I tried last week to explain the Heisig method to my Japanese teacher, I failed of course. So at class this week I took in the book and showed it to her. Even with the book it was hard to explain (she started saying how this wasn't a kanji and this wasn't - they were primitives). So I lent her the book because I said that the intro at the start was worth a read. Even if you didn't subscribe to his method/stories it was an interesting slant on non kanji users needing a different way to learn kanji than natives/people immersed. I said anyhow it would be good to have a week where I could take a break from trying to learn kanji. But i found myself looking on the story lists yesterday. I kept meaning to do it when I had the book. (I have been struggling to make good stories up). But I knew what number I was at, typed it in and read through the stories. When I found a few that I liked I rechecked the kanji and the primitives and worked out which were best and wrote out a card for them. Completely forgot about them all day. This morning looked at the keywords and knew them straight away, so tried a couple more. Yeah more success.
I think a few things are helping: only being able to see one kanji at a time allows me to not feel hassled to move on when I should not. But also its helping me with stories which even at #825 I am still not getting right. I have been too worried that I have 2000+ to do and should be finishing in x weeks/months to realise that some people take longer to pick up methods and thats an ok thing.
So thanks to anyone whose put a story in because you have really helped someone like me who is struggling with this method. I would like to add that I have been struggling to use visualisation to memorize vocab in general so I am hoping that it will help me get over that hump too.
Amber

I'm sorry to tell you I'm not surprised your stories are better than the book's. I've done my own stories (by copying or not other people's) since the 500.

Strugling is normal. It takes some time to learn the method, keep working hard and you'll do fine.

But I'm very curious about your teacher. Please, what are her impressions?

I left the book with her so won't know untill Tuesday when I have my next lesson. I am interested to see what she thinks. But talking to her I think that native Kanji users have a completely different slant on kanji than alphabet users.

It'll be interesting to hear what your teacher thinks.

How good is her English? Explaining the subtleties of Heisig in English requires a lot better leverage of the language than just buying groceries. Maybe there's a Japanese explanation somewhere online.

Naturally people who spent a decade+ learning the kanji will be very slow to accept that it's doable in a year.

Yeah snips. That's what I was curious about. She just won't believe RTK works.

Shes been in the UK 15years, and is married to an Englishman. When I first showed her the book she was surprised that some of the more complex kanji are done before the easier ones. I tried to explain why, but I am not great at explainations hence why I left the book. (plus I knew I had tonnes of vocab to learn and so wanted time off kanji!).
I did have an interesting convo with her about her not being able to cook and listen to the news in English at the same time. I kinda thought that after 15years you almost become English but I guess it still requires a brain switch. Her English is good. If I attained that level of Japanese I would be chuffed.
hugs
amber

Yo amber, please dont quit RTK. You might regret later.
I kinda sucessfuly explained RTK to a non-RTKer this weekend.
Before introducing RTK I asked him if he tought it would be easier for a chinese person to learn how to read japanese than for a brazilian (we are brazilian). He said: of course!
After that I explained what and why RTK. He was still shocked I was learning the kanjis without the readings, tought.

Most of the native, Kanji/Hanzi user's that I've talked with either show great surprise or total indifference to the method used in RTK1. According to one of my professors, it is one of the 6 traditional styles of learning Hanzi. (I guess he meant learning characters by deconstruction of radicals). Either way, some of Heisig's ideas are not exactly original or new to the Japanese people. Open any 1st-3rd grade Japanese kanji books and you will see use of stories and visual aids to learning. The true brilliance to the RTK method is:
1. the order in which the Kanji are presented.
2. The use of English keywords, and
3. The idea that all the kanji should be learned in one stretch.
Combined with visual mnemonic learning, it's no wonder that some manage to become proficient in the meaning and writing of over 2000 kanji in as little as a single month.

@Amber: keep plugging away, your almost at the halfway point and it'll be all downhill after that. It may be helpful to read more about memory enhancing techniques, the following is a site I referred to while going through RTK1:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTIM_10.htm

check the "memory improvement" section for more articles.

For some reason I don't seem to be giving up. Each time I have a phase where I am getting a bit sick of it I just tread water for a bit and do a vocab run instead. Anyhow there is always a light bulb moment round the corner (when you get a piece of knowledge that either explains a load of things or expands your Japanese loads - like suru verbs did).

With regards to showing my teacher my book. I tried to prize out of her what she thought. But she doesn't read much (in either language) and so I think that quite big intro she didn't really look at. She was still a bit confused at why they were ordered like they were so I tried to explain again. I used the example of aka(i) (red). A kanji I know I should know, its first grade after all. But I pointed out that if your not writing it all the time, or see it all the time,using kinesthetic's or rote works in the short term but you find 6 months later they are suddenly gone. If you have a hook to get it back that 6 month/long term loss is worked out. It also helps when you have two kanji that look alike because you again have that hook. I honestly think that people who grow up using kanji find it very hard to understand why its so hard for us. Like if I knew an adult who had never ridden a bike. I haven't ridden one for years but I know I could just jump on and go. The idea that someone would struggle with something so basic I would just find hard to grasp. We do this all the time, something we are good at and others are not that we take for granted. When they struggle even when we explain how to do it we cannot see what the problem is.

anyhow I have the book back today and I have 30odd kanji to input to my srs which is a job I hate so I should just knuckle down and do it

hugs
amber