I got the idea for this while I was doodling some kanji from off the top of my head during a boring business meeting.

The challenge is this: over the course of the next three weeks, I'm going to carry a notebook in my briefcase and I will see how many of the RTK1 keywords along with their kanji I can recall and write, just off the top of my head. I'll follow Heisig number order, as I roughly know where in the book the different kanji appear; e.g., animals near the end, thread in the middle etc. And following Heisig order, often I know what kanji come immediately before and after a particular one. I'm curious to see if I can recall more than 1,500 of them.

We'll see.....

John I like your idea! I was thinking something similar in the past few days. The goal is the same as yours, but I was thinking to use a story, or better a mental movie, to link one kanji to another. The problem is that I don't know which order would be the best to write an easy story to memorize. One idea was to group kanji thematically, like numbers, cardinal points, time-related kanji and so on... but it seems like a lot of work... but maybe in the future I'll do it. This idea appeals me so much, to be able to write all the kanji I know in a row and once finished, to write a couple of words I know beside each kanji. Mainly to review common onyomi/s and very common kunyomi words. For example:

...
真　→　ま of 真っ黒；　しん of 真実；
...

But as in reviewing kanji I am using only japanese words I've forgotten the heisig keiwords and I don't have an unambiguous way to reffer to each single kanji :/

Sorry john if I contaminated your thread with my idea xD keep us informed about your experiment, but also let me know if you have some suggestions for me! xD

cophnia61 Wrote:to link one kanji to another

You could try kanji shiritori. Start with a kanji word, then try to think of another word that starts with the last kanji of the previous one:

電話(でんわ) → 話題(わだい) → 題名(だいめい) → 名前(なまえ) → 前日(ぜんじつ) → 日立(ひたち) → ...

Shiritori is a great idea! I remember playing it when I first started learning Japanese. There was an app for it too for the iOS but the words were all kana. I don't remember the app name though :/