I apologize: I'm sure this is a FAQ, but I did not find it in the official kanji.koohii.com FAQ. (If this query is inappropriate for this forum, please at least include in the kanji.koohii.com FAQ.)

I would like to download the whole RTK flashcard stack/DB, including stories. My flashcard-reviewing program, Anki, lets me download ready-made stacks of Kanji in the order given in James Heisig's books, but these cards do not include stories.

I know that the stories from James Heisig's book are copyrighted and not downloadable in this way. But it is my understanding that this site also has stories submitted by others, which I infer are public domain.

I also know that, in the opinion of many, it is better to create one's own stories. I think this is some merit to this opinion (even though the fact that James Heisig's book includes many stories implies that this is not necessarily so). But even granting this, having ready-made stories that can be modified or overridden later greatly speeds up getting started.

The problem of learning Kanji is that it is very time-consuming, so it makes sense to minimize the amount that one needs to spend just *generating* one's study materials, so that one can maximize the amount of time one can spend *studying* these materials.

Is there a way to do what I want to download the whole RTK flashcard stack/DB, *including stories*. Preferably, I'm looking for something already in a format compatible with Anki, but this is a very minor preference. The more important requirement is the downloaded file be in plain text format.

Many thanks in advance,

gfb345

Each kanji on this site has at least 20 different people's stories on it, if not more. More and more are added each day. There is no way to download all those stories with the kanji flashcards.

HOWEVER, it seems you are misunderstanding the purpose of Heisig's method completely. The point is that you learn to create your own stories, as this will help you remember the cards better. That's why, in the first part of the book, which contains less than 300 of the 2042 cards, he shows you how to do it. In part two (which still leads up to you learning only 1/4 of the entire amount of kanji) he already makes the stories much smaller and for the remainder of the kanji (3/4) you must come up with the story yourself. This is not 'the opinion of many', this is the purpose of the entire book and the basis of Heisig's method!

Also, you must not study a 'story', you must have an image in your head that is described by the story. Sometimes the stories come within seconds, sometimes you need to take a bit longer. I never take more than 30 seconds to come up with a story before I look on the site, so it doesn't have to be extremely time-consuming.

The purpose of sharing the stories on this site is so you can choose one that works for you for kanji you find difficult to come up with one yourself. For example, a lot of people chose Spiderman for the 'thread' primitive (糸) but I didn't like it, so I read about someone who used 'old sweater' and I found that worked for me. The stories on this site are merely there to support you to remember certain kanji, not an infallible way to remember certain kanji. You LEARN by the GENERATING of the study material, not by studying it afterwards. If you do it well and use the SRS system, you won't even have to 'study' it, as you'll learn it by generating it and then reviewing it.

I have two more questions to conclude this long post:

1. Have you even read the introduction to the book?
2. Do you even own the entire book (part 1, 2 and 3) and have you looked at part 2 and 3?

If you've already copied a story for each kanji, go to http://kanji.koohii.com/study/mystories and click the Export to CSV button.

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I think gfb345 just wants to review other's stories while reviewing his cards, offline. The short answer is no, there is no "official" way so far to download the whole publicly shared stories archive.

That said, even if you had all the stories, how do you combine that in a deck? It's not a question of creating your own, but rather that you need to settle on a story BEFORE you review it. If you review the cards, and upon a wrong answer, pick another from a list displayed on that card, you're not doing RTK properly. You may remember in the short term but you're shooting yourself in the foot.

With all that said:

1. The default RTK decks for Anki includes a link to the Study area (that's what I heard here before).

2. If you really need them offline, some members have "scraped" the public stories before, and even shared a script. You'll have to search patiently, as I can't keep track of all those topics, I can just confirm you that someone already did that, and also had a file to download.

It just sounds stupid to me.

hereticalrants Wrote:It just sounds stupid to me.

Hahaha you just summarised my ideas in one sentence. Respect.