I first started my journey of Japanese learning January 2012. I learned Hiragana and Katakana. I went through Season 1 at Textfugu. I then spent seven long months on RTK 1. I practiced writing the kanji every day on Skritter. I moved on to sentences with some Core decks on Anki. I have many Japanese apps on my iPhone and iPad.

Here it is only a few months later and I'd say I have forgotten (probably more than) 50% of the kanji I *thought* I had learned. I tried Genki and was bored out of my mind. Textfugu does the kanji in a different way than RTK and I now find the studies there confusing. The kanji amnesia has really affected the rate I learn vocab. I had thought finishing RTK would help, but not for me.

I feel very discouraged at my slow progress and kanji amnesia. I still do some kind of study every day. Plus Japanese films, anime, music and podcasts.

I am starting over. (Not with RTK, I couldn't go through that again.) I think I want to focus more on speech and listening as that seems easier for me.

I do want to add that this site and forum have been great assets. So many posts here have helped me.

So, have many folks here had to start over one or more times. Or, am I just memory-challenged?

Twice. I stopped once in the mid-90s, then made another run at it around 2004 and stopped again.

On the up side, I've been back at it now for five months, and thanks to the various methods discussed on this site, I've made more progress, more quickly, than I ever have in my two previous attempts to learn the language. I'm reading and speaking now at a much higher level than I ever was.

So, hang in there. It gets better.

EDIT: Re-reading this, it seems like you mean you never stopped studying, but that you forgot the kanji you had learned with RTK along the way. Were you drilling them every day in an SRS after you had formally completed? You do forget them over time if you don't keep them active through some technique like SRS or massive immersion. (I use KanjiBox for this.)

This is true whether you use RTK or some other method to learn the kanji, I think. You're trying to keep over 2,000 facts - plus thousands of ancillary facts regarding pronunciation and meaning - in your head. That's not easy without daily exposure.

Altaira Wrote:So, have many folks here had to start over one or more times. Or, am I just memory-challenged?

To be honest this is the first time I heard someone HAD TO start over, but don't worry, not all methods work with everybody, try different things and see what work out best with you.

Did you use an SRS software/website to review RTK?

I started in the summer of 2011 using Human Japanese. Then I took a hiatus until the summer of 2012, and I used Heisig's method and I'm almost halfway through Tae-Kim's guide. So I restarted once...so far.

Never yet, but only been going for 3 months so far. I've studied little bits casually in the past but it never lasted beyond a day or two and wasn't real study anyway. Let's hope I keep this going then

well, I started studying like in the end of 2008. but it was too hard and soon gave up. then in the summer of 2009 I started studying RTK and have never stopped.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:Were you drilling them every day in an SRS after you had formally completed? You do forget them over time if you don't keep them active through some technique like SRS or massive immersion. (I use KanjiBox for this.)

This is true whether you use RTK or some other method to learn the kanji, I think. You're trying to keep over 2,000 facts - plus thousands of ancillary facts regarding pronunciation and meaning - in your head. That's not easy without daily exposure.

I was just thinking this, because this is how we maintain native literacy: constant immersion/exposure. People can forget even their first language if it falls into complete disuse for long enough, so don't feel bad if those relatively new traces have faded.

When I hear someone say that they finished RTK and now they forgot all the kanji it blows my mind. Your not supposed to stop doing RTK until you can read a novel without picking up a dictionary. Once your at that level then you can stop reviewing RTK.

Also, not all is lost. Just start reviewing RTK again. Everything you learned is still rolling around in your head. What SRS where you using? If you have a million reviews waiting for you just do 50 a day till your caught up. Don't throw away everything you learned with RTK.

My primary interest by a very long margin is to read Japanese, rather than produce it myself.

To that end, once I'd "finished" RTK using the usual method of keyword to kanji, I downloaded an RTK ANKI deck and turned it from a production deck into a recognition deck. It meant starting again from the point of view of the SRS, but the fact that I can very rapidly run through the reps doesn't make this a problem. Also, I'm not overly strict on whether I recall the exact English keyword for the given kanji, just that I'm close enough in terms of general meaning and intent.

As Adent said, you're not supposed to just stop with RTK the moment you complete the book, but you're supposed to carry on until you really don't need it any more.

It's true ideally you shouldn't stop reviewing like adent said however for one reason or another it's easy to fall behind. After that comes demotivation of a huge reviews stacked with most likely whatever got in the way already. Chances are whatever got in the way is a new priority in your life and before you know it's been six months since you reviewed. At this point going at 50 a day won't be as effective as starting from scratch (possibly use your judgement) if I do 50 reviews but fail 40 my stack only dropped by 10 this would take 150 days to get through 1500 reviews. I finished rtk in 60 originally.

TL;dr catching up in reviews might not be as simple as doing 50 a day and a restart may seem appropriate.

It doesn't matter how long it takes to finish the reviews. Like I said before your not trying to finish RTK. Reviewing the Kanji is the goal. So everyone just keep going there isn't any deadline.

Personally, I think too much emphasis is put on RTK. Initially it helped me understand the subtle differences between kanji but it soon began to take up too much of my time - I am living in Japan and need to learn how to communicate, not right a bunch of kanji - a skill which I learned from RTK and useful nonetheless. I dropped RTK after about 2 or 3 months, halfway through, to focus on learning words and grammar instead and this approach worked for me so much better.

The initial boost RTK gave me was a help but constant immersion is all I needed to learn the words I use on a daily basis. I can read a good portion of mails sent to me in work and I haven`t touched RTK in 4 months - only been studying for 10. Find out what works for you but what people say about immersion is right, it`s the key.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I was feeling rather whiny that day. (Insomnia doesn't help.)

gaiaslastlaugh - KanjiBox is great. I remember about 80% when I use that app. However, when I run across some kanji in sentences, it's almost like I've never seen them before. I did SRS using Skritter. I also used the RTK app for reviews.

Adent Wrote:Your not supposed to stop doing RTK until you can read a novel without picking up a dictionary.

I didn't know that. When I finished, I never wanted to look at that book again. I wanted to move on to sentences and grammar.


RTK *was* helpful to learn how to recognize and break down kanji. Yet, I still feel like I did something wrong. Went too slow or too fast. One thing that throws me off are the various fonts used for kanji. I need to get used to different ones. I don't think Heisig mentioned that fonts could be a problem. I have seen it mentioned in other books.

On the bright side, I renewed Skritter and they have a nice iOS app for reviewing kanji and vocab that has gotten me interested again.

Again, thanks for the replies!

Altaira Wrote:gaiaslastlaugh - KanjiBox is great. I remember about 80% when I use that app. However, when I run across some kanji in sentences, it's almost like I've never seen them before. I did SRS using Skritter. I also used the RTK app for reviews.

I've also had this issue just from drilling the kanji themselves on KanjiBox. I'm currently drilling the readings (読み) on KB, and find that is doing wonders for my general kanji reading ability. I think it's also helping me supplement my vocab.

I'm constantly restarting to learn japanese because I haven't found a method I'm motivated enough to finish it:

-I did RTK. I had two big stops, finishing it in two years. I've stopped the reviews and I've 1300 to review on ~2300...so terrible =D

-I've listened to some lessons on JPOD 101 : I listened to some seasons. My subsription is finished and I didin't renew. I had a good time on it thogh, don't know if I'll come back again.

-I'm on Textfugu, but didn't give me enough motivation to finish more than two seasons.

-I've started Genki, but first lesson discourages me, already knew all of it, not motiating enough .__.

-I've read pages on Tae Kim but finally gave up.

I've also two books in my native language you're not familiar with, but also not motivating.
Trouble is now I'm not a newbie anymore (all books and methods for newbie are annoying in the start for me), but I don't scratch JLPT5 level .__.
About Core 1k and all, I'm admirative in front of people who have the courage to learn so much vocabulary dryly. I've tried but I can't....

So, for you, only twice ? Don't worry, there's worst
I would advice not to do like me, find one method and not scatter like I'm doing.