桼: a lacquered knee

桼も表外漢字です。英語で、「varnish」です。
漆, lacquer.  It's liquid 氵, applies to/comes from wood 木, and can make a big nasty splash under your roof if you're careless.
膝, knee:  It's flesh so we get 肉 on the left.  Beyond that, I think of a wooden knee and water on the knee as things that can go wrong with it.

漆膝

舛: Dancing with the greats

舛 is 表外漢字.  It relates to dancing.  I'll remember it as a dancer 㐄 with arms out and the forearms we see on our left up (sort of like half of walking like an Egyptian), dancing at night 夕.
舞, dance:           Before a lineup of spectators (the top row), the dancer does her stuff.
瞬, wink:            With the eye, using her eyebrow + eyelash 爫 and eyelid 冖, the dancer winks.
傑, greatness:     The person who sees the dancer walking those floorboards thinks:  she's a great artist, and this work is a masterpiece!
隣, neighboring: But glamorous or not, beyond the hills, the dancer eats rice like everyone else and is just a neighbor to those she knows.

舞瞬傑隣

旡: all choked up

旡は表外漢字です。TheKanjiMap.com thinks it's choke/sob; using Henshall, I get that it's a figure stopping its throat or something; I'll picture it as having a hand up in front of its fact saying, "No more food."
既, already/previously/    I looked back on what I'd eaten, and said, "No more
   established:                    food -- I already ate."
慨, deep feeling/lament:  A deep feeling of sadness for days gone by
概, generally:                  Trees are generally already established where they are
                                          (try moving one and you'll agree).

既慨概

私は それを * 疑う（うたがう）*

疑, question/doubt.  This is a monster.  Guy sitting 匕 on an arrow 矢 questions/doubts
                                  whether ma マ was right 正 to shoot him in the butt.
凝, stiffen/congeal.  Doubt can cause you to "freeze up," which really means get stiff.
擬, imitation/mock.  Create a handicraft that mimics something and people will
                                  question whether it's real.

疑凝擬

今日。。。

メリークリスマス、皆！

隶and his daring escape

隶は表外漢字です。It means slave.  I picture it as a hand working a butter churn that's sort of splashy.  I'm going to use the meaning "criminal" (next symbol) here, because I couldn't find a happy ending for my mnemonic story otherwise -- there was no symbol in this group for "escape" or "abolish slavery."
隷, slave/criminal:    The samurai from last time was seized at the altar as a
                                   slave/criminal.  Oops.
逮, chase/arrest:     Once in motion, the criminal is chased and arrested.
康, peace/ease:       When the criminal's in the Big House, everything is peaceful
                                  again.  Until the next exciting episode.

隷逮康

示: showing up at the temple

示is an altar, and looks like it; per Henshall, the lines coming down left and right are drops of blood or sacrificial wine.  It doesn't mean altar as a standalone, but means show, meaning that what comes from the sacrifice will show the will of the gods.

Different religions

宗, sect:                  Each sect has an altar, but under a different roof.
奈, Nara:                The city of Nara is famous for its temples -- they're a big 大きい deal.
斎, worship/study: The holy text 文on the altar, bounded by walls, make the temple
                                 a place for worship and study.
崇, worship/lofty:  The Samaritans used to put altars for worship in lofty places in the mountains.

The forbidden-forest temple

禁, forbidden:        This altar is in the forbidding/forbidden forest.
襟, collar/neck:      It's forbidden to wear a collar on your neck in the forbidden temple
                                  -- wear a robe.

The festival in the hills

祭, festival:            Offer meat 肉 on the altar for the festival.
際, occasion:         The festival in the hills is quite an occasion.
察, guess:              When we offer meat to the gods, it's done under a roof of secrecy
                                 -- you can only guess how the gods will respond.
擦, scratch/score:  Use your hand to scratch the altar so we can guess what it's made of.

How not to behave in church

票, ballot/ticket:     Put your hat on the altar -- it's your ticket out of here (because you'll
                                  get kicked out).  OK, I vote we don't do that.
標, signpost/stamp:Put up that ticket or ballot on a tree as a signpost for others:
                                 don't try the "hat on the altar" thing.
漂, float/drift:         Throw your ballot on the water and it will drift away.  Maybe
                                 people will forget what you did.
款, friendship:       The samurai, feeling a lack of friendship in life, offers himself
                               on the altar:  take me!  So now he is friend to the gods.  Better than the
                               thing with the hat.

There is also the kanji 隷, but since we haven't done 隶, I will defer that until tomorrow.

宗奈斎崇禁襟祭際察擦票標漂款

Strange 奇妙な (きみょうな) travels 旅行 (りょこう)

奇, strange.          A big 大 mystery:  what 何 can 可 that strange thing be?
騎, equestrian.    It's strange how dedicated equestrians are to their horses.
埼, promontory.  What a strange earth formation!  It's a promontory
崎, promontory.  What a strange mountain!  It's a promontory too.
寄, approach.      Even a stranger, when you let him approach under your roof, can become a friend.
椅, chair (いす). What a strange tree that is!  No, that's a chair.

奇騎埼崎寄椅

鬲: the evil laboratory

鬲is 表外漢字.  Unfortunately, per Henshall, it's a cookpot.  The last thing I want to remember is yet another cookpot (良、豆、曾).  So I say instead it is... an evil laboratory setup.  Papers sitting on a display 口 above a work table, underneath which is a stool.  The two marks above the stool are either supports for the table or clutter on the stool -- you know how messy evil scientists are.

隔, isolate:  The lab is isolated behind those rolling hills.  What secrets lurk within?
融, melt:     He's made a weapon capable of melting living beings!  He's experimenting
                       with bugs for now.  But who's next?

隔融

丂, a twisty water weed

丂 is 表外漢字 which, per Henshall, is a twisty water weed under the surface (the top line).

朽, decay:        A plant under the water with the twisty weed will soon decay.
巧, ingenuity:  My mind, turned to technical things エ, is deep and complicated like
                            that water weed.
号, number:     Our worker found a phone (to me this 漢字 looks like a dial with a
                            receiver beneath), dialed a number, and escaped!  (This one's easier
                            for me because it's part of 電話番号, phone number.)
考, think over:  This to me is like a person or worker 者, except he's like that water
                            weed -- he's thinking over how to do things.
拷, torture:       Uh-oh.  Someone's raising a hand to him.  "Think!  Remember the
                             information I want!"
誇, boast:        "To hear him talk, he's a big man who can walk on water.  But notice
                            that surfboard he's actually standing on!"

朽巧号考拷誇

バックパッキング旅行 with 尺

Although 尺 means hand's-breadth (I think I can see the palm and fingers), Henshall suggests thinking of it as a backpack.  This helps make a coherent story for mnemonics.

昼, noonish:   After sunrise, I backpack till around noon.
沢, swamp:    On my backpacking trip, I came to a wet swamp.
訳, translate:  On my backpacking trip (in a foreign land), I often had to translate words.
釈, explain:   "Sir, explain why you're smuggling rice stalks in your backpack."
択, choose:    I use my hand to choose something from my backpack.
尽, exhaust:   I'm so exhausted I'm dropping things out of my backpack.
駅, station:     In this case, I think of 尺 as looking like a hitching post,
                           the station where I tie my horse. A good place to rest for
                           the night.  Story ends.

昼沢訳釈択尽駅

官: 映画館、図書館、音楽、と死亡

官 is bureaucrat:  someone with a big head, sitting under a roof, with a big, well, you know muscles get bigger when you exercise them and he exercises his sitting muscles a lot.  Just sayin'.

館, public building:  It may be a government building or it may have food.
管, pipe:                   When he has a moment, the bureaucrat likes to practice his
                                 bamboo flute.
棺, coffin:                 It's made of wood and one day the bureaucrat, like the rest
                                 of us, will go into one.

官館管棺

What's 次

次 つぐ, next, is common enough.  I don't know why you put ice 冫together with a hole 欠 and get next, but so be it.

This set of 漢字の物語 feature various agents:  a playboy, a consultant, a grazing animal, a banker, and a thief.

姿, figure/shape:           A woman has a figure, but so does the next.
恣, selfish/arbitrary:      ...or so thinks the selfish man:  it's arbitrary -- one's much like the next
諮, consult/deliberate:  Words in which one mouth speaks, then the next.
茨, thorn/briar:              The thorns tell the grazing animal:  skip this bush and go on to the next.
資, capital/resources:    Capital is a commodity -- one piece of money is just like the next.
盗, steal:                       The next thing to do is steal a plate.

次姿恣諮茨資,盗

場s to go

昜 is 表外漢字, and I find it more useful to base everything on either 場 (place) or 湯 (hot water/hot spring). so:

場, place:                  an earthen spot where the sun shines over, oh, maybe a bank
                                 with trailing weeds, IDK.
陽, daytime/male     Sun shining in daytime over the hills at that special spot.
/yang principle:        I'm guessing that identifies it with the yang principle which
                                 symbolizes male.
湯, hot water/spring:  This spot is all about the water:  it's a hot spring.
腸, intestines:          People come to the hot spring to cure their ailments.  Some
                                of which may be gut-related.
揚, elevate:             And Christ reaches out his hand and says to the sick person,
                                you're healed -- get up!

場陽湯腸揚

育てる your children well

育てる（そだてる）means raise (children), train, foster.  This was a tough one to make mnemonic for.  I think of it as a hanger dangling a piece of 肉.  Maybe we're raising tiger babies.

徹, penetrate/pierce:  You'd better have a stick in hand 攵. or the baby tigers waiting
                                     at the crossroads 彳will have some piercing insights into... you.

撤, remove:                The safest thing is to use your 手 to remove the 肉 from that
                                     hook, still keeping stick in hand 攵.

育徹撤

旦 and what comes later

旦, early morning.      Yep, that's the sun coming over the horizon.
但, however/but:          A person sees the sunrise and says,
                                      "But...but...I was SLEEPING!"
胆, courage/nerve/gall bladder:  The part of human nature that sticks up for things
担 shouldering/carry:  Put your hand to something, pick it UP and carry it
揚, elevate:                 Take someone by the hand who's waiting at the 湯 hot spring
                                      water.  "Do you want to be well?  Get up and walk!"*
宣, proclaim:              Under that same roof we saw at the podium, proclaim what's in range of your topic
恒, constancy:           The feeling of staying in between, not going out of range.

亘range/span:            Sun shining between two borders.
垣 hedge:                   Separate earthy areas between hedges.
壇, podium:               See the samurai getting ready to speak at a podium (well, it
                                     looks like one to me.  I think that thing in the middle is a TV.)

*I don't think this one belongs here, but rather with the 昜 family, but I got confused and put it in this set instead.  No wonder I'm having a rough time remembering it.  I'll move this later if I remember.


旦但胆担揚宣恒亘垣 壇

喜: time to rejoice

喜, rejoice:  As in a previous post:  ten bean cola makes the mouth rejoice.
樹, timber:  We can measure 寸 trees 木 for timber and rejoice in our profits.
膨, swelling:  The bean symbol 豆 is (per Henshall) related to a cookpot:  the square's the pot, it's got a stand, that kind of thing.  Let the at the top be the lid and handle.  What happens to your flesh ⺼ if you put yo' hairy 彡self on that cookpot?  Ouch!  Now it's going to swell up.
鼓, drum:  Safer to put a stick in your hand 支 and bang on that cookpot as a drum.  Maybe rejoicing 喜 in our timber 樹profits rather than nursing a swollen 膨 hand.

喜樹膨鼓

曲: music and pleasure

曲, music/pleasure:   Looks sort of like sheet music on a music stand
豊, rich/abundant:     It also looks like an extension of 田 field, so maybe it's a big, rich, abundant field of beans.
艶, glossy/colorful:  The leaves of the beans are glossy and colorful.
農, farming:              The bottom symbol 辰 is clam, and a clam shell looks
                                    like/could be used as the blade of a hoe.  Hoe your field:
                                    that's farming.  (There's two great discussions of  at Kanji
                                    Portraits, parts one and two; I used them instead of making my
                                    own.)
濃, dark/thick/concentrated:  Run water through your farm and you'll get dark,
                                    thick, concentrated runoff.


曲豊艶農濃

豆: mame mia

豆, まめ bean:  I think of it as ground, vines climbing up a trellis, then a bean, then the top of the trellis.
頭, あたま head:  That's using the old bean.  (The 頁, though it means leaf or page, is derived from a symbol for head.)
短, みじか（い）short:  The distance an arrow flies to cross a bean's width is pretty short.
喜, rejoice:  Ten bean cola makes the mouth rejoice.  (Supposedly Coca-Cola's name in Chinese means "makes the mouth rejoice.")  I put the descendants of 壴 into their own set, which I may post here soon.
登, のぼ（る）climb:  Two climbed the beanstalk, then lay on their backs to watch the clouds go by.
澄, settle/clear:  Those climbers saw clear skies -- no clouds -- so settled in to wait.
闘, fight:  Unfortunately, it's the beanstalk from Jack's story, so attached to it is the castle gate.  They'll have to fight a giant.

There are two more kanji, 艶 and 豊, but I'll put them in later post related to 曲.

豆頭短喜澄闘

殳: pushing through

殳:  a lance.  Wha--?  Well, the bottom is a hand, and the top is a lance after you've smushed it into a wall so it's all curved.  Best I can do here.

Now, for the descendants.
殳, lance/pike:      First, there was a pike(man).
穀, grain/cereal:    Like many adventurers, he started on a farm.  He poked grains into the earth with his lance, to get a crop of rice.
殻, husk/nutshell: Didn't work, so he poked in the earth with his lance and found nut shells.
般, carrier*:          He tried getting a job on a carrier ship, but...

没, drown:            He fell into the water and nearly drowned.

役, role/military service:  Finally, seeking his fortune, he came to a crossroads.  They drafted him for the role of military service.
殴, assault:           The pikemen made an assault on the city ward.
撃, shoot at/aggression: The army used their hands to shoot lances in their attack.  (車 here is used as army.)
疫, epidemic:        There was an epidemic, so he used his lance (to enforce quarantine?)
殿, mansion:         Finally the pikeman came to a mansion.
段, stair:               He made his way up a staircase.
鍛, forge:              He found a forge at the top.  There at the forge was his opposite number, with a fresh-forged lance.
投, throw:             They threw their lances.
股, thigh/crotch:   Like the Fisher-King in Arthurian legend, he got a wound to his thigh or crotch, from a lance.
設, establish:        Ultimately, to establish anything, he found you need words not weapons.

This doesn't fit, so I'll put it by its lonesome:
殺, kill:                On the cross, or poetically a tree, they killed Christ; the soldier stuck a lance in his side.

* There are more with 般 in them, but the list is getting long and I put these with 舟 (ship) anyway.


殳穀殻般没役殴撃疫殿段鍛投股設殺

斥: axe it, reject it, repel it

斥:  reject.  It looks like the axe radical 斤, but with a strikethrough.  So:  I really reject this thing.  So I axe it and then strike it out.

訴:  accusation.  Words that thoroughly reject.

斥訴

余: it's all just too much

余 means remainder or too much.  Maybe it's a broom sweeping out a shed, and there's way too much dirt remaining.  It helps my story here if I focus on it being too much dirt, so:

除:  remove.  Remove the hills of dirt from that shed.  (掃除機, sweep-remove-machine, is a vacuum cleaner).
斜: diagonal, slant.  Put too much dirt in the dipper and it'll slant diagonally.
途  route, road.  Move the dirt you swept up down the road.
徐: gradually.  Don't want to get caught dumping, so I gradually let dirt spill as I travel the intersection.
叙: confer/describe.  I'll put my hand on the dirt before conferring it on... you.
塗: paint.  Liquid black dirty stuff that looks like earth.  (The earth radical at the bottom is also in ink 墨).

余除斜途徐叙塗

The clear brightness of 奐

奐 is a 表外漢字, hyougai (rarely used) kanji.  But it's got two commonly used descendants.

奐（かん）：clear/bright.  Looks like a lamp on a table, with the bulb clear/bright enough to see the wiring.
喚 （かん）：yell.  Which is what you'll do if you stick your hand on that hot bulb.
換 （かん）：interchange/convert/replace.  That's what your hand can do to a light bulb.

喚換

且 and friends: story of a cairn

Kanji related to 且.  Since many can be pronounced ソ in on-reading, I'll mark the ones that can.  The story to link them:  The community builds a cairn, up past the hills, to reverence our ancestors.  Eventually we build it a roof 宜.

且 (ソ).  Moreover:  3 rocks stacked in a cairn, ソ put more over the ones already there.
租 (ソ).  Tax:  Moreover, there's a tax on the rice harvest to pay for the cairn.
粗 (ソ).  Coarse:  Moreover, the rice grains ground on the cairn (yuck) are coarse.
阻 (ソ).  Hinder:  Moreover, the hill is a hindrance to getting to that cairn.
祖 (ソ).  Ancestors:  ソ we built an altar at the cairn to reverence our ancestors.
狙 (ソ).  Aim:  Moreover, we aim the animal at the cairn as part of our sacrifice/celebration.
査 (サ).  Investigate:  Moreover, we investigated putting a wood covering on the cairn, but...
組 (ソ).  Assemble/group:  Moreover, we assemble threads in a group at the cairn instead
宜.  Kun includes よろ as in 宜しく(よろしく), best regards).  Best regards:  We honor the cairn with a ceremonial roof.  (Of threads thus assembled 組).

畳 tatami has the same root, but I can't fit it into my story.  So I'll say the square mat 田 fits as a covering (horizontal line in middle), more over the floor than was there before.

且租粗阻祖狙査組宜畳

Well, that was クール

I said I wasn't going to do much more Anki.  Takes the joy out of it.

But something else put the 嬉しい back in.  I picked up my print copy of ライオンと魔女, picked a random spot, and read:

「魔女は、ものすごくおそらしいひとなの。じぶんではナルニアの女王だといっているけど、ちっともそ権利がないひとでね、フォーンもドライアードもナイアードも、小人たちも動物たちも、いいほうのひとたちはみんあ、魔女のことをからってるわ。

Admittedly there are parts I'm not getting.  But I get witch, person, self-of-as-for, Queen of Narnia, is saying, but ("She calls herself 'Queen of Narnia,' but..."), faun, dryad, naiad, dwarf, animal, people of the good way, everyone, dislike, and the closing "wa" particle meaning it's a girl or woman talking.  ("She calls herself 'Queen of Narnia,' but ... the fauns and the dryads and naiads, the dwarfs and the [talking] animals, all the good people, they just hate her." -- I remember a little from the book, too, which helps.)

So I'm popping 権利 and 小人 and 魔法 and some other terms into Anki.  Maybe if it's fun terms I won't be so mind-numbingly bored.

好きじゃない

Not liking it.  Here's how it's working out:

I put all the vocabulary from a Reading Japanese with a Smile story into Anki.  It's nontrivial.  Since there are still kanji I don't know, I copy them into Kanji Study.  Then I do what I usually do with kanji, when I get time:  I find other kanji with the same radical using The Kanji Map; make up mnemonics or steal Henshall's; stuff them into Kanji Study as well.  OK, this is still fun.

The Anki flashcards look like this:  correct spelling (front), phonetic spelling and mnemonic (back).

大晦日

おおみそか, last day of the year

Big day, dark as miso soup, at year's end

Without mnemonics, I'm hopeless.  (Except on the easy ones.  It's unpredictable what's easy, but I always know.)

Thing is, I'm finding what draws me to Japanese was the beauty of the language, especially its written form.  Memorizing weird squiggles without understanding them robs me of that beauty.  So I have to get the kanji and understand them, to have an interest in going on.

It helps that Reading Japanese with a Smile is quirky and fun.  Not sure it's going to be enough.  I may have to go back to my old way of doing it, despite the drawback that I'm not piling on vocabulary that way.

A totally new tack: Anki

This study method is a work in progress.

I found I was reading ライオンと魔女 and the new words, I'd forget as soon as I looked away from them.  How do I get myself to remember new vocabulary?

On reddit, Anki the online flashcard program is a god only rivaled by the almighty Genki. I tried it before on my desktop computer.  It was clunky; I couldn't find things easily.  It was bossy.  "You want to look over this deck again?  Sucks to be you, huh?  NO."

But if it's designed for remembering things, and I'm not remembering things, and I'm not ready to get out index cards and a Sharpie... Anki's promise includes "spaced repetition," which is supposed to get you learning things appropriately.  (You see a flashcard when you've almost forgotten it but not quite, essentially, and Science Has Revealed that this is the best way to cram things in.)  Well, I like science.

So I took the first short story in Reading Japanese with a Smile -- nine stories from Japanese weekly Shuukan Asahi, with almost everything defined and discussed for language learners -- and put all the vocabulary I didn't know into an Anki deck.

Now instead of looking at the book and forgetting the word instantly, I can look at the deck and forget it instantly.

So I put in mnemonics.  It's helping some.  だいこんげき , "deeply moved," I remembered when I woke this morning based on "The key to deeply moving Gaye is a daikon radish" -- ack -- but mostly I'm forgetting the mnemonics too.

One reason is the kanji:  despite work in Kanji Study, I don't know them all.  So today I put them all into Kanji Study.  Several reasons this is annoying:

• I can't just select all and put 'em on the clipboard.  I have to go to each individual card and highlight what I want.  Can't just swipe between cards, either; go into a card, highlight and copy, go to Kanji Study, select +, select Add from Clipboard, go back to Anki, get out of the card, do it all again.
  
  There may be a way to export the deck to CSV, load it in Excel, and then put it into another program; IDK.
• I can't browse the cards for an individual deck; I can only browse all cards in the database at once.  (This is Android version.)  This is going to be a pain when I add the next deck for story #2.
• It doesn't match with the way I've been using Kanji Study:  learn kanji by common component, rather than by occurrence in a particular bit of text (!).  Oh, well, this was going to happen eventually, no matter what methods I use.

---

OK, it's been a few days.  I am getting the flashcards eventually.  It feels like very shallow learning -- I see a word and guess how it's pronounced and I'm right, but I don't know why I'm right and I'm sure I'll forget in a couple of days.

But I've got to get vocabulary expanding or I'll never get anywhere.  So I'll give it a fair shot.

去 and friends

去leave/gone:  When they bury your personal self under the earth, it's time to leave.
法 method/principle:  Water leaves through the principle/method of evaporation.
蓋 lid:  The greens 艹 will soon be gone from the dish if you don't get a lid.
却 retreat/instead:  when we retreated, we had to leave 去 the seal卩 of our house.  Bummer.
脚 lower part/legs:  the legs are the body parts 肉 that retreat 却.

去法 蓋却脚

貴: precious kanji

貴 precious:  The NGU (not general use) character at the top, or Henshall's suggestion of taking it as 中 and 一, are too much for me, so... it's a stop sign.  Stop and see my precious shell.
遺 bequeath/leave behind:  When I move on from this life I will leave behind all my precious goods.
遣, send/use/do:  You're chasing 追 someone and stop to do this:  use the phone to send a message.

貴遺遣

亥 and friends

亥 is the sign of the pig in the Chinese zodiac.  I suppose it looks a little like the radical for pig 豕.
刻 chop: use knife on pig to make chops
劾 denounce: use your power over a swine to denounce him
核 core/kernel:  when roasting a pig, put the spit through its core
該 the above-stated:  We were just talking about said pig.

刻劾核該

ライオンと魔女、第二話: 難しい漢字

I'm even more annoyed at Kindle now.  Its highlighting mechanism won't function near the bottom of the page, and I spend much pain trying to highlight something I want defined.  Argh argh argh.

Still, let's go with some stuff from the previous post and actually learn it this time.

空襲, air raid:  that second kanji's pretty complex.  Does it have family, so to speak?  Technically, yes, it has 龍, which is a jinmeiyou (used-for-proper-names) kanji meaning "imperial dragon."  But I avoid bothering with jinmeiyou kanji.  So what does Henshall say about it?  Nothing.  It's not listed.

Kanji Portraits?  Nothing.  龍 shows up, but not with explanation of its parts (that I can find).

Wiktionary?  It's 龍 + 衣 (duh); the dragon part is a snake with whiskered mouth and eyes.

So I'll adapt KanjiDamage's words:  The dragon 龍 is 立 stand + 月 moon or flesh + a curvy dragon with face at top, curvy neck, several legs, and a tail.  The dragon's flesh, when it stands, looks like that curvy thing.

襲:  a dragon with a big fleshy dragon-head 立 will attack your clothes.

Whew.

Next monstrosity:

疎開, evacuation. 疎 is alienation and 開is open.  Like open enrollment, open alienation/distancing means everybody gets to distance himself/herself from home: evacuation.

KanjiMap doesn't help; nobody shares that ⺪radical.  Nor can KanjiPortraits.  Or Henshall. KanjiDamage lists it as マ (Mama) + 止 (stop) + 束 (bundle of sticks).  I'll say:  yo mama stops with her bundle after a long distance.

If it keeps going like this, will I ever get done?  But it won't.  I've found tons of clusters.  This time I found 2 standalones.  It means I'm getting closer to done with my 2000 kanji, I think, that the 2 I didn't know on the first few pages of ライオンと魔女 were such freaks.

Although 玄 mysterious + 関 gateway forming 玄関 front door is pretty freaky too.

---

ライオンと魔女

I love this book, and I know it well.  So I'll try reading a bit of it in Japanese.  I went to Amazon.co.jp and found they do have a Kindle version, and I can download a sample.  (To do this, I have to give my address as somewhere in Japan, and I can't have Amazon.com downloads on the Kindle at the same time.  No problem.)

I'm not that strong on Japanese, so it would help to have a rikaichan-like dictionary.  As it happens, it wasn't hard to get one, though I read online that this didn't work on Android Kindle apps but only dedicated Kindles:  after highlighting a word, I told it I wanted to download the 日本語 - 英語 dictionary, and it did.

Internet doesn't seem to know how to disable Wikipedia lookup.  Too bad:  screen's looking cluttered.

Hey, that's interesting.  If I highlight a single word, I get dictionary.  If I highlight something longer, I get Bing translation.  Seems to work OK.  I wish there weren't this menu continually blocking part of the highlighting.

Sometimes the Japanese-English dictionary doesn't bother with any English (!).  You can click and go to another page with more detail.  It's easier to use the Popup Japanese app, but you still have to highlight, which isn't that easy, and then say copy.  With rikaichan, all you have to do is touch part of the word (and maybe adjust).  I haven't found an easy way to do this yet.  Argh.

---

Here's my notes as I struggle.  Maybe they only interest me.  We'll see.  BTW, put no stock in these translations; I'm stretching here.

ライオンと魔女 

１るーシイ、衣装だんすをあけて みる
 1.  Lucy,         wardrobe        open and see
 Lucy looks into the wardrobe

むかし、ピーター、スーザン、エドモンド、ルーシイという
In the past, Peter          Susan          Edmond           Lucy       called
四人の子どもたちが、いました。
 4       children                  were.
Once there were four children named Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.

この物語は、その四人きょうだいが、   この前の戦争（せんそう）
In this story,     those 4    brothers & sisters, the previous war
（第二  次  世界      大戦   ）の時、 空   襲 を さけて ロンドン から
    #   2 next world great war   ’s time,  air raids     avoid   London    from
疎開          した時におこったことなのです。
evacuation did   when occurred        because
This story occurred when the four brothers and sisters left London to avoid the air raids during the last war (World War II).

New kanji to remember:
襲.  Boy, this one's a bear.  It's composed of a jinmeiyou (used-for-proper-names) kanji for dragon, the top part, and the bottom part is clothes.  It means pile on or attack.  Dragon's piling on/attacking your clothes?  I guess I'll put this in Kanji Study and see if I can get it..
疎.  The left bit is a radical I don't know and the right part is bundle.  Together they mean penetrate/sparse/shun/neglect/rough/alienate.  Will have to consult Henshall on this.

New vocabulary:

衣装だんす or
いしょうだんす:       wardrobe
戦争      せんそう:     war
次          じ                  counter that applies to wars
世界      せかい:         world    
大戦      たいせん:     great war
空襲     くうしゅう:  air raid
疎開      そかい:         evacuation
おこる or 起こる:      occur

New grammar:

なのです。Per Japanese Stack Exchange, のです means the sentence is an explanation. な is there before the の because what precedes is a noun or a な adjective; if it were an い adjective or a verb, we wouldn't need な.

A lot of work for three sentences!  OK, for one; the first two were easy.

I don't know if I can keep it up.  But I'm interested to see that な goes before explanatory の or
 ん for な adjectives and nouns.  I keep thinking the rule in Japanese is to put a lot of vocabulary I don't know and then end your sentence with an apparently random stream of particles.  Hah.  Maybe it'll be less random now.

---

Patent 革の靴

革: leather.  The top looks like a cow's head if you squint really hard.  Maybe the bottom is the legs, and the big rectangle is flappy skin.

靴:  shoes.  That's what 革 leather can change/take the form of 化.

And, yes, 革靴 (かわぐつ) is leather shoes.

革靴

㐮 and friends: Clothes Inspector #6 goes to work

㐮 -- now that's complicated.  To me it looks like 六 six, plus a pound sign, plus 衣 clothing.  So I say this hyougai (uncommon) kanji is the one that drops that message in new clothing:  "Inspected by #6."  Here are her derivatives.

嬢:  daughter, girl, Miss.  Inspector #6 is a young woman.

壌:  dirt, soil.  Inspector #6 will certainly find any soil on the clothing.

譲:  convey, defer, turnover.  At the end of the shift, I got word from Inspector #6:  it's time to turn over the job to the next inspector.

醸:  brew, cause.  Now that she's off work, Inspector #6's hobby is brewing sake.

嬢壌譲醸

吉 and friends; 甫 and friends. Or: the joy of needlepoint

吉:  joy, luck.  Either a cross on an altar (how lucky we are to have it!), or a human figure stretching his arms out for joy, standing on a pedestal, celebrating his good luck.

結:  tie, bind.  "Blest be the ties that bind."  We're joyful and lucky to be bound by such a common thread.

詰:  rebuke, reprove.  It's good luck to have those whose words rebuke and reprove us, pushing us toward virtue.  Sort of like "faithful are the wounds of a friend."

舎:  cottage.  The small roofed dwelling is a joy that we're lucky to have.

---

Henshall says 甫 refers to hands using a tool.  But he also suggests treating that stuff at the top as a needle and a point.  I'll go further in my mnemonic from point of a needle (I think he means) to needlepoint, the craft. This helps because I can base mnemonics for many of the derived characters on needlepoint.

So here we go

甫: for the first time, not until.  Some sweet old thing is making a needlepoint for baby's first time in the world, but not until baby arrives.

舗: store or shop.  A little cottage-like building with needlepoint supplies is a kind of store.

捕:  capture, catch.  Use your other hand to catch loose threads while doing needlepoint.

哺:  nurse, suckle.  Do needlepoint while letting baby eat.

浦:  bay.  Branch out in your needlepoint and do an image of the waters of the bay.

補:  learner, compensate, offset, supplement.  The learner of needlepoint can supplement income by mending clothes, too.

---

屯 and friends; 再 and friends

Why do I post these tiny groups?  Because they haven't made it into Kanji Portraits, and I need to learn them, so here they are.  (And I've gone through more of the big groups, like those based on

屯:  barracks, police station, camp.  Maybe it looks like the front of a roofed, symmetric building, with a path coming in from the right?

純:  genuine, innocence, purity.  When you've done your basic training, you go in dressed in innocence, and come out with a genuine uniform.

鈍:  blunt, dull, slow, foolish.  The metal (sword) you use in basic training is apt to get blunted by your inexpert practice.

---

再:  This is described in Henshall as 一 plus a basket, but I'll think of that line at the top as a handle.  Anyway, it's a basket.  The meaning is again, twice, second time:  if you want to keep your stuff for a second time to use again, put it in your basket.

構:  pretend, build, posture.  Build your baskets out of wood and you'll have a posture problem (because they'll be massive!).

溝:  ditch, sewer, drain.  Put water in baskets and it'll drain fer sure.

講:  lecture.  A lecture is baskets upon baskets of words.

購:  buy, subscription.  You'll need baskets of money to buy this subscription.

至 and friends

A kanji cluster, with notes to help me (and you?) remember them.  Heavily informed by KanjiPortraits.

至:  an arrow (the top half) hitting the ground (土):  the climax, conclusion, attainment of its final result.

室, as in 寝室 (bedroom):  when that arrow is fired in the house, it'll never make it out of the room you're in.

屋 (roof, shop, store, seller, house):  I think of the top and left part as an awning for a shop, so this elementary kanji is easy for me and the first I learned of this group.  It's like a one-room shop (薬屋、果物屋、肉屋、etc.) or its manager.

握: What you might do with your hand at a (sushi) shop is grip, hold, and mold sushi.

到: Apparently the sword to the right used to be a person, but changed (!).  So when a person, maybe with a sword to cut off the process (?), reaches the climax, conclusion, attainment, etc. of 至, we say that person is arriving.

倒: Whoever reaches the climax of his ambitions -- especially with the sword -- is bound to fail, collapse, break down, and be overthrown.

 致:  The teacher with the stick in hand (right half) makes/causes you to reach the climax, conclusion, attainment of your instruction.

緻:  When your teacher has helped you reach the resolution of your learning, you'll be rich enough to afford fine-weave threads.

窒:  Bringing that hole 穴 to resolution, climax, etc., would be plugging or obstructing it, leading to suffocation if it's your air supply.

動物えんに父 (Dad at the zoo) 第 3 章

Skip the notes if you don't need them.

I assume the reader knows how to read kana, plus the basics of Japanese sentences, －て form,and particles.  For kanji, you may want rikaichan or rikaikun for automatic furigana.

Kanji notes:  重 means "heavy"; put it together with 力 to get 動 "move," as in うん動 "exercise," 自動車 "automobile" (literally "self move vehicle"), and 動物 "animal" (literally, "move thing").

A person 人 who's doing a lot of movement 動 is likely working 働く.

Vocabulary

運動	exercise	食べ物	food
ええー	Yeah...	手伝う	help
大きい or 大きな	big	どうぞ	Please have this/here you go
オーケー	OK	とら	tiger
男の人	man	箱	box
お願いします!	Please!	働く	work
重い	heavy	見る	see
ください	Please	休み	time off/holiday

父は男の人と大きな箱を見ます。
父：何をしていますか？
男：働いていますね。
父：ええー
男：うん。重い箱です。手伝ってください、オーケー？いい運動です！
父：ここで働きません。今日は休みです。
男：お願いします！
父：これは何ですか？
男：とらの食べ物です。
父：はい！どうぞ！

とら：いいですね！

どう物えんに父 (Dad at the zoo) 第 2 章

Skip the notes if you don't need them.

I assume the reader knows how to read kana, plus the basics of Japanese sentences, －て form,and particles.  For kanji, you may want rikaichan or rikaikun for automatic furigana.

Kanji notes:  the radical 豕 (pig) shows up in several kanji.  You can think of it as a pig lying with its snout to the fence, front legs down left, and perky tail sticking up.  It's a largish animal; give it the big ears you see here (?) 象 and you've got a huge one: "elephant."  Put a person (a sculptor?) next to that and you've got "statue."

Grammar notes:  (Verb)ことができる means "can do (verb)."

Vocabulary

え〜っ!	Argh!	話す	speak
こと	abstract thing	本当	truth
象	elephant	見る	see
像	statue	もの	thing
父	father, daddy	わかる	understand
何	what	私	I, me

---

父：    何ですか？[父は象を見ています。]
もの：私はぞうです。
父：    象？
もの：いいえ。像じゃないです。象です。
父：    像？
もの：いいえ。像じゃないです。
父：    象の像？
もの：いいえ。象です。
父：    わかりません。
もの：像は話すことができません。
父：    象も話すことはできません。
もの：本当です。
父：    え〜っ！

どう物えんに父 (Dad at the zoo) 第 1 章

Skip the notes if you don't need them.

I assume the reader knows how to read kana, plus the basics of Japanese sentences, －て form,and particles.  For kanji, you may want rikaichan or rikaikun for automatic furigana.

Kanji notes:  牛 means cow.  (I tend to think of the left top tweak as a messed-up horn.)  Put it together with something that looks like it has long tusks (an elephant, though it's not the kanji for elephant), and you get 物, meaning "stuff" in a very general sense.  You can find it in many compounds:  食べ物、飲み物、どう物 and どう物えん ("animal" and "animal park"; yes, I'm leaving part of that in kana, to keep the words simple).

 第１章, meaning "Chapter 1," is a combination of 第, which is an ordinal marker, and 章, "chapter."  第 shows up in other compounds:  第１号 ("the first"); 第１話 (also "Chapter 1").

Vocabulary

牛肉	beef	とら	tiger
サンドイッチ	sandwich	フー！	Whew!
父	father, daddy	持つ	have, hold
食べ物	food	やった！	[I] did it!
どう物えん	zoo, animal park	私	I, me
どうぞ	Please have...	思う	think

父はどう物えんにいます。牛肉のサンドイッチを持っています。
父：　すみません。どこにいますか？
とら：どう物えんにいます。私はとらです。　
父：　私は男です。
とら：いいえ。食べ物です。
父：　いいえ！　牛肉をどうぞ。
とら：いいですね。　
父（おもう）：　フー！
とら（おもう）：やった！*

*I later learned this word: うまくいった, meaning something like "That did the trick!"  Too complicated for such a basic story, but... cool.

醜い、か女性らしい？

おめでとう？

十二月間私は日本語を勉強していました。

And in that time, I have learned about 1100 漢字, with some 200 more still in my "currently learning" list on Kanji Study, so the end is in sight.  I've started ruling out remaining ones that aren't in the common use but are used for proper names or not much at all.

I was able to read ジャックと豆の木 (Jack and the Beanstalk) on Wasabi with only occasionally looking at the translation for a word.  Admittedly I've reviewed it a few times and had vague memory of some words it uses a lot.

Haven't turned the corner I keep hoping for, though, past which reading is more fun than work.  I can almost feel it with ジャック, though.

Next up:  Japanese Graded Readers.  I've ordered the first.  I'll let you know.

ラーーー、七月四日で

七月四日私の家族は博物館に行きました。恐竜（きょうりゅう、dinosaur）の博物館です。

息子は日本語を習いますから、彼のため(behalf)に日本語のphrasesのリストを作りました。(I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to get the right conjugation of 作る there.)  These were the phrases:

スーは食べることができます。I know I'm assuming you have rikaikun/rikaichan going, and know some vocabulary like 食べる and 博物館, but sentence patterns are harder, so: This says

Sue, the famous T. Rex from  South Dakota.  (We didn't actually see her, but we did see a couple of T. Rex-like monsters.) 車のなかにスーの音楽を 聞きました。 私達は大好きです。

スー    は         食べる こと が でいます.
Sue   as-for     eat     thing           can                or
Sue can do the eating thing:  Sue can eat.

 (こと, "abstract thing," makes a verb usable as a noun, and dictionary-form-verb こたができます, "can do verb," is a common construction, I think.  Rosetta finally got funny doing this.  猫 （ねこ, cat）は走るができます。猫は読む（よむ, read) ができません。)

スーは私たちを食べることができます。
スーは私たちを食べたい。
だめです！ 
食べない！ 食べない！(Yes, that's not right, but we'll correct it later.)
きょうりゅうが大好きです。

息子はリストを書きましたが、we didn't actually say the more complex ones that much.  We did say, however:  スーです！食べない！食べない！

How am I going to remember those -て and -た forms? And so on

A couple of new tools for keeping track of -て and -た forms.  [Edit:  and other verb forms.  See below.]  (Recall that if you know one, you know the other:  change the final E to an A, or the reverse.)

て-Form Practice (and more)  is a web page that asks you to enter the -て form based on the dictionary form.  It also (per my suggestion) gives you the English meaning of the word.  I'm going to do this till I ace them every time.

One of the respondents on the reddit thread where this was posted said he'd learned this mnemonic from his teacher, to get all the -て forms:

む, ぶ, ぬ->んで、う, つ, る->って、 く->いて、ぐ->いで、 す->して

are the five step verbs!

...to the tune of "Silver Bells."

Use whichever you find less annoying!

Edit:  the creator of  て-Form Practice ahead decided to do some more conjugation forms, with more to come.  The link above is so altered.

KanjiMap

Kanji Map just came out.  It's a web site that lets you navigate from one kanji to the kanji/radicals it contains or is contained by.  Its creator posted about it on reddit.  

This is just what I needed.  Henshall is great on describing the kanji, but his ordering is by grade level, not by radical, and I find it way easier to learn groups of characters that share a radical.

Here, you pick the kanji you want, and you can trace back to its various radicals, and find out what other kanji have them.  Copy and paste them into Kanji Study (Android, iOS)and you've got your set to learn for the day (or whatever your schedule is).

I had been thinking of doing this myself when I get my gift of copious free time, but now I don't have to.

I'm going to suggest to him making a way to select everything that uses a particular radical, so I don't have to cut-and-paste into Kanji Study one at a time, but... I'm already using this.  Radical of the day:  歹.

Cracked turtle shells, and righteous feet

Cracked turtle shells

兆 "omen."  Henshall says it's cracked turtle shells, used for divination as I recall.

I can't get much memorable out of cracked turtle shells, but I can get something out of "fate," which I suppose is what divination tells you.

挑 "challenge."  Facing a challenge is taking your fate 兆 in hand 扌.

逃 "escape."  Get going 辶 to escape your fate 兆.

眺 "stare"; "give the evil eye."  Turn your eye 目 to something fateful 兆 and you won't look away soon.

桃 "peach."  OK, for this one I went with the turtle shells.  The peach tree 木 gives you a fruit the stone of which can be cracked (and the flesh if it's unripe enough).

I looked up 兆 on Wiktionary and got all the derived characters, skipping those not in common Japanese usage.

Righteous feet

疋, listed in Wiktionary as a variant of, among other things, 正.  But if I have to remember to draw it differently I want it to be different in meaning, at least in my mind.  正 is "righteous" and both are derived from "foot," so I'll call it "the righteous foot" or "best foot forward."

疑, "doubt."   When you're shot with an arrow 矢 while sitting 匕, you got in motion 龴 and put your best foot forward 疋 ... you'll doubt you're going to make it.

凝, "congeal" or "freeze."  That man who got shot and doubts he's going to make it may feel frozen 冫or unable to move. (冫means "ice.")

擬, "pseudo-" or "imitation."  It's something made with hands 扌, but you doubt 疑 it's real -- it's an imitation.

従, "obey."  Wiktionary says 䒑 at the top is grass (another variant!), but... lawzy, this is getting complicated.  彳means we're at a crossroads, same place where we saw the rules 律 (which is crossroads plus a hand with a brush writing those rules where you can see them).  When you see the rules, get your smarts on (the lines at the top) and put your righteous foot forward -- it's cool to obey the rules.

Boy, that last one was stretch.

I am uncertain if there are more that use 疋.  Wiktionary couldn't find those derived characters by link from 疋, so I had to search.

Rooflike radicals

I keep confusing these, forgetting whether to put that topside tick on top of 宝, say, so maybe you do to.  As part of my study, I'm going to make up a list and note the distinctions.

These radicals are listen in the Kangxi Dictionary; go here and scroll to the bottom for a complete list.

一.  I think this at the top of something can be many things, but I often take it as the surface of the earth.  死, "death," has the moon and a dead guy under the earth.  昔, むかし, "long ago," as the sun under the horizon and two grave sites above.  (I know this is not historically accurate, but we do what we can to remember.)

亠 is described as a lid.  This works for me for 亨 ("enjoy," which I remember as enjoying a pot of baby limas) and 京 ("capital"; I picture it as a Chinese lantern, with its rooflike lid).  Sometimes Henshall says to take it as a top hat.  For me, it works as a mortarboard/graduation cap, in 卒 (graduates -- persons on a podium with a mortarboard).

冖, "cover cloth."  軍 ("army") uses this; I picture it as covering a truck or tank so it can't be seen by the enemy.  夢 (ゆめ, "dream"):  艹 details from the dream catcher (罒, "net") of someone under the 冖covers at 夕night.  (I sometimes interpret 艹 as "details" rather than "grass" if that helps.)

宀, roof of a house.  Shows up all over.  寝 (sleep, presumably inside under the roof) is one example.

厂, "cliff."  原 (はら, "origin") shows a spring under a cliff, that is, the origin of the spring.  歴 (REKI, history/path) shows a foot(path) up past the trees near the cliff's top, as I see it.  In either case, we're out of doors.

广.  Originally a house on a cliff, but I'll just say "shed," because the cliff's often irrelevant to whatever mnemonic I use.  店, store:  there's a table and a cash register in that shed.  庫, warehouse:  shed with cars in it.  磨, polish:  use the bristles from trees and a rock, in your shed, to polish things.

ㅅ, as in 験, 合, 今, 介.  There are different things this is shaped like, and I'm seeing it as 人 (person), 入 (enter), as well as something about an incisor (!) and a roof.  To me roof works best, but... we already have roof.  だめ.  Roof of a cabin or cottage?  Fortunately it looks so different from all the others here I rarely get them confused.

戸, door, is unmistakable, and shows up in 所 (ところ, place); 肩 (かた, shoulder -- the part of the flesh you put into a door to break it down).

尸, corpse.  But I find that a stretch in many cases, so I think of it as an awning for a vendor stand or some other small public building. 尿, "urine":  an awning for privacy at a Porta-Potty.  漏, "leak": rain getting in as water splashes onto your awning.

𠃜 is described as a variant of 尸, to which I say, "Thanks for clearing that up."  But I'm also reading, but haven't confirmed, that it only shows up twice:  in 声 "voice" and  眉 "eyebrow."  I suppose I can memorize two exceptions.  巴, as in 色, clearly isn't rooflike so I'm going to ignore its similarity.

斤, axe, looks shedlike but it's coincidence.

Lots of subtleties.  But I have got to find some way to remember whether there's a topknot on 歴 or磨, on  軍 or 庫.

If I made any awful errors, please let me know.  I don't care if I got the history of the character right, so much, but I do want things to be easy to remember.

The Gospel of ヨハネ, from the 初め

Here's my notes for 5 verses.  IDK if it'll be helpful, but some of the info helped me.

初めに言あった。There are two words pronounced はじめ:  始め and 初め.  And they both mean "start"!  But according to my peeps on reddit (and jisho confirms this somewhat), they're not quite the same "start."  始め is first in line, outset, or origin, and 初め is first-ever.  So either would work in this case.

It looks like choosing between 言葉 and 言 may be the same.  The audio for John pronounces 言
as ことば, but jisho and Google Translate don't agree.  Since it's repeated several times, it's no typo.

言は神と共にあった。I had thought that God (not a god) was a special name, something like Emperor of Heaven.  Blame Read Japanese Today!, IIRC.  No, it's 神.

言は神であった。Weird.  Why isn't it just だ at the end?  Apparently is a literary form used in "writing and formal situations" (again, H/T reddit).

この言は初めに神と共にあった。

べて    の もの     は、これに   よって できた。
All       of things as-for,  that by  thus       were made

うち doesn't just mean house, but also "midst":

できた もの の うち、           一つ   として   これ に    よらない  ものはなかった。
Made   things of  amongst,   one man by done   this   to  not dependent thing as-for don't exist.
Among all things that were made, there is nothing is not dependent on Him.

この言に命があった。そしてこの命は人の光であった。
光はやみの中に輝いている。そして、やみはこれに勝たなかった。

More later.  Meanwhile, I've added a few kanji to learn (輝 being one).  John 2 also has some challenge.  I like this section because its nouns are so easy, and so repeated that I get a lot of sentence understanding bang for my vocabulary buck.

Kanji Portraits -- and my own

Kanji Portraits is a great web site for identifying clumps of kanji with a common radical, and learning them in groups, which I think is easier.  For example, I recently went through a lot of kanji with 糸 (thread), 玄 (short thread), and 衤(collar).

It's in blog format, which makes little sense for that site (or this one?), so don't bother with page 1, but go to PREVIOUS POSTS AND SEARCH, which lists all the clumps they've done so far.

Meanwhile, partly with their help and Henshall's, I've come up with my own mnemonics that have the memorization of related kanji work together more.  I show this more because I think it's fun than because I think you'll want mine in particular.

The two shy brothers.  Here they are as a radical not used as its own kanji in Japanese: 㑒.  They're under their roof, with their heads together (maybe they're holding each other in fear?) and their topknots or hats are together.  They know a lot about horses, so we get 験 (test, examine).

What are they afraid of?  Whatever it is, they hide well:  their house is beyond a hill 険 (inaccessible place, steep, dangerous).  But someone is coming and sees their house through the trees 検 (investigate, inspect).  That person is the tax man, and they're too cheap to pay 倹 (frugal, thrifty).  What'll they do?  Uh-oh.  Look what they have behind their house: 剣 (sword).

The pot of baby limas.  Here it is with the lid, the bean, and "child" below showing it's a baby lima: 享 ; it translates as "enjoy."  Put it in a round 丸pot on a fire 灬and it'll be ready to eat: 熟 (boil, mature, ripen, complete).  You stuck it on the ground 土instead?  That's not how to cook beans!  Looks like you need extra schooling 塾 (cram school, private school).

It really wasn't that hard to come up with the stories; it was more work to find the groupings, which weren't in Kanji Portraits or Henshall.

Android tools

Struggling to get that Gospel of John thing going (previous post) I definitely found the need for some tools for the Android tablet.  Here's the best setup I can find.

rikaichan for Android (H/T Kanji Koohii Forum).  Forget rikaikun for Chrome; it doesn't seem to exist.  So I installed Firefox and rikaichan.  (Read the Koohii thread for installation instructions.)

It works beautifully.  I only have to touch and hold the character, and rikaichan figures out how much text, starting from there, to consider as part of the word it'll define for you.  If you weren't precise where you touched, use the arrow key to bump it left or right.  I keep bumping it to go through difficult sentences.

Google Japanese Input.  Turn off that horrible kana keyboard and use roumaji input just as you would on regular computer.  I'm not completely happy with it.  It's easy to get from Japanese to Roman input (touch a button at the lower left to toggle), but it's eliminated spelling suggestions for English, which is a pain.

John's still tough, because rikaichan, cool as it is, doesn't understand entire sentences; Google Translate does, but doesn't explain them.  But I'm getting further now.

次が何ですか？

(Please note:  the Japanese in these posts is likely to be horrible.  I am a beginner, after all, inviting whoever wants to come along.  If I don't polish these in accord with any suggestions in comments, I ain't dissin' you, honest.)

I have to read All Quiet on the Western Front, and was thinking I might do it in Japanese in Kindle format, waving mouse pointer over words I don't get for help.  That leads me to two problems:

1.  I don't have anything nearly as good as rikaikun for Android.  I was able to find Popup Japanese Dictionary (H/T LearnJapaneseOnline), but it's not as robust as rikaikun:  less likely to actually find an answer.

Now, I can just highlight text and Google will let me scroll to an option to Translate -- in Chrome.  It's not working in Pocket, and it's too much trouble even in Chrome.  うるさい.  (Rudeness warning on that last comment.)  Any ideas?

2.  I can't find anybody who'll give me an e- version of 西部戦線異状なし (All Quiet on the Western Front).  So it's moot.

What else?

How about the Gospel of John?

It shouldn't require a huge vocabulary.  Its sentence structure shouldn't be too 難しい.  It's bound to be free online.

And so it is.  (ヨハネ ... です。）

「初めに言があった」。OK, With Google's highlight and translate, and the web page's audio, I can get this.  Still a lot of work.  No way am I ready for 西部戦線異状なし.  Maybe I need that JLPT 4 reader I don't want to pay shipping on.

(Edit:  Someone did a few chapters of John in a video series, explaining the language point by point as Mangajin would.  I was pretty excited -- not so much after the first video.  The narrator's accent is like he's not even trying -- I think he'd agree -- and the explanations don't do anything rikaikun/rikaichan isn't giving me already.  No, that's not true:  rikaikun doesn't always know the right pronunciation for kanji, and this reader does.  Still.)