Hi guys,

I have a real problem recognizing kanji. I have been studying Japanese for probably 4-5 years seriously now. I did RTK1 at the start, I have been through both KO2001 books and I have thousands of learned vocab words in my vocab deck. I am not great at all, but can read at a 12th grade level at a reasonable (but still slow) pace with a dictionary. Reasonable enough that I can get through 10 pages without getting fatigued due to exertion. It's not an impressive command or anything, but I feel somewhat at a decent midway point.

But I cannot recognize kanji. I don't even know how I do so well in my vocab reviews because -- it's hard to explain but I feel like I don't even really see the individual kanji or the radicals, but somehow I am able to differentiate something about them enough to get the word right. But I really don't like this. I feel like my kanji recognition skills are really dragging behind everything else and maybe make things much more difficult than they need to be. If I see a vocab I really know but in the context of a slightly different font, I will be thrown and have to look it up.

I mean, I even remember a little after I completed learning (still was reviewing though) RTK1, seeing 油 on Jiraiya's forehead protector and being stumped to the point that I was certain it had to be an RTK3 kanji, then finding it was indeed from RTK1, that I had successfully reviewed it a dozen times and that when the keyword was in my head I had no problem remembering the kanji. I kind of figured I would get better in time, but I seem to have never overcome that same roadblock.

I'm not sure what a smart way to go about improving my recognition. I searched koohii and found some OPs who had the same problem. All suggestions were to just not worry about it as recognition would naturally improve. It doesn't seem to for me. I even tried doing like a Japanese-word RTK for some of the vocab I'm learning with RTK3+ kanji. Then I failed a vocab card and noticed only via the kana that it had a kanji I had been reviewing all week. Somehow x > kanji is not doing it for me.

Has anyone found an approach for this problem?

edit: I'm just now thinking about trying to write the kanji physically for each review for these vocab with unrecognizable/new kanji

Well if you have trouble recognizing kanji, you should work on recognition -- that is get a RTK deck and set it to review kanji>keyword. Have you tried that? That might be weird if you already know words though, maybe a jouyou kanji deck might be better in your case. Guess there'll be a bit of trial and error here.

Hmm so it sounds like you know a lot of kanji... its just you don't know them very well?

I found learning all the radicals (60 of them?) and writing them out for several pages really helped me to 'get' kanji. It made it much easier to learn and tell similar kanji apart

Write. Seriously, it's the best (and maybe only) solution. I understand the feeling you have, when you see the kanji in real use you have a fuzzy understanding of them, enough to recognize most words, and you know the individual kanji well when you review the RTK deck, but you don't "really" know them.
It was the same for me, than three months ago I stopped using Anki for vocab learning and I started the Gold List method in which I write every word I learn, and every one I review, and my understanding of the kanji improved a lot. I don't know exactly how to explain it: now, it's less mentally demanding to recognize a kanji when I see it in a text, I learn new words more easily, I'm better at remembering and guessing pronounciations.

You don't have to use my method of vocab acquisition, you could write the word you see in anki as you suggest (but I suspect it'll quickly become tiresome, one have so many reviews in anki...), or write a few line about something, or write every new word before putting it in the SRS. The important thing is to write by hand evey day.

Incidentally, the last post on japaneseruleof7 preach the same thing. Ken has come to this conclusion after 10 years of study, we can use his experience as a headstart!

I found making physical flashcards helped me learn a lot of vocabulary quickly. But reviews got unwieldy after a few thousand cards.

I also used two free phone apps - games that used a clock to help me nail down the kana at speed. I even found them helpful at more advanced levels - the game clock pressure helped me to internalize the kana, and made them feel more natural, like the roman characters are for me.

The apps are simple but really slick. Unfortunately, they don't have much with respect Kanji.

1. One app is called "Japanese!!" published by Ron B. Yeh at squarepoet inc. No sounds other than some clicking sounds to speed up the player.

The program shows an english keyword at the top of the screen and a matrix of up to 9 kana or kanji characters. The goal is simply to read the english keyword and rapidly tap the corresponding kanji. Scoring is based on accuracy and speed; each game is only a couple of minutes long.

However, there are a few issues including:

a. keyword / vocabulary is in english
b. only a few dozen kanji characters (and the kana) are in the database
c. no sounds

2. "kanaswirl" says the kana then the user needs to quickly match that sound to an increasing field of kana. Accuracy and speed are once again the drivers of success.

Unfortunately, this is kana only.
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It would be great if the developers would allow the user to import his own RTK keywords/kanji (or vocab kanji/reading/definition/recording of sound). Maybe the developers would be open to opening up their apps. Maybe there are some other games that koohii people use?