Dustin_Calgary Wrote:Spent more time with my kids, had my job change the way they pay people in order to maximize their profits and minimize my money to the point where I had actually OWED them money for working a few times.

I didn't even know that was possible... wow.

o.0

Welcome back Dustin!
Times have been tough on everybody but it's how we react to challenges that defines us.
It's amazing that you able to create a buisness in this economy. Kudos to you!

As for me I finially finsihed that stupid Japanese college course, "Intensive Japanese III". The teacher hated me and I didn't appreciate her much either. She told me to join the lowest class and work my way up but I refused and did pretty well in the class. (The class was the last 4 lessons of Genki 1 so it was pretty darn easy.) She mocked in me in front of the class because I asked so many questioned and accused me of cheating so I had to be seperated from the rest of the class everyday. >:C I hate her.

I hated giving a speach in Japanese but the simplicity of the final made it up I guess. I can't really complain about an A but that class sucked!

The ironic thing is that now that the class is over I can finally go back to actually learning Japanese. It held me back taking 15 hours out of my week and removed me of all motivation to learn. But this motivates me further of my dream of becoming a teacher.

I'm going to go throught RTK and Smartfm Core 2000 again this month while working through my textbooks as well. 皆さん、御互いに頑張りましょう！

I agree, squarezebra, up to a point. It's not a matter of time, so much as energy. I work as a secondary school teacher, so my job does not finish when I leave the building. I often have stuff to do in the evenings and on the weekends. But mostly it is very tiring to keep classes of 30 kids in check all day, along with all the administrative stuff, more of which is added to my job every year.

I do find Japanese the most fun thing I could be doing, and I wish I had the energy to do it 3-4 hours a day, but I'm usually glad when I can finish my RTK1 and 2 reviews, do a Pimsleur lesson and perhaps add some RTK2 cards to Anki. The latter I often cannot even do; if you want to remember what you've learnt, you actually need to have the energy to focus. So it's not a matter of squeezing more time out of my day. When the energy is done, it's done.

squarezebra Wrote:3-4 hours a day of studying is a hell of a lot when you're holding down a full time job, as well as all the other responsibilities life brings; I think that much is unrealistic for most people. I do think, however, that people can always squeeze more time out of their day if they want to.

My thoughts exactly.

gyuujuice Wrote:But this motivates me further of my dream of becoming a teacher.

Go gyuujuice! It's really a lot of fun, I can tell you. Most of the time.

No, it's not just you, it is fun!
From many sides RTK is fun, to mention some:

1-Chicken strokes have become words.
2-Focusing on one thing makes things less stressful and more enjoyable.
3-Kanji is cool by nature! it shouldn't bore people!
4-You'll become a mnemonic master at frame 1000 and you'll go fast through the second half.

Tobberoth Wrote:I thought it was fun at 500 too. It sucks SHIT when you get to 1200-1500 though.

Yeah I'm starting to feel this now... I'm at 1160 should hit 1180 tonight. My motivation for Kanji is just going down and down. 50 a day was no problem earlier now I can barley make myself spare the time to keep 20 a day going. My retention for Kanji has been going down as well. Mainly I feel like it's because the more Kanji I learn the more keywords I run into that are similar to old ones.

On the flip side I've been doing lots of vocab, and reading in Japanese the Manga Way. And I'm loving that. learning new words is tons of fun, and I'm planning on reading through Japanese the Manga Way and then using the Tae Kim anki deck for grammar as I feel that is what makes the least sense to me right now.

And I have 3 Japanese games to play. Pokemon Heart Gold, Tales of Rebirth, and Tales of Vesperia. Playing any of those is really fun, and everytime I pop one in it makes me much more motivated to learn.

However Kanji is getting hard to deal with. I spend a lot of my time being unproductive thinking about how I don't wanna do 20 more kanji that day. Or I procrastinate with my Kanji by reading Japanese the Manga Way / Playing Pokemon / working on Core 2000.

undead_saif Wrote:No, it's not just you, it is fun!
From many sides RTK is fun, to mention some:

1-Chicken strokes have become words.
2-Focusing on one thing makes things less stressful and more enjoyable.
3-Kanji is cool by nature! it shouldn't bore people!
4-You'll become a mnemonic master at frame 1000 and you'll go fast through the second half.

I agree with this for the most part. I love the fact that Chicken strokes are now very easily legible characters. And I think Kanji is amazing by nature. I love Kanji and how it integrates into Japanese is simply beautiful. I think the problem is the further I go through RTK the less I feel the benefit is. I'm getting to the point where I don't seem to run into primitives I'm unfamiliar with very often. And a bunch of the later primitives in the book I've already learned.

As a result it makes RTK less and less fun to go through it seems. I'm thinking of just doing a major push to get RTK done with ASAP. I'm sure it will hurt my retention, but the sooner I get through these Kanji the more I can really focus on my studies. They are dragging me down badly by making me not want to study at all.

arch9443 Wrote:

Tobberoth Wrote:I thought it was fun at 500 too. It sucks SHIT when you get to 1200-1500 though.

Yeah I'm starting to feel this now... I'm at 1160 should hit 1180 tonight. My motivation for Kanji is just going down and down. 50 a day was no problem earlier now I can barley make myself spare the time to keep 20 a day going. My retention for Kanji has been going down as well. Mainly I feel like it's because the more Kanji I learn the more keywords I run into that are similar to old ones.

On the flip side I've been doing lots of vocab, and reading in Japanese the Manga Way. And I'm loving that. learning new words is tons of fun, and I'm planning on reading through Japanese the Manga Way and then using the Tae Kim anki deck for grammar as I feel that is what makes the least sense to me right now.

And I have 3 Japanese games to play. Pokemon Heart Gold, Tales of Rebirth, and Tales of Vesperia. Playing any of those is really fun, and everytime I pop one in it makes me much more motivated to learn.

However Kanji is getting hard to deal with. I spend a lot of my time being unproductive thinking about how I don't wanna do 20 more kanji that day. Or I procrastinate with my Kanji by reading Japanese the Manga Way / Playing Pokemon / working on Core 2000.

sadly kanji get's boring after a while(in the beginning) because the amount you need to know is scary at times. 2000 is general for common things, so you should be able to get 90% understanding on this easily i think(i think the number was higher than that). In my opinion once you reach a level of knowing a lot of kanji, you'll enjoy it way more than when you did in the beginning(for me it was annoying that I couldn't read smoothly, but over time it got less and less until I could read most things.)

RTK, once you finish it, don't ever go back as it can get really boring, real native-material is way more enjoyable by any means.

I'm also noticing that the Kanji I really remember nowadays are the ones that I have learned Japanese keywords for. And the more kanji I learn Japanese words for the worse my retention gets on old English Keyword Kanji.

Like I just got to the Kanji 君 or きみ・くん I've known that Kanji for about a week now. And seeing it with Heisigs keyword "old boy" just kind of messes with my head. I do see where he got that keyword from, but it still just doesn't work with me.

The keywords in general just seem to be less effective the further I get through the book.

arch9443 Wrote:I'm also noticing that the Kanji I really remember nowadays are the ones that I have learned Japanese keywords for. And the more kanji I learn Japanese words for the worse my retention gets on old English Keyword Kanji.

Like I just got to the Kanji 君 or きみ・くん I've known that Kanji for about a week now. And seeing it with Heisigs keyword "old boy" just kind of messes with my head. I do see where he got that keyword from, but it still just doesn't work with me.

The keywords in general just seem to be less effective the further I get through the book.

happens to me all the time. RTK main focus is meaning/writings of the kanji. Japanese meanings will get associated with kanji. It's better that way, as you'll advance more in japanese more effectively then relying on a keyword meaning. The more japanese you learn the more you'll start forgetting RTK keywords. Not necessarily a bad thing, it's only natural.

I'm hardly an expert, but I don't think it's the end of the world if you want to substitute a Japanese keyword for one of Heisig's. In that particular example, I have both the Japanese and the keyword rattling around in my head; there seems to be room for both.

Some of Heisig's keywords are decidedly odd, but more often than not I find them very helpful. I've also started to notice that he may have chosen a few odd ones for phonetic reasons as much as meaning. Maybe not, I dunno. But, for example, I find it easier to remember the reading "ritsu" because it has the keyword "rhythm."

As for plowing ahead faster and getting it over with: I'm all in favor of this. In the second half I picked up the pace quite a bit, even though it pushed my retention rate down (below 70% sometimes). I figured I would SRS them once all done, and that approach worked for me -- though I still average only about 85% on my reviews, a few months after finishing. But I grade myself very tough, and I usually don't miss by much, or I pick a kanji that's close to the keyword in meaning. And my reviews are down to about 50 a day, which doesn't take long at all.

On whether to give it up: I hope you stick with it, because there are important kanji all the way to number 2000-whatever. Because Heisig doesn't order them by frequency, some high-frequency kanji appear toward the end, which helped keep me motivated. Also, if you want to learn Japanese, sooner or later you'll want to learn to recognize, write and read all these kanji, so why not do it now? Not a day goes by that I don't marvel at the transformation in my approach to kanji: I used to dread seeing them in a sentence, and now they are my friends.

Yeah I certainly plan to continue. I have no plans to stop. They are just painful to do. But I'm on summer break right now so If I plow through them now then my reviews should be down to a good standard before school starts and everything will end well. So I think I'm just gonna make a big push. Because I want to be done with them sooo badly.