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Kana Flashcards | 
| Authors: Max Hodges, Tomoko Okazaki
Creator: Michael Rowley
Publisher: White Rabbit Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy New: $11.21
You Save: $10.79 (49%)
New (11) Used (2) from $11.21
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 24861
Media: Cards
Pages: 100
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0974869430
Dewey Decimal Number: 495
EAN: 9780974869438
ASIN: 0974869430
Publication Date: July 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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Book Description
Each of our Kana Flashcards includes a memorable verbal and visual mnemonic, provided by award-winning illustrator Michael Rowley. Along with stroke-order diagrams and hundreds of vocabulary building example words, Kana Flashcards is sure to become the most desirable product on the market for kana learners. Each stroke-order-diagram includes arrows to indicate stroke direction. Each example word is written in kana on the card front with the English reading and definition on the flipside. Along with the Audio Companion, these cards include all the information you need to recognize and remember, to read and write, and to pronounce hiragana and katakana in no time at all. • Master hiragana and katakana with visual and verbal mnemonics.
• Learn 450 basic Japanese words.
• Includes stroke-by-stroke diagrams. Varnished cards with rounded corners. Boxed with plastic tray and shrink-wrapped.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
Excellent start to learning the Japanese language July 28, 2008
These cards have been invaluable in getting me started on the right path to learning the Japanese language. I am a beginner student...very beginner. I've picked up the Pimsleur program and Rosetta Stone, and am trudging through the first few lessons. However, these flash cards provided the solid foundation which I am now building upon with these other programs.
Learning the Hiragana and Katakana characters takes perhaps an hour (each) with these cards. Once you have them figured out, it's only a matter of repetition to ensure you learn them in long-term memory. My method for using these cards was simple: pick up the first 5 cards, and flash them until you have those cards memorized. Then add 5 more cards and flash all 10. Keep adding cards in sets of 5 until you have the whole deck of either Hiragana or Katakana memorized. While doing this, I think it's important that you speak each character out loud, rather than in your head. Ultimately, if you are learning Japanese you are probably learning to speak it, and speaking each character now will make learning and speaking full words much easier. Kana are the building blocks of Japanese vocabulary, and I have found it much easier to pick up new words once I had these characters mastered.
You may need to find a source online to find the proper sounds for each character. While the examples provided on the cards work in most cases, I find them a little sketchy sometimes. I think this may be because of differences in how some words may be read in different English dialects. I suggest finding a secondary (audio) source online to provide the correct pronunciation of each character. Taking the effort now to get these sounds correct will prevent any possible problems later, such as incorrectly learning a sound and having to relearn it (along with every word which uses it!).
If you are self-teaching the Japanese language, these cards are a necessary first step.
Fantastic June 16, 2008
No joke, taught myself to read hiragana and katakana in a week - and that on a ten minute subway ride to and from work! If you are visual learner, this set will teach you to read the kana quickly. Simple as that. Very impressed by White Rabbit Press.
Very effective tool in memorizing the Japanese kana. March 30, 2008
Covering all hiragana and katakana, these flash cards are an inexpensive and highly effective learning device for memorization of the Japanese kana.
With entertaining mnemonics provided by Michael Rowley, it only took me about one week of going through the cards for 20-30min a day to memorize all the kana... permanently. Each card includes four alternate style writings of the kana (very helpful for beginners), five sample words using that kana (translated on back), and stroke order. The cards themselves are high quality, easy to shuffle, and come in a robust two compartment box.
I do not normally write product reviews, but well-executed products like this deserve special treatment. If you have a desire to learn Japanese, do not yet have the kana memorized, and learn well by mnemonics, then these are the flash cards for you.
Awesome Cards! January 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am a beginner in the Japanese Language and it didn't take me long to memorize all of the cards. Hiragana and Katakana together took me about 4 days memorizing 5 cards at a time.
Some reviews have said that the front of the card doesn't have the English meaning. Well that's just ridiculous because then you'll have to cover the English definition on the front and that will defeat the purpose of a flash card. Definitions always go on the back.
The audio in the beginning was a bit challenging because it's all in Japanese. With a little common sense you can understand it. The lady speaking says the card number, how to pronounce the character, then the line number, then the word. Simple no? Really, some people just want something to complain about. You have to learn to say the numbers in Japanese either way. Consider it a bonus.
There is no easy, fast way to learn another language. It takes time, patience, effort, and several resources. Using these cards is an efficient way to quickly learn Hiragana and Katakana as well as some vocabulary words.
Kanji is a bit more difficult for me. So this time I'm going to combine the audio, the card, and writing it to help me memorize them.
I would highly recommend buying a buddha board at [...]
I love this thing. Simply put, it's like a chalk board but you write on it with water and a brush. So, you save on ink and paper, doing your part for the environment. =)
Thanks!
 ok January 16, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I was disappointed in both the cards and the audio.
I would recommend instead - or at least first - the Kana Cards by Tuttle Co for flashcards for beginners.
Kana Cards (Tuttle Flash Cards)
I recommend instead, for audio items:
Learn in Your Car Japanese
and
VocabuLearn
Vocabulearn Japanese Complete (VocabuLearn)
Learn in Your Car Japanese: The Complete Language Course (Learn in Your Car)
The Tuttle cards have the Japanese in the front - with both the Japanese spelling and the English in the back.
This set has Only Japanese in the front and Only English in the back.
I am a complete beginner trying to learn on my own, and I can use all the visual help and review possible; having to flip back and forth without ever seeing both together does not help it stick as quickly as the Tuttle cards do.
Easy Hiragana: First Steps to Basic Japanese Writing (Passport Books)
This book was the best for both making learning less boring and easier to learn. (there is also a book by the same author for Katakana.
It gives 8 Hiragana (2 pages) to learn to write (with space for writing) and then gives 2 pages of words to practice using those 8 for reading and writing practice.
I was also disappointed in the Audio for these Kana cards since it is ONLY Japanese, WITHOUT ANY explanation whatsoever anywhere as to the pattern of the audio.
For example: Card 1 is A with a a sentene below it and then 5 numbered words below.
I don't know any Japanese yet, I bought these as a starting place -
but it seems like the sentence is read first or it says card one? who knows?
then the A, said once,
and then instead of the words, it seems to say the number of each word - Only in Japanese, if that is what it is saying - maybe? -
and then the word twice, if you can manage to keep up (not horribly fast, but definitely Not slow either) esp when you have to try to sort between the actual vocabulary words and the other stuff in-between.
For just review/brushup or someone taking a class, this probably isn't a problem, but for self study and a being a complete beginner - which is what I thought these cards were for since it is just the Kana basics - it is extremely frustrating and disappointing.
The Intro is Only just a warning not to make or give copies of the cd.
The Intro explains nothing about the audio.
If you want to hear the Kana sounds by themselves -
I would recommend Everthing Conversational Japanese.
Though I do not highly recommend it. The first track is the Kana sounds said only in Japanese, said very quickly as if the person were in a rush to be somewhere else - there is absolutely no way to repeat the sounds while listening since the person says them so fast; but they are clear and easy to hear.
The rest of the audio is conversation, also said very quickly. More like for practice in understanding real life conversations - also all in Japanese only (with the book being in English.
The book is all in Roman letter - none in Kana/Kanji.
I liked hearing the Kana sounds separte from their being used in words since I am brand new to Japanese.
The Everything Conversational Japanese Book: Basic Instruction For Speaking This Fascinating Language In Any Setting (Everything: Language and Literature)
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