Kanji (or more generally called Chinese characters) are for the native Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese individual, part of everyday life. But for the westerner, they symbolize a mixture of fascination, consternation and ignorance.

Fascination because of their number (about 100,000 of them have been recorded throughout history), because of their longevity (going back nearly 4000 years ago), because of their picturesque origin, and because they define not only a writing system used today by a third of the planet, but also a major art form and a proven method of relaxation and self-control.

Consternation, because we can wonder about the future of a technology-driven world when the most promising third of that world is using thousands of years old little pictures in everything that is written, defining electricity as the tail of the dragon when it rains (i.e. lightning), and a computer as an electric brain.

Ignorance because Chinese characters and the writing system they define have been largely mystified and thus misunderstood. It is not the oldest writing system. It is not an ideographic one either. It is not free of phonetic dependencies (on the contrary). It does not limit the ability to adapt in a fast changing, technology-driven world. And it does not require a lifetime to learn and master.

I myself am just amazed with these thousand years old little pictures. I came to Japan to learn them and so far got over the first 1000. It took about 2 years, during which I researched on my spare time (if there is such a thing as spare time) about their (Chinese) origin, evolution over time and space, the best ways to learn them, their impact on societies using them...

These pages are about sharing my experience, what I have found and learned about these characters, including history, classification, study, pros and cons, and my original Web-based Japanese kanji flashcard program.

So here we go with the following sections.