Inspired by you guys, I finished writing all the N2 kanji once.
…now I’ll start over? Or do the rest of the 常用漢字? Not sure but I definitely want to continue. I wrote a big part of those ~1000 kanji while on the phone talking to friends and family or sitting on my bed, and it was such a relaxing activity.
Your work is very pretty, expecially with all the complicated kanji. I can’t wait until I can write all of the difficult ones.
I do find it very relaxing, but I have the tv on in the background. It’s probably not great to have distractions, but I think that I would be too bored otherwise.
beautiful work 
You did this while talking on the phone???
Give me your powers!
2024-03-10T15:00:00Z
Studied
New kanji
存，尊，退，宅，担，探，誕，段
Missed quite a few days. Finally got to it this early morning. Reviews + new kanji.
Tomorrow will do reviews + exercises!
友達に漢験の練習を貸してもらった。
It’s a copy of past years exams, 5 per 級.
So I tried it.
For 10級 I got it quite easily, with 2, 3 or zero errors.
For 9級, I started to feel my lack of vocabulary. I had between 4 and 10 errors, some times stroke order, but mostly I didn’t knew the word hinted in kana.
For 8級 my lack of vocabulary started to hurt, and also I realized some kanji I don’t write very often, as I failed to correctly draw or recall them.
Between 10 and 25 errors…
小学三年生と同じだけだな…
(What I realized is that “knowing kanji” is but a small fraction of what is needed for 漢験, what is needed is to know vocabulary)
I can’t imagine learning that many difficult kanji in a day. I decided to start with four a day for now, and it’s only grade two. I ordered the Kanken Step books from Japan and they should arrive in a few days. Thank you for the recommendation 
That’s why I love this test! It’s not just “vocabulary” either btw. It reveals holes and guides you to a better understanding of Japanese! It teaches you how to actually learn these things 
I’ve already spent years grinding vocab N5-N1 w. kanji, and I did RTK before most of that, so these aren’t completely “new” to me. Especially at these lower levels. I just never studied them properly, so basically my time is spent learning readings, radicals, confirming the meanings, and then how to actually use them.
Please share when you start working through the books. I’m really curious about your reaction!
Honestly I really enjoy looking at your writing. My characters are a bit like drawings, I’m still practicing to get used to the shapes and flows. Yours look …idk “applied” or something? Very practiced and fluid. I like it.
eta: reading through all of your posts makes me want to do the same thing as @Izabelle 
But I’m a bit on a deadline as I need to remember all 常用漢字 until December so idk if I can afford going that deep
I will trade you immediately! No give-backs. LOL
Yeah slow and steady is the only way. I’m assuming you’re studying them through wanikani? Or are you doing some other method?
2024-03-11T15:00:00Z
Studied
No new kanji
Back down to exactly one hour for this morning’s review. It doubles my time to get through a book, but I prefer it this way right now!
It’s honestly really easy to make them look like that though. Took me maybe a hundred or so to get the basics down.
The trick is to use grid paper where each grid is split into four quadrants, then have a reference that’s also on four quadrant grid paper and then copy it, just like you would in art class. Tracing it once or twice at first can help, too. But once you get used to that it’s really quite simple.
Ah, of course like this it takes a little longer to write each character, but now that I’m a bit better at balancing I notice that I’m slowly getting faster.
Wow I wish I had done that from the start. That makes too much sense. I tried to get the balance by sight but not through diligent practice like you outlined 
I will definitely need to add this to my practice at some point. Maybe in between learning phases when my review queue becomes smaller. Thanks!
2024-03-12T15:00:00Z
暖，値，宙，忠，著，庁，頂，腸
My study time is definitely back down to an hour, so I made a good choice to split up learning kanji and doing the exercises for each step. One session for each is slower, but it’s plenty. I could come up with so many reasons and excuses, but whatever the case may be – I definitely make consistent progress when I keep my study time to one hour. I’m hoping that I can increase this to two hours when I get more free time later in the year, but right now I must keep the study time within an hour. The key is keeping the time and energy high enough to actually learn something and make progress, but low enough to virtually guarantee that I can do it every day without feeling overburdened. Even if I had more time to put into this, I’m starting to sense that keeping the amount of new information low might be better for my overall retention. I stay more relaxed while studying and can focus harder on a smaller amount of things. And this style might be better suited for kanji study because it involves a ton of memorization.
I sometimes use these drill pages meant for Japanese children, and the site I get them from also has tests. Yesterday, I did a test for …3rd graders I believe? I got 54%
Even though my kanji knowledge should be at least at a 5th grader’s level.
After I was done grading myself I appreciated the difficulty and intensity of how you’re studying much more. The number of kanji we know might be around the same, but the way you know them is most likely on a completely different level. めっちゃ尊敬してる！
2024-03-13T15:00:00Z
I knew the answer but couldn’t produce the characters (著，値) with confidence, so I missed four questions. It’s a little bit annoying when that happens, but ironically these types of characters tend to burn into my memory much easier later on. When I first started studying, that would get me down. I’d be tempted to cheat the review, saying “Ah yeah I knew that.” But it’s actually a learning opportunity and a chance to improve so skipping would only hurt me in the long run. And it’s all about the long run.
@Thubanshee I appreciate the kind words, but I also want to stress that what I’m doing is basic AF and the absolute bare minimum anyone studying Japanese should be doing!! If 3rd graders can do it, we should be blowing them out of the water! 
Join in! Please! 
Go for gold!
@Izabelle Beautiful! Man you guys have such nice characters
@NeoArcturus where you at???
I kinda had no time in the past few days, but I managed to find some yesterday, I’ll post them soon 
