye with the legs beneath means to see." Me: "Okay..." ... Video: "The kanji for mouth with the legs beneath means..." Me: "Speak! It has to be speak." Video: "older brother." Me: "WHAT?!"

Probably the best explanations, thank you 🙏🙏🙏😊

THANK for the tuts and guides.

you guys are doing this for anime but i'm doing this because i accidentally changed my laptop's language to japanese and i can't turn it back edit: jesus christ calm down its a fucking joke

"Learning kanji is gonna be ezzz" *Sees the kanji character for melancholy* (Õ_Ó)

that was a great beginning for me in kanji >> thank you so much 💙💙💙

I'm not a fan of kanji but I've got to get this revision done. Arigatō gozaimasu for the simplified lessons and neat format Matane! ✌🏾

Hiragana mastered 3 days _"Anime Here I come!"_ Katakana Mastered 1 week _"Oh, Anime you're so gonna get rekt..."_ Kanji... _"Belay my last... I'm gonna be here for a while."_

“We highly recommend keeping ready a phone, in case learning the Kanji strokes gives you a stroke.”

This is what I'm looking for. Thank you ❤

Thank you for this wonderful video.

I will tell my brother he's a mouth on legs, I'm sure he will appreciate it.

This really feels alot like going to an art museum and learning how to read abstract paintings and decyphering what the painter was thinking at the time

This is a very good video thanks. Please make more of these.

そうなんだよなー 日本人でも漢字が難し過ぎて知らないものもたくさんあるし でもその分多彩な表現ができるから日本語は面白い言語だと思うよ

I bawled my eyes out when i saw a kanji composed of 29 strokes

"where are your legs?" me: *[sweats nervously]* uhhhhhhhhhhh

I first watched this video 6 years ago right after I learned Hiragana and Katakana in less than a week, of course from JapanesePod101 as well. It was semestral break and I was an incoming senior university student at that time. For the first 5 minutes of this Kanji series video, it kinda gave me a headache and I felt what they were saying when you’re learning a language: “having a nosebleed”. As years passed by, I am still self-studying Japanese and I am getting more interested in learning everything Nihongo so I decided to come back and continue learning Kanji as well. To all those people who are studying Kanji like me, let’s do our best! 😊 諦めない!～ 😁

ありがとうございます。Need more videos like this

Here's something that may help others learn Kanji: "You must unlearn what you have learned" -Yoda

Japanese: yeah let’s use kanji in our language Me: I’LL NEVER FORGIVE THE JAPANESE

That is absolutely helpful thank you