First off, I would like to say this is an excellent website and tool. I love it.

Now, the only problem I have is that I can't really use the kanji i'm learning here. I can't really 'read' them so I can't look them up and find the actual reading of the specific kanji. Also, even if the kanji is found, how does one decide which reading(s) to learn for an individual kanji, and how do you go about learning those?

I don't quite understand the question.
You can use rikaichan (see google) to check readings.
As for learning the readings, it's simple -- you do not learn any with RTK1&3 which are what this site is about.
You can use RTK2 to learn readings, although I don't think there is any benefit to that -- just learn the compounds instead.

I don't understand. I don't know what RTK1-3 is and why wouldn't learning how to read them be benefitial?

Quote:I don't know what RTK1-3 is

http://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore.php
This site is a rather specific tool designed for those who follow this particular book series.
I am not sure if it would be of use to anyone else.
See also the replies to your own questions here:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=186

Quote:and why wouldn't learning how to read them be benefitial?

Because readings only matter in compounds, and once you learn a compound you will also know the readings of the component kanji. Works for me, some ppl do it differently though.

Psychia Wrote:Now, the only problem I have is that I can't really use the kanji i'm learning here.

Hi Psychia, let me give you an example. How about "to eat" = tabemasu = たべます　＝食べます。The kanji version, 食べます, contains hiragana (べます), which I assume you can read, and a kanji character (食), which I'll assume you can't.

When you finish RTK1, you'll know basic meanings for about 2000 characters. You'll know 食 means eat. So now you have a lot of clues. What word do you know that has something to do with eating and ends with (べます)?

Not all are words are this easy, of course, but most are. You'll still need to do a lot of practice reading to get fast, but finishing RTK1 is the hard part.

[ファブリス]

Hi Psychia,

this website does not give any instruction as to how to study and remember the characters. The method is explained in detail in the book that you can see in the documentation page, as laxxy has kindly pointed out above. Have a look at the sample chapter PDF file at the bottom of this page. This can get your through the first 250 or so kanji, to get a good feel of how the method works.

Using the flashcard reviewing on this website for learning the characters might get you to 50, 100 or even 200 characters but after that it will become very hard. Early on you get very simple characters, with relatively different shapes. As you progress to 1000, 1500 and 2000 japanese characters.. there will be too many similar looking characters and visual memory alone will not cut it. That's why you need an effective method such as decomposing the characters into component "primitives", and using mnemonic associations for those components, all of which is introduced in the book, step by step, as you progress from lesson to lesson.