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The Japanese begin to learn kanji at school. For each kanji, they must memorize how it's written, ans a few words written with it.
This makes sense for somebody who speaks Japanese. For you, the best way to learn kanji is buying an electronic dictionary and getting somebody to teach you to use it. Basically you write a word in kanji in the screen of the gadget and you get the English translation of that word.
Do that before you memorize anything. Japanese teachers frown on this machinery as much as math teachers on calculators, but fortunately you don't have to pass an exam. You just need to know how to look up the kanji you don't know.
This said, all the trick to learning kanji is learning the ones used in common words first. The most common words are those that you see often in manga written in kanji. As for instance, álu ある is a very common word, and if you look it up in the dictionary you'll find a kanji supposedly used to write it, but the Japanese usually write it in kana, and manga always have it in kana. So, learning to write that word with kanji would be a waste of time.
when should kanji be used?How to Read Japanese MangaHandwritten Kanji and Typeset Kanji
Copyright (c) 2003-2008
Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/kanji3.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-08