sethg wrote:

I'm on lesson 29... half way through... and I'm just finding it REALLY hard to focus now. I suddenly have no drive whatsoever. 2042 seems like forever away. Did any of your guys get this at the half-way point? I'm so anxious to finish, but it feels like I anticipated half-way for so long that now that I'm here... I'm, like, done. I don't want to continue.

One way you can look at it is to look at your choices, they're really quite obvious. You can quit, or you can keep going.

Since you've made it this far, I'm going to assume that learning Japanese is something you have a genuine interest in, at the least, and probably it is a passion. So, if you quit, you're probably going to pick it back up at some point. Do you really want to pick it back up six months from now and kick yourself for not doing something small toward your goal?

Look at it this way. If you add 10 kanji a day at 30 days per month, that's 300. In 3-4 months, you will have it mastered. Knowing that, should you quit, you will surely kick yourself when you pick it back up.

It's really as simple as that. The path is totally laid out, all the tools are there, all it takes is a bit of effort, even five days out of the week. So, break it up into manageable chunks, harness your impatience and have courage.

I dragged a bit around the halfway mark, too.   What eventually worked for me was breaking the idea of finishing down into smaller, more tangible goals.   It was the difference between thinking to myself, "Man, I still got 1021 more of these to go" and thinking, "Only 22 more and my countdown will be in three figures instead of four."

I started officially counting down once I had 1000 left to go, and I made it an event every time the count cleared another 100 kanji.   I celebrated the 'event' by allowing myself to order something small  or cool from amazon.jp to support my listening habit.   

Just keep plugging away, even if it's only a little.  Find something you can focus on as a short-term goal, and you'll hit 2042 before you know it.

Hi guys!
I'm one and a half week into it, and currently on frame 137!
My plan is to do 15 a day, until I get a week off in July/August (should have around 1400 by then, if I stick to schedule!), and finish off in a super-über marathon doing 90 or so each day, woho!
It's going well, but it's getting harder! But I'll just keep going!
The way I motivate myself is that if I finish RTK by early/mid August, I should be able to dig into real Japanese, sentences and such, when I start my music studies! This way I can read Japanese (of course with 100% use of blood, sweat and a dictionary, hehe) in between breaks in practise sessions etc.
Hopefully I can pull it off!

Keep going guys! I couldn't have done it without this site, seriously... I use RtK stories for 99% of all my stories, they're really, really good! I just add some spice in between, if they're a bit, well, neutral? If that makes any sense?

Last edited by Zorlee (2009 May 02, 6:00 am)

I've just got 400 down. I had a big chunk of 100 cards to review today, and 16 ended up in my failed pile. The other 300 I've got nailed down pretty much 100%, so it's all going quite well. However, the 16 I failed, half of them were from yesterdays 'lesson'. So I had a 40% fail rate for yesterday. This has happened quite a few times, where just nothing sticks at all. And I usually get annoyed, and end up not learning my daily 20, like today. I wish I could turn the clocks back an hour and do them haha, I feel kinda stupid for giving up on the daily 20.

But even after having bad days, of forgetting 50% or so, after going over them again once (or twice), they usually stick very well. I don't have a problem remembering any of the first 300, so I guess I just have to press on! Although doing 20 a day isn't really quick enough for me, I really don't want to have to wait another three months. So on the weekends, I'll try to get 40 per day done, and for my mid year holidays in a months time, I'll do 40 per day for three weeks. So hopefully should be able to finish before July

I've been slacking off with my kanji reviews, finals, activities and other things have been getting in the way. I slacked off so long, my review pile grew to 400. I got so intimidated, that I avoided it until it hit 639! I got through all those reviews in a day painlessly.

What I did was, each time I went on my computer... to check email, to go on a forum, watch an anime, AIM,... I wouldn't let myself do it until I passed 20 or 40 cards. (If I don't count failed cards, then I spend more time reviewing rather than just zooming through to get to my activity.)

Last edited by crayonmaster (2009 May 03, 12:29 pm)

vinniram wrote:

I've zoomed up to 64 kanji in three days, but now I did the review of keyword to kanji, and I was forgetting them left right and centre. When I read the stories, they just don't stick - I don't remember them that well, word for word, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I feel like I have some problem because the stories don't stick, like my "imaginitive memory" is deficient. What do I do I don't want to give this up, but if I can't even remember 64, how will I handle 2042!!!

Don't be so worried about trying to remember the stories word for word. In fact "story" is really quite a misleading term. What you should be aiming for is more of a "mental image" that is very vivid and which reminds you of each of the primitive elements that make up the kanji. The story is just the written formalisation of that image.

I also wouldn't be too worried about not recalling very many. As long as you are using an SRS (such as this site or Anki) then sooner or later things will stick in your memory. Even if you're doing everything wrong, things will still stick eventually. But you might try learning less kanji per day if you are really worried about your recall. Or spend more time making a really good image for each kanji you learn. Spend as much time as you think it needs until you've got a great image. But really, I wouldn't be too worried mate. Just keep at it.

harhol wrote:

Ignore Heisig's advice re: not writing anything out. Typically I'll write out each new primitive 10-15 times and each new kanji 2-5 times

I found this helpful for the first 100 kanji, and when I was learning the primitives (I did Heisig out-of-order).  But after that I only wrote a kanji once when I learned it and once each time I reviewed it.  Any more would distract me from creating a good mental image of the story.

But that's just me.

For me good handwriting came when I started sentences (I'm a fan of dictation).  In hindsight I had no good reason for doing RTK out of order, and although I did it it's not something I recommend to people now.  I was impatient to start sentences, so I learned just the primitives (about 500 total) and added new kanji as I encountered them.  It ended up being very inefficient however, and is most certainly a path I do not recommend.

In my case the question side is audio-only, but yes that is what I mean.

vinniram wrote:

I'm a bit confused - Heisig says he's trying to avoid using "visual memory", but then he says you need to get a good "image" for each kanji, involving the primitives. But an "image" is a visual thing! I'm really confused - should I be linking the primitives in the kanji to its keyword by creating some sort of visual image?

When he says to avoid visual memory he's talking about trying to remember the exact shape of a kanji. So what he is saying is *don't* look at each kanji as a bunch of squiggles and try to memorise their placement.

What you need to do is create in your mind an image (it doesn't have to be a static snapshot, it could be like a mini movie playing back in your mind) for each kanji based on what its primitive elements remind you of.

So for number 63 (defeat) it is made up of the "bound up" and "shellfish" primitives. So you might create a movie/image in your mind where the poor little freakish "shellfish" with his one eye has been *defeated* and "bound up" and gagged in some seaweed. Since you know how to write the primitives (each primitive is usually repeated many times, so you will eventually remember them) if you can recall this mental image/movie/story you should be able to draw the kanji.

I hope that was of some help.

vinniram wrote:

Ah I kind of understand a bit better. An image can be part of the "story", but it is not about trying to remember the placement of the kanji strokes in isolation. I think I'll just start again, writing out all the "stories" and making sure to actually replay them a few times to really let them sink in.

Different things work for different people, too.  In fact, different things work for the same people at different times.

There are some kanji that work well for me with a vivid mental image.  Others don't seem to work that well for me, but perhaps they work well with a definition based on a play on words, or something like that.  Mnemonics for others.  So don't worry if you don't find a single technique that works for every kanji.  You have to learn the primitives -- there is just about no way around that.  But you will, and the SRS will guarantee that you will learn the rest.

Provided you don't toss in the towel of course. 

Last edited by Wally (2009 May 12, 6:01 am)

vinniram wrote:

Ah I kind of understand a bit better. An image can be part of the "story", but it is not about trying to remember the placement of the kanji strokes in isolation. I think I'll just start again, writing out all the "stories" and making sure to actually replay them a few times to really let them sink in.

Most primitives tend to show up in the same place 90% of the time (e.g. dirt, person, fingers, state of mind and tree on the left, house on top, heart underneath, taskmaster and sabre on the right) so attempting to remember the exact layout of the individual elements of each kanji isn't necessary right away. However, if you can arrange the story so that the elements show up as they appear left to right & top to bottom in the kanji, it can be extremely useful. Even better is if the primitives appear next to one another in the story, for example the aforementioned bound-up shellfish example (in one of my stories I remember ardent as a flaming bone sabre in the hands of Arthur Dent). It's all about finding links between the physical writing of the kanji and the visual imagery of the story.

I was just going to ask the same for a 1/3 thread Just clocked in 700. And to time in nicely, I have a review pile of 130, which is the biggest I've had so far. Oh well, best get chugging...