What is the Kiku Method?
The Kiku Method is a revolutionary method that takes the traditional approach to learning Japanese characters and creates a fun engaging unforgettable experience.
Japanese is a rich language with many complex elements to it, but if learnt correctly those complex elements are simple to learn and are easy to understand, making the character learning process quick, easy and fun!
This is the power of the Kiku Method. The Kiku Method makes Japanese characters simple, fun and unforgettable!
All around the world there are many educational methods for learning. Some better than others, some with longer histories, some with thousands of followers and some that are just beginning to get started.
Each learning method started somewhere, it started for a purpose and a reason. Often that reason was to try and solve a problem. The founder of that method saw a problem with how things were being done and wanted to fix, change or completely revolutionise that way it was being done.
The founder of the Kiku Method, Aaron Nagasaka or... myself, are just like all the other founders. Many years ago I noticed a problem with the way Japanese characters were taught and decided to make it my mission in life to make Japanese character learning simple, fun and unforgettable!
I am a life-long learner of Japanese with over 23 plus years of dedicated study. I say dedicated study only because I did not grow up un Japan. The first 12 years of my life I hardly knew anything about Japan let alone Japanese.
That all changed when I turned 12. I entered junior high school and for the first time the idea of language learning took on a whole new meaning. I was given the option of learning Japanese, German or Indonesian. I looked at German and Indonesian and compared them to the cool writing system of Japanese. Japanese looked so much cooler. I jumped at the opportunity to learn Japanese and spent the next six months totally in love with the language. Just after a short six months that all came to a stop. I then had to learn another language. I chose German and to be honest apart from counting to 10 I cannot remember a thing. During my German class I continued to study Japanese. I used to practice writing the Hiragana and the limited number of kanji I had learnt. I would also look up random Japanese words and practice writing them.
From those simple days to now, I have never given up on the Japanese language. I have continued to push on, little by little and bit by bit. Even when all odds seamed to be against me. If you asked me what I spent most of my high school hours on, it was Japanese. There was and still is something about the language what I can not let go of.
You may be wondering, so you are not Japanese? That is correct! I am not. Though my name is Japanese I am not Japanese. My name is only Japanese my marriage. When I got married I took on my wife’s surname. In the western world this is a little strange but in Japan this is quiet common.
How did the Kiku Method start?
Let’s go back a few years, I was living in Australia, and my young children were attending a Japanese Saturday school. At the school they were teaching them the Japanese Kanji. But unfortunately my children were not learning the characters very well... Why? Well, the method of input was not very effective. Their method of teaching was something I have disagreed with for many years!
Everyday they were writing the same set of characters 10 times or more, their marks on their test were not bad, but when asked what the character meant or when used out of the order they had learnt them, they could not remember the characters very well. This got me thinking. 'There must be a better way to learning than what they are doing!' I have always believed that you should only need to write a character only a couple of times to remember it! Actually, writing a character once should be enough to remember it! But only if it has been taught correctly in the first place!
In other words, you should only ever have to write a character only a couple of times to actually learn it! Not every day for a week, 10 times a day! The important thing about this is that the character is taught correctly in the first place.
And this is why my children were struggling. Yes, they were getting ok scores on their tests, but they were not remembering what they had learnt. This continued on for about a year. During this year I began experimenting with different ideas. Then to top it off about a year later, I returned home from work on Saturday and my son was siting there looking at the computer, his teacher was teaching the new characters for the week. He looked so bored! I sat down and watched... I could quickly see why he looked so bored!
The way she was teaching, it would have to be one of the most boring ways I've ever seen. She showed the character, talked about it for a few minutes and then moved on to the next character. There were no images, there was no excitement, there was nothing that engaged the student. It was the most boring experience I've ever seen. And this got me really thinking. ‘Is there something wrong with the way we're teaching Japanese characters. Is there something wrong, or maybe not necessarily wrong but is there a better way to learn characters than the way we currently are?’
This is how the Kiku Method started!
And that is where the power of the Kiku Method comes into it. It is not just a method for you to repeat the same character, 10 times a day and hopefully remember the character. You can write a character 10 times every day and if may help but at the same time you can also write a character 10 or 20 time and not remember what you wrote because you're actually thinking about other things, you might be thinking about the movie you watched last night. That you're hungry and what you are going to eat.
When learning a new character or anything for that matter if you really want to remember it, is it important to make the learning process a whole body experience. What do I mean by a whole body experience? Keep reading below!
This is what the Kiku Method is all about. It is a whole body learning experience. The Kiku Method is derived from the Japanese character 聴く(Kiku) or in English to listen.
If you search for the word 'Kiku' in a Japanese dictionary you will get three characters: 聞く、聴く、訊く. Each of these characters have a slightly different meaning. 聞くmeans to listen. This is perhaps the most popular of the three. There are two elements to the character, 門 Gate and 耳 ear. By either opening or shutting the gates you can choose to listen or not to listen. The next character, my favourite is 聴く: In order to listen using this character you need to use you 耳 ears, 十 number 10, 目 your eyes, and 心 and your heart. If you truly want to listen to someone, this is the character to use! The last character is 訊く. This character uses the character 言 to speak or to say and the character 几 is table, or place to put things.
This character 聴く is one of my favourite characters because of the meaning of the seperate characters that make up the character. When learning something new, this character shows you how to learn!
Let me explain the parts of the character and how they relate to learning.
Learning a character or anything by itself is in some ways almost useless, you want to learn it in context for your language study. As you learn something in context it it makes learning not only easier but also more rememberable.
First you want to use your ears, hear the character, listen to it being used. Listen to the sounds of the character. Mimic and practice repeating the sound.
Next you want to use your eyes. You want to practice reading it, you want to use it in sentences. You want to see it in context, but you also want to see it visually. You want to turn that character into a visual object. And this is super important in the beginning, because you don't have the necessary connections in your brain that allow you to remember the new bit of information. As you turn the new bit of information into an image, link it to something you also ready know, your brain begins to create new links, new connections and you will not only remember things quicker but also longer. Over time the image will fade, but you will still remember the piece of information.
Next, you need to engage the heart. This is perhaps the most important part. You need to engage the heart, if you don't engage the heart in your learning, the learning process will be much slower and harder. If you can engage the heart, while you're learning, then you will learn, you will not only learn but you will remember what you learn.
And the last part of the Japanese character is 10. I believe you need to do this in 10 different ways.
Now I'm not saying you need to write the character 10 times, but the Kiku method has 10 steps. And these 10 steps will engage your heart, and will truly help you to learn the character correctly. Hopefully at the end of all of that you will not forget it.
Now, that does not mean you may have times where you're like ‘oh what's that character?’. And that's where you want to review it. But that's the power of the Kiki method. The power is that you are using the character, you're engaging all the senses of the body. In doing so, you're making it fun and engaging. And when you do that, it will become an unforgettable experience.
That is the Kiku method. Turning Japanese characters into a fun unforgettable experience.
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