Kamishibai (紙芝居) is a form of Japanese street entertainment and theatrical performance. The name Kamishibai literally means “paper drama” (紙 kami, meaning “paper”, and 芝居 shibai meaning “play” or “drama”). The performers tell a dramatic story while showing drawings or paintings at the crowd. This type of show now is mostly oriented towards children. It was very popular during the early 20th century and until the 1950s.
So today I’m going to be talking about how to learn Kanji, which even in Japan takes a long time and is a pain to learn. This way is very effective on the long term, and is not very intense nor complicated. It’s easy to keep up with and allows you to continue to learn Kanji without stopping. I started learning Kanji around 8 months ago for real with this technique, and to this day I know 1330 of them. I should know the recommended amount within 6 months. So with this technique you can learn the necessary Kanji amount in just a little over a year with less than 10 minutes of work a day ; compared to 10 years of school learning in Japan. The only downside to this strategy is that it does not emphasize the writing very much, but then after all, you should be the one to decide if you need handwriting.
So the method in itself is very simple:
5 steps is all it takes.
「鬼は外！福は内！」”Demons outside! Fortune inside!”
Throws beans at a monster, achieving weirdly satisfying results.
And thus spring begins!
Kōan is a short story, enigma or dialogue that a teacher uses to teach his student lessons in Zen Buddhism. These stories are often enigmatic, sometimes absurd and paradoxical, not soliciting conventional logic. They lead to great doubt, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste to the receiver.
That’s a pretty simple advice (as usual with this series) but it’s true that singing along songs in the language that you want to learn is hugely beneficial. It helps a lot with pronunciation and getting a good grasp of the rhythms of the language; it’s also really good to practice reading a bit faster since you got to keep up with the song.
