Currently I'm at frame 430 and have found that the book so far seems to keep a pretty consistent level of difficulty for me. I learn around 15-25 new Kanji a night from those 15-25 I will fail about three-five the next morning, then only one-three that night, and then by the second morning or afternoon fail 0-1. For the majority of the Kanji I end up making up my own story, as it seems to stick in my head better.

As the book goes on do you find that it keeps a consistent level of difficulty, allowing for easy build up to 20+ stroke characters, or does it increase exponentially, with a much higher level of difficulty as you go on?

Thanks.

If anything, the book gets easier as it goes on. It does begin to stagnate as you get to the 1000-1200 area as the kanji are just generally boring, but once you get past that you pretty much fly all the way to 2042. Stroke number also seems to have very little to do with difficulty. It's more the number of primitives, or how well you are able to group them into a coherent story.

For example, dissolve 融 becomes much easier if you turn the one, mouth, 4, and insect into a "1040 form". The 10 comes from the one and the mouth being a "ten" and 40 is "four T", the four and the T shaped post inside it as the bottom of it. You then only have "1040 form, insect". Much easier, even though it seems to have a lot of strokes and primitives. Also the 1040 shape is repeated once more in RTK, so it's easier in that one too.

Note - credit for that goes to kanjihito I believe, as that's where I got that idea from.

[Katsuo]

Having written all my own stories too, I'd say the level stays about the same throughout, except for chapter 51 which includes many of the more unusual characters.

To some extent, though, it gets easier because you become more expert at making stories.

wonderflex Wrote:As the book goes on do you find that it keeps a consistent level of difficulty, allowing for easy build up to 20+ stroke characters, or does it increase exponentially, with a much higher level of difficulty as you go on?

Thanks.

The method doesn't change; it stays the same really.

However, as you go on you'll start to encounter 1) similar kanji with very similar primitives (the first time I got stuck was the arrow/fiesta/parade), 2) chapters with tons of random new primitives and 3) similar or weird keywords. But as long as you keep your stories strong, you'll be fine!

25 a day is a good pace, just keep at it - you're nearly 1/4 of the way through the book!

p.s. 1000-1200 was certainly not boring - it had the person/Mr T. chapter!!

If you keep a steady pace the difficulty stays pretty constant. That doesn't mean you won't fight bouts of potential burn out, but it will often have little to do with the difficulty of any new Kanji. I struggled a bit somewhere around the halfway point but that was almost entirely from the fact that I added 500 cards in the first week which later came back to bite me in the butt in terms of reviews.

aphasiac Wrote:However, as you go on you'll start to encounter 1) similar kanji with very similar primitives (the first time I got stuck was the arrow/fiesta/parade)

If the difficulty of chapters with similar primatives doesn't get much harder then the arrow/quiver/fiesta/parade/thanksgiving/march and stop/correct/mend/zoo then I think I will make through unscathed. These chapters have given me the most amount of errors and moments when I just seem to space it, but after I rework the story it seems to turn out okay.

activeaero Wrote:If you keep a steady pace the difficulty stays pretty constant. That doesn't mean you won't fight bouts of potential burn out, but it will often have little to do with the difficulty of any new Kanji. I struggled a bit somewhere around the halfway point but that was almost entirely from the fact that I added 500 cards in the first week which later came back to bite me in the butt in terms of reviews.

Oh, don't worry, I can image that burn-out is coming. In fact, I've already had a few days where I really didn't want to set down and study. I just keep reminding myself though that language learning isn't a cardio workout that you power through for 15 minutes three times a week. I have to be persistent and keep on the forefront of my mind that learning Kanji is one of the largest doors to push open, but it will open up to a world of other learning.

Yeah, the book is pretty much consistent the whole way through. I find it's not the difficulty that changes rather the person who changes. Different people will go through different times of difficulty depending on their emotions and motivation. For me I hit a breaking point at around 800 where i didn't add anything for 3 weeks. Anyways, just keep at it and you'll be fine.

wonderflex Wrote:If the difficulty of chapters with similar primatives doesn't get much harder then the arrow/quiver/fiesta/parade/thanksgiving/march and stop/correct/mend/zoo then I think I will make through unscathed. These chapters have given me the most amount of errors and moments when I just seem to space it, but after I rework the story it seems to turn out okay.

Nope, doesn't get any harder than that.

Funnily enough, I also got stuck on the stop/correct chapter. But now I can look back now and laugh, as the SRS has burned those primitives so deep into my mind I can't believe I ever found them difficult!

I wouldn't say the difficulty is completely flat; I found some chapter's primitives to be very conductive to making stories, and others were harder, but there aren't really any big surprises if you stick to the method. Near the end you have to push through some sections where it feels like every 1 or 2 kanji have their own weird primitive, but it doesn't last long.

aphasiac Wrote:Nope, doesn't get any harder than that.

Funnily enough, I also got stuck on the stop/correct chapter. But now I can look back now and laugh, as the SRS has burned those primitives so deep into my mind I can't believe I ever found them difficult!

This is good to hear, because I was thinking that if I got hit with a chapter that has 10 primatives that all look simlar (especially at first glance) then I was in for a world of hurt. I can manage the 5 or so, but more than that and my mind doesn't seem to work quite right.

Thanks all for the insite.

I kept thinking I'd have trouble keeping the primitives distinct... but actually it was some extraordinarily confusing keywords that stymied me in the end (darning, tighten, strangle, entwine, tie, spinning, winding, truss; thread, cord, fiber, netting, cotton, silk - all of which use the same freaking thread primitive!). Just got going again after a week of interference related despair at the hands of these merciless fiends!

I think the more distinct or abstract your images are for those primitives, the easier it is to keep them distinct (even if they are visually similar) - and even then, the SRS will help you after a while anyway.

wonderflex Wrote:

aphasiac Wrote:Nope, doesn't get any harder than that.

Funnily enough, I also got stuck on the stop/correct chapter. But now I can look back now and laugh, as the SRS has burned those primitives so deep into my mind I can't believe I ever found them difficult!

This is good to hear, because I was thinking that if I got hit with a chapter that has 10 primatives that all look simlar (especially at first glance) then I was in for a world of hurt. I can manage the 5 or so, but more than that and my mind doesn't seem to work quite right.

Thanks all for the insite.

Learn those 5 first, and the kanji that go with it, and the other 5 the next day?

It will almost feel the same until frame 900-1000, then it'll be easier ( I don't think the book will become easier but you'll become better at it ) then at about frame 1500 it becomes boring but at that time you'll not even sweat 100 kanji/day...

Thanks for warning me about the arrow/fiesta/parade/etc chapter. I just got through that the other day and I knew I had to spend more time on that because I saw people on here found it so difficult. So I managed to get through it really well!

[/offtopic]

I've just passed 1,000. To calibrate, I studied Japanese for two years in university 35 years ago, become fluent in a couple of languages since, and am now returning to Japanese. I'm a professor. I started this kanji death march 6 1/2 weeks ago.

My use of this method has changed. The first 200 were very easy and went by fast. About then I realized I needed to start writing down keywords for some of them. By 500, I started leaning heavily on this website (I was thinking of writing a webapp when I came across this site). At the current point, I can come up with a story anywhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes or more, where the danger of the longer time is I sometimes remember the aborted stories better than the one I adopted. This is especially bad if I discarded a song as the hook, since songs are my strongest hooks. On the other hand, it took me 15 minutes to come up with my story for 834: rather, but once I had it, it slipped into memory perfectly.

The trick for me is to get a secure link of the keyword to a set of hints that create the story. In review this morning I found my story for 969: faith and 998: praise collided since I had both associate with a preacher. So, I have to think about both to try to tease them apart in my head (faith is an attribute while praise is an action; a person of faith is a person of words but a person who praises the Lord is trying to protect his soul). This happens more than before, and so review for me has slowed down. I've recently started a hint list of my most problematic kanji - about 70 of them - and every few days test my ability to recall hints for a keyword (eg, "bathe -> Iao stream", "briar -> pipe", "creation -> road to revelation"). Then, there are those that are astonishingly stubborn to get into my head, usually because I already knew the kanji. My stubborn ones are: risk, prosperous, part, increase, measurement, beg, before, receive, or again, going. So now, every few days I make sure I remember them. Luckily, this list is growing very slowly.

The academic year just started, so that has slowed me down, but the extra work for collisions, more abstract ideas, and fatigue have also slowed me down. At least the vivid dreams of kanji have gone away!

Happy kanji!