I think the order of Heisig's method is rock solid and with Anki and the keyword to keep you from forgetting them is imagining the stories actually worth it?
It requires full concentration making it boring and far slower than perhaps writing down the keyword and the kanji next to it while revising in Anki every day.
It'd make it far easier to go through RTK faster by adding more kanji a day.
Personally imagining the stories is something I hate because I can't listen to music or anything while doing it and coming up with good stories isn't all that pleasant either.

What I'd like to know is has anyone tried:
Cutting out the stories but following Heisigs kanji order and keywords while continuing to review every day in Anki? If so did it work well?

Edit: Is there a way to undo changes to an Anki deck? My deck contained multiple versions of the same card I tried to delete them and pretty much lost my entire deck and every story I added.

subkulture Wrote:I think the order of Heisig's method is rock solid and with Anki and the keyword to keep you from forgetting them is imagining the stories actually worth it?
It requires full concentration making it boring and far slower than perhaps writing down the keyword and the kanji next to it while revising in Anki every day.
It'd make it far easier to go through RTK faster by adding more kanji a day.
Personally imagining the stories is something I hate because I can't listen to music or anything while doing it and coming up with good stories isn't all that pleasant either.

What I'd like to know is has anyone tried:
Cutting out the stories but following Heisigs kanji order and keywords while continuing to review every day in Anki? If so did it work well?

Quality over Quantity.

You might speed things up for now. But you'll end up paying for it by not doing things right the first time.
RTK is not a race. It is for the long term. If you don't spend time learning good stories that stick in your head, you'll spend more time in future coming up with new stories over and over. Even if you went as slow as 5-6 kanji a day, you could finish the book in a year. You have your whole life to learn Japanese.

Anyway, Why not use this website (kanji.koohii.com) and copy/paste other people's stories?

That's the beauty of the RevTK website. Everyone can share their RTK stories.
You don't have to make up your own stories for every kanji.
Half the stories I've saved are not mine.
Often the most popular story is good enough (but not always).

Personally, I use kanji.koohii.com for Heisig study.
You can use Anki for other things (like Core 6k, JLPT, and sentence decks).

Btw, are you A.D.D. or similar? I'm being serious. You hate studying RTK because you can't listen to music or do anything else at the same. That's messed up.

Finally, how far are you into Heisig?
What kanji have you studied up to?
Also, are you reading the book?

Thanks.

[Zgarbas]

If you're going by rote memorization, then you might as well skip the keywords while you're at it and learn an actual reading/stand-alone term while you're at it... they keywords are there to aid the stories and have no long-term value aside from that.
That being said, of course, most people go by rote memorization without Heisig. Worked out for many, but progress is definitely slower and it doesn't stick as well. You're investing time into the stories and if you do it right it pays off in the long run.

I think stories are important, especially in the earlier stages. However I don't think I've made more than 10 stories myself out of the 3600+ in my deck, I just take one I like from the shared stories section, and it's been working for me. I think making your own stories makes it a bit more memorable than just taking someone else's. But if you're like me and you think that it takes way too much time and makes the whole process boring, then just copy a story from this site and paste it into Anki, it doesn't take more than a few seconds and it doesn't take much for that small effort to pay off.

chamcham Wrote:Anyway, Why not use this website (kanji.koohii.com) and copy/paste other people's stories?

I've been doing this but I can rarely use other people stories, I need to edit them because insane amounts of them don't use the exact keywords of primitives or they contain multiple keywords when 1 can be used so I've shared a lot of my own.

chamcham Wrote:Btw, are you A.D.D. or similar? I'm being serious. You hate studying RTK because you can't listen to music or do anything else at the same. That's messed up.

No, I love studying as long as it's not boring but (RTK)kanji is boring I've read random textbooks on Japanese for 12 hours straight plenty of times.

chamcham Wrote:Finally, how far are you into Heisig?

Over 500 now so 1/4 of the way in 90%+ correct answers on kanji. I've ensured no matter what to do a minimum of adding 5 a day.

It's been proven that remembering stuff using stories make it far easier than without. Memory easily forgets, by using a story, you give order to what you want to memorize. I've seen a TV show which was solely focused on memory and shown it to you that if you make up a story, remembering stuff is much easier.

However, I don't like making up stories. I think of the primitives as ingredients that you mix up to get something else. Something along the line of "Bread + Meat + Cheese = Cheeseburger". While it does work for many kanji, there are many others where it simply does not work. Sometimes, the problem lies in the primitive, sometimes it's just the Kanji itself that doesn't work well. For the hardest ones in which no story sticks in my head, I just force the Kanji as-if into my memory.


This is to say, you learn however you want. If you choose Heisig's method, that is because you feel it is far easier for you to learn by primitives. If you don't learn the kanji using primitives, RTK is a waste for you.

When I started doing RTK, I didn't bother with the stories for the first few hundred. Encouraged by ancient memories of the numbers and a few of the others from way back in the day when I did five minutes of Japanese at high school, I thought I'd "just remember them".

Some I did, but many I didn't. The value of those vivid generated associations and images (not always quite the same thing, for me anyway) became clearer as the numbers mounted - and I've since eaten humble pie and gone back and added 'em in for many of those "too easy" early characters.

FWIW. Mileage varies, but Heisig's genius gets more apparent the further in I get. It's something of a cliché on here that he teaches you a lot about how your memory works, but it's true.

Stories help a lot, but you don't have to spend so much time making them.

When I learned new kanji I would read one or two stories from this site to get a general feel for the kanji and its radicals. Some stories I remembered, some I didn't. During reps, my focus was on writing the kanji once, from memory. For me, this process was a lot faster than simply focusing on a story.

I went Kanji->Keyword btw.

What also happens to me is that I copy one story from the board, that which I think is best, but when the keyword is coming up, I remember one of the other stories I read.

subkulture Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:Anyway, Why not use this website (kanji.koohii.com) and copy/paste other people's stories?

I've been doing this but I can rarely use other people stories, I need to edit them because insane amounts of them don't use the exact keywords of primitives or they contain multiple keywords when 1 can be used so I've shared a lot of my own.

chamcham Wrote:Finally, how far are you into Heisig?

Over 500 now so 1/4 of the way in 90%+ correct answers on kanji. I've ensured no matter what to do a minimum of adding 5 a day.

Well, of course you have to edit people's stories. We all think differently. That's part of the Heisig process. At least you've got people's stories to give you some ideas or inspirations. I remember doing Heisig up to 500 WITHOUT this site because I didn't know about it! It took much longer to think of a good story that sticks, to measure and cut out physical flashcards and fill them out and then review. Just be grateful you've got stories to edit!

Maybe it's because you've never tried learning it the traditional way? If that's the case you're VERY lucky. And it would also explain why you're even asking whether stories are helpful. haha. If you had to learn by rote memorization you'd have to write each character 100 times over and repeat every so often. that's ONE character ... do that for 2000 of them. Kids in asia cover 2000 kanji over several years of school, plus they're immersed so they're constantly exposed passively. But as an adult you probably don't want to spend several years, You probably want to learn the 3000 kanji in as little as 3 months right? That's not going to happen by rote memorization. So YES the stories are worth it!

You've already done 500 kanji and can remember 90%+ so shouldn't that already answer the question for yourself?

I understand it's boring, monotonous, dry and excruciatingly tedious, been there done that lol. but man does it pay off when you're done! The rest of the language learning is pretty smooth sailing since characters are already in your head, you just have to focus on vocabulary, listening and speaking.

OH YEAH, think about why you are learning the language. If you just want to learn to read and speak, then you probably don't need to focus so much on learning to write (doing heisig)

Miyumera Wrote:OH YEAH, think about why you are learning the language. If you just want to learn to read and speak, then you probably don't need to focus so much on learning to write (doing heisig)

I wouldn't even think about learning a language unless my goal was at least to attain native level.

But yeah I've never tried learning through rote memorization I just thought with Anki if i could continue to get correct answers by just doing reviews in Anki after writing it out once on paper beforehand it'd be easier and save time but if it's not possible then yeah the stories are definitely necessary.

subkulture Wrote:But yeah I've never tried learning through rote memorization I just thought with Anki if i could continue to get correct answers by just doing reviews in Anki after writing it out once on paper beforehand it'd be easier and save time but if it's not possible then yeah the stories are definitely necessary.

You could do that, but the elements of each character would have no meaning to you they'd just be boxes, lines and dots with no relation to each other. it'd be difficult to remember and in long run as everyone else says you'll end up resorting to sitting down and writing each character over and over.

Another benefit of keywords is that they help you to understand the character and I personally find there is a lot of cultural history in the characters. eg. Thunder is 'rain' over 'rice field'. not what we think about these days as the definition of thunder but there was a time when.....

If you really hate the stories, you don't -have- to do them, but you would then have to come up with some other mnemonic device and some other way besides the keywords to uniquely identify characters and quiz from question->write the kanji.

It's not impossible because other people that find the story mnemonics don't work for them have gone other directions, usually starting with memorizing the traditional radicals and their names and building up some other kind of mnemonic system.

Learning the characters without mnemonics is probably impossible - if you tried your own brain would start betraying you and you'd find yourself thinking about what parts of a character you fail a lot look like and before you know it you're making mnemonics again, just unsystematically and inconsistently and wasting a lot of effort trying -not- to make them.

Look at these 2 kanji: 楢 (japanese oak) and 樽 (barrel)
This is an example in which not having a story can get your brain confused.
They are just too similar.

But if you are doing reviews from kanji to keyword then it's not completely wrong to not use a story.

You can consider to make up stories just for the most similar kanji.
猫 (cat) and 描 (draw) is another example.
For example you can think that 描 looks more symmetric so it is a good drawing.
Instead in 猫 the left part has been twisted by a cat.
These are a kind of "soft stories" that can speed the process up.
I sometimes use these "high level stories" because they are easier.

I agree that you do not need a story for remembering 欝 and 鬱 (if you do not care about writing) because they are so strange that stick to your brain.
Or you can say that are too depressing to draw!

I think that the point of rtk is to make you so used to kanji that they became like the roman letters.

I did RtK in 6 weeks. Like a boss, if I do say so myself. (well, technically I tried doing it a year ago and gave up, and then tried again and did it in six weeks - not quite as impressive, but for the purposes of this post, makes no difference - point is, I did do it in 6 weeks).

And my answer is yes, it's worth it. It's the best thing you could do. If it wasn't for the stories, I would still be spending most of my day struggling with reviewing RtK (and, inevitably, coming up with various less effective tricks for remembering it), instead of getting it done in 30-40 minutes every morning (and at a very relaxed pace, no rushing), and then merrily studying the actual language.

And even in those six weeks, I found that studying new Kanji was never more boring or tiring than reviewing with Anki. Wasn't much fun either, but at worst it was the same level of unpleasantness. The fastest way to get through the unpleasantness that is learning RtK is with the stories.

P.S. If you have trouble remembering a story from a keyword, it's OK to add the occasional hints to your Anki deck question. Not a list of the primitives, of course (which would be a hint to the writing of the Kanji), but hints about the story.

Here are a couple of examples of hints I have in my deck:
1. Question:
atmosphere

(This is #atmosphere# as in ambiance, mood).
Answer:
雰
2. Question:
item

"Two items? Three items?" (the kanji is a counter for items)
Answer:
箇

As you can maybe tell, they're mostly just copy pasted from the story I got off this site, I didn't actually write most of them

The stories are freaking hilarious. There are still occasions I think or hear a keyword and have to hold in a laugh due to the ridiculous nature of the mnemonics presented on this site. They've enriched my life, if only a little.

As an aside, once the stories were learned (written down once, glanced at a few times: not actually included in my Anki deck at all) I never had to look at them again. Over time the story doesn't have to be remembered unless you want to for the most part. It's become internalized, as Heisig predicted.

Stansfield123 Wrote:And even in those six weeks, I found that studying new Kanji was never more boring or tiring than reviewing with Anki.

Perhaps I put in to much mental effort and time into the stories and originally memorising the kanji than I should as it's led to being so unpleasant my time spent procrastinating is several fold longer(hours) than time spent actually adding kanji. Reviewing kanji is a breeze though I actually enjoy it because I barely ever fail.

subkulture Wrote:

Stansfield123 Wrote:And even in those six weeks, I found that studying new Kanji was never more boring or tiring than reviewing with Anki.

Perhaps I put in to much mental effort and time into the stories and originally memorising the kanji than I should as it's led to being so unpleasant my time spent procrastinating is several fold longer(hours) than time spent actually adding kanji. Reviewing kanji is a breeze though I actually enjoy it because I barely ever fail.

Studying is hard the first time around because you have to spend time making/copying stories. But it gets easier after that. After you make it through, you'll only need to revise stories if they're not working for you.

When I look at a Heisig keyword, I think of the very first idea that comes to my head. Because I'm likely to think of that same idea again in the future when i see/think of the same keyword. As soon as that happens, I try to see if a story pops up in my head. If I can't, then I look at other people's stories and choose one. It also helps to add your own personal experience. Take the people and experiences in your life and make them part of your stories.

It's OK if you don't have a good story the first time through.
In the course of reviewing, I sometimes imagine new stories that I couldn't the first time around. So over time, my stories are revised and I only keep the best ones.

If you find that a story doesn't work for you, delete it immediately (even if you can't think of a better story at that time).

It really doesn't have to take long. Stansfield123 finished it in 6 weeks. But even a year is fine. There's no rush. The important thing is that you're constantly pressing forward and keeping your retention rate high. But reviewing is more important than adding new kanji. So if you're failing reviews miserably, don't add any more kanji until you get better. If you keep piling on new kanji too quickly, your review stack will get out of hand.

Like some other people already said, just use some story you like from this site, they are just fine most of the time. There were some cases when I really didn't like any of them and made my own, but most of the time I would just pick a story, close my eyes and imagine that story for a minute or so and then add it to anki. Really fast and simple. The first 600 or so Kanji I did without this site, and after I found this site my speed went up remarkably (started adding at the least 100 a day) without my reviews getting noticeably worse. So at least for me, copy pasting entire stories were no problem at all (I was careful though to not just read them once, I tried to visualize them in my head most of the time).