It's doable. To learn all 2042 kanji in 2 weeks time, but it's probably better for to learn it in one month's time. You can even go up to 3007 for 99.98..... coverage of kanji in half of a month. so 1.5 months to learn 3007 kanji.

spleenlol Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:I think he's just exaggerating for emphasis. I remember reading somewhere that someone learned 2042 kanji in around 2 weeks. But they said they had nothing else to do in terms of time. So they spent all day on kanji.

I feel like even if you had nothing to do you still need to sleep and eat. I somehow don't think that's possible to retain all of that. But maybe it is...

I think it's possible do in a few hours per day if you were to use a different method. Retaining it... not sure yet.

Learning all 2042 kanji in 2 weeks or even less is easily doable if you have the free time. Retention comes with review and will always take longer though. People making those claims just mean "finished the book".

Jarvik7 Wrote:Learning all 2042 kanji in 2 weeks or even less is easily doable if you have the free time. Retention comes with review and will always take longer though. People making those claims just mean "finished the book".

Yeah, imo, how quickly you learn the kanji has nothing to do with long term retention. That has everything to do with reviewing. If you've got the time for the increased review workload caused by the higher pace, then it is definitely doable.

I personally did 100/kanji a day way back, and now almost a year later, my retention and reviews are doing just fine.

Crap! I did 99 today. I'm no longer awesome. Can I make up for it by doing 101 tomorrow?

I know I'm not awesome, but hey, I averaged ~75 per day for a month (finishing RtK1) and it just about killed me. I had the time to work on it full time (except for meals and sleep), and only took part of one day off per week. I did keep up with reviews in my SRS during this period. Chalk it up to a lack of imagination but I can't fathom how you awesome people can go any faster!

I'm still waiting for the guy who does 1,000 kanji a day. Everyone has wimped out of my challenge though.

We know full well when we are out-awesomed!

I'm doing this as well. At least I was but have had a couple of busy days in which I missed learning (but kept up reviews) - but in a week and a half I'm 1/3 of the way through RTK. It's not difficult really, I look at a new kanji for about 15/20 seconds each so it only takes an hour or so to get through 100 (with 79% retention). It's reviews that take more time (usually about 1 hour but maybe 1.5 hours on bad days because sometimes I end up with almost 300 cards for review (yesterday I had 230 and it took 1.1 hours for example)), the ones I forget I need to go and rethink stories for, and they do seem to pile up quickly.

I think everyone should work at their own pace though - but I think that lots of people spend too much time thinking up really good stories (like 5 minutes per kanji!) when they could be learning more. I just whizz through them, and the ones that don't stick I find stories for. I really only spend about 3 hours a day on kanji and although I could (and want to) do more, I don't want to cram my brain, and give myself way more cards to review. I mean it's reviewing where the stuff really sticks permanently not the learning bit so I don't spend any more time on it than strictly necessary - I just want to get the initial Kanji learning out the way so that I can just review stuff I've already seen and therefore dive into reading real Japanese asap (since I'm already slightly beyond JLPT3 level with regards to grammar/listening etc since I've been doing Japanese for years before this, just not that seriously) - it's just not knowing that much kanji that is holding me back [already knew about 300 thanks to rote memorisation] I mean seeing kanji you've never seen before in a sentence is so distracting and annoying when you know everything else in the sentence.

I tried doing a burst of 100 kanji last weekend at 50 a day. I'd never been so tripped up. My bamboo hat's off to you.

I have been doing rtk since april last year, stopped at 829, and now am at 1426 and just ran out of pages in my exercise book. I am doing 100+ a day just because I want and know this can be over in 7 days or less. I have no problems with big reviews.

Nijuro Wrote:My bamboo hat's off to you.

Ahaha, just covered that a few days ago.

And am beginning to realize laughing at rtk references is becoming compulsory..

Hey guys.
I did 100 a day once (in about eight hours), because I think the learning is really the part where the retention works for me, so I need excellent visual, with good stories, and that takes time (for me). The revisions are always E, E, E...
But I stopped doing that because I'm looking up the chinese etymology to better my rational stories, so I'm stuck at 50 a day.
For now. After all, I'm just breaking in the method.
And Aijin, Respect. If I had your awake time, I'd probably slob half the time, which I cannot afford. (sigh)
Anyway, to close the "train" subject, it came from anglo-normand from the 14th century onwards, and that comes from the verb "traîner" (as the excellent page above shows) which is something like "dragging", and a train used to be a convoi, and also the king's suite (you know, the court that followed him around?).
See yall.
EratiK

Get out of the way guys, I learned all the Kanji just by listening to Japanese music.

zachandhobbes Wrote:Get out of the way guys, I learned all the Kanji just by listening to Japanese music.

now thats funny XD. You just made my day.

I've done 1100 in 5 days so far, but I have a background with previous study so I know a decent amount already, and it's easy enough to break down stuff you already knew. Even still, some of the lessons with over 100 can still be a challenge because there's a fair amount of components I haven't encountered. Hoping to blaze through the first book by this week.

zachandhobbes Wrote:Get out of the way guys, I learned all the Kanji just by listening to Japanese music.

Just tried this method, but it wasn't going fast enough. Possibly because some kanji are not too common in the music I was listening to. After that I stared at this http://www.users.on.net/~drneale/kanjigr...7-1680.png for 48 hours and learned all 3007 kanji and their readings.

Nest step, Kanji kentei 1 in 72 hours

I used to think it was impossible for me to do 100 in a day but today I actually did it. I went from frame 816-916. I split it up into four 25 kanji sessions with around a 1 or 2 hour break in between. Plan on doing the same thing tomorrow and see if it works out just as good as it did today.

update: Besides one day where I had a bad headache I've been keeping up with doing 100 a day and I'm currently at 1483. So far doing the 100 daily isn't the problem but rather the amount of daily reviews the result from doing 100 back to back. Not really a serious issue now though since I've got nothing but free time.

Hahahaha, 100 a day?(no, this is not one of those exaggerated "make fun of the nerds" comments) I´m doing 250/day right now with no problems, in addition to my usual grammar, lyrics, and vocab reviews in my main Japanese deck, as well as work and school.






(I noticed that I hadn't reviewed my RTK deck in eight months so I set all the kanji to new cards and changed the "easy" button to a warp drive that instantly turns any new card into a mature card.)

You made me rage so hard...

What kind of intervals are you setting your cards to? Aren't you gonna get a whole bunch of reviews coming up in a few weeks?

The easy button is set to 27 to 49 days, so it spreads them out over a long interval. I won´t have to worry about any huge reviews off on the horizon.

I´ve only been hitting the easy button about 70% of the time, though. I will have a lot more reviews than usual over the course of the next week or so.

aphasiac Wrote:

BooTheGhost Wrote:I usually spend about 2 and a half hours on 50, and then like an hour and a half reviewing. Then I go and do another 50. So I guess you're right.

6.5 hours a day - To learn 100 kanji??! you're kidding right??

Wow, I did 25-30 kanji a day, but learning + reviews only took a maximum if 60mins. I used to get up early and do it before work everyday.

Maybe you'll find making up original stories and retention a bit easier if you slow down a little. Also bare in mind your reviews are going to increase exponentially as time goes on..

6.5 hours is not that bad. Even Heisig said in the intro it would take 6 weeks studying full time to do RTK which is 2040/42 or 50 words a day. And by full time he probably means at least 4 hrs.


When I learned 20 kanji a day, I could learn those 20 kanji and do all the reviews in about 30 minutes. So you'd think if I was learning 100 kanji a day I would take 5*30 = 150 minutes or 1.5 hours right? WRONG! The ammount of time I have to spend rises dramatically with the amount I study per day. Approximate times:

20 kanji/day: 30 mintues
25/day: 40
35/day: 1-2 hrs
50/day: 2.5-3.5 hrs
100/day: 4-6 hrs

You have to try it yourself to see what it's like, for at least a week so you can see what it feels like when the reviews start to pile up.


This is for several reasons:

1. When learning more kanji I usually have to take at least short breaks in between to give my brain a rest, when learning 20 I can learn them all at once.
2. You're much more likely to confuse different kanji when you are cramming a huge amount every day. They don't have enough time to really stick in your mind.
3. Your brain does not like retaining too much unnecessary information, so you're much more likely to forget in 3 days when the first review comes around. The first review comes in 3 days, that means you crammed 300 cards in that time, your brain is likely to just dump the first 100 because it is overwhelmed.
4. Because of numbers 2 and 3, I have to spend a lot of time reviewing the stuff I am learning the day I learn it: for example, i'd learn 1-30, then go back and review 1-15, then learn 30-45, and go back and review 1-30, or and so on. This is so my brain puts them in longer term memory and so that I can sort out similar cards, so it can survive the 3 days until it is reviewed again. When learning a small number like 20 Ican learn them all in one batch and only review once.
5. Reviews pile up, and when you are learning 100 kanji missing one day can mean 100 extra reviews the next day! Also because you are cramming so much if you missing a day means the cards are much more likely to be dropped from your long term memory and forgotten.