I am usually pretty strict with it but I am wonder if I should mark certain things as hard instead of failed or whatever they call the option.

Things like when you get the story right and all the parts but they are in the wrong order. Like if it should be A over B and you do AB instead. I usually mark it as a fail but I am wondering if I should let it slide and let it sort itself out either over time or when I enter into proper Japanese vocab study.

Then there are the brainfart ones. Where I to use a non example say to myself, oh that's brain and fart but still manage to say forget to write an element for fart even though if I were to be asked about fart I'd get it right.

Sometimes I get one wrong because I don't pay enough attention to the English word and end up doing an entirely different Kanji although correctly and I am pretty sure I would have gotten the actual right answer correct if I didn't putz out.


What sort of rules do you use and/or what sort of principals do you apply in making the rules.

If I wrote the kanji correctly (or believe that I 'air-wrote' it correctly when reviewing on mobile while standing in line somewhere), then I consider it a pass. If I didn't, then it's a fail.

Whether I remember the story correctly or not is irrelevant. If I know the kanji perfectly without the story that's fine. (It is possible I don't know it perfectly and fail it later, but reworking the story can be done later -if- it's necessary. There's no need to make extra work if it turns out I have the character down cold.)

If I get all the parts right but placement wrong (top/bottom left/right etc.) then I often try to modify the story. Mostly this isn't necessary because so many parts have predictable placement (tree, person, etc. on the left, heart at the bottom, air at the top, grass (flowers) at the top, etc.) Mountains have an annoying habit of showing up anywhere, but try to work that into your story.

For characters that I mix up keywords for, I put hints on the front side. An elaboration on the meaning of the keyword preferably, or a hint at the story (without using any of the component names), but sometimes it ends up being something like 'not the one with 'road''

Honestly, this doesn't really happen much to me. Some primitives really seem to like certain positions, so part of that issue will be solved with practice and exceptions aren't always hard to remember. But when you reviews start getting a little out of hand because you've been failing a lot of kanji or adding a few too many cards, failing a whole bunch of cards can make it hard to move on.

I don't think there's anything wrong with failing a kanji because you wrote the primitive in the wrong position. But you can also choose hard and move on. Some of these kanji will become easier to remember once you see them in real Japanese, at least the more common ones. If you have a problem with a specific kanji, you'll probably fail in the near future anyway.

That being said, there are some kanji that you just have to fail. You know that you need some more practice to make it stick and you'd rather do it now. So if you think that's the case, by all means go for it.

One thing that you may not be taking advantage of is primitives that have a fixed position - or rather, special names for these positions. This can be similar to the first one or something else entirely different. For instance, you have the unoffical "spiderman" primitive, which more often than not comes on the left. But sometimes, it comes below other primitives as well. I've noticed one person decided to give it the special name "venom" in those cases. That makes things much easier.

Another alternative is to arrange the position of the primitives in your story a little more carefully. 湖 is one kanji that I needed to do that. When I realized that I couldn't remember it clearly, I imagined a 2d version of the story - a lake on the left, an old man by the lake (next to it), and finally a moon on the right. Now, I have no problems recalling it at all.

Some kanji need tips to remind which ones they are. I can never remember which is "male" or "man", but I've seen 男 in real Japanese and I don't mess it up when I need to use it. So instead of being obsessed with remembering the keyword perfectly, I just write whatever I need to help me not mix them up in my reviews. If you already know words with one of the kanji, it becomes much easier because they become practical examples.

For 湖 I use water with old flesh. I have the understanding that lake fish tend to be larger than river fish and perhaps reach an older age. I could be wrong and I have a feeling that it isn't the only Kanji story that has incorrect information

I tend to remember the idea but the exact wording I sometimes miss and am at a loss with what goes where. I could put the exact story in anki and try to remember them in order but...

Also it just seems that some Kanji just don't relate to usable stories that help with order. Sure there are stories that people have come up with but it would take more effort to try and memorize these long winded tales than just write it out 100 times a day for a week.

I seem to be having trouble with a few where there are say 3 prims and I just can't come up with a way to remember if it is 2 across with one on the bottom for the whole thing or 1 on the side and 2 on the bottom. There is one I have in mind, there are two stories in ANKI none of which really address that particular issue and are again too long winded to remember. Sadly I can't remember the keyword at all.


On a completely unrelated note, I've come across some that just don't relate to stories at all. I can go pretty extreme in stories. Water Polo turkeys reaching the semis with needle injected steroids for example. However some of them just are weird as hell. However if they are so weird that I can't remember them, I fail with no problem. I am worried that this will become more common as time goes on. It almost seems as if buddy put all the easy Kanji up front and stopped giving stories because it got to hard, not to force us to do it.