Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm currently learning Chinese so Kanji comes easier to me n_n But when i'm trying to remember it, I try to break up each part of the character and then put it together. I think it really helps! That's just for writing characters though, for speaking wise, I try to look at the character and read it aloud.

Well everyone learns differently, especially when it comes to kanji. So there is no real "best" method. I know that one popular method of learning kanji is the "Heisig Method" where you make up stories for each kanji. I've heard it's pretty effective.

I think that no matter what method you use you should learn what each individual radical means. After all, kanji aren't pictures, just groups of radicals-- it will be harder on you if think of them as pictures.

Like Tae Pando said, I found it really enlightening learning Chinese. Kanji are Chinese characters which were made for Chinese, not Japanese, after all. Before I started studying Chinese I didn't understand how kanji were really made... in the Chinese context, they consist of a main radical that gives pronunciation and another radical that gives meaning. For example. You probably know that the on reading of 中 is "chuu." Its reading in Mandarin Chinese is "zhong." Another word that was pronounced "zhong" in Chinese was 仲 which meant "mediator," so they took the main radical 中 for pronunciation and added the 人 radical to it because it's a person pronounced as "zhong." In Japanese its on reading is also "chuu" but it has a different meaning than it does in Chinese. Actually, every single (jouyou) kanji that has 中 as its main radical will have an on reading of "chuu" (and possibly other readings). Once you know things like these learning kanji becomes so much easier.

Er, not that you have to learn Chinese, but I suggest trying it out for a week or two lol

I learned it with a book called Remembering the Kanji, and this site for reviewing. My advice is to try a bunch of different things. Something will work for you. Also, don't listen to anyone who says that the kanji are impossible to learn, that there's just too many of them. It is possible, and you don't need to be a genius or something to learn them either.

Some people told me it's wrong, but the way I learn kanji is mostly from listening to Japanese songs and reading their lyrics. Maybe it's not neccesarily the right way, but it works, so why not use it? I also simply write kanji a couple of times on paper sometimes, too.