Heisig once told me that his kanji learning material was on a program for PC but was no longer available through the publisher. He suggested I check with kanjiclinic for the same or similar items. I have yet to find it. This website does not seem to provide this either. Anyone see that PC program?

How can I best use the computer in studying kanji through Heisig materials?

Thank you for your kind attention.

Personally, I think the study section of this website is the perfect computerized companion to the book. But if you really want the original Heisig PC program, I have no idea where or how you could find it. However wouldn't it be quite old by now if it is that out of print? Are we talking a DOS based program from the 90s?

The program referred to is KanjiGym Lite. There is a link to a download on the kanjiclinic.com page. I have it, and the only part of it that I like is the animated stroke order diagrams (not really sure I can trust them---may have the same errors as the book). But, it's a free download and all, so you can try it for yourself and see what you think.

I could not access the KanjiGym Lite at kanjiclinic, but I don't believe that's the PC program I had earlier mentioned. Let me explain my going to Heisig with my digital question to clarify what I was seeking in the virtual or non-virtual worlds.

I used the Heisig published material between his initial (?) Adventures in Kanjiland (if familiar with the kids game "Candyland," you can appreciate my immediate delight felt with that title) and the latest version (?) RTK. I quit my study because of the ever enormously increasing burden of memory, which demanded more and more of my time. But as I speak, a weather worn blue box of kanji cards by James W. Heisig beacons me from my bookself to continue on, ha, ha.

Half of the study battle is needless, I believe. Assuming readers agree that writing the kanji being studied is beneficial, then I found I had to use several reference books to locate all of the associated information. But what if the kanji sound is unknown? Then onward a fishing trip to locate the little bastard ha, ha (sorry, no offense intended).

Additionally, I reasoned that even if the "fishing trips" could not be eliminated, if the Heisig kanji cards were digitalized--wow that would be the golden fleece. Or at least the RTK books, which I assume would permit instantaneous cross-referencing.

So I asked Heisig if a digital form of his material was available. Even though he said not any longer, I still pressed on. I located the publishers catalog and did find a PC program listed for the Heisig program, which I do not believe was Kanjigym. I called the publisher--ah, sou desuka. mou nai desu. zannen!

True, the virtual world requires tech updating, but that has always been the case. Who knows why the digital program was discontinued.

So now I am a "born-again" kanji student trying to pick up the pieces. I return after a long absence of years, hoping that previous needless burdens have been reduced by digital means. In other words, eliminate the secretarial jobs so that I can focus my energy on the essential task of mastering kanji.

Would anyone be kind enough to share the study steps they take in kanji study by sharing either here or by email? I want to find out if any of the secretarial tasks can be done by the computer.

Many thanks.

I downloaded it not very long ago. It was from a German site. I think it was http://www.kanjigym.de/ If you cannot find a download site, perhaps I could attach the zip file to an email for you. Offhand, I don't think this is what you're looking for. On one side of the "card" is the keyword. Then you have a pad where you draw with the mouse. You then can flip it over and see the kanji. Then you can attach/review a note about it, like a story. You can at this point see an animated SOD. You can select the review either by lesson number, or by range of slot numbers (Heisig RTK1 numbers).

If I understand you correctly, you'd like them to be digital versions of the cards you can buy, with keywords, readings, compounds, and cross-reference numbers already on them. You can buy them, but they're pretty expensive (IMO), but then you have a physical box of cards...not very "searchable". I have a pdf somewhere of that, so you could print them on your own cardstock, but I never figured out how to get it to come out on 2 sides right. But that would be searchable...never thought of that. There is also http://ziggr.com/heisig/, which is a searchable heisig cross reference.

Currently, I'm coming to this site on a daily basis. I'm within 10 chapters of being done with RTK1. My first procrastination is to visit the forum, but eventually I get to the review the kanji site. I first review the expired kanji from the different boxes. Right to left (so to speak)....those that I haven't seen longest before the ones that I've seen most recently. Some do click the "review all expired" link at the bottom, but I've found that to be more difficult.

As I do that, I will inevitably fail some kanji. So, after that I'll review the stories of the failed kanji. Sometimes, I just forget how to draw a primative, but the story was fine. I remembered the primatives and put them in the right place, but just forgot the primatives form. Sometimes I confuse keywords. A fairly recent example was "intestines" vs "entrails". So, I wrote the kanji correctly for the keyword I thought I was writing for, but it was the wrong one. So, then I study to more clearly differentiate the stories of the "similar" keywords. But some, I just draw a blank. I flip the card and look at the kanji and its "Oh, yeah! That one! (again)" So, then I definitely consider abandoning the story I have and look for something more memorable. Or maybe I get the primatives right, but in the wrong order, or they're written up and down vs left and right...that sort of mistake. I may decide to tweak the story to add positioning clues.

Then I look at the time. If the above went fairly smoothly. Then I'll see if I have time to add a few more kanji. My routine is to read the chapter/lesson and try out a few basic ideas for stories, just mentally, not writing anything down. When I get to the end of the chapter, if there is time, then I'll add the whole chapters number of kanji.

I immediately fail all the ones that I just added.

Then look at the shared stories, with the uncommitted ideas that I got. I adopt stories (and there are plenty of good ones--THANK YOU!!!), or write my own. I visualize the story a couple of times--maybe a minute or two, and then "learn it", and move on. I know I'll be back to that card in a day or so.

This agenda has resulted in expired kanji coming due in clumps. Some times hundreds of kanji a day to be reviewed. They can go pretty fast some days, even if there are a lot, when I DO remember them. Sometimes, it takes me 30 seconds or more to recall the story...and naturally a few seconds to write them down. I got some elemenary school kanji practice books from theJapanesePage.com with 200 squares per page. It feels kinda cool to see the pages filled with kanji that I've written. I definitely work on getting the stroke-order correct, and also to work on the relative proportions of the primatives and parts of the primatives within the little box. Eventually, I'll have to get a teacher, or a pen-pal or something, so that I can polish that aspect of it.

So, I never add any new ones unless I can finish all the expired and failed stacks.

But you do see how this site automates the card creation and management functions? I can get to the site from home or from work, and my "card box" is there for me, without having to lug it around.

[ファブリス]

CharleyGarrett Wrote:It feels kinda cool to see the pages filled with kanji that I've written.

Same here! I think I can wallpaper one whole wall of my bedroom now, but then I might have kanji nightmares

"The magnetic chain of humanity" (Saul Bellow) stretches from Heisig to related websites, to the originator and members of this site! I especially thank CharleyGarrett. I got the KanjiGym and Zig's Heisig Index, which both seem loaded with potential. Zig's story is amazingly just like mine. Thanks to his and others' contributions, the kanji trail should be a lot less burdensome than previously.

A question about the situation of trying to find the reading for an unkown kanji. It stares you in the face but you don't have the proper sound reading in order to find it in a dictionary. In that case I use the following book:
2001 Kanji (Joseph R. De Roo; published by Institute of Japanese Studies, Tokyo).

My questions:
1 Is there the same or similar De Roo guide available online? The De Roo book helps you trace the kanji by using the upper or lower graphics of the kanji. Not exactly radicals but similar. The De Roo method seems much simpler than using a catalog of radicals.

2 What do members here do in the above case?

3 That along with online access to stroke order, kanji readings and example phrases, sentences. Is there one website dictionary that includes all of those things?

4 Does this site, Reviewing the Kanji, have the kanji coded by Heisig numbers and code words for easy retrieval? (Sorry the learning curves for many of these programs are steep. I am probably overlooking a lot but I did imput a Heisig code word in the search engine but nothing came up.)

5 Please members continue to share your study methods step by step.

First of all, for reading, I use Firefox with the rikai-chan plug-in. If you don't have rikaichan, then it is worth switching to Firefox just to get it. If you hover your mouse over a kanji (or the first of a compound) it will pop up a definition, with the reading and translation(s). Another thing it does for me (I'm 50), sometimes the font on the kanji is pretty tiny. When I hover over the kanji, it will repeat the kanji in the pop-up at a larger size, so I can see the primatives more clearly.

If I'm "offline", then I'm using Kodansha's kanji learner's dictionary, and that is organized by the SKIP system. I'm not very good with it yet, and I miss the right page too often, which is kind of frustrating.

I have a copy of KanjiGym on my palm pilot and I use it sometimes - it's pretty much got everything you need to review... and those SOD's shouldn't have mistakes, it's not part of the KanjiGym program, it's called Taka and PADict and other stuff also uses it.

At the start I had lots of trouble looking up Kanji I just came accross, especially if they were printed and not on my computer already - Now I do a few things, first I'll try and draw it on my palm pilot inside PADict and see if I get it right, this is good for kanji you can already draw all the radicals/primitives for but not soo good with ones you stab in the dark with. Failing that, I try by stroke order in the index of Kodansya's Compact Kanji Guide (Jyouyou only) or by stabbing in the dark with the radicals I can see (this dosen't work very well) Nelson is aparently the best because it dosen't just list compounds by the first Kanji like other dictionaries, but I'm not too sure.

I have never seen that De Roo book, but that system is called 'SKIP' right? does it work very well? At my university they're very pro-Nelson, and Nelson has a system to make radical lookup easier, since some Kanji might have any number of radicals in it and you don't know which one it is you can look up by the one at the top or something like that, I don't have a copy of Nelson's though (sunk $180nz into that Kodansya dictionary when I first started)

Edit: whoops, I missed CharleyGarrett's post about SKIP, how do you find using it?

Edict is also a very good resource and it has links to stroke order diagrams and heisig numbers and so on: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/wwwjdic.html

Also JWPCe has the Heisig numbers, if you right click on a kanji and select 'get info' then press 'more info' on the Kanji display screen it will tell you the Heisig number. JWPce seems to support most Kanji lookup methods aswell. I just got JWPce and JFC running in Linux and I'm really happy with them. If only I had a Windows CE handheld!

krusher: "I have never seen that De Roo book, but that system is called 'SKIP' right? does it work very well?"

No to the first question: yes to the second. Without knowing the reading, stroke number, etc. of unknown kanji my only recourse other than to ask a "walking dictionary," is to consult the De Roo book.

Basically, De Roo has about 30 graphics for the tops of kanji and about 30 for the bottom. Each graphic is coded by number and their combinations produce kanji. You look up the combined code number to find your kanji. They are also are cross-referenced to similar or related kanji and includes a very brief "story" of the elements for comprehension.

Here is the address of the publisher:

Institute of Japanese Studies
St. Joseph Friary
2-39 Roppongi 4 Chome
Minato-Ku, Tokyo 106
Japan
Tel. (03)403-8088

The tel. nuimber exchange is probably 033 now and the postal code updated will have four more digits. But using 106 will not impede delivery.
There is no ISBN on my copy although it since may have gotten one.

As I have only just reached the end of the the part of RTK1 where Heisig provides the plots/stories (the plot/story distinction seems too subtle for me so I ignore it in practice) I have been able to do the initial learning from the book with a little notepad. I'm not sure how I will record my own stories (and those borrowed from here) yet, other than by storing them here, but I may use Supermemo (see below).

The big problem I was facing was review. I hate flashcards for any purpose, so instead, as I have all the keywords and kanji in a spreadsheet with the meaning on the left and the kanji on the right edge of the page, I was printing pages out of this, folded in half to hide the answers, and writing the kanji by the keywords until I had filled the page. (I used randomisation to avoid relying on clues in the order.) This worked but was cumbersome, so having heard about Supermemo on the RTK Yahoo group, I decided to buy this for my Windows CE handheld (a Journada 720, bought cheaply on eBay). The CE version of Supermemo is - to be kind - basic and does not import unicode as such, but I found a way round this using NCR codes in XML.

Having done this, I then discovered Reviewing The Kanji, a wonderful site you may have heard of. So my reviewing problems are over. I'm effectively running two parallel review regimes, one here on RTK and the other on my handheld, which of course I can use on trains, buses and other places where I can't get online.

My background resources are JPWce both on PC and the handheld (I bought it just for JPWce). I use JPWce as an editor and copy and paste into web browsers, e-mail, or into Word or Excel, from there as I deeply dislike Windows IME, perhaps I should persevere with IME but I'm happy without it for now.

The only thing I don't bother with electronic resources for is stroke order/direction, but I have a good head for these and I find RTK1 and my Spahn & Hadamitzky more than enough. I also use S&H for a second opinion on readings and meanings. I learned about the traditional radicals, stroke styles and the basic rules of stroke order from Let's Learn Kanji by Mitamura & Mitamura. My initial training with that was invaluable.

I'm not worrying about 読み yet, although I had a go with the kanji chain section here, which looks promising.