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+--- Thread: Who Introduced you to Heisig? (/thread-1236.html)
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Who Introduced you to Heisig? - tuuli - 2008-02-25
I heard about Heisig through the article this fall in (I think) the Japan Times that was about the book and this site as well (thankfully!) I came here and read people's comments and was inspired.
I have also been intermediate level Japanese with elementary school reading ability for a while
so I had nothing to lose...I know I'd picked the book up at stores before and done the typical "where's the Japanese?" scan before putting it down. Oops.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Aikiboy - 2008-02-25
I've been in Japan for quite a while now and had pretty much no interest in learning Japanese other than the intial kana and kanji stumblings. My conversation isn't bad though. Someone mentioned aikido in the last couple of days somewhere? I started with karate-doh, then aikido and kobudo. When I got to Japan I joined an aikido dojo and started iaido. I'm strictly aikido now, hence, aikiboy
I started working with a guy who decided to study for the level 2 test and he wanted me to study with him. I felt bad cause I've been here way longer so I decided to do the test. Actual studying started November '06. I didn't bother to study the 200 grammar points, just worked on vocab and I missed passing by .02%. Anyway, while studying the vocab with excel@japanese, I bumped into a friend at Starbucks and told him a funny way I remembered words, not kanji. He told me there was a whole book like that, and I thought it was a different book I'd seen and wasn't interested in.
But I got the study bug and had downloaded a ton of free Japanese stuff in the fall. I finally opened the Heisig file in January '07 and realized that this is what Joe was talking about. I did about 100 kanji sitting at school that day and thought it was amazing. Then I discovered SRS with Memory Lifter and I started the method in February '07. I typed my ENTIRE list of kanji, keywords and stories. What a struggle that was!
Then Anki came about and I started my reviews from scratch in May '07. Then perhaps there was an update or my deck, not being proper and including primitives caused a problem and I had to restart my reviews from scratch again after about 1000 in. (Thanks resolve for the many band-aids on my deck!) But I didn't give up and I finished at the end of last summer.
My new goal is to continue the Heisig reviews and work on the Kanji in Context frequent vocab/kanji list and tackle the grammar and perhaps next year shoot for level one.
Oh, so the point of the post
, Joe mentioned it briefly but bittorrent gets the credit!
BTW, after much hounding on my part, I convinced two people to try Heisig. One finished Book one and the other stopped at 500. But no matter how hard I try to convince people, no one has taken up using Anki. The one guy who finished spent 10,000 yen ordering special precut cards to write all the kanji on. He DID NOT do the Leitner system though. Go figure.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - vosmiura - 2008-02-26
I don't remember well now. I think it might have been Kanji Clinic where I first heard about RTK. All I know is I got a copy of the sample PDF and after going through it in a weekend and remembering most of what I learned, I got hooked.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Kieron - 2008-02-26
I honestly can't remember where I heard about Heisig, at least not more specifically than "the Internet". However, I do know that finding this site was the most important factor in deciding to tackle the RTK challenge, and the forums in particular. This place has a nice high level of "helpful people studying seriously", and a correspondingly low level of "people that can barely write their native language asking for tattoo ideas".
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Mighty_Matt - 2008-02-26
When I decided to come teach English in Japan I got all gung-ho about learning Japanese and so spent a while trawling the net looking for good books etc. I would have come across the name Heisig somewhere and Googled it, eventually buying the Kana book from Amazon. I got through that pretty quickly and enjoyed it so decided to get RTK1 despite the large number of reports saying it was a gimick, wouldn't work etc.
I got through the first 150 or so, broke my arm, didn't pick it up again for a year. When I decided to I searched online again for something better than the paper cards and that brought me here. The rest is history!
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - CharleyGarrett - 2008-02-26
I heard about it from Kanji Clinic too.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Tori-kun - 2010-09-16
It's actually a quite magical story.. My girlfriend gave it to me to help me learning kanjis (see saw her effords were ending up somewhere.. in middle of nowhere, so she thought heisig is the only way out of this disaster!). Since then i use it and it has this special magical positive pressure -- learn them, just for her. (<3)
Yeah, what a nice story~
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Dragonslayer131 - 2010-09-16
Well I was just randomly google searching things (as I often do) when I typed "How to learn Japanese" and it directed me to a video on youtube from Tkyosam. I watched the video and a few of his others so I got interested when he said he learned Japanese using Heisig and AJATT. I looked up AJATT and read through that which led me to this site.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - iMat72 - 2010-09-16
Now that you mention it, I don't really remember. It was probably on ajatt.com... That's how my japanese journey really started after all!
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - joe_bevis - 2010-09-16
Khatzumoto of the infamous AJATT clan.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - EratiK - 2010-09-16
We were introduced by the mule.
I was looking for a kanji dictionnary (I had no idea how edict and such worked at the time), or at least a kanji lexicon, and I ended up with all the RTKs.
No need to say it changed my life (I had tried to rote learn 350 kanji during the three previous months; it never worked). Got to this site a couple of weeks later searching for the French RTK.
Life can really be haphazard sometimes.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - gyuujuice - 2010-09-16
I remember looking at the book in Barns & Noble and laughing at it. Then I think I read a post about it on the *gasp* Japanesepage. He was flamed as RTK isn't populat there but I thought I would look it up and I found this website. I feel guilty for snickering at the book which gave me literacy. (Well OK *partial* literacy)
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - DKnight - 2010-09-16
I just made a little research on the internet about methods of learning the Kanji. I downloaded the first chapter of Heisig and everything made too much sense... I tried it and I was euphoric, in just minutes I was learning kanji with awesome retention. Yeah, no readings, but that could come later... ordered the book right away!!
I tried learning the kanji then, but dropped the process 3 times around the 100-150 mark in the span of a few years.
Then, browsing the internet randomly I found a post mentioning this site along the lines of "yeah, reviewing the kanji is the perfect complement for the book". I googled "reviewing the kanji" and here I am. That guy was not mistaken, this site is a huge help; I'm at 950 now and steadily progressing (30-50 a day).
Method may be silly, but recognizing lots of kanji in random japanese text is extremely gratifying, and I'm sure it's going to help a lot in the future. I don't want to be like a friend of mine, who took conventional certified japanese classes and can speak like a native, but can't read newspapers or novels.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Rina - 2010-09-16
This forum!
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - ta12121 - 2010-09-16
Web but initially from the AJATT blog site.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Evil_Dragon - 2010-09-16
Friend of mine. And I was all "Yeah.. sure.."
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Asriel - 2010-09-16
Originally googled "how to remember kanji"
Found this site, didn't like that you could only review once per day.
Checked out sample chapters...didn't like it, but figured I'd give it a try. Did research, heard a lot of bad things about the book. Talked with my Japanese professor (who has umpteen years of teaching under her belt) what she thought of it. She thought it sounded like a crackpot ("Why bother learning a bunch of meaningless stories when you can just remember the kanji and the readings?" etc..). Gave up.
Came back after about a year and decided my normal kanji studies weren't getting me anywhere. Went through it and liked what it did for me. Yay.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Korvar - 2010-09-17
AJATT, I think. I downloaded the preview, read through it, thought its was thoroughly stupid, then realised 3 days later that I still remembered all the Kanji from it. From there, to Amazon!
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - Womacks23 - 2010-09-17
Mr google introduced me to Heisig.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - zigmonty - 2010-09-17
Necessity introduced me to Heisig.
I was about 50 kanji into the N5 list in class, and i was doing ok retention wise, but i kept looking at these japanese documents at work and going "holy sh*t there's a lot of them". I looked at the rate we were learning them in class and my estimate of how many i'd need to be able to have any hope of being able to read, and decided i needed a faster approach.
I was googling kanji books at work, and one of my coworkers saw me looking at the amazon page for RTK and said "That book does work, you know...". I never expected it to be quite as fun as it was though... i was bracing myself for hardcore studying. I guess it was heisig that convinced me that it was possible to make quick progress and enjoy the journey.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - thecite - 2010-09-18
Mr. Heisig came around door-knocking; the rest is history.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - vonPeterhof - 2010-09-18
Wikipedia. I was trying to find out about various methods of learning the kanji and so I stumbled upon this section - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji#Kanji_education
From there I went to Wikipedia's page for RtK, which had a link to the pdf sample. This made me somewhat interested. After that I searched the Runet for the surname "Хейсиг". Not that I really cared about what my fellow countrymen thought about the book, just that, given our legal nihilism regarding copyright, I was hoping to find something more than book reviews, if you know what I mean
. In the process I came across a mention of this site, recommended to "those poor souls" who decided to go all the way with the "much-maligned Heisig method". For some reason, that made me even more interested, and the prospect of not having to make any physical flashcards clinched the deal for me.
Who Introduced you to Heisig? - truando - 2010-09-18
OK, I have a cool story:
It started 12 years ago.
I was reading a French comic by Benoît Peeters and Frédéric Boilet called "Tôkyô est mon jardin". In this comic the hero was learning Kanji from a book called "Les Kanji dans ma tête" by an author called Yves Maniette. In the comic you could see the cover and the title well, and also a couple of pages from the inside.
I was wondering if this book really existed, but I couldn't find it. I then "googled" - well google didn't exist back then - Yves Maniette and found a personal mail that a man of this name wrote to some other guy. I wrote him a mail, and it turned out that it was the right person, and that he was still writing the book which wasn't out yet, a translation of Heisig. Boilet was his friend and had seen the manuscript, that's how it ended in the comic I was reading.
To make a long story short, or actually a short story long since it has been 12 years ago, Yves Maniette gave me Heisig's email address and Heisig sent me the book from Japan.
Unfortunately at that time I didn't have the stamina to finish it (there was no SRS and no RevTK) and stopped studying Japanese - only to pick it and the book up again a few months ago...
This time I won't quit.