I'm on 556 now... I've run into some primitive elements that were somewhat difficult to learn (such as sow; eel; arrow, parade, march; mend, run; etc.) and especially with their various incarnations (e.g. the 7th stroke of Run is extended in "Surpass", Heisig 387).

This is a question to those who have completed RTK1: What were the rough patches for you? Although I assume it's different for each person, I had an especially troublesome time with the various incarnations of elements born from Stop (e.g. the lengthened 7th stroke in the Surpass example given above, and also the twist on the Parade element in the same kanji). Advice on coping with these kinds of exceptions? I made a conscious effort to work the exceptions into each story which has helped immensely.. but I'd love to hear other's methods/tricks..

Just a matter of tweaking the stories and repetition. The kanji you have the WORST time with now, will be super easy down the road

Just keep it up, and if the same kanji keep coming back, tweak it a bit, it's all you can do, but it works

Hey m pacheko.

Remember all the primitives that aren't kanji (the starred ones) have more or less arbitrary names that you can change to best suit your learning style (I don't even know what parade and march are ^^).

Also, like the kanji that can mean both ball and king, each kanji can mean different things (from etymology or from the use in other compounds). For example "stop" can also mean trace or footprint. Do a little research on the difficult kanji, and once again, find the general definition/meaning that strikes you the most.

Good luck!

Yeah I figured it's all in the story/repetition. I wonder what others consider to be difficult parts in the book?

Today I breezed through nearly 100, from 556 to 642, in about two, two and a half hours.. which is damn good time for me. Around 350-400 was much more difficult in comparison, and both stories and the elements took longer to "get"..

I had that too; so much trouble with some primitives, and such an easy time with others. I think it's normal. I know a lot of people had trouble with the 'arrow' and related primitives, as it's really the first time in the book you encounter such similar-looking primitives. But I can't even remember what was most difficult for me now, and it's been less than a year since I've finished.

Those Kanji aren't so bad... I'd say anything you stick on, like Heisig says, take up to 6 minutes to 100% get the story down to the key visuals, and revise them often. As time passes though, you will find that the Kanji for March, Parade, etc, become horribly easy to remember when you start seeing them in dozens of other Kanji over time. In fact, the differences will become even more obvious.

Take emotion, versus guile, versus range... those three Kanji gave me a problem for a while because they looked similar, but when I adjusted the stories, I had a hard time writing the wrong Kanji, or the wrong stroke.

I'd say don't worry too much about the "prettiness" of the Kanji (e.g longer strokes here and there, etc). Write it 99% correct and no one will know otherwise. I think there is too much pressure attached to the "correctness" of this writing, instead of just keeping it going. You will also notice more Kanji with "lengthened strokes" all over the place, and then you will get a feel for it and not forget it.

I personally rarely changed the meanings of primitives ( I didn't discover this website until I hit 1000 Kanji and had been using Heisig's stories wholly) but if you need to make it more interesting and dynamic in your own brain.

I liked the "march" Kanji's because I used lots of images of things marching (armies of super thirsty people for "dwindle", balls of fire marching for "destroy"), etc. Any set of Kanji that are similar with the extra "dash" or drop or whatever, I don't always sweat it... as you do Anki or other revision systems, you will remember it over time. The important thing to do is just keep learning the new Kanji.

I think every person will have several hundred that are impossible to forget and then some "seemingly easy" ones that are trickier.

either way, that's my two cents.


cheers

I agree with you about the 'prettiness'. I was in Japan last summer and some people wrote down stuff for me and I couldn't even recognise the kanji, until they wrote them really slowly and I could see the stroke order. Written Japanese looks nothing like printed characters (unfortunately :/ ).