If you're serious about learning to read japanese then at some point you need to find a system for learning the kanji. You know this. There are many different views on which is the best.

Many people, including myself, find that breaking the task into two parts makes the process much easier. This is what RTK does. First you learn to recognize/write the character and then you learn to read it (in it's often many forms). Therefore, you will not be able to read Japanese at the end of RTK1, but you will be able to recognize and write all of the basic characters. The journey beyond to full knowledge will become significantly easier (and I can't overstate that).

The people on this forum have found Heisig to be a great way of nailing the first part in a (relatively) fast and enjoyable manner. The subsequent approach to readings is much more debated, with most people preferring to build up a knowledge through studying sentences and vocabulary on their SRS. RTK2 is generally not considered to be a great "next step" to learning readings, but there are a few followers here.

There are many posts on this forum which ask questions such as yours. I suggest you browse through and do a bit of reading. If you think that the system might not be for you then go off and experiment with other study methods, but having tried these other methods I'd advise you to stay open minded with regards to RTK1.

Let me explain how RTK has helped me so far. I've been going for 6 weeks and am up to 900 kanji.

I have been studying Japanese on and off for more than 4 years. I'm currently in an "advanced" class at a university. Before starting RTK, I could probably read about 100 kanji, and I might have been able to write about 50 kanji from memory. Sure, I was "supposed" to know a few hundred by now, but the fact of the matter is, I don't. I usually can't even write basic words like 勉強する。 There is just nothing to make them stick for me. Also, learning kanji up until now has been just about the most boring thing I can imagine.

But now, if I am presented with new kanji in class that I need to learn, I will often have already learned how to write it from RTK. In that case, I have very little difficulty at all learning the reading and meaning of the words. The hardest part is just knowing what the kanji looks like! Learning them through RTK is also MUCH more fun and interesting than simply drilling some apparently random strokes over and over again until I finally get it (only to lose it a few days later).

How long have you been studying Japanese? If you're just starting out, RTK won't seem obvious. If you've been studying a semester or two, it should be pretty apparent. I took 6 semesters in college, and I saw the benefits after the second chapter of RTK. It just makes it SO much easier to remember how to construct proper kanji from memory, as well as to deconstruct them when you see them on paper.

The other question I have for you: how are you studying RTK? Are you using this site or some other SRS/flash card system? Because if you're not, you're going to get frustrated quickly.

I finished RTK about 5-6 weeks ago, and now I find that my ability to learn new kanji compounds/vocab is a heck of a lot easier than it used to be, simply because I can look at a kanji, and recognize it. I may not always know the keyword right off the bat, but I can look at, tear it apart into pieces, and reconstruct it.

RTK creates a lot of memory hooks and placeholders in your brain for kanji, the same way you do so when learning an alphabet. "A" may not have a meaning, but it occupies a spot in your brain you associate with it. RTK is sort of the same thing. You create connections between kanji and keywords not so much so you can use they keywords to "guess" at Japanese words, but so when you encounter kanji in Japanese, you understand how the characters a) are written, b) fit together, and c) you understand that if all else fails, you have a quick and dirty set of pre-made mnemonics to remember the compound until your brain fills in the gaps with Japanese.

So 京都 is きょうと, that famous Japanese city I so love to visit. I don't have to think it's the "East Metropolis," based on Heisig's keywords, because I've seen it so often, I just know it's Kyoto. But if I was just learning it, it makes a nice crutch. Same goes for 沖縄 or おきなわ, the place in the "Open Sea" where you can find a chain of beautiful islands that looks like a "straw rope" from above. It's a crutch you CAN use (you don't HAVE to) until you internalize it as simply おきなわ.

I find it's especially handy for place names.

I can also keep 待つ　and 持つ straight now.

I think of RTK as lubrication for my Japanese skills. It won't make or break you, but it will make things a LOT easier.

Last edited by rich_f (2008 May 06, 3:39 pm)

I'm surprised, I went into this post even more negatively than I went into RtK, and I actually got some good answers out of it.

To put a background to it, I've been studying lightly for about a year and a bit, seriously for about a month. Through context, I've learned maybe 300-400 kanji for recognition, 150 for writing. My vocab is kinda lacking though.

Prettykitty and rich_f phrased it in a way that makes a lot of sense to me, and I thank you. I never really thought of that angle; that even if it didn't help you read it, it may help you WRITE it.

rich_f wrote:

how are you studying RTK? Are you using this site or some other SRS/flash card system? Because if you're not, you're going to get frustrated quickly.

Mainly use this site. For some of the tricky ones, I hand make a few flashcards to bring to school with me. Generally, I spend my mornings reading over the Kanji (Bout an hour), my B block class reviewing on this site (It's a throw-away class. My mark is actually above 100%), and then I go over the ones I had trouble with when I get home. (Bout an hour)

It's great that the number of people that have "finished" RTK1 stick around to post advice for those asking. I had assumed when I "finished" RTK1 I'd eventually move on to another forum, but I'm finding the community here very refreshing and positively builds on my studies.

I'm pretty sure advice from those that complete RTK and go on to complete further Japanese studies holds some weight about the efficacy of RTK.

By the way, I put "finished" in quotation marks cause I'm of the opinion you're not done with RTK just because you put the last story into the SRS deck. Nor are you really done when you put 90% into stack four or higher. Anyway, sorry for the brief thread jacking.

Triddy, glad you're getting the answers you didn't really think you sought. I will add caution that since you had prefabricated knowledge of Kanji prior you're at risk of going about RTK the wrong way. Remember not to rely to heavily on mnemonics. Create or use stories that make visual images even for the kanji you already know. For myself, complicated kanji that I learned prior to RTK (the ones for 飛行機, airplane) actually gave me problems cause I knew them already. I brushed off creating a good story for them, meaning I was missing the proper writing.

Based on comments in this forum, around 1000 mark people start hitting a brick wall with recall. Even at 1800, people were getting burned out. Just a word of caution that fast going early on does not mean completion at that rate. Do the method properly and you might avoid that.

Funny you should mention that. I too am doing KO, but today I made a decision: I'm going to also add about 20 to 30 new kanji a week (from RTK3) into my Anki deck (not RevTK). I figure it could take 6 to 10 months to fully finish KO at my rate. By that time, I could have almost all of RTK3 entered in Anki.

Reason I'm not doing RevTK for these is I'm really wanting to experiment with the Kanji to Keyword and Keyword to Kanji reviewing.

About finishing, yes, I think it's important to remember that even after you added that last story you still need to review every day getting the kanji into long term memory. Soon, those 40 to 50 reviews a day dwindle down to 20 to 30 (where I'm at) and hopefully to 10 to 20. Just mathematically, assuming that Kanji will never be spaced out farther than 240 days for stack 8, then 3000 cards means roughly 12 reviews a day minimum. Well, that is until Fabrice decides to add a stack 9.

Nukemarine wrote:

Triddy, glad you're getting the answers you didn't really think you sought. I will add caution that since you had prefabricated knowledge of Kanji prior you're at risk of going about RTK the wrong way. Remember not to rely to heavily on mnemonics. Create or use stories that make visual images even for the kanji you already know. For myself, complicated kanji that I learned prior to RTK (the ones for 飛行機, airplane) actually gave me problems cause I knew them already. I brushed off creating a good story for them, meaning I was missing the proper writing.

To be honest, I find it hard to use stories for the ones that have already be etched into my mind. It's a thought process something like 'Well, this character means time. Why WOULDN'T it mean time? It just makes sense.' I use stories rather than mnemonics for the vast majority of the characters I don't know, however. Almost 100%.

There are some that are impossible to use mnemonics for, at least in my opinion. Treetops, for example. I cannot possibly think of something for treetops that doesn't involve a story of some sort.

billyclyde wrote:

have you been to Japan yet?  If not, once you're immersed in kanji top, bottom, left & right, RtK may seem a lot more efficient.  When I lived there I had 700-800 kanji "mastered" and was up to 1300 in RtK, and I was thankful for those 1300 because they helped me navigate all kinds of things, from menus to signs to office memos.

No, I have not been to Japan yet, as I am only 15 and can hardly afford to go on my own. My school district apparently offers a homestay program that I am looking into, so I hope to go sometime next year.

It's nice to hear that this helped out with being in Japan.

I just want to really encourage you to keep studying Rtk.

One of the beauties of RtK is the sheer structure it provides. It's something that has a pretty definite end (there are kanji not covered by RtK, but by doing RtK you can handle those fairly well on your own) and provides you with a lot of information and ability you'll gain throughout the way. It's not difficult per se, just time consuming. It also isn't really hard to "get lost" like it is in general language learning; discouragement is likely to come from feeling overwhelmed by the volume rather than feeling lost on what to do. It's easy to keep going because what you need to do is always in plain view.

At 15  I think this is an incredible task to complete. Really, you can accomplish a lot. You have so much time ahead of you to study language without worrying about other responsibilities too much. Doing RtK now will put you leaps and bounds ahead of other people. If you take Japanese at college (in America) you will probably laugh at the lists of vocabulary and kanji to memorize while your classmates forget the simplest ones they learned last year.

Keep at it and Japanese reading and writing will be a cinch in the future.

Last edited by sutebun (2008 May 07, 2:16 pm)

Triddy: you may find the following interesting

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=19730#p19730

or directly: http://wrightak.googlepages.com/afterrtk1