Hello RTKers,
I haven't kept up with my reviews and I am thinking of making an Anki deck for kanji.
Also, I had no clue where to put this thread since it involves pretty much all the topics available.

1) I finished RTK two months ago and I am planning on doing number 3 next month. Since I know a lot of the kanji's onyomi and kunyomi I was thinking of replacing the kanji I am familiar with a word commonly associated with the kanji.
For example: 天→天国 Are there any disadvantages to this?

2) I will also start Hanzi simplified next month doing 20 a day, depending on the difference of the characters--but it should be easier since I can write the 常用漢字 (old not new). Any advice?

3) I was also thinking of adding one word to each card so I can learn some of the readings by osmosis. (and more importantly the words.) How should I place the word? All on the back side?

Here's the main question: Heisig says explicitly that one must ALWAYS review from key-word to writing the kanji. I was thinking of making two cards for each kanji.
Meaning --> Kanji and information
Information in Hiragana --> Kanji

Please tell me any experiences you may have had with type of problem.
どうぞ宜しく御願いします。

1) There's merit to it. Don't limit yourself to just one word, put multiple words that use that yomi on the front.

Q: Heaven
(heavens, sky, imperial)
てんき　てんごく　あめ

A: 天気　天国　天　

2) No experience in that area, sorry

3) See number 1, as it's the same situation. I think it's important that your RTK deck is about kanji recognition, so be wary of using the extra information as a failing point. Later, as you get confortable with vocabulary and various yomi, then this isn't as big an issue to add in (I now have missing onyomi as a reason to fail a card).

4) Heisig's advice stemmed from flashcard use pre-SRS. In the world of computer flashcards on Anki, doing Kanji to Meaning flashcards in not as counter-productive and in my case helped my reading ability I think. There was more to the problem than that, but I'm a bit too tired to go into it.

Thanks for your response!

1) OK, Thanks a bunch for the example!

2) That's OK! It isn't as important as the other questions.

3) So become comfortable with [meaning-漢字] cards before the [漢字-reading] cards? That makes sense to me.

4) So it's not counter productive in Anki but it's reccomend to have a grasp of the characters beforehand. Did I read that right? Thanks for the explanation, it was enough but I like to make sure that I read your post right.

You were a great help!

Regarding 4). I think it's counter-productive to SRS from Kanji to Heisig's keyword, because the keyword is supposed to be mainly a mnemonic aid, and does not always correspond to any real meaning (or the most common meaning). I think this is the reason why Heisig recommends against it too.

Personally, I think it's not worth the trouble to SRS individual kanji -> approximate meaning + info cards. Start making real vocabulary cards instead that go from kanji word to reading + translated meaning (and later, J-J definition).

Shang, that was very insightful.
That would probably be a lot more interesting and save me time.
Thanks for your responce.