So yesterday I learned 100 kanji (500-600) today I tested them and got TWO wrong, so I'm feeling pretty good :o

but then I hi ta total rut with these really abstract concepts and no turkeys or Pegasus's to help me, just a stupid throbbing emotional piece of meat.

how do you guys get around this bit of RTK1/ any tips?

Just change the meaning in your head.

the heart in 想, think of a physical heart.
the state-of-mind 忙, think of some person who you connect to feelings in a special way.

If you think something abstract is hard, make it concrete. It's hard to think of a state of mind perishing from business, but it's easy to think of some special person dying from being too busy.

Performing an action with/on/toward the heart helps me. 忍 for example, a ninja enduring the blade being slowly plunged his the heart. Or someone enduring a bad relationship all the while feelings as if a blade is being slowly plunged into his heart. 忠 picturing an immense battle with tons of violence going on, and sitting there in the middle of this battle field is the heart of some poor fellow who literally left it all out there as a show of his loyalty. Or to show his loyalty he cuts his heart out the middle of his chest.

I then attach a shorter mnemonic line from which I can reconstruct the story. Ex, leaving his heart in the middle as show of loyalty.

Then I eat ice-cream while watching soaps in my underwear.... >_>

Tobberoth Wrote:the state-of-mind 忙, think of some person who you connect to feelings in a special way.

In the West we think of the mind as being in our brain. In Eastern religious traditions, the mind is centered in the heart. So I think this is where the idea of heart becoming state of mind comes from. If I were to create my stories over again, I think I would use Einstein or Freud to represent state of mind though.

I just thought of the heart as being a heart with drops of blood, didn't Heisig recommend that? As for 'state of mind', I believe Fabrice wrote something about imagining a switch to be flipped or something.

Heart is a bastard? Never noticed...

98/100? How one earth did you do that?!
Yesterday I did 30 and got 13 wrong! Maybe theres something you're not telling us... D:

The "heart" that goes at the bottom or the right hand side (感、恥) I just use simple heart concepts.

The "state of mind" on the right side (忙), I did use "heart shaped locket" for the longest time. Now, while doing RTK3, I switched it up to "TinMan from the Wizard of Oz" thanks in part to some using Data, and of course the scene in the movie where he's wearing the heart shaped locket.

I'll be honest, state of mind gave me more trouble, but having a humanoid character for the visual has really helped.

One thing I really like doing is making characters up. For me, the state of mind radical is "The Sad Man". He's this really lazy fat guy who's super depressed. The thread radical is a wise old lady who works as a seamstress. The servant radical is a big brick golem who's really lumbering and stupid(and works for the princess 姫). It's kind of fun actually, cuz as new kanji appear with that radical you can add things to that character's personality and background.

Machine_Gun_Cat Wrote:but then I hi ta total rut with these really abstract concepts and no turkeys or Pegasus's to help me, just a stupid throbbing emotional piece of meat.

how do you guys get around this bit of RTK1/ any tips?

I think that I posted in the stories section but for state of mind, I chose a robot. Data from star trek was pretty good. Asimov's stories provide lots of material too. It's easy to make stories about emotions when your subject is someone/something that wants to feel them but can't.

For the normal heart, I actually envisage a pulsing, meaty and bloody heart. Memories of biology classes where we dissected a pig's heart helps with this.

wrightak Wrote:I think that I posted in the stories section but for state of mind, I chose a robot.

It turns out I didn't post it in the stories section, I posted it in the forums quite some time ago:

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=296

You should be able to find some other ideas there too. Nice to see that the robot gained popularity though.

I posted a bunch of stories for heart using one form as Jack the Ripper the vicious serial killer, because most of the keywords that used it easily fit with it - dreadful, repent, hate, pleasure, remorse, etc....