Aguro

Thanks to my JLPT study, today I’ve finished studying the last level 8 Jouyou kanji. With this, I’ve actually completed all the Jouyou kanji! The amount of Jouyou kanji is 1945, which is the year which Indonesia declared its independence! Yay!

The last kanji is 髄 which is used in words such as 骨髄 (kotsuzui, bone marrow) and 真髄 (shinzui, essence). It’s interesting that there is a Japanese cosmetics sold in Indonesia named しんずい (shinzui). If you can stand some gross images click here to see what a marrow looks like.

This is just only the beginning. There is so much in mastering a kanji: its multitude meanings and readings, and most importantly proficiency in using words containing the kanji. I’m still far from that. Well, but still each small milestone must be celebrated :).

I still have 100+ kanji to study for the JLPT, but perhaps I should try a mock test soon and see how well (or nasty) it would turn out…

Currently, the kanji subcommittee of Monbushou is reconsidering the relevance of Jouyou kanji with regards to the kanji actually used in the wild. They have released a second draft on June 16th which proposes the inclusion of 188 kanji into Jouyou kanji. Among the proposed kanji are pronouns such as 誰 (dare, who) and 俺 (ore, I), kanji used for place names such as the 畿 (ki) in 近畿 (Kinki), and other frequently used kanji such as 頃 (koro, time) and 岡 (oka, hill). They also proposed dropping some rare kanji such as 勺 (shaku, an old measuring unit equivalent to 18.039 mL). from the list.

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