What's the point of RtK (Remembering the Kanji) ?

I've found Heisig to be helpful in learning vocabulary, and it gives you a huge headstart if you're following Japanese courses. In fact, if you plan on learning Japanese at school, I strongly recommend doing Heisig (and if possible learning basic grammar) before you begin.

Scribbling kanji on your hand or air-calligraphy is also somewhat helpful when communicating with Japanese and Chinese people sometimes, or at least gives you something to talk about when the language barrier and the cultural differences make the situation too awkward.

Also, I've found that Heisig is actually sort of consistent with how Japanese people actually store kanji in their head - I've shown rare compounds to Japanese people and they couldn't read them at all despite having supposedly learnt the kanji the compound featured by studying the individual readings. I'll admit though, that my experience here is limited so this is just anecdotal evidence and I might be wrong. At any rate, not bothering to learn individual readings is what seems to work best for me.

yudantaiteki Wrote:Although if you're asking how to learn words, you don't want jisho.org.

Is there any good resource for usage notes you recommend, besides looking up words in a J-J dictionary? Pseudo-synonyms always trip me up...