Alice in Kanji Land: Kanji as Characters and Adventures

I wish there was a book like this one for the other 1900 ish kanji. Cure Dolly did a great job. All the kanji become memorable after a quick read.

This book is a fantastic introduction to kanji, covering the basic meanings and pronunciation for all the kanji in both the Japanese 1st grade and the JLPT N5. The kanji are presented as characters in an Alice-in-Wonderland inspired fantasy story. The story is fun and engaging, chocked full of puns and mnemonics that really help with remembering both the meanings and pronunciation. Also, don't let the cover make you think it is only for children. I'm a 57 year old man and have bought 2 copies, one for myself and another for the 11 year old daughter of a friend.I really can't believe the reviewer that gave this book only 1 star. Please trust me, this really is a fantastic book.I'd like to also recommend one of Cure Dolly's other books, "Unlocking Japanese", which is short but very valuable in understanding Japanese grammar.Cure Dolly first came to my attention from her YouTube channel, which I also highly recommend. However, I should warn you about the CGI avatar she uses which takes some getting used to. Definitely uncanny valley territory. In fact, I almost switched it off in the first few minutes but, her explanations of Japanese grammar were so clear that I knew I had found something special. She strips off the layer of polite decoration that most Japanese text books teach as basic Japanese, and shows you the real core of the language which is very logical and consistent. Once you understand the core you can start confidently constructing grammatically sound sentences. Then later you can add the decorative layer of politeness back in without destroying the integrity or meaning of the sentence. Japanese doesn't have to be difficult and confusing.

I’ve been studying Japanese, off and on, for a few years, and have bought so many books, and flash cards, etc, but I’m still looking for help with kanji. Somehow I had the good fortune to find Cure Dolly’s Japanese lessons on YouTube, which led me to this book. Right away I was intrigued, because I read Fluent Forever, which got me to make (hand draw) my own flash cards, and review them in the order recommended, and that was a huge help. Okay, so it takes a lot of time, but if you do the work, you get the reward, and you don’t have to draw your own, you can get images online. So you can imagine how excited I was that Cure Dolly wrote a story to teach all the JLPT N5 kanji. WOW! Not only did she save me days of drawing, and coming up with my own “story” for each kanji, she makes it interesting, and so much easier to remember. I already know some of the kanji, but I like her descriptions of them, because they will help with the more complex kanji. Kind of like building blocks. I think this book would be helpful for beginning and advanced students. Even if you already know the kanji, you will see them in a different way, that is very useful. One more thing. The book is 190 pages, plus information at the end, including how to download the Anki App to access the Alice in Kanji Land flashcards. Don’t let the adorably cute cover of this book make you think it’s a book for children. I haven’t tried the flashcards yet.

I've been studying Japanese for around 6 months now, and I've just recently started to grasp how to handle Kanji. This book has been a delight to read, both from an entertaining and learning standpoint. The process of learning Kanji sometimes does feel a bit Topsy turvy, just like Alice's Wonderland is, and the author did a great job constructing the world of Kanji Land. I love that the Kanji are characters in the story, which gives them all such life and personality that they are hard to forget. There are parts that still confuse me as a learner, but that isn't the fault of the book itself. I'm very happy with this purchase and plan to share the book with my children.

Love Cure Dolly; this book and the videos.

I am an 11 year old girl who loves Japanese anime and was given Alice in Kanji Land as a gift. I enjoyed the book and found it extremely helpful because it put Japanese kanji characters into an entertaining and exciting adventure. It made memorizing kanji extremely easy for me. The book wasn’t too long that it got boring, nor too short. It was easy to understand, and was definitely worth reading. I would absolutely recommend Alice in Kanji Land for anyone trying to learn Japanese kanji characters.

This is a wonderful and useful book! I wish this book had been written when I was first learning kanji. Even though I am long past 1st and 2nd grade kanji, I still found this book filled with useful information. My weakness is and has always been kanji readings, and Cure Dolly's amusing puns make very good mnemonics. The story in and of itself is charming and fun to read! Overall, this is just a wonderful book!

Cure Dolly's Unlocking Japanese is a fantastic resource, as are her videos. Check them out if you haven't. But if that led you to this book, it has astonishingly little value.The story starts out quite compelling, Dolly has an interesting voice to lend to it, but it quickly devolves once it starts to try and teach. I was hoping to read along the way about little tricks she knew about kanji, akin to the tricks she knows about Japanese grammar. And there are one or two, like "ten ten hooking" which I was glad to learn. But you could fit them all on less than one page.The 190 or so other pages go like this: 1) Introduce anthropomorphic Kanji. 2) Come up with a random mnemonic to associate with it. 3) Repeat. And that as a resource does not remotely distinguish itself. Those pages could have been written by anyone who knows these kanji. Which, considering her insight, is quite a disappointment.

This is such an informative and fun book!

Linguist have argued for some time that words of a foreign language are remembered better when they are presented in the context of stories. "Alice in Kanji Land" supports this in two different ways: The book introduces new Kanji as part of words and these words as part of a story. In addition, the author provides an Anki deck for reviewing the Kanji from the book.The only draw back may be the limited number of Kanji, mainly JLPT N5. A follow up volume would be appreciated. But in any case, "Alice in Kanji Land" is an excellent introduction. It is available online as well as in printed form. Therefore, it is suitable for studying "on the go".

The Cure Dolly/KawaJapa is a bit of a renegade among the sheer endless "Learn Japanese" websites and YouTube channels. Idiosyncratic and iconoclastic and certainly not everybody's cup of tea. But for some of us - myself included - we've learned more real Japanese in a shorter time than the people who slog through the Genki "watashinonamaewasumisudesu" and other constructs that try for teach a language that has a totally different linguistic structure than all Indo-European languages *as* Indo-European language. And even worse: as English, the bastard conglomerate mess of languages brought in by every conqueror that ever set foot on the British Isles.(In its defense, Genki is likely awesome if you have the luxury of actually learning in Japan or at least having it as your full-time subject with teachers at some uni)This book follows that idiosyncratic approach by breaking with the "standard" holy temples of Remember The Kanji and its offspring. While still using mnemonics, they aren't disjointed, but assembled as part of the ever-familiar Alice in Wonderland stories. I had struggled with and finally gave up on site like Wanikani because I spent more time remembering someone's ridiculous mnemonic that probably made sense to them in whatever state of mind they were in at the time of writing. Don't even get me started on Heisig!Here, I just followed along with this, perused the freely downloadable Anki deck, and to my own (and my italki partner's) surprise suddenly could read both kun-yomi and on-yomi readings of Kanji that previous simply failed to stick. I took a practise exam on the "official" JLPT5 site and was absolutely stunned when I achieved 80+%. I've been learning Japanese in my spare time for 3 months.Some people may feel I am being unfair to Heisig and his approach and maybe I am. Depending on what kind of learner you are you may absolutely benefit from RTK because that's how your brain works. But it's not for everybody. If you've struggled, especially with Kanji, give this one a try.

Did exactly what is says: taught me basic kanji via a cute and entertaining story. I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted an introduction to kanji.

Absolutely recommended. I bought this for my niece to introduce her to the kanji (which is one of the most intimidating aspects of Japanese). I ended up reading it myself, and it does a fantastic job of introducing the kanji in a fun, interesting and memorable way. I wish this book had been available when I had started learning Japanese. My niece loved it too!