I can't actually remember where I found out about Heisig. I think it might have been in a torrent pack of Japanese material or something back in the day...

I have spread the word to a few people and they seem happy with the whole method.

so who told you about it?

this is a thank you thread similar to the one Mr. 正弦曲線 received recently.

Well it's already known but 正弦曲線 (I'll need to add this one to the SRS) is the one whose post on another forum got me onto Heisig.

heard about it from Yorkii

really? sweet. and now you're the Kanji master dude!

It was Tae Kim, on his blog.

I have lived in Japan for three years and am ashamed to say that I am no where near conversational yet... be it the one year with NOVA where it seemed Japanese was outlawed or my inability to crack a text book and sit down for a couple hours to learn a little something. Having left NOVA some time ago and having been working in a Japanese public elementary school I have really come to see the importance of speaking the language. But even that did not push me to study as much as I knew I should be. It was something that my friend said, not TO ME but just in conversation that really struck me, that made me feel that I had wasted so much time and was seriously behind. He said "If I met some one in my country that couldn't speak my language I would think they were ignorant."
So, not only is Yorkii fully responsible for introducing me to this awesome set up. He is also responsible for pushing my efforts to study harder, whether he knows it or not. He has always provided plenty of information about how to study and where one might find materials to study, he has lent me books by the stack and answered any and all questions I have had regarding my new found passion for studying the language of a country I love.

Thanks buddy!

woot, welcome Spinny Another yorkii convert

I see you are on frame 94...how ya liking it so far?

I learned about Heisig reading "The Kanji Clinic" articles, thanks Mary !

stehr Wrote:I learned about Heisig reading "The Kanji Clinic" articles, thanks Mary !

Same here. Found out about Heisig from the same Kanji Clinic articles. That was February of last year. In my opinion, finding out about Reviewing the Kanji website (again, via Kanji Clinic articles) was what really supercharged the learning.

Nukemarine Wrote:I learned about Heisig reading "The Kanji Clinic" articles

Me too, a few years ago, although I didn't act on the information for a while after that...

Me 4.

I subscribed to an email service, which would send one kanji a day to you for a period of 100 days (via learnjapanese.com or sth similar). On the bottom there was a short infomercial about the Heisig method.

I found out about it through posts on amazon.com.

A friend of mine who had tried the method and gave up part way through posted a link to this website in her livejournal a little over a year ago. She was excited because the part that got exhausting to her was thinking up stories all the time.... I came over and registered out of curiosity, and then never did anything with it as I was busy finishing up my last year at uni and trying to study for the JLPT.

I'd always been a bit skeptical of the method, as I started off learning Japanese in a university classroom and was therefore taught kanji by more traditional means (i.e. write them over and over until your hand falls off... and then write them a few more times... and cram a couple of readings in your brain while you're at it...). But after reading a post on Tae Kim's blog in December and a few other posts about it on various study boards, I decided to give it a whirl in the downtime between the JLPT and getting the results back and find out what the fuss was about. So here I am...

Amazon.com for me as well. Funny thing was, I never intended to learn the kanji this way. I had finished the Japanese in Ten Minutes a Day text (great for vocab, horrible for anything else, romaji only) and was looking for some hiragana flashcards and maybe a workbook. I found heisig's kana book through reviews, and purchased it. It was amazing. But, then my wife got pregnant and that was that. My boy turns three on Wednesday. ^^ I picked up studying again this November and after re-learning the hiragana, I enjoyed it so much that I bought RTK1. This website has been a godsend. I'm currently on chapter 14 and having a ton of fun!

It was this very website that introduced me to Heisig. I got lucky with a search.

Ditto. I was searching for info on Nazotte Oboeru for the DS, and stumbled across first this message board/site, then on to the 125-page preview PDF of RTK 1. Coming from a university background, I thought it was totally fishy and probably just some sort of gimmick, but I tried it because if it could deliver on what it promised, I'd come out way ahead in my kanji. After about 20-30 kanji, I was totally sold on it. I think I plowed through those first 125 pages in about 2 days while I waited for my copy from Amazon.com.

This site also turned me on to AJATT, which has also had a big influence on my study methods. It's one of those, "I wish I knew about his years ago" things, but better late than never.

I heard about Heisig over 3 years ago, and I'm not even sure how anymore. I think it was through searching for Japanese books and study materials. I downloaded the first 100 pages and thought it was great, so I bought the book.

I can't remember where I heard about Heisig, but I remember picking up a copy of RtK 1 (3rd ed) in a bookstore when I first started studying, and thinking, "where are the readings? This book sucks!" Little did I know...

I discovered RevtK through Khatzumoto's AJATT site, and haven't looked back.

I saw it from the Kanji Clinic, too. =) Halfway through!

yorkii Wrote:I think it might have been in a torrent pack of Japanese material or something back in the day...

Happened to me; they had bundled the pdf of the first chapter thats available for download on Heisig's webpage; soon after that I bought the book direct.

I first heard of Heisig through a post on a gaming-related website I helped with. Someone mentioned his book as a helpful way to learn the stuff and it percolated in the back of my mind for probably a year or so. Once I got more serious about learning Japanese I ordered the book and I wound up here when I was searching for an online flashcard program.

And I'm glad I did!

Spinny808 Wrote:So, not only is Yorkii fully responsible for introducing me to this awesome set up. He is also responsible for pushing my efforts to study harder, whether he knows it or not.

Thanks Spinny, good to know that I can bring a little bit of joy into other peoples lives

泣けるわｗ

I was working for a certain Aircraft company in Northwest Washington. We were partnered with Mitsubishi. I got tired of listening to Japanese all day without being able to understand. So I decided to take the free 16 hour Japanese class after hours. I liked the class, so I started to find out a little bit more. I started surfing amazon, looking for info. That's what I did back then (2005) - I had no idea forums like this existed.

According to some book reviews on amazon, there were these characters called kanji that cause all sorts of headaches to learners. I bought a book on kanji (a learner's dictionary) and tried to start learning. Being a complete beginner, taking the characters totally out of context without a real method, it was brutal. Doing some more research on Amazon, a reviewer mentioned Heisig. I went to the actual book, and thought "this sounds like a gimmick, but it's cheap, so I'll give it a try". I ordered the book. While I waited, I found the free PDF, and learned about 20 characters per day. It was soooo much easier - here was an actual method for learning characters out of context.

I finished the class, and quit the job, but didn't want to quit Japanese after investing all that time (maybe 200 hrs at that point). If I'd known I was less than 10% of the way to fluency, I probably would have quit. But I continued with Heisig, Pimsleur and Japanese for Busy People.

I finished Heisig after 7 months. I was so proud of myself. In the dozens of review I read about RTK1 back then, only one or two people had actually finished it. I was on top of the world. On a whim, I did a google search on Remembering the Kanji. I found this epoch post. It changed my language learning world. Anybody remember that?

leosmith Wrote:On a whim, I did a google search on Remembering the Kanji. I found this epoch post. It changed my language learning world. Anybody remember that?

Wow, cheers for posting that. Really enjoyable read, and a bit of a history lesson! Now hopefully if I go to bed right now I can still manage to get up for work in the morning.