Here’s a little story on my ever ongoing Japanese language escapades. 
I got in a little hot water in my weekly Kumon Kokugo lesson over the importance/neccessity of Kanji. XP
As always when advancing to the next level at Kumon, I took a diagnostic test to guage my Japanese skillz. My results were pretty good; 100% on all sections (w00t!) bar one; written Kanji… where I got 0%. 
My tutor was somewhat confused about the apparent contrasts in scores, and asked me what happened. I didn’t really think about what I said, but just blurted out “I don’t really have any drive to learn to write Kanji”, as to which the reaction I received was somewhat of mortification.
In any case, I spent the last day thinking about this, and I thought I should post what I concluded with here.
Even after 13 years of this studying this language, I don’t see any really good reasons to learn to write Kanji, but, I see a dire need to be able to read it very well.
And now I’ll try and explain that hehe.
The main reason for this is because of our entry into a era of digital communication. In an era where our main for of writing is merely pushing buttons on a keyboard, it seems to be a pointless exertion of time and effort to learn and then maintain the ability to write complex symbols such as Kanji.
A lot of my Japanese friends have said this as well, where they only do their writing on PCs or mobile phones and that this is affecting their Kanji writing ability.
Personally, when I spent 8 months in Japan, the only times I wrote out anything in Japanese on paper was when I was filling out registration forms. And even then, I had my Japanese mobile on me that could show me how to write any Kanji I didn’t remember.
Every other time I wrote was with my PC, in which case, it was very easy.
But on this note, I would also point out that because of digital technology making writing Kanji so easy, the scope and vocabulary of the symbols has the potential to exponentially increase. If that’s so, then it would imply that being able to read it is doubly more important than being able to write it.
Either way, that’s my opinion on it. I’ve been struggling with Kanji for a good 8 years or so (The first few years being Hiragana/Katakana lol ), and I’m feeling my progress has been slow at best. So this is why I’m going along the line of totally ignoring how to write it, in favour of dedicating more time to being able to read it.
In any case, what do you think? I may be totally wrong and completely missing something here…
I’m not sure if my two cents is actually worth anything since I don’t speak, read or write any other language than English (despite Spanish and French lessons); however, I agree that reading and speaking is more important than writing in this day and age.
On the other hand, I also think that if you completely neglect writing it’ll be more 1,000 x more frustrating when/if you decide you want to learn later on after you master the speaking/reading skills.
Good luck with all of it though! Do you plan on going back to Japan anytime soon? …maybe I should tweet that question for faster response ;P
日本人の私でも読めるけど書けないものって多いかもm(-ω-`;m)
でも漢字も含めた日本の文化だから
ある程度は書けたほうが素敵かなぁって思うかな(●´ω｀●)
読むほうが極められたら漢字も勉強するとかね♪
Hey Kristina! Thanks for the post!
Haha yeah we’re living in an age of information overload. Writing’s still important, but I’m thinking reading is more of a priority when it comes to learning a new language.
Yyyeah, that’s the thing. It’s not so much simply writing it (since that’s easy on PC
), but actually remembering how to manually write each one. I’m wondering if there is any benefit to doing that or not, when I’ve found it’s not entirely necessary, even when in Japan.
Hehe thanks! Haha, well I just got out of bed… this couldn’t have been any quicker.
I’ll answer the question on Twitter tho. Thanks again!
お、久しぶりだねくりこ！ 元気でやってるの？
へ～マジで？ すごい、それは漢字の難しさの知るしなんだね。
う～ん、それは確かにね。 日本語にとって、とても大切な物だね。
あ、うん、そうね。 せめて、何とか書けたらいいと思うが、いつも使ってないと、簡単に忘れられて、どうしようかな。 ＾＿＾；
はは、うん！ でも、私にとって、ある漢字を見て、意味が分かるが、その漢字を書く時は、忘れた。 ＾＿＾； やれやれ。
まぁ、とにかく、勉強を続けて頑張ります。 ＾＿＾
またね！ 書き込んでありがとう！ ：D
久しぶり！ティム。
恥ずかしながら私も漢字苦手なんで、時々恥ずかしい間違いを人前ですることも、しばしば。。
日本に住んでるのにこの調子じゃ、そっちに引っ越した時は完璧に漢字忘れちゃうんじゃないかって本当に心配になるよ。。
お互い頑張ろう！
そっち行った時はティムに会いに行くのでよろしくね！！
I heard recently about some Koreans currently visiting Canada who taught themselves to fluently read English and Dutch, but can’t write or speak much of either language without great difficulty. Regardless, with a human translator it is evident that they are fully grasping everything they have read. The only thing they are fuzzy on is the circumstances surrounding what they are reading and why it was written.
Tim~日本語頑張っているねぇ～！！！！
日本人も漢字を覚えるのは大変だからねぇ～。
漢字の読み書きを一度で覚える方法は、漢字の読みを覚える時に紙に書きながら読みを覚える。（覚えるまで書く）
そうすると、一度で両方覚える事が出来るよ！すでに知っているかも～XD
私も最近はPCばかり使っているから書けなくなった＞＿＜
私は英語も頑張らないと！！！XD
Hey Scott, thanks for posting!
Wow really? So that means that they grasped the technical grammar of English, and can understand it… and yet they can’t actually reproduce it? That’s fascinating.
I suppose that just goes to show how complex and diverse languages are and how the relate to each other.
I don’t suppose you have a link to an article on those Koreans and how they studied it?
＞Sanae
おぉ、久しぶりだね！
へ～Sanaeもなんだ。 しかも、人前ですること。 ひどいな。 ._.
あぁ、そうね。 私は一回、ドイツに住んでいる日本人と会話した。 たった二年間がかかったが、もう完全に漢字忘れちゃった。 この字の問題は、毎日毎日使ってないと、ものすごく速度で忘れるみたいだね。
ははは、うん！ お互いに忘れないようにね。 XD
ああそうだったね！ いつ来るの？ あは、うん、来られば連絡してね！
＞rie
はは、まぁあ～、ぎりぎりだね。 XD
はは、日本人にも大変だったら私はちゃんと覚えるわけがないと思う。 XP
あぁ、うん、覚えるまで書く事ってよく聞いたが、それだけじゃないね。 多分漢字の部首の勉強は必要なんだね。
おっと、全部書けなくないだろう。。。？ おっと大変だね。 でもけっきょく、携帯を持っていれば、ちゃんと覚えなくていいね。。。。 XD
へへへ、うん！ Good luck!!
I lived in Japan for 6 years, passed JLPT 1, and have studied Japanese for 10+ years as well. All through high school, university, and while I was living in Japan.
I understand what you are saying. Writing difficult Kanji is something that even Japanese people today forget every now and then. Kinda makes it hard to stay motivated when even the natives fail from time to time.
Still though, I think refusing to learn to write -any- Kanji is extreme and only doing yourself a disservice. It’s so much easier to learn to read lots of Kanji when you can write them as well. Practically speaking though, the only disadvantage you’ll have in not being able to write anything is that of personal embarrassment when trying to write stuff in front of Japanese people… which only happens in situations like you mentioned, when filling out forms, or once in my case when taking notes on a whiteboard during a meeting when I was working at a Japanese company. Making mistakes there is just embarrassing. Even if you can participate in the meeting 100% verbally, when you try to write down someones great idea and can’t write, it just makes you look inferior, and natives will begin to seriously doubt your language ability.
Anyway, remembering to write kanji is definitely the hardest thing aout learning Japanese. And the hardest parts are always the ones we tend to avoid the most!
Hey Harvey! Thanks for the detailed post!
Wooow, 6 years? How did you get into that? Was it the JET programme or study or anything?
Yeah, that’s probably the most depressing thing about it. Every Japanese person I’ve met has also said their Kanji is bad and that they keep forgetting to write. Doesn’t bode too well at all there.
You’re totally right there and I agree. But I think I’d better clarify what I was saying up there.
I do learn how to write Kanji during each lesson of Kumon (usually 5 or so a week) and every Kanji I know I’ve had to write at some point or another. The problem is, unless I keep writing them, I forget them really quickly, and I usually don’t see any point to re-memorizing them (hence re-inviting the cycle). Come the test time, I usually write the ones I know (usually like 25% lol) and am not really phased by not knowing the rest.
Ahh wow okay. Yeah haha… my Japanese was never good enough to ever go into a meeting situation like that. But yeah, I would say once the necessity to be able to write it came along, it would probably become much quicker. It’s definitely something I would focus on when/if I go back to Japan.
Either way, since I’m thinking of re-taking the JLPT 2 exam this year, if I’m to have any hope of passing it, odds are I’ll need to rethink this pattern…
Thanks again for the post! I also loved the site you put up too! Thanks!