I finished Heisig's Remembering the Kana series a while back, finishing each book in well under three hours. I'm now just starting his Remembering the Kanji series, and want to know if any of you have some helpful tips for me. I have a fairly busy schedule, and I'm trying to find a way to gain a working knowledge of the jouyou kanji as soon as I am able.

Thank you.

~Ether

Welcome Ether. I'll try to share my experience.

For me, the difficulty of assimilating each kanji varies from one chapter to another. Some will be quite easy and some tough. My tip is that when you hit something tough, just keep going; there will be easier later and you'll memorize the tough ones in time.

The first 250 kanji should let you know if this method works for you or not. For me it worked and I was hooked onto the method quickly. Heisig gives you stories and plots for the first 500 or so kanji, and during this time its quite easy to progress through the book.

After about 500 kanji, Heisig stops providing the stories so you have to invent your own. You're also greeted with a few difficult chapters IMO between 500 and 700. I think this is where many give up (as I did 1st time ). So don't give up !

If you keep going and work through that part it'll feel more like downhill. You'll have had lots of practice picking stories that work for you. Use this fantastic website as much as possible. Many of the stories shared here are priceless; they accelerated my progress and plus I get a good laugh from some of them .

Try not to spend a lot of time counting how many days you have left to finish. (I'm guilty of that too). The best thing is to set a reasonable goal of a certain number of kanji every day, and stick to it.

Don't count how many kanji are left. Instead set your goals to finish lessons. For example, I now have a goal to do at least 21 kanji per day (21 is just over 1% of RTK1), but if a lesson has for example 50 kanji, then I will set a goal to finish the lesson in 2 days. My goal is not very high because I don't have all day to study.

You'll need to review the kanji using spaced repetition. "Reviewing The Kanji" website Leitner system works great for that. I also use Anki personally.

Good luck!

Welcome to this forum Ether.

Here are a couple of tips I would give based on my experience with the book.

-RTK will take lots of time and concentration, so don't give up if things slow down at some point. Also, be regular. Work everyday and don't let expired cards pile up.

-Use a spaced repetition system, such as this site, to review. Review is really half the work.

-Learn how to create good stories as soon as possible.

-Don't give up on hard kanjis. They will challenge your story-making abilities and allow you to improve them. A story can be created for every kanji in the book (excepting primitives which you might or might not wish to remember with a story).

-Heisig's stories are just examples, so you don't have to use them if they don't fit you.

-Stories have only one purpose: to help you remember a kanji, so don't worry about making them logical or nice. In fact, if they're too logical, then you won't remember them.

-Keep a list of confusing keywords. At least, that's what I did and it helped me distinguish between similar keywords.

- Seemingly useless kanjis are not that useless. For example gall bladder 胆, liver 肝 and Plum 梅 are all used in relatively common compounds.

If you keep up a constant effort and make good stories, there's no reason why you shouldn't finish the book, so がんばって！

Another welcome to you, Ether. I would just add that the thread "I just finished RTK" at http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=95 has a lot of useful information from people who have finished the book.

And be consistent-- I wouldn't have finished had I not done my orange stacks first thing every morning and added at least 5-10 new cards a day. Once you figure out what works for you, you'll be done before you know it.

Yes. The consistent work is the key, but I would say that reviewing is the most important thing. I don't think I'm too far off when saying that most of us have given up once or twice and then come back to it.
Personally I have had to start over TWO TIMES(!) just because for some reason I didn't do the reviewing while I didn't have the energy to study new characters. So the most important advice i can give is: what ever you do, DO NOT NEGLECT REVIEWING!
Last month I was just too busy and tired to study new kanji but I did the reviewing as a part of my morning routines and thus didn't lose a single character I had worked for. Fortunately now I'm back on tracks, progressing slowly but steadily. =)

So. If you are having too much work or big changes in your life (I have had lots of those recently), slowing down on adding new kanji is acceptable but if you stop reviewing, the characters will start slipping away and most of your work will have been in vain.

Ps. I have noticed that RTK and big changes in your life don't go together very well..

Thanks for all of your replies and words of encouragement.

I find that Heisig's ordering has always worked well for me, as it did in his Remembering the Kana series, but I never really remember the stories that he makes. I'm not quite sure how I retain them in this matter without using the stories, but I seem to. It just seems to be some other sort of thought process that allows me to retain the characters fairly easily.

However, I will give the story system a few more tries. There have been a few I've remembered so far that have helped (as a crutch) at first, but eventually, the character just seems to come to mind without thinking about it. I don't know, maybe it has to do with the fact that I program quite a bit - I'm constantly and consistently taking in and remembering a lot of information.

Anyhow, any further comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

~Ether

Learning 2042 kanjis and learning about a 100 kanas is not the same thing. You might be able to get as far as 300 or 500 kanjis without creating good stories, but you won't be able to finish the book. I did the same thing in the beginning, thinking that I knew better than Heisig.

I would say that if you have a good visual memory, then it's true that you will be able to remember characters just by glancing at them, until a certain point. That's why it's hard to understand how to create stories and why you need them.

And it's interesting that you pointed stories as being a crutch, because that's exactly what they are. Eventually, you're supposed to forget all about them and just remember the character.

Quote:I find that Heisig's ordering has always worked well for me, as it did in his Remembering the Kana series, but I never really remember the stories that he makes.

Magnadoodle made the suggestion earlier of not making your stories too logical or nice. I'd second this and even emphasize it more strongly. For a story to be memorable, it needs to be unusual enough to make strong associations. Having something be illogical is one way to stand out and form strong associations.

Intentionally violating a social or ethical or moral norm is also (if nothing else) very memorable, so that many stories that work really well might not be sharable in polite company. Even Heisig (who I think is a religious scholar?) ever-so-delicately suggests sexual imagery in some of his stories - for example, check out frame 86 "seduce" or frame 100 "likeness".

If you have a full-time job or, like me, a full-time job, a demanding part-time job, and a family to take care of, this suggestion may be useful: it is better to work every day, even if only a little bit, than to study 8 hours one day and then blow off the rest of the week.

My daily goals are simply to (1) review all expired cards and (2) to add at least one new card every day. I can accomplish this goal over my lunch hour. The smallness of the goal prevents my ever feeling like learning kanji is a chore and, as a consequence, I don't miss many days. When I had more grandiose goals--eg. "if I just do 10 kanji a day I'll finish the book in less than a year"--I always got hung up and frustrated when life intervened and didn't permit me to do that many. I grant that for other learners, that sort of thing might be a motivator; not for me.

Some people with more time can devote themselves more fully to the process. Being able to do so is probably a benefit in itself: a person who is adding and reviewing 50 new cards every day, and keeping up with expired cards, probably develops a momentum that makes the process much more effective (like learning a foreign language by immersion).

Even if I had eight hours a day to devote to study, however, I would keep my modest goals because they prevent frustration. As far as I am concerned, frustration is the enemy in this process: it turns something lovely (kanji are beautiful and drawing them feels good) into a chore.

PParisi, I bet your pace will result in a VERY good recall when you're done. I finished the book, but I still have a sizeable failed stack to finish because I pushed a little fast at the end.

And I think you touch on a central pillar of language study in general: doing it every single day is by far the most important thing.

Ether Wrote:I find that Heisig's ordering has always worked well for me, as it did in his Remembering the Kana series, but I never really remember the stories that he makes. I'm not quite sure how I retain them in this matter without using the stories, but I seem to. It just seems to be some other sort of thought process that allows me to retain the characters fairly easily.

However, I will give the story system a few more tries. There have been a few I've remembered so far that have helped (as a crutch) at first, but eventually, the character just seems to come to mind without thinking about it. I don't know, maybe it has to do with the fact that I program quite a bit - I'm constantly and consistently taking in and remembering a lot of information.

Anyhow, any further comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

~Ether

I didn't use Remembering the Kana, but I would think kana & kanji are quite different beasts. The kana don't build upon eachother anywhere near as much as kanji do and there's only like 100 of them. As such stories are going to be less useful or interesting and won't be in your mind for long, because you'll finish learning all 100 kana in a short time. Its normal to remember kana pretty soon as images just like you remember the alphabet.

Unless you have photographic memory, its nowhere near as easy to remember all the kanji as whole images. In kanji, most of them are made of 2 or more primitives, so stories are ideal for reconstructing kanji. Besides, that is essentially what many kanji are... two or more parts brought together (in a story) to create a new meaning, and they are best remembered from their constituent parts than as a whole image, until the point where you've had a chance to use them in reading or writing many many times.

Most of the primitives occur in many kanji. This will let you really get to know the primitives well, and the primitives are the heros of your stories. The primitives are often rich enough that you can make your stories make sense, or interesting, funny, happy, sexy, sad, grose, outrageous, or whatever kind of story works for you in each case.

One tip is to personify some of the primitives. For example Mr. T, Chuck Norris, Rocky, Prince, Data from Startrek, etc. That's because (I think) we are good to remember attributes and personalities of people. For example 憎 (hate) is made up of 'state of mind' and 'increase' primitives. But earlier in the book I use Data (an android who wants to feel emotions) for 'state of mind' and Prince for 'increase', and then this kanji just becomes an attribute of Data: "Data hates Prince music".

I think, I'll make at least one new character a day my goal too. Seems like a decent idea. So far I have just thought to add "some" each day but I think writing a character or two down for your lunch hour in the morning would make it a bit more conscious effort even on busy days.

as per previous poster:

"One tip is to personify some of the primitives. For example Mr. T, Chuck Norris, Rocky, Prince, Data from Startrek, etc. That's because (I think) we are good to remember attributes and personalities of people. For example 憎 (hate) is made up of 'state of mind' and 'increase' primitives. But earlier in the book I use Data (an android who wants to feel emotions) for 'state of mind' and Prince for 'increase', and then this kanji just becomes an attribute of Data: "Data hates Prince music"."


This is one of the most important things to do! I found anything that wasn't tangible i.e. "state of mind" I would just think of a physical object to represent it i.e. freud in my case.
Unlike abstract terms objects can interact with one another and thats what makes something memorable. Freud rapping "lets talk about sex, sex is life yeah" whilst doing the running man mc hammer style is so memorable (state of mind i.e freud + life = kanji for sex) compared to a dull "im in a great state of mind when i make life during sex".

In fact the connections are so strong that I tried to substitute a vivid object for all of the primitives.
deer = Robert de niro (deer hunter)
silver = the bad terminator from t2
waitress = sarah connor
wheat = wheatman (kanji version of the whicker man)
rabbit = bugs
blue = smurf
west = clint eastwood
etc etc

I also change the various objects size, colour, quantity to aid memorization. I.e. in your story you have:
open door and vegetable hits me.
or you could have
open a ridicoulsy tiny door and thousands of flurecent pink carrots come flying out drowning me.

no idea why that works but it does.

Also I made it a habit to look only at the kanji meaning and avoid looking at the primitives that make it up.

e.g. for sex = freud + life

I just looked at sex and then noted down the first thing that came into my head which was salt and peppas "lets talk about sex". I know that every time i see the word sex - salt and peppa will pop into my mind 9 out of 10 times. So it seems to make sense to try and intergrate "freud and life" into that. Hence the image of freud rapping the tune. MC hammer part was just thrown in to make it stand out. Its all about making connections with those neurons in your brain.

thats my tips..(excuse typos - time is money)

[ファブリス]

thegeezer3 Wrote:excuse typos - time is money

Made me laugh, I'll remember this one ! ^_^

Thank you all for your replies - I never expected this level of support.

Yes, I can see what you all mean about the difference between learning the kana and kanji. There have been a few stories that helped me, mostly for the seemingly obscure (though less so in compounds) kanji such as 胆. However, instead of remembering Heisig's story for the character, I tend to just remember something along the lines of "left moon right nightbreak".

As far as volume and frequency goes, I'm learning at my own pace. I'm not setting specific daily goals, as my schedule varies heavily, and I often can not meet them. I may learn 50 characters in a day, I may learn 0. It's irregular, but I don't seem to lose many even if I don't use them for a few days - though, I tend to use them daily. Whether I'm in class or whatever I'm doing, if I get bored, I tend to sit there and write characters. I also speak with native-speakers on a fairly frequent basis (via a textual medium), and am exposed to Japanese texts a fairly good amount. I seem to notice characters I learn "pop up" everywhere... yes, I know they were there the whole time but they tend to stand out more when you recognize them.

So far my retention rate is nearly 100%. I know this won't be so once I learn many more kanji, but I'm sure as hell going to try to keep it as so.

Many here have already pointed out that visual memory is impossible for all the kanji. Heisig himself dicusses it within the book. Listen to the stories from the many here (and innumerable unrepresented more) who have said they have repeatedly failed and restarted before they embraced the visual learning method, and heed their advice! Do not wait to employ visual mnemonics. Use it from the first kanji. And don't fall for the trap of using visual memory for "simple" kanji just because they have few primitives. You will fail.

Visual learning is a wonderful tool, but simply inadequate to tackle RTK. Save it for after you finish to employ with those stubborn kanji in your review that need to be hammered in.

Good luck!

stories like "left moon right nightbreak" are much less likely to be remembered once you start reviewing from the last stack waiting a month or two between reviews and there is nothing to tie the story to the keyword.

Yeah, sorry to say but "left moon right nightbreak" is not a good start. There's no plot and no relation to the word "gallbladder" at all. That may get you through a few hundred kanji, if you do rote repetitions of the phrase, but that's not Heisig and won't help you get very far. If you follow Heisig's advice it'll save you lots of wasted time. Sorry, I think anyone who's gone through a big part of the book will tell you the same.

Well, as I was saying, I'm going to give the mnemonics a few more tries. I can see what you all are saying. I'm just trying to find what works best for me.

[ファブリス]

Hey Ether, I'd like to emphasize to you that Heisig's method is based on "stories". I don't remember if he used the word "mnemonic" in the first volume, but keep in mind mnemonics have a history, and are usually short phrases that tend to stick in memory for the person who created it, based on their perceptions of the word and how they sound. Heisig's stories are a mnemonic device, but the intent is to flesh out a minimal plot, or explanation for the components in the character, this will create a link between them in memory, however unrealistic the story may be, and it will often suggest mental images without you making a special effort. Have you ever read a book and have a kind of image of what the characters look like? Even if the book describes them often time your mind will fill in the blanks. Here's a random story out of the blue : just before nightbreak (night breaks into the day), a werewolf eats some more gall bladders under the moon, yummy! Try to force yourself to write something down, it might help you in fleshing a story. Do this for a while for all characters. I think I did this for a long time, when I believed I would need to look back at them later. Over time I've found good stories never need to be written down, so I stopped. But writing it down, with the minimal effort of writing something comprehensible (again, however unrealistic the plot may be), will help you flesh out the mental images for the character.

I'll take that into consideration. Thanks.

billyclyde Wrote:PParisi, I bet your pace will result in a VERY good recall when you're done.

Thanks for the encouraging words! From your laptop to God's ears, I hope!