#marinoxxycontin

i used to take chinese (didn’t retain much though lol), and while it’s obviously not necessary, it can definitely help with some basic kanji skills (stroke order, radicals, meanings). sometimes if you know the chinese you can predict the japanese pronunciation of the kanji - i’ve been lucky a couple of times.

before taking japanese in college, i taught myself the basics (hiragana, katakana, simple kanji) when i was younger (around 14 years old). while it wasn’t much it gave me a pretty good foundation. i would print out song lyrics and then write the pronunciation above each line.

then i took japanese in college and studied abroad in tokyo for a semester which is why i’m able to do what i do today. i’m assuming you know the basics (basic grammar, hiragana, katakana) since you’re just asking about kanji. it’s mostly drilling, especially in the beginning - writing the characters over and over and over on a grid sheet. as for how to read them, a lot of it is memorization and for that i like using flashcards. memrise is a great site for flash memorization; i liked using the mobile app quizlet to create my own flash cards on my phone. (saves paper!)

i think the most important thing is to never skip over a kanji you don’t know. always go through the effort of looking it up if you don’t know what it means - it’ll help you remember it better. i use a japanese dictionary app called imiwa and the chinese handwriting keyboard so that i can write kanji that i don’t know how to pronounce. when i was in japan i was constantly looking up kanji when i was out and about - on signs, products, advertisements, etc.

i also recommend rikaikun (or rikaichan if you’re on a mac) which is a little handy pop up dictionary add-on for web browsers. you can turn it on when you’re on a website with japanese text, you can simply hover over it and it’ll define it for you.