The book itself kindof explains all this, but...

The idea here is to effectively and easily learn to write them for the long term, which is otherwise pretty difficult, in a logical order that builds up over time. Being able to write them also allows you to much more easily recognize them (and distinguish them from each other) in a variety of written and typographical styles. Having English meanings associated with them (in addition to the recognition) lets you more easily pick up new vocabulary in Japanese. Learning how to read/say them is kindof the easy part. As it turns out, it also works pretty well when going through text when you don't have the time/opportunity/inclination to use a dictionary. Lately I've been playing games and even reading instructions where I don't know half the words, but know what they're saying anyway. Good times.

It's a divide and conquer method. You learn to write them now, it makes everything else easier later. This is instead of trying to learn it all at the same time and overwhelming yourself.

We learn actual Japanese from different sources. This doesn't teach any of that.

1. Yeah. Write them a few times when you learn them, write them again every time you review.
2. If you just use this site it's a lot easier since they're already all there. Anki has them all in there too. Pending that, you can copy them directly off the Study page here. Pending THAT, you can look them up in a dictionary based on the English keyword.
3. Not sure I understand the question, but you should enter/activate the flashcards into the SRS as you learn them through the book.

There's a sample PDF with the first 276 kanji at www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publicatio … sample.pdf
See how you like it.

Last edited by QuackingShoe (2008 July 18, 9:09 am)

If you put them in separate categories, do you review them separately? If so, definitely not. It's sort of cheating yourself that way, you see? The Heisig ordering introduces primitive components and then several characters that use those components, so if you know you're reviewing a certain section, you already know what primitives you're going to be using. It's best to let them mix up once you've added them, so you're testing your actual recall as much as possible.

Here is an example of how it helped me.

Before, I had been studying Japanese for years, but Kanji was definitely my weakest point. In my class, we would get about 20 kanji compounds that we would have to learn, and it would take me 1-2 hours of study time to be able to learn the words well enough to go through all of the flashcards without making a mistake. And that was just going from kanji->reading. If I wanted to be able to write the kanji from seeing the reading, that would take me another 1-2 hours of study. And after all this time, the stuff was still only in my short term memory. I would forget it all within days.

After completing RTK I did a little test to see how quickly I could do the same thing--learn about 20 kanji compounds forward and backward (only short term memory). I accomplished the task in about 15 minutes.

The difference was, before RTK, kanji were just a jumble of weird strokes randomly laid out. Now I recognize them.

Last edited by Zarxrax (2008 July 18, 9:56 am)

IMPORTANT!!!

About the mnemosyne default flashcards: DONT USE THEM

Email-me and I'll send you a copy of my deck, will all the mistakes fixed until kanji number 1965, that is where I am in the book.

No! You need to go back and start again!

Re-read the introduction. Do NOT review from kanji to meaning (as in seeing the kanji and saying the keyword). You MUST review from the keyword to the kanji (be able to write the kanji when just given the keyword).

If you do it that way, the other way will happen automatically. Use this site's flashcards. They're really good.

I think the easiest way to understand the benefits of heisig is to think of a word you already know in Japanese, for example なります to become. This word is almost always written in hiragana, but it has kanji. The kanji is 成ります.

Trying to remember 成 just like that is pretty tricky, but if you use Heisig you will be able to learn it easily. It has the keyword "Turn Into". It is much easier to associate Turn Into with 成ります than 成.

Most people know およぐ means swim, but do they know the kanji? 泳ぐ
Again, tricky to remember like that and easily confusable with 水,氷,永...
Using heisig you will learn that 泳　means Swim and can easily associate it with 泳ぐ.

etc. etc.

You will soon know the kanji for tons of words you already know. What it boils down to is, its far easier to associate a keyword with a piece of vocabulary than it is to first learn a squiggly character and then associate it.

erlog wrote:

I think the finger in the air method is better than nothing, but I find that learning how to proportion kanji helps me remember them. If you're writing them in the air you have no sense of proportion.

Don't use the air, use your palm. It's still not as good as writing on paper, but you'll get a better sense of proportion than using the air. It's also a bit easier to use your palm than the air because the movements will be more natural.

- Kef

You're just not good enough at lying to yourself!