It will get better when you learn actual words which use the kanji. See the example the JALUP guy gives. There are similar keywords like stomach, belly and so on... but once you know 胃ー＞い you can put い together with the english keyword. Also many kanji "components" give the kanji on-yomi.

For example you can see "lend" and think of "借" which is "borrow".
But if you put "たいしゃく" together with the english keyword "lend" you will see: "ah, its on-yomi is tai, so it must be the one with 代 on top (代 signales the on-yomi たい)".

Another example, kanji with keywords related to dress. You can read "attire" and you think "what of all those dress-related kanji is it?".
But if you put a word like ふくそう you will instantly think of 装 because it has the 壮 component (そう, see also kanji like 荘).

妊 and 娠 -> "pregnancy" and "with child". Easy to screw them, but if you put にん and しん as hints you will know which "pregnancy にん" is 妊 because the right component signales the にん onyomi, while "with child しん" must be 娠 for the same reason (see 震, 振 etc..).

Another thing you can do, as other users suggested, is to put hints about the story, or hints to better explain what the keywords refer to, like "clothing (es.: girls on school uniform)".
In the "benevolence" kanji I put the hint "reek" (a GoT character) because I used him in the story. The hint does not give away anything about the kanji, so it doesn't undermine the RtK method's effectiveness.

I seem to be having a problem with element order. For example
Is 書, Write...

I WRITE with my BRUSH all over the DAY
or
I WRITE all DAY with my BRUSH

Even worse are Kanji where in order to put the story in order I have to use very odd word order in English.

I usually fail one of three ways.
1: Right elements, wrong order. Another one I get wrong is Outside, Evening. Divining rod. No problem remembering the elements but left right or right left, bah.
2: Right elements wrong order directional. I try to put in some sort of above or over where there is one on top of the other to keep them straight from side by side where it isn't obvious like with flower, house, schoolhouse, crown etc.
3: The ones where I completely blank out which are few and usually fixable
4: Where I know the story but blank out on how to write one of the elements... that drives me a but nuts.

With recently learned Kanji I fail maybe half on points 3 or 4 but failure and repetition tends to get the stories in the skull.

The first one is more of a problem. I can come up with a story but unless I put the story in order AND remember it verbatim I can fail some I've seen for a while. I figure give it time and it should solve itself. Try to picture those particular Kanji on the page/in Anki.

It is hard enough to remember the idea behind a story without having to remember them in exact word order.

Dudeist Wrote:I seem to be having a problem with element order. For example
Is 書, Write...

I WRITE with my BRUSH all over the DAY
or
I WRITE all DAY with my BRUSH

Even worse are Kanji where in order to put the story in order I have to use very odd word order in English.

I usually fail one of three ways.
1: Right elements, wrong order. Another one I get wrong is Outside, Evening. Divining rod. No problem remembering the elements but left right or right left, bah.
2: Right elements wrong order directional. I try to put in some sort of above or over where there is one on top of the other to keep them straight from side by side where it isn't obvious like with flower, house, schoolhouse, crown etc.
3: The ones where I completely blank out which are few and usually fixable
4: Where I know the story but blank out on how to write one of the elements... that drives me a but nuts.

With recently learned Kanji I fail maybe half on points 3 or 4 but failure and repetition tends to get the stories in the skull.

The first one is more of a problem. I can come up with a story but unless I put the story in order AND remember it verbatim I can fail some I've seen for a while. I figure give it time and it should solve itself. Try to picture those particular Kanji on the page/in Anki.

It is hard enough to remember the idea behind a story without having to remember them in exact word order.

It's helpful to remember that some primitives never appear in certain positions. Sometimes kanji have lots of radicals, but most of them have one which vaguely indicates meaning (usually the one to the left, but there are many exceptions if you want to be consistent with the actual etymology) and one which vaguely indicates pronunciation. Try to use stories where you immediately file the kanji under whatever the semantic radical is.

Dudeist Wrote:I usually fail one of three ways.
1: Right elements, wrong order. Another one I get wrong is Outside, Evening. Divining rod. No problem remembering the elements but left right or right left, bah.
2: Right elements wrong order directional. I try to put in some sort of above or over where there is one on top of the other to keep them straight from side by side where it isn't obvious like with flower, house, schoolhouse, crown etc.
3: The ones where I completely blank out which are few and usually fixable
4: Where I know the story but blank out on how to write one of the elements... that drives me a but nuts.

I have the exact same issues, but I finished it anyway. As long as I stay above 80%, I'm happy.
Even if you don't get the writing right all the time, you'll be able to read it, and select the correct option when typing.

Don't worry about it. Continue on, and you'll end up getting these right for all the common ones.

I did a little experiment the other day. Went through the index on a recognition trip.
First 200 I was getting over 95% right, never 200, about 90%
If I were training for recognition as opposed to recall only I'd probably do even better.
Today I nailed 95% on my recall. I think I might do it more often, no writing and they seem to feed off each other.
I did 21 more from a chapter of 90+ and did a quick read through took a few minutes off and managed to hit all but one on the first round. Those garment ones looked scary. Also there was some police/Junkie action while I was doing the learning phase so pretty good. I did have problem with IIRC distant forgetting to put in the road thingy twice.

I find myself disappointed that I am not doing more. I just sit around farting away time that could be used to hammer away at the Kanji. At least now I'm 20% though. I could have been much further along. Must find a way to get my rear in gear.

(2015-10-01, 12:12 am)Dudeist Wrote: I did a little experiment the other day. Went through the index on a recognition trip.
First 200 I was getting over 95% right, never 200, about 90%
If I were training for recognition as opposed to recall only I'd probably do even better.
Today I nailed 95% on my recall. I think I might do it more often, no writing and they seem to feed off each other.
I did 21 more from a chapter of 90+ and did a quick read through took a few minutes off and managed to hit all but one on the first round. Those garment ones looked scary. Also there was some police/Junkie action while I was doing the learning phase so pretty good. I did have problem with IIRC distant forgetting to put in the road thingy twice.

I find myself disappointed that I am not doing more. I just sit around farting away time that could be used to hammer away at the Kanji. At least now I'm 20% though. I could have been much further along. Must find a way to get my rear in gear.

That's interesting. I'm pretty good at production, but I'm generally terrible at recognition unless I already know a word that uses the kanji I'm trying to recognise! I often find I am familiar with a kanji and even remember the associated story, but not the keyword, and I also come across lots of kanji which I'm sure I know because I know every primitive, but which I'm still not able to identify until I look them up and then go "aaah, right!!".

Don't get frustrated - after a while it's natural to run out of steam. Get a break for a couple of weeks and then add some new kanji again!

(2015-09-27, 5:13 pm)Dudeist Wrote: One thing I don't do is visualisation, nor do I really use stories but rather sentences that incorporate the keyword and the elements. I find those actual stories in RTK just get on my nerves. I know that visualisation is a powerful memory tool, but lets just say if I were required to follow the forever fluent advice of say visually blowing up all male nouns and burning all female nouns, I'd rather take up knitting. Not that Japanese has gendered nouns [right?] but you get where I am coming from.

I think visualization is what makes RTK work well.  I didn't start doing it well until Heisig stopped providing the stories though.

I'm a bit beyond 800.
Been stuck in the 700s for ages, by all rights I should have been finished. Sometimes I get a stretch of new ones that scare me but in time and with Anki I get them. Have forgotten some mature cards recently which sucks, but usually it is a minor error or keyword confusion or some other nonsense.

(2015-11-16, 12:32 am)Dudeist Wrote: I'm a bit beyond 800.
Been stuck in the 700s for ages, by all rights I should have been finished. Sometimes I get a stretch of new ones that scare me but in time and with Anki I get them. Have forgotten some mature cards recently which sucks, but usually it is a minor error or keyword confusion or some other nonsense.

You're probably spending way too much time to add new kanji, which is most likely killing your momentum. You can tweak your story later on if you end up failing. Not only that, failing is also part of learning, so don't worry about that.

One interesting thing about RTK is that you won't spend much time of trying to understand a whole bunch of seemingly random strokes  and studying new radicals almost every time you stumble upon a new word. You're doing that in advance with RTK. Knowing kanji doesn't mean anything if you don't take it one step further, so don't lose sight of your goal. It also becomes easier to remember some kanji once you see them a couple of times, so maybe some of the harder ones won't stick until later on, but you'll eventually nail them.

I can't speak for others, but I've noticed that the keyword doesn't always help me with new words. So instead of trying to recall specific keywords, you'll end up having to recall the story until the new word sticks. That means that becoming familiar with the story and the kanji takes priority, after all you'll end up having to assign different meanings and sounds to them at one point anyway.

Good stories can be very helpful, but it's also important to keep going. If you're too slow, you're probably more likely to get bored and give up. Think about it this way - if you can add 10 kanji per hour with a half-decent or good story, you'll finish RTK in about 220h without taking reviews into consideration. That's a LOT of time. So instead of taking 6 minutes per kanji, let's say you take 10 minutes. That's going to be only 6 kanji per hour, which is very slow. It's "only" a 4 minute difference, which doesn't seem to be a big deal... but that means you'll be spending 366h to finish the book instead. Much more painful, isn't it?

Of course, adding way too many kanji can be stressful as well, so pace yourself. But RTK is just one of the steps you'll have to go through, so keep that in mind because there's more ahead of you than learning kanji radicals and creating 2200 stories in isolation.

(2015-11-16, 9:36 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: You're probably spending way too much time to add new kanji, which is most likely killing your momentum. You can tweak your story later on if you end up failing. Not only that, failing is also part of learning, so don't worry about that.

One interesting thing about RTK is that you won't spend much time of trying to understand a whole bunch of seemingly random strokes  and studying new radicals almost every time you stumble upon a new word. You're doing that in advance with RTK. Knowing kanji doesn't mean anything if you don't take it one step further, so don't lose sight of your goal. It also becomes easier to remember some kanji once you see them a couple of times, so maybe some of the harder ones won't stick until later on, but you'll eventually nail them.

I can't speak for others, but I've noticed that the keyword doesn't always help me with new words. So instead of trying to recall specific keywords, you'll end up having to recall the story until the new word sticks. That means that becoming familiar with the story and the kanji takes priority, after all you'll end up having to assign different meanings and sounds to them at one point anyway.

Good stories can be very helpful, but it's also important to keep going. If you're too slow, you're probably more likely to get bored and give up. Think about it this way - if you can add 10 kanji per hour with a half-decent or good story, you'll finish RTK in about 220h without taking reviews into consideration. That's a LOT of time. So instead of taking 6 minutes per kanji, let's say you take 10 minutes. That's going to be only 6 kanji per hour, which is very slow. It's "only" a 4 minute difference, which doesn't seem to be a big deal... but that means you'll be spending 366h to finish the book instead. Much more painful, isn't it?

Of course, adding way too many kanji can be stressful as well, so pace yourself. But RTK is just one of the steps you'll have to go through, so keep that in mind because there's more ahead of you than learning kanji radicals and creating 2200 stories in isolation.

You don't have to sell me on RTK. I love it, hell I want to make it my bride.

The problem isn't that I spend too much time adding Kanji but not enough. I go days without adding any.
I find it takes about 3 minutes to add a kanji, read the RTK entry, figure it out [if possible] and write it out 5 times, then run through 3 learning steps on Anki. [2 minutes for book and writing, 1 for ANKI learning]
I take a bit less than 20 seconds at the review stage per time.
So I can do about 20 an hour shoving it into anki, probably a similar amount for it to get matured.

Whenever possible my stories are simply the elements in order. Stop spooning turkeys. Large turkeys on glue robbed me etc. Water [polo playing] turkeys on needle [drugs] reaching the semis. I can't stand long winded stories especially when I can whip up something simple. If I can't whip up something simple, I just try to remember the word order and let Anki take care of it. I've got a few Kanji that got into my head that way. Some of those mature cards I fail but again if I had to write out a paragraph for every Kanji... frig it, I'll switch to Latin or Old English.

My problems come in 4 parts.
1: Not having a good dedicated study space
2: Too much other time wasting crap sucking up my time.
3: Reviews are not too bad but learning new ones... I must admit I get a bit leery about it
4: I do question all too often why I am doing this and I got other personal issues to deal with.

I want to do more, I should do more. Hell I started in early sept, by all rights I should be done now. I don't work, I have no friends and no other hobbies.

I was thinking tomorrow I'll eat breakfast and pop over to the library for the rest of the day. Avoid computer and TV till I am done.

This reminds me why I began to study Japanese 2 months ago in the first place. It was a nice holiday, but I realized that I was just spending too much time doing stuff that wasn't productive at all. Like, I'd spend way too much time scrolling down my news feed on facebook when I could have been watching a nice anime that I'd been meaning to for a while, practicing starcraft 2, studying Japanese, etc. Things that would be much more useful than wasting time doing nothing.

So I decided to spend the rest of the holiday practicing sc2 for 4 hours or something, watch anime for 4 hours, and studying Japanese for 1 hour. I got a lot more stuff done, stuff that I wanted to do but had yet to set some time aside to do. Soon after the holiday, I ended up ditching everything to study Japanese full time because I just can't half-ass learn a language.

My goals were extremely ambitious - finish Genki 1 and 2 + RTK in 75 days, i.e. by the beginning of December -, so I won't reach them. But in 62 days, I've already added 1295 kanji and gone through 16 chapters of Genki doing most exercises (I never write those compositions in the reading section though), workbook included. I'm glad I've decided to do this, because even this failure will still be a huge success given how insane my initial goal was.

So yeah, I think you just need to set some time aside and just add kanji! No matter what, spend that minimum amount of time every day adding kanji. Consistency is key. 1 hour a day is great if you add kanji that fast, in a single week you'll add more than a hundred . If you have enough endurance, I'd spend even more time and really challenge myself. If you don't have much else to do, 40+ kanji a day wouldn't be that time consuming and you'd finish RTK in about a month. That is to say, if your reviews don't get out of hand and you end up taking a break.

I wish I could be consistent with both RTK and Genki, but I realize now how insane it was to go for 2200 kanji from the get-go + Genki 1 and 2. I should have just done that 1k kanji deck until the end of Genki 2, but now it's too late. But once I'm done with Genki 2 by the beginning of December, I'll put it a lot of time and see if I can finish RTK asap. I'm looking at you, Tobira! I swear, I'm finishing Tobira by the end of February at most!

(2015-11-17, 1:33 am)FlameseeK Wrote: So yeah, I think you just need to set some time aside and just add kanji! No matter what, spend that minimum amount of time every day adding kanji. Consistency is key. 1 hour a day is great if you add kanji that fast, in a single week you'll add more than a hundred . If you have enough endurance, I'd spend even more time and really challenge myself. If you don't have much else to do, 40+ kanji a day wouldn't be that time consuming and you'd finish RTK in about a month. That is to say, if your reviews don't get out of hand and you end up taking a break.

I wish I could be consistent with both RTK and Genki, but I realize now how insane it was to go for 2200 kanji from the get-go + Genki 1 and 2. I should have just done that 1k kanji deck until the end of Genki 2, but now it's too late. But once I'm done with Genki 2 by the beginning of December, I'll put it a lot of time and see if I can finish RTK asap. I'm looking at you, Tobira! I swear, I'm finishing Tobira by the end of February at most!

I'd kinda like to do all Japanese all the time but with actual study and not that picking up language you don't understand by osmosis stuff.
Ideally, I'll eat [while reading the paper/watching TV, bit of internet], go to the gym 3 times a week and have 2 hours on my off days to muck around and the rest for studies.

I'd also like to be batman and sadly the latter option seems more likely.

It seems it takes about 4K hours to nail the JLPT N1 and that is my primary goal at this point. 1 hour a day means it would take over 10 years, even more as more of that time would be reviews.
I am 46, I don't want to spend 10 years just learning something. I feel the need for speed for reasons that make sense for me even if nobody else understands it. [long story]

Oh, I don't really want to be batman,

Maybe I should try to get Tobira done before you. It's on yo.

I don't know about 4k hours. I've heard 2k hours should be enough for good language learners to get to N2 level. I don't really know about that, but I'll take less than year to get reach 2k+ hours if I keep up my current pace, no doubt about it. Whether I reach N2 or not, I'll be doing really well at that point so I don't care much.

I've heard that people who finish Tobira are about ready to take the N3 test. That should be enough to reach my goal, which is to be able to do a lot of extensive reading and watch anime somewhat comfortably while still learning something. Hence, my crazy goals - I want to get there asap, because it'll become a whole lot more fun.

The thing is, I'll probably have to get to N2 to feel truly comfortable. Not sure what I'll do after Tobira, and to be honest I don't even know what my options are after that. Maybe I'll give the core decks a try, but I don't even know how they work and I don't really know how effective they are in comparison to just learning whatever new stuff you stumble upon in your readings and whatnot.

Do a lot of people actually study for N1? My guess is that once you get to N2, you'll be at such a comfortable level that using the language would be one of the best ways to reach N1. At least, that's how I learned English - once I got the intermediate grammar out of the way, the rest was a breeze. I don't expect vocabulary acquisition in Japanese to be that easy because most words are incredibly similar, which makes them difficult to remember and not very remarkable. But seeing these words a couple of times in context probably takes care of that anyway.

(2015-11-17, 7:38 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: Do a lot of people actually study for N1? My guess is that once you get to N2, you'll be at such a comfortable level that using the language would be one of the best ways to reach N1. At least, that's how I learned English - once I got the intermediate grammar out of the way, the rest was a breeze. I don't expect vocabulary acquisition in Japanese to be that easy because most words are incredibly similar, which makes them difficult to remember and not very remarkable.  But seeing these words a couple of times in context probably takes care of that anyway.

Yes, they do. A lot. I had to study both to level up my vocab & grammar, as well as taking practice tests.

(2015-11-17, 8:14 pm)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2015-11-17, 7:38 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: Do a lot of people actually study for N1? My guess is that once you get to N2, you'll be at such a comfortable level that using the language would be one of the best ways to reach N1. At least, that's how I learned English - once I got the intermediate grammar out of the way, the rest was a breeze. I don't expect vocabulary acquisition in Japanese to be that easy because most words are incredibly similar, which makes them difficult to remember and not very remarkable.  But seeing these words a couple of times in context probably takes care of that anyway.

Yes, they do. A lot. I had to study both to level up my vocab & grammar, as well as taking practice tests.

I see. I don't know though. Most languages get relatively easy once you get the intermediate stuff out of the way. You inevitably pick up a lot of vocabulary if you do lots of reading and whatnot.

Most advanced English courses consist of grammar reviews, a lot of vocabulary (and a good chunk of it is oftentimes not used in casual settings), native level reading (e.g. newspaper, magazines, etc), and discussions. But the best way to pick all that stuff up is to spend massive amounts of time with the language and read until your eyes bleed.

So would you say Japanese is very different from English in this regard? Or maybe N1 is just very high level academic Japanese and requires a slightly more systematic approach? I don't know if you're a native speaker of English or not, so I don't know if the way I see language learning makes much sense to you... but that's probably what I'd do to learn most western languages - get the basics out of the way, then use it a lot while going through an intermediate level book to get all major grammar points out of the way, and finally just use it as much as I could every day in my free time.

(2015-11-17, 8:38 pm)FlameseeK Wrote:

(2015-11-17, 8:14 pm)Bokusenou Wrote:

(2015-11-17, 7:38 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: Do a lot of people actually study for N1? My guess is that once you get to N2, you'll be at such a comfortable level that using the language would be one of the best ways to reach N1. At least, that's how I learned English - once I got the intermediate grammar out of the way, the rest was a breeze. I don't expect vocabulary acquisition in Japanese to be that easy because most words are incredibly similar, which makes them difficult to remember and not very remarkable.  But seeing these words a couple of times in context probably takes care of that anyway.

Yes, they do. A lot. I had to study both to level up my vocab & grammar, as well as taking practice tests.

I see. I don't know though. Most languages get relatively easy once you get the intermediate stuff out of the way. You inevitably pick up a lot of vocabulary if you do lots of reading and whatnot.

Most advanced English courses consist of grammar reviews, a lot of vocabulary (and a good chunk of it is oftentimes not used in casual settings), native level reading (e.g. newspaper, magazines, etc), and discussions. But the best way to pick all that stuff up is to spend massive amounts of time with the language and read until your eyes bleed.

So would you say Japanese is very different from English in this regard? Or maybe N1 is just very high level academic Japanese and requires a slightly more systematic approach? I don't know if you're a native speaker of English or not, so I don't know if the way I see language learning makes much sense to you... but that's probably what I'd do to learn most western languages - get the basics out of the way, then use it a lot while going through an intermediate level book to get all major grammar points out of the way, and finally just use it as much as I could every day in my free time.

I'm a native English speaker, and I've never been in an advanced language class (My Japanese class experience amounts to one summer at a language school in Japan, and three semesters of college/university because I needed to take language credits. The college classes' textbook was in romaji, and the language school's was in hiragana. I learned self-study worked better for me & never looked back.), but from what you've mentioned it sounds kind of similar.

N1 grammar isn't exactly obscure, but a lot of it is more formal and more likely to be seen in written language. I probably wouldn't have seen some of the N1 grammar if I just read books, although I certainly did a lot of that while studying for the test. Vocab I picked up mostly from books.
The reason practice tests were so invaluable to me was because I gained familiarity with the test format, as well as practice timing myself to finish within the set time limits. The JLPT is part Japanese test, part stamina test, and if either of those falter during the test, you might not be pleased with your score.

I did read, watch, and listen to a ton of things in Japanese while preparing for the test, but I don't think that would have been enough without JLPT prep books and practice tests I did.

I see. Thanks a lot for the answer. It does make a lot of sense and helps clear some things up.

I didn't make it very clear, but I was mostly thinking about the level you're meant to be at in terms of vocabulary, comprehension, etc. It does make sense that those seriously interested in taking the test would actually take special care to nail it. I'm not interested in taking the test currently, so I was just the nomenclature as a reference - i.e. as a Japanese version of the Common European Framework.

Ah, OK. Then yeah, if you're not interested in taking the test, then just getting as much exposure to authentic Japanese as possible should do it. Things like turning the interface language of all my devices to Japanese, and thinking in Japanese really helped me as well.

(2015-11-17, 7:38 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I don't know about 4k hours. I've heard 2k hours should be enough for good language learners to get to N2 level. I don't really know about that, but I'll take less than year to get reach 2k+ hours if I keep up my current pace, no doubt about it. Whether I reach N2 or not, I'll be doing really well at that point so I don't care much.

I've heard that people who finish Tobira are about ready to take the N3 test.  That should be enough to reach my goal, which is to be able to do a lot of extensive reading and watch anime somewhat comfortably while still learning something. Hence, my crazy goals - I want to get there asap, because it'll become a whole lot more fun.

The thing is, I'll probably have to get to N2 to feel truly comfortable. Not sure what I'll do after Tobira, and to be honest I don't even know what my options are after that. Maybe I'll give the core decks a try, but I don't even know how they work and I don't really know how effective they are in comparison to just learning whatever new stuff you stumble upon in your readings and whatnot.

Do a lot of people actually study for N1? My guess is that once you get to N2, you'll be at such a comfortable level that using the language would be one of the best ways to reach N1. At least, that's how I learned English - once I got the intermediate grammar out of the way, the rest was a breeze. I don't expect vocabulary acquisition in Japanese to be that easy because most words are incredibly similar, which makes them difficult to remember and not very remarkable.  But seeing these words a couple of times in context probably takes care of that anyway.

Tobira is at the N3 level although you might need a bit more vocab and other stuff. Those Kanzen Master books should get you over the edge.

After Tobira is http://www.amazon.com/New-Authentic-Japa...K5XBRS51XC
IIRC by the same folks that do the Genki books, sort of a Genki 4 [there is a psudo Genki 3 book at the Tobira level by the same folks but I get the impression Tobira is better]
I seem to recall that the above text will get you to N2 although I am pretty sure Genki 1 2, Tob and NAJ don't have the 6K vocab and I can't speak for the grammar either. Again Kanzen Master should fill the gaps.


As for time requirements, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese-L...iency_Test

N1
1700~2600 hours  3000~4800 hours
N2
1150~1800 hours  1600~2800 hours
N3
700~1100 hours  950~1700 hours
The first set are for non Chinese persons who will struggle more with the Kanji. RTK should help a bit on that.
Consider some spitballing numbers.
10K vocab at 8 per hour [assuming production and it takes longer than single Kanji RTK reviews] 1250 hours
4 text books plus reviews, 9 hours a chapter [Genki] plus 3 review] 600+ hours
Native material, say 500, half reading, rest mostly listening plus some convo and writing.
Perhaps 100 hours to skim over those dictionary of Japanese Grammer
Another 100 to listen to the dialog portion of Jpod101
Another perhaps 300 for those Kanzen Master books.
You are at 2900 hours.
Oh, throw in RTK, practice tests and you are over 3K
Also there seems to be an actual requirement for 18K words, lets assume you do those recognition style at 15 an hour for about 550 hours [18K-10K is 8K words] although someone suggested that if you got 10K words down cold, anything else you can get from context. I don't think there is a released list of those 18K words so that is probably a good thing.
and you are pushing into the middle of the N1 zone.
Toss in some review and Bob's your uncle.

Reduce the vocab requirement to 6K for N2 and cut back a bit on the native and KM bits and you are in the middle of the N2 requirements.

Once you hit N2, for N1 there is really nothing but mining native material for more vocab and to increase your reading speed and listening skills, and some more grammar points usually picked up from a combination of native exposure, N1 study guides and the Dictionary of * Japanese Grammar books [intermediate and advanced]


The above is based on what I've read. I hope anyone who knows better and has been there can tell me where I am right and wrong.



As for your last point. They say it takes anywhere from 8 to 20 exposures to get a word into your skull [without Anki]
A word at the 18K mark [the 18000's most commonly occurring word] occurs about once every 450K words or about every 5 books. I take 10 hours to read a book in English, in Japanese, I would guess a beginner could be anywhere up to 5 times slower [based on a Chinese example I've read]. Say you will reach half speed soon enough, it would take about 100 hours times 8 to 20 to nail a 18K vocab. 800 to 2K hours.
For 10 K, 160K words or about 2 books so 40 times 8 to 20 for a 10K vocab. 320 to 800 hours.
Half the 10K for 6K. Double the 18K for 28K of vocab.

Bit slower than Anki but you get some exposure beyond your desired vocab level as well as reading speed and grammar.

When they say 8 to 20 times I don't remember if they mean active or passive vocab. Also I'd guess that writing out the Kanji would be a problem without practice as you lack the phonetic cues.

Personally I don't think I'd want to tackle much in the way of native material till I was done with the 4 texts and had my vocab close to the 6K level. However different strokes etc..

(2015-11-17, 10:52 pm)FlameseeK Wrote: I see. Thanks a lot for the answer. It does make a lot of sense and helps clear some things up.

I didn't make it very clear, but I was mostly thinking about the level you're meant to be at in terms of vocabulary, comprehension, etc. It does make sense that those seriously interested in taking the test would actually take special care to nail it. I'm not interested in taking the test currently, so I was just the nomenclature as a reference - i.e. as a Japanese version of the Common European Framework.

Oh, I am so very confused by the Common Euro Framework.

I've read estimates that you only need a 6K vocab to pass it plus the other stuff, as well as an estimated 1200 hours or so.
OTOH one gets the impression that you need to have an almost native level ability with the language.

As for me, at this point it is JLPT or bust.

I'm no Japanese master; I myself am currently just over 1000 Kanji in using RTK. One thing that has really helped me out is writing short, simple, documentation of my progress. Every 5 days or so, I return to old entries and amuse myself at how much less I knew when I started. I don't know if it works for everyone but it has helped me immensely. I started learning Kanji during my highschool finals a few weeks back at a rate of about 35-40 a day, and those entries have kept me motivated. While I only have a few commitments outside of work, RTK can be seriously draining. But keep at it! Today I was delighted by seeing a few other RTKers posting comments about the 'Transparent' Kanji on a YouTube video that is linked on Koohii's mnemonic for the Kanji. Keep remembering that we are all on the same road, and believe you can do it! You got this, random dude on the internet!

(2015-12-08, 3:31 am)AlphaBetaFoxface Wrote: I'm no Japanese master; I myself am currently just over 1000 Kanji in using RTK. One thing that has really helped me out is writing short, simple, documentation of my progress. Every 5 days or so, I return to old entries and amuse myself at how much less I knew when I started. ......You got this, random dude on the internet!

I am just over 1000 also. I do all my writing... sorry I mean production in the same binder so every time I do my reviews or add new stuff I see page after page of what used to be random squiggles. I find that is helpful.


Gotta laugh at random dude.