Personally, I'd hang up all your other Japanese study, and just focus on getting RTK1 done in the next 2 months.  Then you will have a solid foundation for picking the rest of it up^^
Plus, I think it's better to use this site for RTK Kanji reviewing, and you can make use of public stories for your kanji when you get stuck!

jm82792 wrote:

The only reason I've thought about Kana now is perhaps they'd grow well together, but I don't want a hindrance, and perhaps that could be one.

It's not necessarily going to be a hindrance, but kana is like the alphabet, and pretty easy to remember.  I just wouldn't worry too much about getting it learnt right now, unless you really need it for class (or will do so in the near future).

It wasn't stated, but don't major in Japanese.

vix86 wrote:

It wasn't stated, but don't major in Japanese.

I won't go for it
I'm going for a business degree, I am into science and technology but Business was something I could test out of most of the degree with studying at home. I'm seeing that if I learn Japanese it's another asset.
For what I know I may never use my degree for a job, and knowing Japanese might be my ticket. That or maybe it won't but I'll definitely enjoy myself with knowing it anyways.

More realistically, RTK is a tiny aspect of your learning, but it can be like tying your shoes up a little tighter before going on a long hike, or something. It should give you a bit of a footing on the path, and might even provide added motivation (to be able to write 漢字 whereas others may be stuck writing かんじ?), or at least it can be used as an experience in continuous study and review, maybe as opposed to cramming for a test and let letting revision slide for a while.

That or maybe it won't but I'll definitely enjoy myself with knowing it anyways.

Sounds like something you can use for long term motivation. You're already living on an island many see as paradise, so you're already a few steps on the way, lol.

Not sure if you know this, but Heisig also has a book out to help you learn the Kana. I used it to learn the Hiragana, and it made it so easy that it convinced me to do RtK.

Anyways, the reason why I'm bothering you with this dull little anecdote is because I didn't also do the Katakana. I did the Hiragana, practiced it and became pretty much able to read it comfortably. Then I did RtK, and then did the Katakana. Right after, I delved into sentence reviews, with lots of Katakana in them. And I found that it was a problem. I spent at least a month having trouble reading Katakana words, and just guessing what they are.

In hind sight, it would've been better to learn both Kana first, and then practice them while doing Rtk (possibly by reading simple Kana only stories, like the ones in the Yomu Yomu Bunko Level 0, or in children's stories), so that once I finished RtK I would have the skills to read them both comfortably, and be able to focus strictly on Kanji at that point.

P.S. While it's true that you can memorize both Kana in just a day or two (especially with Heisig's book), that doesn't mean that you can also use them that fast. It still takes weeks of practice to get to use them. (not sure if you ever learned to touch type, but learning to read/write the Kana or something like the Hebrew script is a lot like touch typing: you can only be good at it by practicing a little every day - there's no point in doing it 10 hours a day, it won't have the same effect as doing it half an hour for 20 days).

So you should learn the Kana well ahead of when you're planning to use it to learn Kanji words and sentences.

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 March 20, 9:57 pm)

Didn't use Remember the Kana, or anything like that. More brute force style with flash cards and writing them out, pronouncing them during writing, etc. Learning the pronunciation took a fair bit of trail and error with reading different study resources and contrasting with native media, so see what they meant, yet even after things made sense enough, reading a string of kana was still hell, as my brain simply forgot how to work. But after gaining a sense of grammar, with a bit of a vocab., I found reading (and pronunciation in my head) to make a whole lot more sense.

Tablets aren't really something I've had much experience with, but, if you had individual short sound clips of a native Japanese person pronouncing individual kana, would you be able to use it to put in the answer field/back side of the card while you're studying in Anki?   

I've got a collection of these which I could easily email to you if you're interested. They were part of some $1 membership offer package from japanesepod101, so are at least accurate.

(Thanks for all the help, I greatly appreciate you guys putting up with me)

  I do see the chicken and egg issue. Just tonight one of my Sensei(s?) was mentioning getting your black belt merely means you are ready to learn and go up 2nd, 3rd, and etc degree. (nobody in IKL makes a dime from their teaching so their isn't monetary interest in keeping students) If anything I did 4 years ago was filmed I'd be laughing at myself, and others would wonder what that idiot was doing. It is not easy to get to the point where learning is productive, where you already know enough to simply listen, and do what you are told (well to naturally learn) without freaking out that you can't do anything (and that sounds good and all, but in reality it's "here is what to do, now do it!" in my current case).

I think I can do whatever I want for custom flashcards with Anki.
The tablet blurb was me overthinking about what to find that will run android and have an "E Ink" screen. I have found a few decks with Kana along with their pronunciations, I think they were supposed to be native, but I could be wrong.

SomeCallMeChris, I'll be visiting those links since I really appreciate being able to build off of stuff. I can remember Kanji without associations but I "have" to go back to them since they don't truly make "sense". I should become more attenuated to what I hear, as I do notice the pronunciations are roughly comparable to some vowels(and many will say "that's obvious" ) and so forth, but definitely have a difference that I need to integrate in. I won't worry too much since as you said it's an continuous process until otherwise noted. Sometime, someday, I'll bother my a few of my teachers. But not for a rather long time.

Edit. It's a really nice resource. Around here we say "tako poki" when we refer to chopped raw octopus that's seasoned and eaten raw.
Now this is making sense, it's time to tie all the other random words i know to Kana.

Last edited by jm82792 (2013 March 23, 2:41 am)

jm82792 wrote:

I've been busy working weekends, and all that random stuff that consumes more time then you'd like.
But in spite of that I am at 510 or so for Kanji, and am recognizing 25 Hiragana. Recognition is the keyword, me writing it is nearly an impossibility at this time. I find this far more interesting then most things that I can do in my spare time

Impossible to write kanji, or impossible to write hiragana?

If you're doing RTK then you should be  writing the kanji from the keyword on each review. That's pretty much the whole point of RTK, it's a mnemonic method for learning how to write the characters, and it naturally follows that you should be able to recognize anything you can write (although actually 'reading' will involve learning pronunciations, of course.)

I do see your point Chris, I'll start passively writing them out when I SRS after I install the stroke order addon. I do have a story or worst case good association between primitives, but for what I know it could be a missing dimension of learning even with how bad my predispositions are.
I didn't write it off, but thought I'd be fine delaying it. But I've payed for that in the past on other things (passing through a bunch of college courses and now I'm cringing with my math course is a nice example). I recall thinking about studying for what I'm doing now about 4 years ago when I had time and thought having a year or two of college before most was good enough.
I recently realized to stay on this rock means I better make my resume better, and it seems that what I'm doing now is a nice mix of a hobby and a practical skill.

Last edited by jm82792 (2013 April 04, 2:55 pm)