Upon returning from my trip in Japan in April, I created a very agressive plan to learn the Hiragana, Katakana, 400+ Kanji characters, and 2000 words.  In order to do this, I planned to do 7 pages a day in the Kana-a-day pad.  Seven pages a day is not that much, but if you fall behind for a few days, it can quickly build up. 

In addition to this I set goals for reading and working through Remembering the Kana, Easy Hiragana, Kanji Pict-o-graphix, Point and Speak Japanese (gift from a co-worker in Japan), Japanese Verbs at a glance, and Kanji Flashcards.  I have fallen hopelessly behind in each one of the goals that I have set.  But today is Saturday, a day to catch up.

Next thing to catch up on will be the Easy Hiragana book.

Oh, you might be wondering what type of progress I have made.  I know all the Hiragana characters, I have flash cards for about 500 words of which I probably can recognize 50 and know 10 by heart, I know about 5 Kanji characters, and I know about a third of the Katakana.

I have been working on putting some of the things I have learned here on this blog.  You will notice several posts regarding Katakana characters.   I plan to have an entry for every Katakana and Hiragana character with significant notes about where they came from, different samples of them printed and spoken, ways to remember them, words that use them, and other Kana characters that you could easily confuse them with.  It is going to take some time to complete that.  Now on to the Easy Hiragana.