Hey guys, got a bit of a problem. I've been way, way, way too lenient on myself when reviewing kanji I've learned. I reviewed most of the kanji by relying too heavily on the story - i.e. making the story pop up every time I review, instead of simply going from keyword > kanji. I know I might be able to simply 'review' on this site until it all works out - but the problem is, as a result of my leniency, the reviews are too spaced out.

So, would it be ridiculous to go back through the book again? Or am I just panicking too much? I tried doing the JLUP mod deck this morning, and blitzed through the first 70 kanji, and the couple that I did have trouble with I can now easily write from memory, as a result of more vivid stories.

I just want to know that I won't be wasting my time (if I haven't already) going back through the book and "relearning" them on anki.

So you just click on the button so that you can read the story each time you review and can't instantly recognize the keyword for a kanji?
I recommend you not to do this, because it gives you 90% of the answer for you. Your way of recalling both the Kanji, keyword and the story/mnemonic becomes dependent on you getting a que, which you won't get in a real situation.
When I review, if I have to resort to a hint, like reading my story or it takes me too long to remember I always hit the "failed" button.

Only you knows the answer, of course you can never lie to yourself and cheating would immediately be caught by you yourself... The thing is, notice yourself if you are learning, and if so; then that technique might just be effective for you... Just don't lose the essence of learning.. Good luck...

I make paper flash cards in addition to the online ones and try to review those constantly (i.e. I take some with me almost everywhere now and review when I have some down time, even if it's just at a red light). However, if I haven't had the chance to do that much with cards in boxes 1-3 ("new" through second review), I allow myself to look at the story first if I'm floundering. By box 4, I only look at the stories if I *really have* to, and after that, if I look at the story, it's a definite "fail." (I know some people will take issue with this, and that's fine. I have my reasons for this method, and it is working for me.)

I work roughly the same way when using the paper flash cards, trying to ween myself from the stories as soon as possible, though without penalty if I need the story. (That said, I DO set aside cards if even the story left me with problems, because then I really have issues with that kanji!)

Are you trying to recall the stories without peeking first? You should really work on conjuring the image of the story from the keyword (and, just as importantly, tying that image tightly enough to the keyword that you can recall the keyword from the story when you see the kanji in context and need to identify it--I find this much more challenging than Heisig implies it will be in the Introduction to his book).

To answer your question, if you aren't recalling the stories/kanji pretty much instantly 80-90% of the time on "learned" characters, then I would say it's not only NOT a waste of time to go back through from the beginning, but it's probably a good idea. While you could use Anki, you could also just reset your cards on this website (I like this site's SRS spacing pattern better than Anki's).

Finally, I highly recommend making paper flashcards (I cut 3.5"X5" cards in half). It's slower, but the process of physically writing both the character and the *story* are really helpful in setting them in my mind early on, so it's definitely worth the extra time. Online, it's just too easy to hit "copy story," save the card and move on without really thinking about it. Plus, you can then grab a stack and take 'em with you on the go! I find the paper cards very satisfying to use, as well.

Thanks! That sounds like pretty good advice. My reasons for using the JLUP deck on anki are that it includes a japanese keyword next to the heisig one, and as a have a sentence deck with 700 sentences, it could be slightly confusing with only the heisig keyword. But like I said... I pretty much blitzed through lessons 1-5 this morning, thinking "yeah, I know this already."

So I was wondering if should go through the book, word for word, as I did the first time, or if I should simply use it as some sort of "reference" and only refer to it when I run into kani I have a loose grasp of, as I can know all the primitives already. It does seem like it would be a bit tedious to recreate stories for some of the stuff in the earlier parts of the book.