Kana Pict-o-Graphix: Mnemonics for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana

I'm trying to learn Japanese because I'll be taking a trip up to Tokyo in 2011 so I picked up Michael Rowley's book, KANA PICT-O-GRAPHIX: MNEMONICS FOR JAPANESE HIRAGANA AND KATAKANA. Although I'm half Japanese, I was born here and my parents never taught me the language. I only know a few words and phrases and can't read any of it.This book is pretty good because it gives you both the Hiragana and Katakana characters for the Japanese syllabary and explains how to tell the difference between the two. It associates the characters with familiar symbols so that you'll be able to recall what the character stands for. The idea is really good.However, the book is so small and can fit into your pocket, which might be a good thing for some, but I prefer a larger format.Both the Hiragana and Katakana characters are presented on one page -- since the two represent the same syllable but are used for different purposes -- along with the mnemonic character/representation. On some of the mnemonic symbols it's really hard to understand the "match" between them and its Hiragana/Katakana character counter-part, but most of them are pretty clear and you can see the correlation between the two.There's no Romaji (Japanese words spelled with English letters) in it, unless you count the spelling of the character, because you're only learning the characters and not any words at all.The book contains a pronunciation guide and explains the differences between English and Japanese, and how Japanese words are formed, in simple to understand language.The KANA PICT-O-GRAPHIX book won't help you by itself, unless you can already speak Japanese and only need to be able to study the characters, so you'll need additional study material.Other than that, I think that Rowley's book is pretty cool and should help anyone who is trying to learn the Kana (Hiragana & Katakana) characters.

I love mnemonics. I'm horrible at remembering names unless I associate them with something else I know, like my girlfriend's parents' names. Her dad had the same name as my grandpa and her mom had the same name as my cousin, so after associating them they were easy to remember.It's the same for this book. In four days I was looking at katakana and hiragana and instead of thinking "RA" I'd think "ROCKET!" or "YU" and "UNIT!", "E" and "Elevate", "SU" and "Suit", etc. and thinking of them this way makes them ridiculously easy to remember when just starting out. After enough repetition reading the characters you will start to just "know" the sound without needing to remember the mnemonic.10/10 would buy Kanji Pictographix too. Oh wait I already did. Arriving tomorrow :)

this book will blow your mind haha...i literally learned all the hiragana in 2 days. i'm a VERY visual learner, so the characters turned into pictures helped me SO MUCH. i seriously flew through it. i also am working on the katakana now and have only went through the book once and already have quite a few characters memorized without even concentrating on them. it's seriously amazing.the book itself is about 3"x5", so it's small, but i like it. i can easily take it anywhere with me if i want :) i love this book, and i love showing it to people because they are amazed with it as well! it makes learning the characters so easy :) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!a few notes though: i noticed for the "U" sound they have written down it sounds like "Uhh!" and the picture is a guy getting hit in the gut by a baseball, but the sound should be more like "ooo" like, "ooo! look at the fireworks!", but short, like "ou". and for the "ya" sound, they have a picture of a yak, and they say it like the "ya" part when you say "yak", but really, it's more like...a "yah" sound. those were the only two problems with it that i found, but if you are studying japanese in addition to this book you will quickly find that out.

I used this as a crash-course to learn how to read/write/remember Japanese only weeks before moving to Japan. Since I had no previous experience with either katakana or hiragana, this was a lifesaver. As silly as some of the comparisons/pictures are sometimes, they worked for me.I want to add that many years later, when trying to remember how to distinguish some of the similar katakana characters from each other, I *still* think back to this book even though I have advanced much further in my Japanese studies. It really did help much more than simple rote memorization. I suggest getting kanji books that work in a similar way, such as "250 Essential Kanji for Everyday Use". I have both volumes of those books and they've helped me remember more characters than I would have thought possible,

It works, but not a great system. I remembered the kana in two nights. But, I can't say that the mnemonic pictographs made enough sense to recall intuitively later. I found despite my constant practice, while trying to read out of necessity two weeks later in Japan, the weaker associations (for example, where the sound of the letter came from the middle of the pictograph word) were quite harder to recall, and slowed me down too much. Perhaps the author could have done better to find more appropriate ideas. Maybe the hangup lies somewhere in that an eastern mind and a western mind have not been trained to think in the same way.

I picked this up when I first started learning Japanese because while Hiragana was easy for me Katakana for some reason was very intimidating.. with out this little book and its corresponding kana flash cards I would probably still struggle with the Katakana. Especially the look a likes like shi and tsu. Thanks in part to book and to my dedicated tutor I now know the katakana with confidence. My only slight gripe about them is they give no clue as to the stroke order. That is something you have to dedicate to memory.

The little cartoons that Pict-o-Graphix uses really help in recalling the story and sound of the kana. This has both hiragana and katakana.

I thought it worth a try but this just doesn't work at all for me.Firstly, the images it suggests for many of the characters are really a stretch too far of the imagination - so not something I'll easily recall when I see the letter on its own. And some are too similar to each other, which doesn't help.And the words themselves seem based on an American pronunciation, so some work OK for British accent but some are really just not good.All together, it would take me more study and effort trying to remember the odd pictorial sketches for each letter and then remember what words they might represent and then remember which letter the words are for than it would to just memorise the letters the hard way.I'm usually very visual but this just doesn't work for me.

This method does work, although I have to admit some of the pictures of association are a little abstract and stretch the concept a little too far and some seem 'wrong' (katakana 'I' shows an Eagle! I and E?), but the point is you DO remember the shape and the sound of the character. Its pocket-sized so you can carry it around and revise while commuting or sitting in the park. This has accelerated my learning greatly and now I can read the hiragana/katakana with confidence and quite quickly. Brush-stroke order arrows would've been a nice addition. For this price, I'd recommend it unreservedly.

Hey people, I am dyslexic and I have trouble getting information into my long term memory, perhaps I am a more visual learner, but I have to say this book works! first you associate the idea with the image,then you can remember and distinguish which character is which. I have been testing my memory every day with this and writhing down each nemonic and now I am beginning to write the Gana out. So I would recommend this book to anyone. It works but you have to put in the effort.

Despite having read the reviews of this book that said it was no good for British English speakers, I bought it anyway. Guess what! They were right. For the "a" sound symbols, the book suggests sounds that I would pronounce "oh" e.g. for "ta" the picture is tomahawk. Fine if you speak English with an American accent. Never mind. Still interesting though if you can get it at a good price like I did.

I browsed through half of this book, I will be using this as a reference as it is good for that and translating hirigana into romanji if you struggle with reading...but the sound examples used through the book are AWFUL has this person ever been to japan? they would not understand him if he used half of his examples in the book. for example how does HO sound like HA ?... and catch mo' fish...lol? either way good reference NOT a good teaching tool