Japanese Kanji & Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System Paperback – April 10, 2012

I really love the updated version of Hadamitzky's "Kanji & Kana." It is in a slimmer, more compact volume that does away with the spaces for practicing (for the most part) but keeps all the essential information, like stroke count and order, furigana, readings, and examples of the kanji. Along with Halpern's "Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictinary," this book serves as my complete kanji study material. It is not dressed up with bells and whistles, but is organized very logically and efficiently to serve the look-up learner, though you could also go through it numerically.I personally like learning kanji. To me, it's more artistic than boring recitation or repetition. Still, even I have trouble just trudging through the book, swallowing up one kanji after another. I find it best to look up and learn kanji as you encounter them. That way you get the proper context and have a better memory association. I personally use song lyrics and focus on one song at a time, then practice writing and reading the lyrics while listening to the song. Since I like singing, this works out well for me in that I am learning the song and the kanji at the same time.Whatever method you use, be sure to do something that personally appeals to you in order to keep yourself motivated, and to have FUN while LEARNING. (It is feasible, and not just for the uber nerdy!)

This book is great for anyone trying to study Kanji! I honestly think it's the best Kanji book I've ever worked with! Most other Kanji books I've read either throw every single Kanji compound at you per Kanji, or throw only four or five at you that all have other Kanjis in them that you haven't studied. I've always felt overwhelmed by the first strategy and frustrated by the second. Although the first strategy is probably more common in a Kanji reference book than a Kanji learner's tool, this book completely remedies the second problem! The example Kanji only have Kanji in them that you've studied previously in the book, so if you study the Kanji in order from beginning to end, the Kanji examples will always have Kanjis in them that you know! I've always wanted a Kanji book that did that, and I'm glad something like that actually exists. This book deserves a five star rating for the great learning curve!

Anyone who has ever tried to use a kanji dictionary knows how hard it can be to get the hang of it; this book takes the guess work out of it.I'm a high school Japanese teacher, and though I teach my students how to use a kanji dictionary properly during their third year, I find this book to be very user friendly and easy for a non-native speaker to navigate. I used the older edition when I was learning Japanese way back when and have it lovingly marked up with notes and highlighter markings; I even still use it in my classes to this day!Is it a definitive guide or full of all the possible combinations? No. But it is a great starting point and has proper stroke order and useful combinations for each kanji. I highly recommend it.

I wanted to read this on my Nexus 7, which is my main reading device. However, this book suffers the same problems that many Japanese language books have on android. Namely, that the Japanese fonts do not scale. So if you are an older reader like me it can be impossible to see the actual Japanese writing. It's even worse if you scale up the English as the Japanese stays tiny next to larger English script.As per the comment below, setting the font to Georgia does help. I have revised my review accordingly.

This Japanese Kanji and Kana book has pretty much everything you need to learn when it comes to writing Japanese. It has over 2,000 Kanji characters and also goes over Katakana and Hiragana. It also explains how you'd see Japanese writing in several types of media such as televisions and books. I originally bought this so that I would be able to understand Japanese grammar, and it's certainly become a valuable tool; however, since this book has over 2,000 Kanji characters, over 3/4 of the book is full of them. This means that you'll have to memorize A LOT of these characters if you want to effectively understand Japanese characters. This does not by any means make it a bad product; but if you truly want to learn Japanese, you're going to have to truly stick with it.

The Japanese language is quite complicated, but learning the basic characters (kanji) in this book is a helpful resource. No matter whether you're just beginning to learn this language, or have wanted to know about for a long while, this book is highly recommended.

Very detailed breakdown of the Japanese writing system, gives a little history, explains the hira, and kata, then moves promply to the real meat, the Kanji. It's has stroke order and all tge readings you could want. (On-yomi, Kun-yomi)

Before I bought this book, I had been browsing the shelves at several book stores and decided this book had the material I needed to learn Japanese in a welcoming format. The book itself is very helpful, and I've already learned from it, but I received a book that had a damaged spine, and because of the spine it does not lay flat. It's probably not a huge deal to most people, but I paid for a new, undamaged book. I have to say I'm disappointed with the condition I received it in.