So I finished RTK1 and I am almost finished with the pure groups in RTK2. I started RTK on the 19th of September last year and finished in May. In December my friend quit doing RTK and just went the way of brute force with Excel@Japanese. He was only 800 kanji into RTK at the time. He was not a believer. I, on the other hand, have been a devout Hesigian from day one. Since then I have learned all the "meanings" of the general use kanji and I "sort of kind of" know the readings of about 450 kanji compounds. In that time he used a non Leitner (but it is called "fading") drilling system and has blasted past me in Japanese ability. He can read all but 800 of the 4000 compounds that can possibly be on the JLTP Level 2 test. He admits to not being that good at writing them but for the most part he says its not an issue. I don't have any reason to doubt his claim. He may miss a couple of questions on the kanji section where they try to "trick" you with lookalikes, but he will have no problem with the reading where all the points are hiding anyway. I know that studying for the test is not as good as studying for fluency but he sure seems a lot closer to that goal than I do. He cut out all the fancy mnemonic and SRS considerations and did it the old fashioned way. All he did was drill 200 flash cards every day since December. So here I sit, deeply entrenched in my faith, and along comes this Darwin fool making me doubt my very raison d'etre. I'm looking for people with similar experiences or perhaps comfort...anything really.

It's obviously not the case that 'if you don't use Heisig you can never be any good at Japanese'.

I think it all comes down to personal preference. Heisig has revolutionized my Japanese learning. Pre Heisig, I wasn't studying with any real consistency or proper goals.

Although it is different, I equate not being able to write kanji with being poor at spelling in English. Sure if you know roughly how to write English words a spell checker will sort things out for you; as for kanji assuming you know the pronunciation, if you know roughly how it looks then using your computer is no problem.

But let's face it, it's more fun being able to write the kanji for yourself!

Testament to the value of Heisig are people who are already "fluent" in Japanese coming to or returning to RTK.

He who laughs last.....It should go without saying that if all you want to do is to read a fixed set of 4000 compound words, learning how to write 2000 kanji first is not the way to go about it. I am willing to bet that your friend will eventually either quit studying Japanese or go back and finish RTK. In any case, you should have enjoyed finishing RTK a lot more than your friend did drilling 200 flashcards every day. Instead of studying RTK2, I would suggest finding books with furigana and reading them without a dictionary. Spend a couple of hours a day reading, and in short order your reading comprehension will blow away your friend and his flash cards.

If he's concentrating on JLPT 2, I'm sure his knowledge of JLPT 1 kanji is pretty limited. Since RtK covers them all, I bet you've made progress in all kanji, whereas he's focusing on a mere subset.

Furthermore: don't compare your progress to that of others'. Learning a language isn't a race to the finish. If he can drill thousands of compounds into his brain, good for him. If you have the patience to visualize stories for all the kanji, good for you. No one method is universally better.

I can give you an anecdote that is the complete opposite. A friend of mine finished Heisig about nine months after coming to Japan. When he arrived, he only spoke basic Japanese (say JLPT 4 or 3 level at best). Now his Japanese ability - especially his vocab - is one of the best of the group of friends I made starting Japanese classes two years ago. His Japanese is certainly better than mine, and I've been in Japan almost four years now (although he has studied harder, I think Heisig has a lot to do with it). He does drill kanji compound words using a PDA and a spaced repitition program (Supermemo, I think), but this started only after he completed RTK1 and knew all the meaning of the kanji.

I really believe it's worth sticking with this method, which is while I'm still here despite there still being 1300 kanji in my failed stack

Also, there's no denying that Chinese have a clear advantange when learning Japanese. Just watch them burn through the vocab and reading out sentences aloud in class (this could have to do with at least the On readings sounding like Chinese). Knowing the meaning of the kanji gives you a similar advantage. Not all kanji words/compound words are made up of kanji that reflect it's meaning, but it often is the case. The other day I came across "blood transfusion" - that's a complicated term, so I'd be happy with my Japanese if I could remember words like those. And here it is: 輸血. Yep, "transport blood". Of course!

Part of the problem is that you're using JLPT2 as your barometer for success, when in fact RTK isn't a particularly efficient way of achieving that goal. You're in effect learning twice as many kanji as you would need in order to pass that test. If you wanted to keep up with your friend you really needed to blitz through RTK as quickly as possible since he's already at an advantage given that he has 1000 fewer kanji to learn.

Thanks all, I just wanted to add a few final notes. I am not feeling competitive with anyone in my Japanese. I am not really using JLPT2 as a barometer for success. What I was doing was faith searching. When you see someone jump past you, at this point ridiculously far, it can shake really shake your faith in what you are doing. This is especially the case when they do something very "traditional" and you are trying something "radical". I felt, for a few days anyway, that maybe I had made the wrong choice. For what its worth synewave had me at:

synewave Wrote:Testament to the value of Heisig are people who are already "fluent" in Japanese coming to or returning to RTK.

RTK also gave me the same focus in studying that he mentions as well.