Hey, I've got a blog!

ようこそ 皆さん (hiragana, kanji)
youkoso minasan (romaji)
Welcome everyone (English)
to my new blog. The purpose of this blog is a selfish one: to help me focus my study of the kanji. I've spent the last month learning the kana using James W. Heisig's method (imaginative memory). His books are an excellent resource for gaining literacy in Japanese writing. I plan to use his method for learning the general use kanji. However, his method begins with learning the writing of kanji by stroke order and associating them to a key word that serves as the meaning of the kanji. He does not teach the beginner how to pronounce them at first, though; that comes later. While I like this method, it is going to take me awhile to gain any kind of literacy in order to read densho, which is really what I want to do. So while I'm caterpillaring my way to literacy I figured I'd have some fun with the kanji on the side. I thought it would be a good idea to explore the kanji that are frequently used in the Bujinkan 武神. Basically, I'll pick words we use a lot and see what kanji are used for them in the tenchijin or other writings by Hatsumi Soke. I'll learn the stroke order for writing them and their various pronunciations and meanings. Then I'll see if an etymological understanding of the kanji contributes any ideas that I can use in my study of taijutsu.
Now, a little disclaimer here. By no means am I an expert on anything related to Japanese, kanji, or taijutsu. This is all a learning process for me, as well as an experiment. I am also emphatically not claiming that an understanding of kanji will make me better at taijutsu. What I'm claiming (the basis for this little experimental blog) is that if the kanji I'm trying to learn are related to something that is important to me personally (in this case, the Bujinkan) then this will help me retain the kanji better and make them a part of me.
So, having said all this, I hope this will be a fun adventure for me on my journey to Japanese literacy. I also hope the insight I gain from this blog experiment will be of value to the few people who may read this blog. So, let's explore some kanji!