Let's Begin!

It's the first day!! We get to start reading the manga. There's only one problem. My manga hasn't arrived yet... But it's OK. I'm going to pull the old university professor trick of assigning reading on the first day rather than give a lesson! Aren't you lucky.

In actual fact, we can start today because we can work on the cover of the book. For those of us who haven't got the book yet (have I mentioned my displeasure with the postal system yet?), the publisher has graciously given us a (small) picture of the cover.

For those of you without bionic vision, the text on the page is:

まほらば
MAHORABA
1
小島あきら

The first line is the name of the book. It is written using the hiragana writing system. Hiragana is a phonetic system which is used in certain circumstances (please see the additional reading section at the bottom). The second line is the name of the book in the romaji writing system. Yes, our writing system is used by the Japanese and they have their own name for it. Romaji means "roman characters". Note that there is no "n" in "romaji".

The next line is the number of the volume (in this case 1, since it's the first volume). In general, Japanese people use arabic numbers just like we do. However sometimes they will use kanji (or Chinese characters).

The last line is the author's name. The first two characters are kanji. They are chinese characters and almost all Japanese people use kanji for their last names. In this case the characters are read "Kojima". Interestingly, you can tell what the name means by looking at the characters. In this case it means "small island". We will not be learning many kanji in this guide. But it is a fascinating and worthwhile endeavour (possibly the subject of another guide).

The following 3 characters are the author's first name written in hiragana. In Japan, people generally address each other with their last name. Because of this, people list (and say) their last name before their first name. The author's first name is read "Akira". Because his family decided to write his name in hiragana, it is more difficult to determine the meaning. But it likely means "bright light", and could be written with the kanji character 明. For reasons I don't understand, people sometimes use hiragana for their first name (but not always).

You will probably notice that the characters I've transcribed in the guide for the author's name look different than the characters on the book. That's because the book is using a "Gothic" typeface and you are probably using a "Mincho" typeface. This corresponds roughly with "sans-serif" and "serif" fonts respectively. However Japanese has several accepted typefaces, some of whom look extremely different than the standard "Mincho" typeface.

The result of this is that you have to learn how to draw the characters using the proper stroke order in order to be able to decipher Japanese writing in every case. You see, unlike in the west, every Japanese person learns how to draw each character using the exact same stroke order. How the character looks at the end is less important than how the strokes join together. The handwritten characters written by mangaka (manga authors) is usually especially indecipherable if you don't know the stroke order. We will be learning the stroke order for the characters we learn in this guide. all the hiragana characters

Today we have 6 characters to learn. They are all using the hiragana writing system. They are listed in Japanese alphabetical order.

If you click on the hiragana character you will be shown an animation of how to draw the character. If you click on the romaji character, a sound file will be played showing you the pronunciation of that character.

A couple of things to note: The animation of ば(ba) actually shows you the animation for は(ha). That's because they are drawn exactly the same except for the diacritical mark in the upper left. For more info, see the additional reading section.

Please note that I am deep linking into other sites to get what I want. I'm a little bit leery of doing it because I know that some people don't like that. However, I will always do my best to provide attribution to anything I link to so that you can go see the other site. Here we are linking to The Japanese Writing Tutor and a site from Jouji Miwa.

Note: The audio is a little bit difficult to hear, so if anyone finds a better site, please contact me.

Every lesson, I will be providing a mnemosyne file that contains the information that you have to memorize. Today I'll also provide instructions on how to use mnemosyne.

First of all you will want to get Today's Mnemosyne file. Then start up Mnemosyne. From the "File" menu, select "Import". This will bring up a dialog box. Browse to where you saved the "manga-Day1.xml" file and select it. Click on "OK". If everything went well, you should be back at the main window, with a question in the question pane. At the bottom you will see "Scheduled: 0 Not Memorized: 6 All: 6".

Note: Since the Mnemosyne file is an XML file, some browsers will elect to display the file rather than download it. You can just use your right mouse button and select "Save Link As..." in the context menu to save the file.

Also Note: You can use Mnemosyne to memorize stuff other than Japanese. There are some tricks that you can do to keep everything separate, but for brevity's sake I won't describe them here. If you want more information, please contact me.

Using Mnemosyne is relatively simple. It selects a question for you to answer, and you answer it in your head. In the case of hiragana characters, you should draw the character on your desk with your finger (Really!!! Don't skip the drawing step!!!). When you are done (or are convinced that you can't remember it), click on the button marked "Show Answer". This will show the answer in the answer frame.

Note: Unfortunately I was unable to get Mnemosyne to display animated gifs. If I can get this functionality working, then you will eventually see stroke order drawing of the character. But for now, it's just a static image.

Now you should decide how well you knew the answer to the question. 0 means that you forgot it entirely. 1 means that it's in your short term memory, but you'd like to continue reviewing it in this session. 2 means that you really know this one and are pretty sure you will remember it tomorrow as well.

For today, those are the only three choices you should pick. Later, when you are reviewing characters you already know, you will choose 3-5 depending on how well you remembered the character. 3 means that you remembered it with considerable difficulty. 4 means that you remembered it reasonably well. 5 means that you remembered it instantly.

These numbers are used by the scheduling algorithm to determine when to schedule the item for review. Choosing either 0 or 1 means that the item won't be marked as "memorized" and you will get the item again this session. The other choices will mean that you won't see the item again for at least a day.

As you use Mnemosyne to memorize hiragana characters you will notice that you are only practicing from romaji to hiragana. This might seem odd since we only want to read hiragana, not write it. As I mentioned before, if you can't write the character with the correct stroke order, you won't be able to recognize it properly. And since we want to save time, we will only learn the character in one direction. The other direction will sort itself out (trust me!)

Now your task is to memorize those 6 characters. Normally we'll try to have 10-15 items to learn each day. But because there is a lot of reading to be done today, we'll leave it with 6. In fact, there is so much reading to be done that the next lesson probably won't show up for a few days (depending on when my book gets delivered!!!) Try to find a time to run Mnemosyne each day. I usually do it in the morning right after I get up. It won't take much time out of your day (especially at the beginning -- probably only 5 or 10 minutes). So try to find a time that you can use every day without fail.

Do you remember way at the beginning when I said I'd assign reading? Well I wasn't joking. Your reading assignment is to read the introduction, writing system, and hiragana pages in Tae Kim's Guide To Japanese Grammar

I realize this is a lot of reading, especially since I promised only 30 minutes a day of effort. So it's OK to read one page a day for the next 3 days. That along with your memorization of the 6 hiragana characters should fit into that time schedule. Don't skip your reading, though. There is lots of good material there that I didn't want to waste my time repeating.

That's it for today. I will see you again in about 3 days.