Hello im new here. I have been learning basic japanese at a steady slow pace for aboutr a year now and am familiar with the language, watching J-drama and anime, reading manga understanding roughly the meaning of every second senetnce, although I am unable to set a specific level I am at.

after having checked through this forum today I've learnt quite a lot about how to study and what to do after RTK1. Although i have missed one huge thing about the whole concept while studying which I am still unable to fully understand.

after having ordered a copy of RTK from amazon a couple of weeks ago I was too eager to wait for the delivery and downloaded anki along with RTK1 premade deck. without checking out this forum nor anything about study methods I started to learn kanji by simply looking at the keyword -> write down the kanji -> look at the answer. I have now reached about 300 kanji. although i never thought of anything like a story or thoughts to relate this keyword to the kanji (which I now realise that I am supposed to do) as I have never used such a method to learn beofre. I discovered that people are able to remember, recall and write 40 or even 60 new kanji in a day. this made me realise i am doing something completely wrong as I am struggling with 20/day.

I do believe this is something I'll understand as soon as i get my copy of RTK1 although I do not know when it will be delivered and I really don't want to wait for it.

after my attempt to understand this a little more I see people using the review session of this website to post stories. now my question is how this is used in a proper way:

-am i supposed to simply copy a story into the back of my kanji card in anki(the story field)?
-or am I supposed to just remember a sentence in my mind and then lightly recall it as i see the keyword for the kanji?

also I recognized that old keywords are used in many subimitted stories such as in: 道 for example, a story from the study page says: When we go out on the ROAD-WAY, we often risk our own necks (that's why I take the train! ). I am having a hard time relating this to the kanji as i never used to think of the kanji 首 being a neck to begin with and don't remember those two as being similar in shape. although I really want to start using this method I am wondering if I should go from the beginning using this method and start to relate the more complex kanjis to the more simple ones? I am really lost at what to do as am yet to recieve my copy real copy of RTK1 and quite don't grasp the basics of this whole method or more like feel very unsure of what I am doing is really the proper method.

I have a lot of time on my hands this summer and plan on really studying japanese most of the time. even if i have been putting down almost full days studying it feels like I have had a horrible start and really want to do this in a proper way. I want to speed up my learning very much.

sorry if my explanation was difficult to understand, maybe it was because I feel so insecure of what I understand and what I don't. I really appreciate it if you have taken your time reading this and would be even more grateful if you were to guide me on the right track, maybe give me some links to other threads on this forum which might help me. thanks.

You can get a sample pdf with the explanation of the method and the first few hundred kanji here
http://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/publications/...sample.pdf

With regards to how many kanji people study per day, that's up to each individual. I only did about 20-30 per day depending on how I felt.

Hi Octorok (a Zelda fan I presume? Awesome! :-P), welcome to the forums.

If you want to read the introduction and the first few hundred kanji in the RTK book, there is a free sample here:
http://kanji.koohii.com/learnmore

Read the sample and that page and you'll have a better idea of what to do.

I think that will answer many of your questions. But here's what I do (everyone is a bit different):

1) I read the section in the book about the kanji.
2) I look at the stories on here, and choose one I like the best (often I find Heisig's stories aren't great for me, and most of the time I like at least one on this website).
3) I look at the stroke order in the book and write the kanji while thinking about the story with the keywords
4) I then think of the story and write the kanji without looking at it a 2nd time.
5) You could, at this point, copy your favorite story into your Anki deck. I normally remember the story pretty well and only copy it into the deck if I'm having lots of trouble with the kanji. But most of the time I have this website open when I'm reviewing in case I forget the story and need a refresher.
6) If this kanji is especially difficult to me, I might write it a few more times.
7) Repeat for how ever many kanji you want to do per day. If you are only doing RTK and want a steady pace, maybe do ~20 per day (you'll finish in about 3.5 months). If you do over 30 per day the reviews from the flashcards might be too overwhelming, but that all depends on you. I'm only doing about 10 per day because I'm also doing vocab and grammar at the same time.

Here's what I do when I review:
1) I do keyword to kanji.
2) When I see the keyword, I think of the story and write the kanji down.
3) Check my answer. If it didn't take me too long to remember and write it down, I mark it as "Good" in Anki (whatever option 3 is). If I took a while, I put down "Hard" (option 2).
4) If I got it wrong and I can't remember the story well, I open up this website and look up the story. I then think of the story and write it a couple of times.

Since you already know how to write some of these kanji and I assume have associated them with a keyword from Heisig, you don't have to do much work now. I would just read through the sample and take a look at the kanji or primitives that have multiple keywords associated with them. That's probably why you didn't recognize some of the keywords in the stories. You might want to just run through the first 300 quickly while doing the story method so you get the hang of it. Since you already know them it shouldn't take you too long.

This forum is pretty awesome. There are so many threads on useful things. Definitely check out the Learning Resources forum and look at the stickies. I would also browse through the discussions in the RTK specific forum.

Good luck!

Don't worry about how many a day you can do. It starts out low for almost everyone, and some people build up to crazy amounts per day. Of course, that also takes time.

Octorok Wrote:as i never used to think of the kanji 首 being a neck to begin with

This kanji represents the word "kubi" (neck) even if you're not using Heisig.

thanks a lot for the explanation. I'll download the sample and see what happens.

Stories aren't the end all be all method for RTK. It's actually secondary. It's the ordering of the Kanji that makes RTK what it is. Some people have done fine without the stories. (Can't find where it was, but it's buried on this forum somewhere.) But anyway, try the stories out, it is there to help you.