The Japanese Ministry of Education came up with a list of kanji called the Joyo Kanji - a list of 1,945 kanji that you need to learn in order to effectively get about everyday life in Japan.

Me didn't have the opportunity to go Chinese school so had to start from scratch self learning from magazines and dictionaries that I picked up from the Japan Center in London. To speed up my learning I didn't bother to learn the stroke order of the Kanji because I thought that as long as I could write then it didn't matter in what order I did the strokes.

Sure enough I did learn kanji quick and pretty much know all of the Joyo kanji now but I'm terrible at using the handwritten kanji recognition systems ^^;

How many of you learning Japanese and how many kanji do you think you have mastered?

Mojibakeru news and photos from Mycom.