First off, a new book I bought, it's called Read and Write Japanese Scripts and its a part of the Teach Yourself series. Now, I haven't had very long to look over it, but what I have read is pretty good. Basically it teaches you hiragana, katakana, 170 single kanji and 230 compound kanji words. It's a good start, it shows you the origins of the kanji, the stroke order, stuff about radicals and gives you real world scripts and extracts for you to read! It also briefly explains the history of each script and the rules behind them. It's a pretty good read and will get you started off with kanji, great!

Next up is my goals over the next two weeks, but first a bit of background explanation is required. I will be going on holiday to France, so this will probably be my last blog post for two weeks, but don't worry! I promise when I get back I will have lot's in store for you! Tip's and tricks for learning katakana and maybe even kanji for example. You see, as you read above I have a new book, using this book over the next few days I will learn katakana, it shouldn't take me more than 5 more days. After that I will start kanji, am I dreading it? HELL NO! I'm actually quite excited about it, this is where I jump up to the next level of Japanese reading, sure I can read hiragana, that's great and by then I will also know katakana, but when I start learning kanji that's when I really start advancing! And no, not just in my written skills, but my over all Japanese, with the learning of kanji comes the learning of a lot of vocabulary and a deeper understanding of the language! That is why I'm excited. I figured out dreading kanji won't do me any good, I won't enjoy it and will probably make slow progress, so I looked at the good points and realised that I'm actually going to really enjoy this!

That is all, see you in two weeks!