I guess nothing good in life comes too easy.

All this is, is a method. It is method that makes it easier to learn this for a non-native speaker of Japanese. The work is still the work.

Its like digging a hole. You want to dig to reach your goal; a buried treasure. You can dig by hand if the soil is soft enough. Heisig offers you a shovel. Easier to dig, but you still have to dig. Digging is the only way to get to the treasure of learning kanji.

From what I have read, most people use other "tools" along the way than the book and this website. I started using flash cards that I printed up myself from the polarcard website. I also typed up the all the keywords in list form with a small explaination on a separtate file that I print up and take along with me.

Example:

59. Beginning- number two over human legs
60. Page- head- t/b ceiling, drop, shellfish
61. Stubborn- beginning and head
62. Mediocre- ?a drop in the wind?
63. Defeat- bound up over shellfish
(I have my own codes and marking to help me remember. t/b means from top to bottom)
I cant show it here, but primitives are in italics)

I review this list in groups of 100 daily. I tackle 50 first. Then I do the other 50. Then all the 100.

Here is my method.

1. I read the list/ group of 50 and visualize the kanji in my head.
2. I review the correspondiing flash card looking at the kanji first to identify the keyword. (I know, this is against Heisig's suggestion but bare with me.)
3. I review the ones I miss until they are solid.
4. I review the flash cards again looking at the keywords, and I write out the kanji.
5. I correct the ones I missed
6. I repeat all the steps for the second group of 50.
7. I review all 100 both ways; kanji to key word, key word to kanji.

By the end of this which takes about an hour, I can blow through a set of 100 either way in under 5 minutes.

I also review the set of 100 from the previous 2 days. It is amazing how much I can remember. I end up reviewing 300 flash cards a day. Since the two groups from the previous day were already reiviewed by the method above, I only need to go through them once or twice. At under 5 minutes a piece, that is very reasonable.

As a result of using this method, I do not really use the flash cards on this site. I dont have to anymore. The value of this site, to me, is in the community and forum. That is priceless.

I hope this makes the "digging for your treasure" a lot easier.

Wisher.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies. I was told that I would get intelligent replies here. I was skeptical because of the level of the arguments I was getting. But on the whole the responses have been lucid, on target, well-worded, and helpful.

It seems in general people agree that it's taxing, meaning it requires a lot of time and work, even if that work is fun and/or spread out over time making it feel easier or less taxing. And it seems that in general stress is in the eye of the beholder. A few people don't feel stressed at all (or feel a positive stress), and some even calmed by the method. For most there is a level of (negative) stress which seems to be related to self-imposed constraints (timelines, goals, etc.) and/or conflicts with things happening in life.

To samesong: I wasn't really trying to set up an opposition between taxing/stressful and easy/fun, but re-reading what I wrote, I can see that it's there. But I don't think it's accurate to read easy=fun into what I wrote. Easy is generally opposite to taxing and fun is generally opposite to stressful. (These of course aren't exact since something may be mentally easy but physically taxing or vice versa and some games, for instance, can cause stress but be fun.) My main point was to not paint Heisig's method as a walk in the park. Even if you think it's fun and you take your time in order to reduce stress, it's still not a walk in the park. It's more like several hundred daily walks in the park. The unprepared person may have trouble finding this enjoyable 50 or 100 days in, but the prepared person might be able to enjoy the differences in the each day's walk through kanji.

[Katsuo]

At the start of RTK1 in the Preface/Note, Heisig writes:

"...while the method is simple and does eliminate a great deal of wasted effort, the task is still not an easy one. It requires as much stamina, concentration, and imagination as one can bring to it."

I totally agree.
To me it is hard work. Being a full time student with a part time job plus exam season coming up. I found it particularly hard to carry on with daily learning.
You just have to make it fun, if its not fun itself.

I meant "reading" as in, being able to properly identify the character and relate it's meaning in terms of keyword, not reading as in japanese vocabulary.

One other thing to consider, the amount of "difficulty" is mainly in the size of the task. When I look at the amount of time taken and divide by the number of kanji--which I haven't technically done--it comes out roughly to acquiring the writing, recognition and meaning of one kanji per 10 minutes of effort over the entire period I've been doing RtK. That is not stressful or in any way a negative trade-off in my mind. It's just that there are 2042 of the lil' buggers!!

If true, that's only 340 hours for the entire first book. That's like 8.5 workweeks added on to other commitments. So, when I can I try to view it on the other smaller level of ~10 minutes to conquer a kanji (well, minus the japanese reading).

ivoSF Wrote:man i probaly the only person who is at this site for almost 3 years and still did not finish it yet.

No worries, ivoSF!

I first tried Heisig over 10 years ago, way before this site existed. I tried a couple times, before finally succeeding with this site on my third try. So don't give up!

頑張って!

It was me that posted the original message, I didn't say it was fun/easy.

On the topic of discussion with rote memorisation vs. heisig, what I said was that there isn't much stress involved in learning the Kanji using Heisig. Heisig never stressed me out at all, it merely took time and commitment. It was like building a tower out of lego, where I merely have to put one block after the other down and all that is required is not giving up.
Heisig is completely systemised and works in the same way, kanji after kanji. If you forget a kanji, it ends up in a different pile, you don't have to panic or do anything, you just keep going, one by one, through the lists. The stories let the kanji enter your head with the minimum of effort - if you are stressed, you just end up studying less kanji that day. Occasionally when you didn't put them in right, they fall to the back and you have to redo them later.
However with rote memorisation it's like trying to fill a bucket of water that has holes in it. You must force the characters into your head, again and again and again... plugging holes as they spill out forgotten. Then later on you have the stress of kanji that look similar, with no methodical exact method to write (or read) them without forgetting for example, 氷永 which one was eternity... (edit: actually if you were using rote you wouldn't even have a keyword eternity would you? youd have to remember it for the individual compounds it appears in... every one of them...ouch [this compound uses the one with the squiggle dot on the left... and this one with it on the top. or was it the other way around?]) if you ever get stuck like this you can check with the story you made. Learning the order, associating kanji into compounds, not having a rigid fixed system of keywords will all stress you out, when Heisig is like pedalling a bike, you simple get on and put the time in and you don't really have to do anything except pedal.

It requires commitment yes, but it's not really stressful, at least not compared to rote memorisation and methods that are not completely systemised. It's actually kinda fun too

That's what I think anyway. I tried to complete Heisig as fast as I could and got up to 1000 kanji in about a month, but a relationship breakup and someone coming to visit for a couple of weeks broke my schedule, and with heisig its important never to stop going or you end up trouble. It's like keeping a fire going in the rain, everything is cool and it's easy to throw logs on, even just a few if you are busy, but if you ever leave the fire to go out, then you are royally screwed. It's only stressful when you get to that point and go oh crap...

Sorry. I wasn't trying to imply easy and fun were you're words, Magician. I was just using them as opposites of taxing/stressful as I explained above. They are also referring to people who speak lightly about doing Heisig. (I was one of those people when I was first starting out.)

In this last message evident is one reason why it was frustrating having a discussion with you. You were constantly combining or compartmentalizing arguments at will. Here the only topic at question is right in the title of the thread. You've gone and started talking about rote memorization. Other methods have no place in this discussion as it's not an extension of the other thread, though it's drawn from it. (By the way, you were the only one talking about rote memorization in the other thread.)

My problem with your previous statements is that they characterized Heisig's method as not "stressful" and not "taxing". Those were your words. You tend to make it sound as if one simply puts the time in, and success is achieved. In addition to the time is the mental effort and the consistency. There is the requirement of reviews. There is the fact that you must continue through life events which threaten to interrupt the process. There's the mental fortitude needed to make it through to a 400/700/1000 and not think "I've spent X weeks/months/years and I'm still only one-fifth, one-third, halfway through". There is the monotony of the routine. (Not that these are felt by everyone or that things can't be done to overcome them. But that's my point.)

At times you do mention some of this, but you do so flippantly, with a tone of "it's not really that big a deal." I think spreading the word about Heisig is great, but if you do it by saying it's not hard and the pitfalls are few and easily overcome, you're doing people a disservice. I think it's good for people to know the commitment they are making when they start. Not that the above pitfalls are felt by everyone or that things can't be done to overcome them. But that's my point. If you can't see this in your own words (re-read your last paragraph) then you're not being honest with yourself.

And again, if it's so stress-free, why aren't you still pedalling?

I find going for walks to be stress-free. I don't go for walks very often, though.

mattyjaddy Wrote:In this last message evident is one reason why it was frustrating having a discussion with you. You were constantly combining or compartmentalizing arguments at will. Here the only topic at question is right in the title of the thread. You've gone and started talking about rote memorization. Other methods have no place in this discussion as it's not an extension of the other thread, though it's drawn from it. (By the way, you were the only one talking about rote memorization in the other thread.)

I'm afraid difficulty is relative. Learning 2000 kanji is easy compared to building the pyramids, building a house of cards is easy compared to learning 2000 kanji, and writing your name is easy compared to building a house of cards. If you have nothing to compare it to, you cannot label anything as anything. So of course, I label it to the popular alternative which is to sit there and force those kanji in. Every book I have seen here in Japan has been about forcing those kanji in by writing them out over and over (mostly school textbooks / exam textbooks) so it seemed obvious to compare it. In fact, I believe Heisig himself compares it throughout his introduction, so I see it as being completely relevant.

mattyjaddy Wrote:My problem with your previous statements is that they characterized Heisig's method as not "stressful" and not "taxing". Those were your words. You tend to make it sound as if one simply puts the time in, and success is achieved. In addition to the time is the mental effort and the consistency. There is the requirement of reviews. There is the fact that you must continue through life events which threaten to interrupt the process. There's the mental fortitude needed to make it through to a 400/700/1000 and not think "I've spent X weeks/months/years and I'm still only one-fifth, one-third, halfway through". There is the monotony of the routine. (Not that these are felt by everyone or that things can't be done to overcome them. But that's my point.)

I don't think those are stressful though. Waking up every morning and making myself some cereal is not stressful, yet I have to do it every day or I suffer. I firmly believe one simply does put the time in achieve result, like pretty much any activity. But I believe the learning process itself is not stressful. I have tried studying subjects like maths where I have to get my head around difficult concepts, and I have tried studying tricky grammar for tests with complex rules. I've studied physics with tons of complex formulae, and music where I have to learn to compose music according to various styles. I believe all of those things can be considered stressful, because they require a strong mental effort to succeed. Learning kanji is like working in a job screwing the caps on toothpaste. It's not difficult at all to learn a kanji using Heisig's method. It merely takes a lot of time to get through them all. After all, there are 2,000.

Would you describe the toothpaste job as stressful? I suspect you would argue that the long hours and monotony make it stressful. I don't think that is relevant though, as such things are found in all methods of study. The reviews are not stressful exams that have ambiguous answers from complicated grammar rules. They involve the very un-stressful task of looking at a word and seeing if you remember it or not. If you don't then you press, "No" otherwise you press "Yes". Pretty simple. You don't lose or fail, you just keep going, the whole process is ongoing and you just sit there pressing yes and no. If you want to learn the kanji within a set time limit then perhaps it would be stressful as failure would mean more reviews the next day, but if you just want to dedicate half an hour, or an hour a day, consistently until it's done, no real problem.

I really do view Heisigs method as one as simple as screwing caps on toothpaste. There is little point in reiterating the process of learning a kanji on this forum as everyone here knows how it works. You make a story, you imprint it in your mind, then you throw it on the pile and if you didn't make it perfect enough you keep hitting no at review time and going over it again until you get it. I fail to see how this is stressful at all really. At the end of the day you know that once you nail it and it gets into that last pile it will stick forever (provided you keep up with your reviews) and there is no kanji complex enough to avoid eventually ending up there.
If you compare it to the other methods (and you have to really to make any kind of argument for or against it) then rote memorisation involves a lot of effort of rewriting a kanji tons of times and trying to force it to stick in your mind which is a lot of stress, and results will vary drastically.

It requires dedication to learn Heisig, but dedication and stress are not synonymous. I never had a pull-your-hair-out moment while learning Heisig, with the rare exception of the odd character that decides to have radicals its tough to make a story with, but the forum here soon fixed those. In the first 1,000 kanji that happened maybe 10 times?

mattyjaddy Wrote:At times you do mention some of this, but you do so flippantly, with a tone of "it's not really that big a deal." I think spreading the word about Heisig is great, but if you do it by saying it's not hard and the pitfalls are few and easily overcome, you're doing people a disservice. I think it's good for people to know the commitment they are making when they start. Not that the above pitfalls are felt by everyone or that things can't be done to overcome them. But that's my point. If you can't see this in your own words (re-read your last paragraph) then you're not being honest with yourself.

I am not spreading the word, I merely made a thread saying I am going to try to complete Heisig within a month. I failed, but not due to stress, simply due to the chaos of other commitments. Which I think covers the last point you are stating as if it somehow supports your theory that Heisig is stressful. I haven't lost the time, when the absolute chaos storm in my life ends I shall continue from about 900 onwards to the end. And I shall not be stressed out in the slightest.

mattyjaddy Wrote:And again, if it's so stress-free, why aren't you still pedalling?

Why is creating stories so stressful? Enjoy the path. The destination will take care of itself.

That was a very nicely worded and thoughtful reply. I can now see your points very clearly and I see that, for you, Heisig is not a stressful undertaking. I don't think that should be a part of your argument when defending Heisig (or for anyone trying to share Heisig with others). Not when a majority (if the responses here are indicative) feel it is otherwise.

Bodhisamaya has perhaps given us a better way to present it. It's a path that can be enjoyed. Make a walk with Heisig a part of your daily routine. Don't worry about where the end of the path is (really there is no end to learning kanji, just an end to RtK book 1) and have fun looking at the views and smelling the flowers (and making up stories about them). Eventually the end of book 1 will come and you can work on literacy as you see fit. (Though this explanation may not work with goal- or timeline-oriented people. They may benefit from warnings about stress/burnout or suggestions about sustainability.)

I do find fault with your characterization of the other methods/books and what rote memorization is. But as I feel they are only relevant in establishing a comparison and not answering the question at hand, I'll leave those be.

Thanks for the fun.

Sorry if this is a repeat of what others have said before - I am too lazy to read through all the answers. I think that whether or not you find it stressful/taxing depends on whether this is the first method of kanji learning you have ever tried. I have lived in Japan for over a year, seriously studying Japanese the whole time, and I studied a bit before I came here. I just took the JLPT 2級 (and I think I passed!), so this is not coming from a person who was never serious about studying before...

As someone who tried many kanji study methods and spent far more than I care to admit on textbooks and learning materials *before* discovering Heisig, this is BY FAR the easiest and least taxing kanji study method I have ever seen. In addition to the fact that it simply works better and sticks better, thus requiring less of the taxing and discouraging review that is necessary with the DRILL AND REMEMBER OR ELSE methods, it is *more fun* to study this way! Writing kanji over and over, trying to remember the stroke order, repeating the meaning to yourself, and trying to remember how to distinguish similar kanji from one another, is NOT FUN!!!

I have a strong background in kanji, but I had a pretty miserable track record at remembering how to write the kanji that I could read before trying this method - I have gotten through 249 kanji in only a few days! And I would say only about 50 of these were kanji that I could confidently WRITE before, and only about 50 more were kanji I could confidently read. This method is simply NOT taxing or stressful for me. This is the first time I have felt like it's actually POSSIBLE to really learn the kanji. I am no longer secretly jealous of or afraid of the people who have learned all the kanji!! I can do it, too!!

Conclusion: Not stressful. FUN! MOTIVATING!

Second day of Heisig, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I'm trying to blast through this thing as fast as I can; preferably in under a month. I'm trying to have a pace of 100 a day. My copy hasn't come in yet, so I'm currently working off of the PDF that's online. I'm currently at 194.

My method: make a physical flashcard AND an anki flashcard; I understand the benefit of anki, but I'm a flashcard person. I need to be able to carry it around. It takes a LONG time... I'm sure it'll pay off in that it'll take me 20-30 days to do all the kanji [at most, 40-50] and not 1-2-3-4 years, but ... wow. It took me a few hours to do the 100 kanji for today, though I did take a 20 minute break each hour, and I was forced to stop for about 3 or 4 hours. Nonetheless, I started working at about 2:30 pm and only finished a half hour ago. This would mean there was 4, 4.5 hours of light-moderate work...

It definitely is... difficult. There's lots of information going in. It's not unenjoyable; I like the stories, I like changing the stories to make them fit ME better - 'yonder' became 'Apollo Justice points YONDER'; Poison Ivy of Batman fame featured in some stories; He-Man popped up once]. It's fun. But it's hard, too. Mentally speaking, I'm definitely sore. It's a GOOD kind of sore, like the day after you do a bunch of exercise.

But... I'd definitely prefer it to rote memorization. I'd die if I had to do rote memorization. That'd be taxing in EVERY sense. And this works, at least. I was using my flashcards in math class today, and I got all of them except 6, which I messed up by putting the primitives in the wrong position [I kept switching them around].

Yes, your right i find it quite taxing and sometimes stressful. There are days when you just dont want to do it anymore, or when reviews are bad you wonder where you went wrong. I think it's more interesting then fun/easy and the drive to gain more cards in their stack (for me anyway) in itself keeps one interested.

Whenever people want to know about the method I let them know that even though its efficient n all that good stuff it is still work and requires dedication most definately. ><"

This just depends on your pace, expectations, and distractions in life.

No one going at 5 kanji a day would call Heisig taxing or stressful I think.

Someone going at 15 kanji a day who is otherwise very busy might.

A person who has no responsbilities for a month and decides to try going at 75 kanji a day for a month might say it was fun (but probably not).

Anyway, depends on the person and their situation.

Once you are done, start reading real Japanese and compare your progress with people that have not done RTK, you won't find it taxing at all.

Vulgar_Wheat Wrote:I'm trying to blast through this thing as fast as I can; preferably in under a month. I'm trying to have a pace of 100 a day. My copy hasn't come in yet, so I'm currently working off of the PDF that's online. I'm currently at 194.

My prediction, should you miraculously finish in one month... By the second or third month, you will be so drowned in reviews, that you will stop. By the fourth or fifth month, you may forget a lot of the Kanji.

I hope you prove me wrong! Good luck!

Edit: I take that back, at 100/day, you may start to drown in reviews in a week or two, if you are using a SRS.

FloconDeNeige Wrote:think it's more interesting then fun/easy and the drive to gain more cards in their stack (for me anyway) in itself keeps one interested.

My drive is to get english away as far as possible from my Japanese study and start learning juko asap

That's why the sooner i finish heisig the sooner i can start true study!!!

kfmfe04 Wrote:

Vulgar_Wheat Wrote:I'm trying to blast through this thing as fast as I can; preferably in under a month. I'm trying to have a pace of 100 a day. My copy hasn't come in yet, so I'm currently working off of the PDF that's online. I'm currently at 194.

My prediction, should you miraculously finish in one month... By the second or third month, you will be so drowned in reviews, that you will stop. By the fourth or fifth month, you may forget a lot of the Kanji.

I hope you prove me wrong! Good luck!

Edit: I take that back, at 100/day, you may start to drown in reviews in a week or two, if you are using a SRS.

I'm already reviewing some of the earlier ones [Out of today's load, I've had about 7 old ones]. It's not as bad as it could be, since I make physical flashcards, too, and take about 50 random cards to school each day to review. Though [technically] this makes the the SRS less useful, I like this method. It's more... fulfilling. It also makes things go faster, since I can do it when I'm waiting to get out of my school's parking lot [GRIDLOCK HELL], whereas lugging my laptop to school is asking to be robbed.

Since I review them all so much, it takes me >10 seconds for each card on Anki. Even if after adding all 2,000, it doubles, that's still only 20 seconds/card. If I end up with, say, 100 a day, it'll take between 17 and 33 minutes. With 200 a day, 33 and an hour; so on, so forth. If I'm getting 200+ a day, I'm pretty unhappy, but I'll have free time; answering 10-20 cards isn't a big deal if I do it in chunks.

Anyways, this SRS review swamp will be fine. I have all break to do it. That's however many free hours a day I want! I've heard of people doing 100/day, anyways, so if they can do it... so can I! I think I may be overly optimistic, but I like being that way.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Once you are done, start reading real Japanese and compare your progress with people that have not done RTK, you won't find it taxing at all.

Amen to this.

I really can't believe more people haven't done RtK. I've never met one Japanese major at my university that has done it (there might be someone, I just haven't met them).

I think it's pretty laughable that Japanese people and non-Chinese Japanese learners always talk about the huge advantage Chinese people have when learning Japanese, but when learners are approached with a method that gives the same advantage they usually shrink at the idea of it. Anyway, I am derailing the thread, so ignore my comment

stranded at frame 600 which stresses me a bit I find this discussion interesting!

I completed Heisig in a little over 3 months, and for me, I found it quite challenging, but it was an intense amount of fun, partially because I enjoy pushing myself (I worry sometimes that I'm a masochist). The work depends on the mindset that you start off with. If you honestly think this is the hardest thing you will ever do (like its something you can only do with 110% of your abilities), then as you are going through it you may find that at the end of it, it wasn't so bad and it will have seemed "easy" in retrospect. Its all from what perspective your looking at it in my opinion.