Sometimes I come across a situation like this when doing a daily review so I'll use an example that I encountered today:

The keyword "vegetable" (菜) came up and I use the story "grab the vegetables from under the flowers" which I remembered pretty easily but for some reason I couldn't remember the kanji for "grab" (采). I flipped the card and recognized "grab" right away but chose "no" to fail the card. Later on in the review "grab" came up and I easily remembered it because I just encountered it in "vegetable" so I chose "easy" for that card.

I feel like I shouldn't choose "easy" for "grab" in a situation like this but I'm not sure what to do. Same with "vegetable". Did I forget the story? No, but I forgot part of the kanji. Any advice would be helpful.

[Zgarbas]

Just use the 2 option. But don't worry about it much; if you accidentally easy something it will come up at one point and you'll just fail it if you don't remember it =).

If you forget something, even if it's just a part, fail it.

If I can write the kanji, I pass it, regardless of whether I remember the story or not. That's what counts.

If I can't write the kanji, I fail it, regardless of whether I remember the story or not. You're meant to forget the story eventually anyway.

If I have recently encountered the kanji as a component in another kanji, even though it's really easy to pass, I rate it as if it was hard or normal because I was 'artificially' reminded.

I have been choosing "yes" for the kanji that I remember easily due to artificial remembering so I'll continue doing that.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:You're meant to forget the story eventually anyway.

To those of you who are at this stage, how long did it take you to get there? How do you remember the kanji without the stories?

It really doesn't take too long for your brain to not need to rely on the stories once you start moving forward with your Japanese study. Most of the kanji in RTK are quite common, and they just start to feel second nature. As you move through RTK you'll probably start feeling that way about a lot of the early kanji in the book.

Actually, you're not meant to forget the story eventually. Heisig says that you should eventually not need it, and you should have the kanji come up first in your memory, *BUT* he says that if you forget the kanji, the story should always be there to guide you to it.

I don't really care what Heisig says, but I think the end goal is about remembering the kanji and not the story itself.

I don't do stories anymore, I just remember whole kanji by phonetic association. Or I just fail to write them altogether and look them up on my phone.

Hi !

At first, I need the exact story to remember all details of difficult kanjis.
But after a while I don't even have time to say the story exactly, I finish writing before the end of story. The hand doesn't wait for story anymore.

When this is occuring, you don't need remembering the story anymore, the job is done.