Very useful tool!, December 12, 2000

These are very good, functional flashcards! These are an excellent addition to any Japanese language students already large pile of reference materials! However, I found these cards to be somewhat hard to keep together. They each measure about 2x3 inches (and there are so many of them). They should have made the box so you could keep them together according to grade. But don't let that stop you from buying these, as they are well worth the price. I especially like to use these cards along with Kanji Gold.

moderately useful tools, April 30, 2000

I am especially lazy in my study of Kanji and bought both sets because I am desperate for any help I can get at any cost (I also own a Canon WordTank for example).

If I weren't so lazy I would just make my own flashcards. The cards themselves are smaller than I had imagined. I needed both sets to find all of the first 100 Kanji taught in first year Japanese at Harvard (although I think 96 of these were in the first set). The cards do not have Kana to identify the Kanji, and what is worse uses (I think) Hepburn romanization, not the system used in Jorden and Chaplin that I am more familiar with, and is more logical. In other words they say "chi" and "ti". In any case, I would much prefer that they didn't use romanization at all, as I also need all the kana practice I can get too!

You get what you pay for, July 19, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
These cards are cheap. At $13.97 they are about $.03 per card, but you get what you pay for: poorly design cards printed on small, thin squares of paper; stroke order characters scrawled by hand; and the use of romanji despite strong sentiment among educators that it should be abandoned as it interferes with mastering basic kana skills. I give this product only 1 star because even though it is very cheap, I still felt a little ripped off because the quality is so poor.

I recommend 'Japanese Kanji Flashcards 1' published by White Rabbit Press, ISBN 0974869406. True they cost a few cents more per cards, but they are well worth it. I bought mine through the "New and Used" link so I paid about six-and-a-half cents per card, but the features are well worth it for me: the design and printing is excellent, you get more vocab, better definitions, images of kanji which look similar so you don't get confused them, stroke order diagrams in typeset fonts (not handwritten); and, of course, readings in kana scripts (no romanji). Also, they are the same size and shape as regular playing cards, a little large for some people's hands, but I've gotten use to them.

Learning kanji is a lot of hard work. If you are a student on a very limited budget, then the Tuttles cards do have the basic kanji information in a flashcard format, but if you can afford a few pennies more per card I recommend investing in the "Japanese Kanji Flashcards 1" product--you get a lot more for the money. It's worth is just for the extra example words (six per card).

The biggest problem with the White Rabbit Press cards is that there aren't enough of them. I have written the publisher about this, and they said we can expect Set 2 with 700+ cards sometime later this year, so hopefully they will be out by the time I'm finished with Set 1. Nihongo Ganbatte!

The Reviews are Lies, July 13, 2004

I got these cards as a gift from my teacher, and I just completed the first set (I already knew some). These cards are perfect, the big type allows you to see the kanji clearly, and compounds teach you some of common readings, and it has how to write, along with all the on and kun readings. True, they are in romaji, but RTK also uses romaji. Most of the reviews have just been people going wah wah wah about losing them and them being small. I haven't lost a single card, and how hard can they be to organize? It's not like I'm building a house of (flash)cards with them. The romaji, perhaps unacceptable, is commonplace in kanji learning materials, and the thickness and size is not a problem at all. Don't get these cards if you have the attention span of a 10 year old, but other than that they are excellent.

useful, but not the best, February 24, 2004

Making your own kanji flashcards is A LOT of work (I've tried it) so I definitely recommend buying a set. I tried these Tuttle cards and then read a review here saying that the White Rabbit Press cards were the best, so I thought I would try them too. (I'm always in the market for anything that is going to save me some time.) Compared to the White Rabbit Press cards, the Tuttle cards are not as useful. The vocabulary words they picked are not always something you would use everday and the definitions are usually just one or two words. Also, I found several mistakes, and I'm still a beginner! The White Rabbit cards are much larger (and thicker) so they had more room for more vocabulary (each card has 6 examples--Tuttle has only four) and the definitions on the White Rabbit Press Kanji Flashcards are more like the ones that you'd find in a dictionary. They show if nouns are countable or uncountable or both, like in "(an) internal medicine." Overall I think the White Rabbit cards are a much better investment. I had to search Google to find them, but I found the author's email address and he said they should be on Amazon soon.

Try another product, February 19, 2004
Reviewer: A reader
I have tried hand made cards and the Tuttle Kanji Cards - OK, but easily lost or bent, and hard to organize. I just received the White Rabbit Press Japanese Flashcards - these are keepers! They are the size of standard playing cards, durable, easy to read and have stroke order as well as examples on the cards. And they fit neatly back into their box!