Welcome to the May 2011 Japanese Blog Matsuri.

This month we are going to learn that kanji can be fun, interesting, insightful, beautiful and most importantly necessary to communicate in Japanese.

Having fallen in love with kanji myself I was looking forward to reading what others had to say about it and their experiences learning it. I have noticed, not only through the submitted blogs themselves but also from those commenting, that people who have taken the time to learn kanji have great fondness for it and seem to want to encourage other Japanese language learners to start learning asap.

Enjoy…

Why study kanji at all? Here we are given a compelling reason for picking up the textbooks.

One man’s story about how he came to the conclusion that studying kanji was for the best and also how it improved his live in Japan and other aspects of his Japanese learning. A experience that no doubt many people can relate to.

Interested by the mention of kanji radicals in the previous post and want to know more? JLPT Boot Camp has the answers you are looking for.

Some say a picture tells a thousand words and the picture here tells us so much. Not only does it remind us of the beauty of Japanese script but also the beginning of a fairy story. I love this.

What does the way countries were once written in Japan tell us about the Japanese view of the rest of the world? Find out in this blog.

And there you have it. A short and wonderfully sweet masturi. Unfortunately there is no host for next month matsuri listed currently. Perhaps you could put your name down for it. Find out how at the mastsuri faq page.