Hi everyone, I just registered to the site after reading it for the past couple of nights and I have a question for everyone. I've been studying Japanese for a while, off and on unfortunately, but I have all of the hiragana memorized, but very few of the katakana. I've even learned a few kanji and their readings while dabbling in Japanese.

I don't understand how Heisig's method of remembering the kanji will benefit me. I know it would be a great thing to know the Kanji, but what's the point in knowing them if I can't read them? I'll only know their meanings. I see a few of ya typing small tidbits in Japanese while you're going through the book, but my question is how did you learn that? Don't get me wrong, knowing 1945 or so Kanji's meanings would be good for remembering them, but I'm still going to have to go through the torture of learning how to read/say them out loud, why would I spend 3 months "remembering the Kanji" if the only thing their going to be useful for is translating printed works into english words I know?

Any help on clearing this up would be greatly appreciated. I've got a few more questions that I'll just list below:

1. When going with the book, should I be writing them down in a notebook and doing that?
2. Using an SRS (mnemosyne), how am I supposed to get the kanji onto the card if I have no idea how to type out the romaji?
3. I've got some flashcards from the official mnemosyne site, but should I make them as I learn them and categorize them into lessons?

I think that's everything I need to know for now. Thanks again guys.

The book itself kindof explains all this, but...

The idea here is to effectively and easily learn to write them for the long term, which is otherwise pretty difficult, in a logical order that builds up over time. Being able to write them also allows you to much more easily recognize them (and distinguish them from each other) in a variety of written and typographical styles. Having English meanings associated with them (in addition to the recognition) lets you more easily pick up new vocabulary in Japanese. Learning how to read/say them is kindof the easy part. As it turns out, it also works pretty well when going through text when you don't have the time/opportunity/inclination to use a dictionary. Lately I've been playing games and even reading instructions where I don't know half the words, but know what they're saying anyway. Good times.

It's a divide and conquer method. You learn to write them now, it makes everything else easier later. This is instead of trying to learn it all at the same time and overwhelming yourself.

We learn actual Japanese from different sources. This doesn't teach any of that.

1. Yeah. Write them a few times when you learn them, write them again every time you review.
2. If you just use this site it's a lot easier since they're already all there. Anki has them all in there too. Pending that, you can copy them directly off the Study page here. Pending THAT, you can look them up in a dictionary based on the English keyword.
3. Not sure I understand the question, but you should enter/activate the flashcards into the SRS as you learn them through the book.

There's a sample PDF with the first 276 kanji at http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ...sample.pdf
See how you like it.

Sorry, as for question 3, I should have phrased it

Instead of using the downloaded flashcards, should I create them as I learn them from the book?

The categorizing is a feature of mnemosyne. i.e. frames 1-15 are lesson 1, as I'm making the cards, I could just put them into the "Lesson 1" category. then when I get to Lesson 2, I could put those into the "Lesson 2" category and so on.

probably be better for me to just keep them all in 1 category though, your thoughts?

If you put them in separate categories, do you review them separately? If so, definitely not. It's sort of cheating yourself that way, you see? The Heisig ordering introduces primitive components and then several characters that use those components, so if you know you're reviewing a certain section, you already know what primitives you're going to be using. It's best to let them mix up once you've added them, so you're testing your actual recall as much as possible.

I'll make this really succinct. The point of remember the kanji is both that knowing how to write and recognize kanji immediately is a huge asset in learning to read them. Also, as you said, it takes about 3 months if you're diligent. Can you think of a faster way?

Second, yes, use a notebook. Write kanji once as you learn, and everytime you review.

Finally, once RtK is completed, check out Kanji Odyssey. Also, check out alljapaneseallthetime.com. Those should be more than sufficient to answer questions of how to learn the readings.

Here is an example of how it helped me.

Before, I had been studying Japanese for years, but Kanji was definitely my weakest point. In my class, we would get about 20 kanji compounds that we would have to learn, and it would take me 1-2 hours of study time to be able to learn the words well enough to go through all of the flashcards without making a mistake. And that was just going from kanji->reading. If I wanted to be able to write the kanji from seeing the reading, that would take me another 1-2 hours of study. And after all this time, the stuff was still only in my short term memory. I would forget it all within days.

After completing RTK I did a little test to see how quickly I could do the same thing--learn about 20 kanji compounds forward and backward (only short term memory). I accomplished the task in about 15 minutes.

The difference was, before RTK, kanji were just a jumble of weird strokes randomly laid out. Now I recognize them.

Sounds good.. I'm keeping them all grouped together and I'm actually quite amazed at my recall ability. I haven't been writing them out cause I wanna see how fast I can call out their meaning. I've set a goal of 50 per day right now. I'm not sure how that's going to hold out because I'm assuming they get a lot harder as I advance through the lessons.

I also feel a bit like I'm cheating because I'm not writing them out as well. As it is, with 50, it took me about an hour and a half to get all those into Mnemosyne and review them a couple of times. It's amazing how I can recall each individual story or recall their meaning just by looking at them, I'm just afraid if I don't start practicing with the writing, I'll eb able to read them just fine, but there is no way I'll be able to write even half of them without having to cheat and look at the character.

Definitely going to take some advice here I see how I fair within a week. I just don't think I should spend all my time all day reviewing the same kanji over and over, and I don't really wanna pass the 50/day limit. Think I should make another set of cards and start working on vocabulary? or should I just stick to one thing at a time?

IMPORTANT!!!

About the mnemosyne default flashcards: DONT USE THEM

Email-me and I'll send you a copy of my deck, will all the mistakes fixed until kanji number 1965, that is where I am in the book.

You don't necessarily have to write them down on paper-- you can just do the old draw it with your finger in the air trick. But either way, you really *need* to at least try to write them out once when you review. It helps solidify those memories a whole lot better, and is a good test of your ability to produce the kanji at will.

You *don't* need to write them more than once, unless you're having a ton of trouble writing them. The standard "write the kanji until your hand drops off" method is pretty much anathema to RTK, mostly because it doesn't really work very well.

And just trust the spacing on your SRS. Don't force reviews that haven't popped up on their own yet. Saves a lot of effort that way.

Spend extra time learning and fixing your stories up-front, too. Every minute you spend up front will save you many later on.

No! You need to go back and start again!

Re-read the introduction. Do NOT review from kanji to meaning (as in seeing the kanji and saying the keyword). You MUST review from the keyword to the kanji (be able to write the kanji when just given the keyword).

If you do it that way, the other way will happen automatically. Use this site's flashcards. They're really good.

Tought I dont use the review system, I use this sites flashcards.

They were revised by a lot of people. The stories have passion. The people who wrote them are really devoted to learn the kanji. Using RevTK will ensure you will not make any serious mistake.

Not to forget they are alive and changing everyday. Fabrice should pick up the stories and write a book sharing the authorship with Heisig.

I think the easiest way to understand the benefits of heisig is to think of a word you already know in Japanese, for example なります to become. This word is almost always written in hiragana, but it has kanji. The kanji is 成ります.

Trying to remember 成 just like that is pretty tricky, but if you use Heisig you will be able to learn it easily. It has the keyword "Turn Into". It is much easier to associate Turn Into with 成ります than 成.

Most people know およぐ means swim, but do they know the kanji? 泳ぐ
Again, tricky to remember like that and easily confusable with 水,氷,永...
Using heisig you will learn that 泳　means Swim and can easily associate it with 泳ぐ.

etc. etc.

You will soon know the kanji for tons of words you already know. What it boils down to is, its far easier to associate a keyword with a piece of vocabulary than it is to first learn a squiggly character and then associate it.

I think the finger in the air method is better than nothing, but I find that learning how to proportion kanji helps me remember them. If you're writing them in the air you have no sense of proportion. This isn't to say that you have to learn calligraphy to learn kanji, but that writing on paper is probably the best way to do it. Other ways are good, but might not be as useful.

erlog Wrote:I think the finger in the air method is better than nothing, but I find that learning how to proportion kanji helps me remember them. If you're writing them in the air you have no sense of proportion.

Don't use the air, use your palm. It's still not as good as writing on paper, but you'll get a better sense of proportion than using the air. It's also a bit easier to use your palm than the air because the movements will be more natural.

- Kef

I definitely think writing the kanji out on paper or equivalent is better than just palm-of-the-hand or finger-in-air. I reckon if I did that it would be much easier to kid myself that I really did remember to put in that little dot or that I didn't get the number of horizontal strokes wrong or whatever. If it's down there in black and white I can't do that.
I have a little portable whiteboard thingy which I like to use for reviews, but paper's almost as handy.

You're just not good enough at lying to yourself!

Also, by doing it on your palm, instead on the air, people on the bus will think you are less crazy.