this is kind of long, and i hope these exact questions havent been asked already, so please bear with me.

so, i am starting my third week of RTK1, and i have some questions. so far i am through about 400. so far its been great! this site has been amazing for doing the reviews and i feel that if i continue what i am doing i will eventually be through the book and well on my way to improving my japanese. however i do have some questions:

1. the first 200 or so kanji were pretty easy for me. i knew a bunch of them, and the ones i didnt already know stuck pretty easily. but now, i feel like i study a lesson and then forget all of it, except for a couple, and then have to review it a few times before i feel confident what the kanji will stick. i think i need to work on my stories, because they just arent sticking like i thought they would. any advice? i think that i am a pretty visual learner (for example, in japanese class, if there is a new word i dont know introduced, about 50% of the time just writing it on my desk with my finger a few times goes along way towards remembering it, but if i just hear it, i cant remember it for the life of me) as such, i try to make pictures for my stories, but i think sometimes i get the feeling, oh this story fits together so niceley i can be lazy. which im now doing my best not to do, after i have recognized it. but other than that, i still dont really know how to make it stick. i think i go too fast, so one of my questions is: i have seen people say they spend a good deal of time on a few kanji. so, right now i have time, so someone tell me what i should be doing when i slow down. do i just repeat the story in my head until it sticks? or what.. i think now its about 1 min per kanji unless i feel like i cant get it to stick. but that doesnt seem to work

2. does anyone else get streaks of misses? i think sometimes i mess up a radical, and look back at my missed list and get something like 333, 334, 335, 336 or whatever. i guess this just means i should go back and look at the radical that has all of those cards in it? any other advice on making sure that i have less of these strings of forgetting?

3. also, right now, i have about 3 weeks until school starts again, and i would like to be a good deal into both the method and the book, as i will have much less time to study japanese, (and some of that time will be put into japanese class). in that light, i have a goal of bumping it up to a minimum of 50 kanji a day, which i have been reluctant to do, because they havent been sticking well. while i am still ironing out my bumps in the method, is it better to just do more kanji every day and deal with the misses (right now, having time each day isnt an issue, but it will be soon, as mentioned above). OR is it better to be more methodical and make sure i have a more solid grasp on the kanji?

4. should my goal be to review as little as possible (ie, study a lession, and then imput it into the site, and wait). or will going over it more only help?


well, that about it for now. if youve gotten this far, thank you for reading this!

First of all, congrats on doing so well in the first few weeks! I believe I'm on my 3rd or 4th week now too, and I'm in still back in the 200's or so. So far I've been getting along pretty steadily in my studies, but I'm far from a veteran. I'd say I remember generally 95% percent of the kanji on a moderately difficult review day. Here are my general experiences, and hopefully they'll help you.

I have had some times where I felt like none of the stories were sticking in my head, and I find that usually those are the days when I push myself beyond my personal "breaking point" (usually about 20 kanji or so, your mileage will of course vary.) and get so overwhelmed that my brain just goes into short-term memory cram mode to try and remember the kanji rather than taking my time actually learning the stories WELL and getting them very clearly into my head. Heisig's method of arranging the kanji into lesson blocks is very helpful, but can sometimes goad you into going through the entire lesson in one sitting, even if that is not the best way to study.

I know you are eager to learn as many kanji as possible before school starts again (I am in the same boat) but knowing a smaller subset of kanji (400 is by no means a drop in the bucket, and I'm sure if you browsed through some Japanese stuff you would be able to recognize many of the kanji there) and having them stick well and resonate within your mind is a lot more valuable than blazing through 1000 and stumbling through them while your brain tries to make sense of it all. Everyone's method is different, but I find that when I am consistently having trouble remembering the latest kanji and I feel like my brain is going into cram mode, I take a break for one or two days and don't study any *NEW* kanji (However, it's VERY important to continue reviewing the old stuff, even on these break days).

As for studying methods, what personally works for me is to input the cards, sleep on them, and then go over them when I have time to put them in the first stack, then go over the ones that expired. The Leitner system that this site uses is heavily based on the times in between reviews - the review times should be spaced long enough so that you need to take a moment and collect your thoughts to remember the kanji, but not so long that you totally forget it. If you are constantly going over everything (in other words, using the cramming strategy), you will stick those kanji in short term memory and may have great short-term retention, but long-term your memory of those kanji will suffer. You might wanna take extra time just going through your head and studying stories for the kanji that you consistently miss, but that's about it.

Lastly, probably the best thing I have ever personally done to help myself remember the kanji is to read Japanese. Read some of the more advanced (non-elementary level) manga or light novels, play imported games, browse Japanese sites, read Japanese newspapers, anything that has kanji in it. You don't even need to really know Japanese to do this (I barely know how to introduce myself and ask for the time in Japanese), just as long as you go through a sentence, can say "oh my god, is that the "cow" kanji? it is!!" you will not only feel great and more motivated to study, but you'll remember that kanji better.

Again, this is all from my own experience, and there are many veterans on this board who know all 2042 (or more) kanji using this system, who have all sorts of crazy schemes to study that I'm sure are much better than what I do. Of course your mileage will vary, but the main thing I wanna say is that, at least in my experience, less is more. You are lucky in that you'll be able to take a Japanese course this year, so at least you will always be in the mindset of learning Japanese, so don't feel discouraged if you don't know tons of kanji before returning to school.

phew. I typed way too much, but hopefully you benefit!

IMO, you've got to ask yourself (when you fail a kanji), what did you forget? Did you forget the story? Or did you forget which word in the story was the primative? Or did you forget how to write the primative correctly? Did you say "enemy" and write "walking legs" (ie, just a slip of the pencil)? I do all of those on occasion. But the most frequent failure is "keyword---> {blank look} Cannot even start to recall a story. That WOULD signal a weakness in the "keyword to story" trigger.

I think I'm very visual learning too. Very much so in music. Sing a fragment of a melody for me, I might remember the lyric, but to reproduce the melody...that's tough. But show me the melody written down! I'm getting better with some practice, but. . .

Anyway, so if you were to draw a picture of your stories? Kinesthetic and visual connections between the keyword and the story. I would think that this would be VERY powerful memory aide. Maybe over-kill level of powerful, but in my experience, you do what you need to do to conquer the challenge you're facing.

thanks for the replies! so last night I decided to just buckle down and take a long time and make good mental images, and I managed to get through 52! and this morning i went 51/52 on the review. so, we will see if it lasts in the long run, which i expect it too, but for anyone who is wondering the same thing as I was, my advice would be to just sit down, and really stretch the process out. it seems silly, but it works! thanks guys!

Is it me or is remembering the kanji or am I taking it the wrong way? When I review the kanji, I start with the keyword and then read the notes I took on each one. When I read my notes, a photographic image of the actual kanji comes up and I sometimes come up with a new image.

Is it that easy to remember a kanji? I look at the keyword, read the notes that I took and write the kanji down. I generally do forget the notes sometimes when reviewing without flipping over to them since its so easy (don't have RTK the book but completed the general use characters and some other ones getting 2059kanji) After all, Heisig did say to study with pad and pencil, otherwise there'd be no point in doing so.

I usually get some toys and pens or something and create my image there, that way, you have more control of what you want to do.

By the way, does anyone know where you can order it from Australia????

Lankydan
I started RTK in July and also couldn't find the book new anywhere in Australia. I bought a copy second-hand (it in great condition - the only sign that its second-hand is that the cover is a bit faded from the sun). Try http://www.biblioz.com or http://www.abebooks.com.au. I got a copy in about a week. Hope this helps.