I'm still a beginner at Japanese, with probably around 250 words, and around 50 Kanji.
One of the best ways for memorizing things is, as some of the greatest memory champions will recommend, attaching memorable or striking stories or imagery to them. But, when it comes to applying that to real life, I find the approach of creating fictional and completely nonsensical scenarios just as ineffective as rote learning. In that sense, a lot of what's discussed in the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" is very unappealing to me (granted I think that, in the book, the author actually advocates for stories that speak to its creator, not just anyone).
With that in mind, I would like to find a book or resource which discusses Kanji and Japanese words thoroughly, with interesting facts and history about them. That has helped me improve my French and English over time quite considerably, not to mention that it's applicable to the real world, and very enjoyable as well.
Following that pursuit, I was impressed by the Kanji Learner's Course Graded Reading Sets at first due to the extensive pruning, but, after a short while, I felt the approach was very dry, since the phrases are basically feel just random and disconnected. At best, that book feels like just a reference book you could consult from time to time, humans don't learn that way, I don't think.
One teacher I was really hyped about was Cure Dolly, who opened my eyes to some grammatical puzzles I had been struggling with. She occasionally advertises her Alice in Kanji Land book in her videos, and I bought it just because I was and still am a fan of her videos. However, I feel like she missed quite a few opportunities in that book. She focused way too much on creating those arbitrary scenes and mnemonics, I believe. I think that going over more applications of each kanji, and discussing the their historical backgrounds, and getting to real life stories would have been much more effective and memorable. Not to mention that she doesn't progress from Romaji to Kanji and Kana with the Japanese expressions she uses throughout the book.
Cure Dolly is also the first person I had heard mention the ”私は鰻だ” ("I'm an eel" vs "As for me, I would like an eel"). Not only is that joke interesting in itself for explaining the grammatical difference between は and が, what is the likelihood of forgetting what unagi means after it?
Anyways, sorry for the long post, but if anyone knows of a resource like this, it would be truly invaluable for me! I could be all day reading a resource like that, but 5 min of random phrases is enough to dry me for a week.
by Fanaro009