Well it's already known but 正弦曲線 (I'll need to add this one to the SRS) is the one whose post on another forum got me onto Heisig.

really? sweet. and now you're the Kanji master dude!

I have lived in Japan for three years and am ashamed to say that I am no where near conversational yet... be it the one year with NOVA where it seemed Japanese was outlawed or my inability to crack a text book and sit down for a couple hours to learn a little something.  Having left NOVA some time ago and having been working in a Japanese public elementary school I have really come to see the importance of speaking the language.  But even that did not push me to study as much as I knew I should be.  It was something that my friend said, not TO ME but just in conversation that really struck me, that made me feel that I had wasted so much time and was seriously behind.  He said "If I met some one in my country that couldn't speak my language I would think they were ignorant."
     So, not only is Yorkii fully responsible for introducing me to this awesome set up.  He is also responsible for pushing my efforts to study harder, whether he knows it or not.  He has always provided plenty of information about how to study and where one might find materials to study, he has lent me books by the stack and answered any and all questions I have had regarding my new found passion for studying the language of a country I love.
     
     Thanks buddy!

I learned about Heisig reading "The Kanji Clinic" articles, thanks Mary !

Nukemarine wrote:

I learned about Heisig reading "The Kanji Clinic" articles

Me too, a few years ago, although I didn't act on the information for a while after that...

I subscribed to an email service, which would send one kanji a day to you for a period of 100 days (via learnjapanese.com or sth similar). On the bottom there was a short infomercial about the Heisig method.

A friend of mine who had tried the method and gave up part way through posted a link to this website in her livejournal a little over a year ago. She was excited because the part that got exhausting to her was thinking up stories all the time....  I came over and registered out of curiosity, and then never did anything with it as I was busy finishing up my last year at uni and trying to study for the JLPT.

I'd always been a bit skeptical of the method, as I started off learning Japanese in a university classroom and was therefore taught kanji by more traditional means (i.e. write them over and over until your hand falls off... and then write them a few more times... and cram a couple of readings in your brain while you're at it...).  But after reading a post on Tae Kim's blog in December and a few other posts about it on various study boards, I decided to give it a whirl in the downtime between the JLPT and getting the results back and find out what the fuss was about.  So here I am...

It was this very website that introduced me to Heisig. I got lucky with a search.

I heard about Heisig over 3 years ago, and I'm not even sure how anymore. I think it was through searching for Japanese books and study materials. I downloaded the first 100 pages and thought it was great, so I bought the book.

I saw it from the Kanji Clinic, too. Halfway through!

I first heard of Heisig through a post on a gaming-related website I helped with.  Someone mentioned his book as a helpful way to learn the stuff and it percolated in the back of my mind for probably a year or so.  Once I got more serious about learning Japanese I ordered the book and I wound up here when I was searching for an online flashcard program.

And I'm glad I did!

I was working for a certain Aircraft company in Northwest Washington. We were partnered with Mitsubishi. I got tired of listening to Japanese all day without being able to understand. So I decided to take the free 16 hour Japanese class after hours. I liked the class, so I started to find out a little bit more. I started surfing amazon, looking for info. That's what I did back then (2005) - I had no idea forums like this existed.

According to some book reviews on amazon, there were these characters called kanji that cause all sorts of headaches to learners. I bought a book on kanji (a learner's dictionary) and tried to start learning. Being a complete beginner, taking the characters totally out of context without a real method, it was brutal. Doing some more research on Amazon, a reviewer mentioned Heisig. I went to the actual book, and thought "this sounds like a gimmick, but it's cheap, so I'll give it a try". I ordered the book. While I waited, I found the free PDF, and learned about 20 characters per day. It was soooo much easier - here was an actual method for learning characters out of context.

I finished the class, and quit the job, but didn't want to quit Japanese after investing all that time (maybe 200 hrs at that point). If I'd known I was less than 10% of the way to fluency, I probably would have quit. But I continued with Heisig, Pimsleur and Japanese for Busy People.

I finished Heisig after 7 months. I was so proud of myself. In the dozens of review I read about RTK1 back then, only one or two people had actually finished it. I was on top of the world. On a whim, I did a google search on Remembering the Kanji. I found this epoch post. It changed my language learning world. Anybody remember that?