Sorry if this is already answered but I need some advice. Right now I'm at about 340 in RemTK and it's going great. I'm not sure if I should just blaze through it or do other stuff while learning the kanji from RTK. I'm sure if I wanted to I could do like 50+ a day(I've been doing 15~35 a day).

I've tried doing the smart.fm core 2000 and Tae kim's Japanese grammar guide with anki flashcards and it has kanji on there that I have yet to learn on RTK and I don't want to hinder or even mess up all the work I've done till now. Should I just do it together anyway or just do each of them separately one by one.

It's been bugging me for the past week just had to ask. Thanks in advance

Sounds like you're doing great so far!

I think, in a lot of cases, blazing through it leads to burn-out and kanji-forgetfulness, so it would be my recommendation to take it slowly and really make sure you have things down. In the long run, I think taking extra time to focus on each individual kanji really pays off.

About smart.fm, I'd suggest waiting to do that after finishing RTK1 because:
1. When you get to smart.fm, everything will look familiar and you'll feel more confident to keep going, which plays an important role, I think
2. If you do two at once, you might have information overload and/or burnout.

To me, RTK1 is a task that shouldn't be mixed with any Japanese-related tasks that require a lot of concentration and memorization. But you may get some contrary opinions. I'm sure there are many people who think the earlier you expose yourself to smart.fm content the better, but there's also a lot of value in taking the time to make sure you focus on the foundation of your Japanese learning, which is in my opinion, the kanji.

When it comes down to it, it depends on the person. If you ever feel like you're just starting to feel burnt out, lower your kanji-learning-intake to something that makes you feel more comfortable.

Okay sounds excellent to me, I have no problems doing RTK alone, I just didn't want to fall behind. I usually do a different number a day depending on my mood. Thanks for the advice.

Sign up to JPod or something. You can learn some basic vocabulary and grammar while developing your listening skills at the same time, without really putting in much effort. You could buy a copy of ADBJG to complement it and give yourself a nice little base to progress to Core 2000 with. Doing something else at the same time as RTK doesn't have to involve SRS.

I agree - get a free trial membership on Japanesepod101.com and download all the newbie and beginner podcasts. Listen to those and work through the PDFs, and you'll be learning some real Japanese whilst learning the kanji. You'll come across many of the RTK kanji in the Jpod PDFs which will help you start connecting them with real words.

I'm not sure if I agree with the other posters.

The task is enormous. You don't know yet but you'll soon find out.

Therefore I strongly suggest to keep it as simple as possible. Let go of everything, focus on RTK and go for it at full speed. That way you can concentrate on it and you will feel much better. Almost do it like a meditation.

When you're finished, start with other things, but always, every day, keep reviewing RTK first time in the morning. Don't miss a single day, not even the day after sign of the snake. Just keep going.

You'll make up the "missed" time, the time you felt you could have worked on some "real" Japanese, 10 fold - trust me. After RTK you're just another person, you have another level and this level with pay back your investment with interest.

Good luck on your journey!

I did RTK and nothing else, when I started RTK 3 I was studying "actual" Japanese. Based on this experinance I would say do RTK first before anything else. Being free of other clutter seemed to be quite the boon to getting through RTK, nor was I tempted to try and force Japanese vocab into it.

I started RTK with 100- 150 a day while not a problem I soon got sick of the mountain of reviews (it got to a point where I spent more time doing reviews than looking at a new kanji), so I eventually cut it down to 70 a day. Now doing RTK3 I simply do 10 -30 a day sometimes less if I fell like it.

If I forgot every Japanese and had to relearn the language from scratch, I'd do the passive listening thing while learning how to write kanji. A lot of people say playing something in Japanese in the background helps you familiarize the sound and rhythm even if you don't understand diddly squat language-wise and are not particularly paying attention to it. Some even claim that it can improve your vocabulary and grammar to an extent.

I'm sure it'll improve your Japanese at least as well as voodoo magic will, and it requires absolutely no effort. So it might be worth a try unless the constant white noise demotivates you by overwhelming you and making you think there is no way you'd ever understand the random noise.

Since RtK is a rare learning method focusing entirely on the writing system while having no risk of reinforcing a foreign accent and requiring no audio to do, I think passive listening makes a good counterpart.

Nuriko Wrote:Sounds like you're doing great so far!
About smart.fm, I'd suggest waiting to do that after finishing RTK1 because:
1. When you get to smart.fm, everything will look familiar and you'll feel more confident to keep going, which plays an important role, I think
2. If you do two at once, you might have information overload and/or burnout.

Wouldn't you have to wait until you finish RTK2 before you can truly have the benefit for smart.fm?

I never did RTK2, and found smart.fm very useful (although Japanese Sensei for iPhone is better). You really don't need RTK2 for anything IMHO.

What's wrong with RTK2?

Not that there's anything specifically wrong with it, I just don't value the Heisig method for readings. It works for visual memory, but learning to associate sounds is part of actively learning the language - for me if I'm learning the sounds of characters I want it to be in the context of words. Smart.fm does that without any requirement to have learned the sounds of characters in advance.

Blahah Wrote:Not that there's anything specifically wrong with it, I just don't value the Heisig method for readings. It works for visual memory, but learning to associate sounds is part of actively learning the language - for me if I'm learning the sounds of characters I want it to be in the context of words. Smart.fm does that without any requirement to have learned the sounds of characters in advance.

Yes! Exactly!

truando Wrote:I'm not sure if I agree with the other posters.

The task is enormous. You don't know yet but you'll soon find out.

Therefore I strongly suggest to keep it as simple as possible. Let go of everything, focus on RTK and go for it at full speed. That way you can concentrate on it and you will feel much better. Almost do it like a meditation.

When you're finished, start with other things, but always, every day, keep reviewing RTK first time in the morning. Don't miss a single day, not even the day after sign of the snake. Just keep going.

You'll make up the "missed" time, the time you felt you could have worked on some "real" Japanese, 10 fold - trust me. After RTK you're just another person, you have another level and this level with pay back your investment with interest.

If he owns an MP3 player he can listen to JPod anywhere during time that would probably be wasted sitting on a train or something. He could buy the Shadowing book from White Rabbit Press and spend 5-10 minutes a day doing it. He could look at a Word of the Day site.

There are plenty of things you can do to improve your Japanese while focusing on Heisig. It doesn't mean starting a 10,000 word vocab deck or spending an hour a day reading about grammar. It's also a little insurance for burnout. The idea of potentially making it to 9-12 months without knowing how to introduce yourself is unthinkable, if 3-6 wasn't bad enough. Imagine the benefit of 10 minutes of pronunciation practice a day for 3-6 months. Most intermediate learners haven't had that much by the sounds of it...

Blahah Wrote:Not that there's anything specifically wrong with it, I just don't value the Heisig method for readings. It works for visual memory, but learning to associate sounds is part of actively learning the language - for me if I'm learning the sounds of characters I want it to be in the context of words. Smart.fm does that without any requirement to have learned the sounds of characters in advance.

While I have learned some readings by the smart.fm lists, it is only by seing many words with that kanji in it. For example, if you knew that all kanji with the 白 radical had an ON reading: はく, it would be easier to learn words such as:

拍手（はくしゅ）(clapping hands)
迫力（はくりょく）(intensity)

And also, how would I learn the ON readings of kanji like 凹（おう）? While they may not be useful, if you have to read something to a crowd and see the word 凹凸 （おうとつ）(unevenness), you wouldn't want to appear stupid. But to be honest, I know that that occasion will probably never happen to me but I will still do RTK2 because I think that it might help me to learn words. Has anyone tried RTK2 and found it to be not useful? I'd like to please hear some stories about it if anyone has any.

I've noticed I'm passively writing kanji in a kind of cursive (without lifting the pen from paper in some parts). Should I stop myself from doing this?

It depends if they are recognisable, in my opinion. If you had spare time, you could take photos of some of your kanji and see if they are recognisable to the people on the forums. Also, although this isn't important, being able to count strokes in your kanji can help for dictionary lookup. But like I said, this is just my opinion so take everything with a grain of salt.

Jenkoi Wrote:I've noticed I'm passively writing kanji in a kind of cursive (without lifting the pen from paper in some parts). Should I stop myself from doing this?

Personally I'd make sure I am accurately able to reproduce kanji in the non cursive manner before getting used to writing cursively. There is always the opportunity to go ahead and play with that later on.

It's easier to make bad habits or not notice small mistakes comparing a cursive kanji to a noncursive one unless you really know whatyoure doing, but that might just be me too.

Jenkoi Wrote:I've noticed I'm passively writing kanji in a kind of cursive (without lifting the pen from paper in some parts). Should I stop myself from doing this?

A little common sense goes a long way here. It's the same as with writing English characters.

It depends on what your goal is.

If you want to do calligraphy, write carefully and purposefully follow stroke order. Pay attention to details.

If your goal is to be literate and have the ability to use Japanese in everyday life in Japan (e.g. sending mail, going to the hospital, opening a bank account, etc.) it's not super important to write neatly, nor is it important to use exact-precise-no-mistake stroke order.

Some may disagree with me, but I speak from personal experience.

As a former Waseda student I can tell you that some brilliant friends of mine (Japanese) write worse than I do and use incorrect stroke order all the time.. You should see the professors write on the white boards too. It ain't pretty. lol

#edit - This shouldn't be mistaken as a license to write illegibly... just use your head and think about what your goals are in learning to write kanji.