Hello, everyone! I am new to both Remebering the Kanji and the Reviewing the Kanji website, so I would like to start by saying "hello" to all of my fellow students.

I would like to start by saying that I have no background in Japanese (with the obvious exception of anime. ) However, the language, and especially the written language, has always intrigued me. After much thought, I have decided to study the language. Since it is the most daunting task, I have decided to learn the Kanji first.

A few days ago, I purchased Remembering the Kanji, and have been extremely impressed with how effective it is. It has only been two days, and I already know about 50 kanji. This rate of memorization is much faster than I expected. It has also inspired me to set an ambitious goal: finish the entire course in 1 month. I've calculated that, if I do about two lessons per day, I will be able to meet this goal.

What do you think? Is such a feat possible, or am I overly ambitious?

unless you take naps every single day and are particularly obsessed... it seems a bit unrealistic. i d say the enthusiasm will fail you. a 3 month schedule already is an impressive feat. you want to fixate kanji in your memory, not get a jumble that only lasts for weeks before it breaks down in confusion

Although I've never used RTK 1, from my observation here it seems that a lot of people start out very fast and then slow down as they progress. It's not impossible to finish in 1 month but there may be a quality-over-quantity issue, and you shouldn't expect to do the entire book as quickly as you do the first lessons.

I also think there's a danger in going too slow, though. IMO if it's going to take a year or more to do RTK you should do the "RTK lite" option described somewhere in this forum which allows you to skip half of the kanji and come back to them later.

Sure it's possible if you have the time to spend. We have uisukii on here that did it in 15 days I think! But know that you also have to review them, either using this site's review feature or an SRS like Anki. If you just go through everything without reviewing you'll start forgetting most of it quickly after you're done.

The lessons vary in sizes, so if you want to be consistent you're better off counting how many kanji you go through per day. For 30 days you'd have to do about 60-70 each day in order to reach the 2000+ mark. How long time it takes to go through that is individual, for me it'd take more than 3 hours I think. Depends on how much I'd space out and just listen to music.

The more kanji you go through, the more reviews you'll have, so also count on eventually spending hours daily on reviewing too.

If it's too much you could just spend the time you're comfortable spending, see what long-term goal that can make for, and then focus on the short-term goals of getting the daily number of kanji done. Good luck

It's not impossible, but but maintaining a slower and steady pace is the safest option, for reasons already mentioned. Especially if you're not sure whether you can keep up with your goals/expectations and handle the reviews (keeping up with reviews was a challenge for me even with just 15 new kanji a day). Better safe than sorry, I'd say. By the way, keep in mind that the first part of the book is the easiest, you'll notice the difficulty will increase.

If you want to spend more time and effort you can also choose to start with basic vocab & grammar at the same time rather than focusing everything on RTK. I used a hybrid kanji/grammar/vocab approach in my first half year or so of study and I sure don't regret it. I found it to be motivating because you're actually learning some Japanese right away, but still tackling the "kanji challenge" slowly but surely. I recommend Japanese the Manga Way for grammar; it's a solid method for the basics, starts from scratch and doesn't conflict with RTK at all.

You'll find a lot of conflicting opinion on the matter, and that's not to say there aren't valid points either way. If you are going to speed through it, one thing I can say based on experience (^TwoMoreCharacters was correct) is that it can be very rewarding and stimulating IF you have a passion about writing kanji (maybe writing in general), and you are able to feel good about what you're doing. If you don't genuinely enjoy it, those 300, 400, 500, 600+ (depending oh how fast your initial completion is) reviews, I would imagine, would be crushing as opposing to a fun challenge.


If you are planning to write out the kanji with pen and paper, what I did was experiment with different grid sizes until I found myself using a Japanese manuscript paper template, and printing them out. The squares are (in my opinion, rather large) what is used in Japanese writing, and it might be interesting or useful to get used to what it is like to properly fit kanji in manuscript form.

原稿用紙 200字 (200 squares)
http://www.jakka.jp/mondai/note/200-v-n-1.pdf


Whichever method you end up taking, try to keep in mind that if things are getting out of control, etc. you can always stop adding new kanji until you are ready to continue. It isn't a race, nor is it an endurance test. The best pace to go at is whatever pace suits you.


EDIT: As Savii, mentioned; "Japanese: The Manga Way" can be an entertaining and very useful introduction to Japanese. It uses a large selection of sentence patterns and grammatical examples from manga/comics which provide a less "textbook" array of examples, a lot of it is interesting and sticks in your memory. The coverage is excellent and thorough.

If you are interested, a while back I made an Anki deck based on the book, which could help if you wanted to read through the book and use Anki to review the sentences.
The deck itself:
http://www.mediafire.com/?bn3zm8dnwbifoc4
The Media Folder (needed if you want the comics in the Anki cards -they should appear automatically if you have this folder in your Anki folder):
http://www.mediafire.com/?c9u09v5ccxwpkgx

Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions. It was interesting to see the opinions of different people.

I think that I will continue to do two lessons per day. I think that it would be a fun and interesting challenge, and I do have the time to devote to it. If I find that it becomes too challenging, then I will slow down.

I am certain that I could never learn the kanji in 15 days, though. It is a very impressive feat, but I don't think that I could memorize them quite that fast.

I initially aimed to finish an RTK deck for books 1 & 3 in a month. Alas, it took me 82 days. Show and tell:

If I were you, I'd look into getting that Japanese writing paper. You'll still develop a sense of proportion for each kanji without writing them neatly, but you lose out on the better handwriting. I know I did.

I'd also look into Anki (digital flashcard program). My retention rate for mature cards (kanji that I don't need to see for at least a month before I forget them) is still above 90%, which seems about average for RTK.

Good luck 8)

Did it in 3 months and regret it. You end up with tons of reviews, took a year for it to get to a nice low level.

That said, if you can do it in 1 month it may be ok if you simply start from the beginning again the day you finish and add 10 a day from there. It would then be very easy and you could dedicate more time to actual Japanese grammar/sentences/reading/etc.

Animosophy Wrote:<snip>

Always nice to see images of the process for other people. After the initial review all of my pages were taped together as was large enough to work as a large window curtain (which I did for a short period), lol. There is still a heavy stack of manuscript pages full of kanji in a draw somewhere. Definitely makes for an interesting bit of memorabilia -or something to show people and watch their jaw hit the floor 笑う。

You'll have to review RTK after you're done with adding the new cards(stopping the rtk reviews is one of the big mistakes). Take it easier with rtk, at least 2-3 months and maybe learn kana/basic grammar when you feel you've more time for japanese. It's hard enough to keep up with reviews and adding new cards every day when you're not "addicted" to anki yet. RTK is only a small(but important) step in learning japanese.


"What do you think? Is such a feat possible, or am I overly ambitious?"

It's possible, but you're overly ambitious about it You may hate it at some point, when you have 500 reviews and not feeling like to do them at all. I've tried doing 20, 50 and even 100 new card a day... and at the end the average was around 13/day. So if I had just been doing 20/day it would've been a lot faster. It's the same as I'm learning vocab now, I've decided to stick with 20/day and do other things in japanese, so I don't need to spend my whole day reviewing in anki.

It's possible if you properly encode every single kanji.
Many people try to sprint through RTK passively, which ultimately leads to burnout.

So, make sure to use those mnemonics and associations

uisukii Wrote:

Animosophy Wrote:<snip>

Always nice to see images of the process for other people. After the initial review all of my pages were taped together as was large enough to work as a large window curtain (which I did for a short period), lol. There is still a heavy stack of manuscript pages full of kanji in a draw somewhere. Definitely makes for an interesting bit of memorabilia -or something to show people and watch their jaw hit the floor 笑う。

Haha, definitely. When I saw twofoe's thread with the wall of kanji, it just screamed "try and beat this".

OP, if you have a real desire to learn Japanese, then no amount of momentary boredom/disinterest will outweigh the perceived outcomes. That goes for anything; kanji, vocabulary, grammar etc. etc. I knew from the start that I wouldn't remember the days I didn't feel like studying (which doesn't happen often if you're really interested in what you're trying to achieve). I know I'll only get fonder and fonder of my notebook so, try and beat me.

楽しい思い出を作りましょう。

I know what you mean, that picture also inspired my to try something similiar. I think I have enough to cover the intended wall but I'm too lazy to start attaching them..

The template is from:
http://nubero.ch/downloads/index.html

RTK 1 took me a year to complete, but I was doing other things too. I was doing Tae-kim and Core 2000 concurrently and watching J-Dramas. I didn't really experience any stress throughout this year, and could switch off a lot and hang out with friends without the worry of having to 'keep on top of my reviews'. What's more, I really enjoyed RTK and I think thats because I only focussed on it when I was in the mood for it. I haven't been back AT ALL since the end of that first year to review the kanji because I haven't found a need to; it's enough that I see then 'in the wild'.

RoyalBlue Wrote:I know what you mean, that picture also inspired my to try something similiar. I think I have enough to cover the intended wall but I'm too lazy to start attaching them..

I know you didn't post that picture to be corrected, but the vertical line in 生 starts above the top horizontal line. Since that's a common character and a part of other common characters, I had to say something. Sorry

[fuaburisu]

Clyde1992 Wrote:(...) It has only been two days, and I already know about 50 kanji. This rate of memorization is much faster than I expected. It has also inspired me to set an ambitious goal: finish the entire course in 1 month. I've calculated that, if I do about two lessons per day, I will be able to meet this goal.

What do you think? Is such a feat possible, or am I overly ambitious?

It doesn't work like that. The first lessons are very easy, both the characters are easy, the primitives (radicals) are simple, and the keyword are all fairly simple and unique.

Once you get to ~500 characters it gets more complicated. You have to keep adding the core elements (primitives), keywords become more abstract and many keywords start to have similar meanings. You have to spend more time identifying and solidifying in your mnemonics, the uniqueness of each new primitive as well as characters that have similar meanings.

There are always exceptions, some people will do better than others with the mnemonic process, and some people just have a really good memory overall. If you want good results, aiming for six months is challenging enough. That means committing to do min. 10 kanji a day, no matter what. If you skip a day (you should probably take a rest), that means up to 15-20 on days where you have more time.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

RoyalBlue Wrote:I know what you mean, that picture also inspired my to try something similiar. I think I have enough to cover the intended wall but I'm too lazy to start attaching them..

I know you didn't post that picture to be corrected, but the vertical line in 生 starts above the top horizontal line. Since that's a common character and a part of other common characters, I had to say something. Sorry

Why are you apologizing? You have done me a favor. Thanks!

uisukii Wrote:Always nice to see images of the process for other people. After the initial review all of my pages were taped together as was large enough to work as a large window curtain (which I did for a short period), lol.

Lol, amazing!

@OP, what about finishing it in two months? Also, keep in mind that in the future your reviews will build up to big numbers, which means lesser study time, so I think you can't divide new Kanji evenly on the target studying period!

Two things. First, don't use lessons to measure your progress. Some of them are obscenely long, while others are extremely short. I believe the longest is somewhere along 130 chars while the shortest is <20.

To finish in a month, you'd need to be doing slightly less than 70 characters per day (2042/70 = 29.17). If you are serious, then try to aim for that number. The best place to end a session is at the end of a primitive group (it gets a lot more organized past the initial few characters).

Secondly, going at that rate means A LOT of reviews. You are looking at something like 300-600 reviews per day depending on your SRS model and retention rate. You are going to hit lots of reviews in just one week, and it's not going to let up until you've stopped adding to the deck.
Depending on weather you write down each character (and you should, since you won't get much writing practice elsewhere for a while), this could take you a good 2 hours or more just to do the reviews. 70 characters should also take you at least 2 hours to learn if you are using premade stories from this site, and more if you are mostly writing your own stories. As you see, going at such rate can easily cost you more than half your daytime.

That said, you don't have to finish it in exactly one month. Pick a rate of study which you are comfortable with, and if necessary, skip a day or two when you need to catch up on reviews. As long as you never slack on reviews, feel free to add as many facts as you like to your SRS.

A month is better than rushing through it in two weeks, but still a little too fast. I finished in just under six weeks, and spent 4-6 hours/day on it. I would finish my reviews, study new cards (learn the primitives, pick out the stories for the Kanji), add and review the new cards, in that order (this order is important, because it helps you encounter the Kanji in Heisig's order one more time, before Anki starts gradually mixing them together).

I don't think you should go faster than six weeks (50 new Kanji a day, on average), because it will hurt your retention rate. The faster you add the Kanji, the less time you spend reviewing them before you add more. That means you'll retain fewer of them.

The obvious counter-argument is that that's fine, since you can just review and learn them better later on when you're done adding. However, when you review later on with SRS, you no longer review in Heisig's original order. It's much, much harder to learn the Kanji if they're popping up in random order. One of the main benefits of the Heisig method is how the Kanji are bunched together by primitives.

If you take six weeks, you will be able to review the "bunches" relatively together, a few more times. Then, later on, the randomizing Anki does comes in handy to solidify knowledge you already have, help you transition towards the real world (where Kanji do show up in random order). But it's very important to take the time and learn the Kanji in bunches, first.

Hello, everyone. I have just completed Lesson 7, and I have a question. Please forgive me, if I am posting in the wrong place.

I was studying the character for sniff, 嗅. In the Reviewing the Kanji Flashcards, a drop is placed next to the primitive for "Large." In the book, however, it is not. Which is the correct character? Are they both correct?
Thank you, in advance.

Clyde1992 Wrote:Hello, everyone. I have just completed Lesson 7, and I have a question. Please forgive me, if I am posting in the wrong place.

I was studying the character for sniff, 嗅. In the Reviewing the Kanji Flashcards, a drop is placed next to the primitive for "Large." In the book, however, it is not. Which is the correct character? Are they both correct?
Thank you, in advance.

The one without a drop is the new form, and may still be unofficial. I think it's not difficult to learn both, but it's up to you.

mrbryce Wrote:unless you take naps every single day and are particularly obsessed... it seems a bit unrealistic. i d say the enthusiasm will fail you. a 3 month schedule already is an impressive feat. you want to fixate kanji in your memory, not get a jumble that only lasts for weeks before it breaks down in confusion

I have to agree with mrbryce here. Learning takes time. Its easy to get a large number of things in your short-term memory (its called cramming), but those things will not stick. You need a solid foundation in anything you do in order to progress without too many hitches. This only occurs through time and diligence.

There really isn't any rush. Kanji aren't going anywhere. Take your time to learn them properly. The mind needs time to marinate things; if it is always being bombarded with hoards of information, it will quickly get bogged down and start deleting things.

To put it simply, a deep understanding of 500 kanji will get you much farther than a shallow understanding of 2000+ kanji.

^To be slightly critical, but would it be really fair to consider RtK as providing a "deep" understanding of the kanji? Wouldn't such a description entail a familiarity of readings and in which context they are generally used?