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Actually using the keywords after you finish RTK

#1
I'm now in that awkward transitional stage where I have completed RTK, but only about 1000 of my cards are in stack 5 or higher, and I have a pretty tough time going from kanji to keyword.

So I've been trying to start with sentences, but I whenever I come across a kanji now, I think "what was the keyword for this one?". And so I end up having to load up this site and look up the keyword. It's very time consuming!
Maybe I'm just spoiled with being able to use tools like rikaichan to immediately see readings of kanji, but right now I'd really like something like that which could show me the keywords of the kanji!

Does anyone have any tips for me? How do you do it? Do you just keep looking up every kanji you cant remember the keyword for? Do you spend some time drilling from kanji to keyword just for this purpose?
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#2
If you're using anki, you can review online and use rikaichan (if you hit shift while hovering over a kanji, the first word in the kanji information is the RTK keyword.

At this point still using English keywords is probably the right thing to do, just keep in mind that eventually drifting away from them is just fine.
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#3
Oh wow, I didn't know rikaichan had the keyword built right in like that! It just gets more and more awesome Smile
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JapanesePod101
#4
I'm not done yet, but I've noticed the same thing. But I've also noticed that once I successfully go kanji->keyword once, it sticks really well.
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#5
If you want to see them right in anki, try the kanji_info plugin at

http://ichi2.net/anki/wiki/Plugins#head-...e58eda8e26
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#6
I was always able to work backwards, reconstructing the mnemonic based on the components in the character and arriving at the keyword.
Edited: 2008-07-01, 4:16 pm
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#7
Wow thanks guys, great stuff.
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