I am at a bit of a loss and need some guidance. I've been trying to learn to read Japanese for along time but it is not going well. Following what I've read on this site and AJATT, I've been trying to go through RTK but...it just....

I think part of it stems from the fact that I have no interested in writing or speaking Japanese and RTK seems solely focused on the act of learning to write the language. I want to learn this language solely so I can read manga and light novels, play Japanese video games and watch anime in its original language. In fact, as beautiful a language as this is (in fact I find it to be one of the most pleasant languages to listen to), where it not for the anime/manga culture I would not even be interested in this language.

Back on track though, I need some advice. I've thought about dropping RTK for something like Kanji Odyssey, but I don't know if that would be any better. I know I can learn this language though. I have been immersing my self in the language for a good eight years now (long before I actually even started wanting to learn it myself) and have found that I can sometimes even read things in Japanese when it actually contains words I know (I took 2 years of Japanese in high-school so I know a bit about grammar and over all sentence structure) What is truly stopping me though is this infernal Kanji system of writing.

In closing I'm just need some advice. Do I continue to drudge through RTK even though I don't have an interest in writing this language? or is there a better source for learning Kanji for someone who is more interested in just reading the language.

I'd suggest continuing with RtK. Maybe do RtK Lite if you're not enjoying it. RtK isn't just about writing kanji. It's about the systematic way of learning kanji by dividing it up into individual recognisable pieces.

Even if you don't care about writing it, having the experience of RtK will help you learn to recognise characters that you see in the wild, and memorise characters that you didn't learn through RtK.

tl;dr: The benefits of RtK go much further than just the kanji you learn in the system.

Sigh... I was afraid of those answers, but I guess that's life. Thank you for the quick responses.

@Asriel: I've never heard of RTK lite before, I'll have to look that up.

@tokyostyle: Thank you for the advice, Checking out that link now

I'd say writing the kanji is perhaps lowest on the list of priorities of what RTK is for; the act of writing it is mostly to help memorize it; or rather it can and should be, in my opinion. I think if you focus on writing in that way, as using muscle memory to help memorize the kanji (i.e. recognize it faster), it might help make it seem like a less pointless process for your interests/goals. The idea is simply to use keywords and stories as triggers and frameworks for conceptualizing kanji from the bottom up into iconic wholes, frontloading primitives and a set of common kanji before proceeding onto learning Japanese, reducing the overhead.

As Asriel indicated, there's RTK Lite, but to explore the idea further: While doing RTK you can be using those kanji you've started to learn (I'd recommend once you've passed them a couple times in flashcard reviews at the earliest) in words and sentences elsewhere (for instance smart.fm words/sentences or Kanji Odyssey, or subs2srs, or JDIC words, all of these having audio) - you'd of course want to use various 'filters' and searches by kanji as well as the custom RTK Lite-style learning orders to make sure the words/sentences you're learning are the ones with kanji you've studied in RTK, focusing on recognition and associating sounds with them (even if reading is your primary focus, you want to be able to subvocalize to yourself properly... subvocalization being something I always recommend in the following way: see the card during a review, subvocalize it to yourself, then flip it and listen and repeat aloud to cement the proper subvocalization). I also write or trace kanji during reviews if I feel fuzzy on them.

You can also be learning grammar during RTK, just grading yourself and focusing on understanding particular grammatical patterns in example sentences (for instance use the Dictionaries of Japanese Grammar and associated shared Anki deck).

In other words, think of it in a kind of compartmentalized, production line process, putting it together like a series of complementary puzzle pieces.

As always, I can only second what nest0r says. To add to the muscle memory part, RTK helps even there... although I don't know why exactly. I recommend sticking with RTK even if you don't want to learn how to write.

My Japanese teacher in university forced the "you have to write the kanji a zillion times" method on us. I never got past 500 kanji, kept forgetting them, and (importantly) kept confusing them when I saw them.

Since working through RTK1, I hardly ever forget the meaning of a joyo kanji and virtually never confuse similar characters when I see them written (important in your case, I would think).

But while I can't recall all the stories, I can write nearly all joyo kanji, a good part of it is recalled through muscle memory, and that somehow helps with recognition. Usually without noticing it, but e.g. this morning I was watching the news, heard a word I thought I knew but wasn't sure (基礎年金, but whatever...), wrote it out with my fingers, and realized what it was. Just my personal experience, of course.

if you wanna learn to read Japanese, all you need is reading materials, rikaichan and anki. Throw in a way to look things up if they're not web based and a grammar reference book (DoJG) for when you get stuck grammatically and you'll be able to read Japanese in a few years.

I made a pure vocab deck using exactly that method at the beginning of last year... I learned to read 10,000 new words that year bringing me to a total of just over 13K at the moment. Works like a charm although I did do RTK, you absolutely don't need to do RTK to use that method.

So... i'd say just do that.

Like said Asriel, I suggest you do RTK lite and then add other Kanji later along the way.

Actually RTK is a bless, it makes Kanji systematic (not just learning them) for you, and there's a big chance that you'll like Kanji!

Just like you, I want to learn japanese so I can understand RPGs, manga and other written materials (understanding spoken japanese it's not on top of my priority list right now, but maybe in the future...). My advice is: go with RTK lite (about 1100 kanji - I almost completed it, 100 kanji to go!). When I started 2 months ago I wasn't very convinced about that SRS thing and the Heisig method but now, well... I'm not implying it's perfect (I forget kanji, stories and sometimes both :-)) nor that it's fun - sometimes it is boring - but, at lest for me, it just works. During this time I haven't studied any other material (no vocabulary, no grammar, just kanji) as I'm planning to start the first part of core2000 this week end (then adding UBJG when I feel I'm ready). I also plan to complete rtk doing 100/200 new kanji each month, reaching the grand total before summer.

Thank you for all of the suggestions but, I can't seem to make heads or tails of the whole RTK Lite thing, and unfortunately for me I actually agree with a lot of what Ive read that cutting RTK short defeats the whole purpose

For the now I've picked up my RTK book again and loaded up my old deck. Instead of just starting over from the beginning, I reset the cards in the deck (75 in total atm from last time i tried restarting, farthest I've gotten is around 150) Been a few months since I looked at this deck yet I remembered the majority of them, the majority of the ones I missed, I missed only by an inch (radical in the wrong place or left out) only a small number of them I didn't remember at all (貢 being one of them, I forgot that 貝 also had the keyword for money)

For another little motivator I was actually able to read all but a few text bubbles for this small Touhou doujin I found called おやすみ こめいじ. Granted I read the translated version first, but without looking back at the translated version I could understand all but 1 or 2 pages.


Due to circumstances beyond my control I have a lot of free time recently, so this mite very well be the best time for me to get this done. I've set up a little schedule to do 25 words after breakfast and 25 words after lunch and then finish up all of my reviews after dinner (Being the fat*** that I am I feel more motivated to do things after I've had a good meal) Once I get farther in the book and start getting more used to this I may pump it up to 75-100 words a day. I have nothing but free time recently anyway.