Who decided to put 130 kanji into this one huge mega chapter of doom? :mad:

Dear Chapter 23: You suck but I will dominate you soon. Then after a little break I'm coming after your little brother Chapter 25.

So this thread is dedicated to those battling the mega chapter of doom, and for celebrating when you finish it.

Amazing...I literally thought of the same thing at the exact same time as you posted this. Though, because I love drama and am very theatrical in my ways, I fell on my knees while thinking such a thing, and shouted "HEISIG!! YOU SICK BASTARD!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!!" effectively waking up half my neighbourhood .

Good luck to all of you. Once you have had this chapter, the rest is a walk through the forest.

Kanji-wise it really isn't such a horrible chapter... But just the number is discouraging, I agree.

But the feeling it gives just to finish that chapter, awesome

Oh crap! I'm up to Ch 22, and I didn't know this mother-lode was coming up!

:O

*deep breaths*

Savara Wrote:But the feeling it gives just to finish that chapter, awesome

Exactly. It seems formidable allright, but after finishing these "hump chapters," you'll feel like a champ.

I just finished about a week ago I think. Once you get past 23-25-27, its clear sailing all the way to the end, or at least that's how it looks.

Lesson 23 is very big indeed, but not so hard. Actually, I find the bigger lessons easier. In some of them, you'll use a primitive so much before you have to learn a new one that it makes memorization a piece of cake (the person and thread primitives are good examples of this). The more you use the primitives, the easier to remember the kanji it seems. YMMV, though.

I agree with Jonathan. (Man, it feels weird to type that. It's like I'm being egotistical when I'm totally not.) The really long chapters have been fairly easy for me to blast through, since they usually have just a few primitives getting into a lot of wacky situations. Now that I'm closing in on 1000, I'm sort of dreading the part of the book that has a lot of short chapters with a lot of different primitives. I mean, I know I could take it slow, but gosh darn it I want to go fast, and I can tell already that this part is going to take a toll on my memory/sanity...

It's way easier than it looks. At 20 a day, the kanji in the bigger chapters flew by for me. And yeah, after those big chapters, it's all downhill. I'm on chapter 31 now and after all those biggies, this 59 kanji chapter seems puny. Funny thing is, it's the 2nd largest chapter I have left. So, yay! Haha. Keep plugging away! The big chapters will be in your rear view mirror in no time!
*edit: typos ~_~*

Preach it, brothers. Chapter 23 is a bear--not because of difficulty, but because of the sheer number of kanji.

I'm finishing it today. By my calculation, I've spent 3 weeks on it now. It's going to be great to have it done and move on to 24.

Yeah, I'm on Lesson 21 and I saw that was coming up, much to my horror...>_< I'll post back when I'm done, and how long it took me. Yikes!

23 is also probably one my weakest chapters, because thanks to school I took a break midway and so I never gave it proper attention (well, aside from the finger ones. I got through those during the summer).

I think the 27th chapter was the most grueling for me so far though. I really wish I had found this site before chapter 28. I'd probably be done by now, lol. I chose a friend as my "person" but looking back someone like Mr. T would have been much better. But I already have my stories, so even if I try to learn new ones that are more vivid, it just won't work.

The two Johns are right: longer chapters give a better time-to-kanji ratio. It's impossible to forget the finger radical because it's in a billion kanji.

In any given day's review, the cards you review (be it here or on your SRS) will be massively, massively, overwhelmingly slanted toward the cards you recently added. So when the cards/kanji you add have something in common, the review is very easy-- midway through chapter 23, three quarters of your daily kanji review will be finger kanji, making it much easier to pass them.

For the same reason, I find I learn new vocabulary quicker the MORE example sentences I use for it. The hardest vocab words are words where I can only find a couple sentences.

killerducky Wrote:Dear Chapter 23: You suck but I will dominate you soon. Then after a little break I'm coming after your little brother Chapter 25.

That's right 25. I'm coming for you soon.

Last kanji for 23 has been put into Anki, woo!

Cards for 24 have been made.

Am I the only one who tries to do whole chapters at a time? Because for me, 23 and 25 have been hell. Did both in one day each, and you could easily see the reverb in my reviews, taking about a week to settle each. I really should have broken it into chunks, but I prefer keeping all the similar ones together

Anyway I seem to be fairly impervious to the "burning out" everyone speaks of.

On chapter 23, I divided into bits : since I was learning normally 25/30 kanji a week, I did this one in three sessions (I already learnt more kanji than usual, but since it was the ame chapter, I knew it was important to go faster than usual), three weeks and all was good.
The rule 1 chapter at a time is quite interesting, but they are chapters as 23 and others following ones that are longer, too long for this. Divide the chapters if it is too much for you !

breakies Wrote:Divide the chapters if it is too much for you !

I'm too stubborn to break my habit!

Besides, from here onwards they're all around 70 or less, so I should be fine with that. Other than these chapters though I recommend one chapter at a time; it's a great way to get lots done quick, learn similar kanji together, and keep motivated :)

I tossed the chapter structure out of the window at like ch2 . I just can't force myself. I did as much as I felt like at the time, and then a few more, and stopped there. Sometimes 15, sometimes 80 (god those days were headache-inducing). But never according to some artificial limit set by someone else.

Aah I wish I had your... Well... Laziness? :p