I write it, usually two or three times.  I took a long break from kanji after going to Thailand and the the Philippines for 3 weeks so that could've done something with memory retention.  Im not just trying to "remember" Kanji, I want to own it and make my muscles be familiar with it.

Thanks, but are there are any tips to increase the quantity of the kanji in a reasonable time period?  I want to to be able to do 25-30 a day for 2 hours tops.  The other hour is dedicated to review.  I think some would recommend that I stick to kanji and study it for 4-5 hours, but I also do sentence mining on the SRS, I listen to textbooks and shadow them, and watch Japanese television all day.  Full plate.  I struggle even with 15-20 kanjis.  Coming up with images for the kanjis is tiresome as hell.

It's hard to really recommend any methods to make someone's mnemonic-creation go faster, because we have no idea how your mind works and you haven't actually described what you're doing, so we can only give generalities. Of course, hey, I'll do that.

Experiment. Do you really NEED to take that long forming an image? Try to just take less time with it, don't worry so much about having to actually smell the sea air. Or maybe spend less time and focus EXCLUSIVEly on smelling the sea air? Do you even need an image? Make a little story or a rhyme instead. Maybe you need both, but kind of loose?

Personally, my conscious efforts focused almost exclusively on pithy little half-logical statements. Unconsciously, these statements tended to put a vague image in the back of my mind, and even further back I tied it in vaguely with things that were important to me, and other kanji based both on composition and by group I learned them in, and...
Actually the one about personal involvement is a good idea on it's own. If you can consciously weave a story or image to something either important to you (perhaps philosophically) or to something you've experience (particularly intense, or perhaps traumatic), it sticks better and doesn't really require five minutes of strained visualization.

And for the love of all that is Kanji, don't think that it has to make sense. It isn't actually necessary to question "but is that a scene I'll REALLY think of when I hear this keyword?"
It can be a bad question. In one sense it's important  - the reason personal importance works is you are likely to think of it immediately - but it's only hampering if you spend too much time fishing around for it. First of all, because the question will answer itself over time as you either fail or pass the card, and secondly, because the studying process itself is a way of MAKING that keyword recall that image. It doesn't have to by nature. There isn't anything about the keyword 'outlook' that makes me inherently imagine a pegasus, I just told my brain to start making that connection, so now it does.

Not necessarily related to studying faster, but one of the best ways to maintain retention is to build as many associations as possible. I don't want to misconstrue that idea though; for example, using two different mnemonics for the same kanji is only confusing, and when I've accidentally done it (switching mnemonics, only to find they BOTH stick), I just end up double-guessing myself, thinking they belong to two different kanji and I just can't remember one of them right now. No, more like the personal involvement thing, again. The kanji is related to the keyword which is related to the scene, and the scene is related to something real for you, and when you think of that, you also think of the keyword and the kanji, and there's this web that forms. The more anchor points present in the web, the stronger the web gets. I don't know if this is something you can do too purposely in many cases; for me it mostly happens incidentally. For instance 路 is much easier to remember for me because it has the additional memory hook of being 'that kanji I use in 露.' 務 is much easier because it's 'the kanji I use in 霧.' 露 and 霧 are easier to remember because I simply relate them to each other, being visually similar as well as similar by construction, which in turn makes the other two FURTHER stronger. In addition, all four were learned relatively close to each other, which makes it even stronger. Basically, I don't forget these kanji. Actually, I don't really have any distinct images or mnemonics for those kanji at this point; I just kindof know them by association.
I remember 剣 easier because I know it's the standard Chinese character for sword (as opposed to 刀, which is a dagger in China), and I recall seeing one of it's historical ancestors in Hero as a large plot element, and looking up many of it's variations online out of interest and seeing how it evolved.

It's also a good memory anchor when you learn the actual Japanese vocabulary that goes along with these kanji, but I'm actually a member of the camp that advises waiting until you finish Heisig to go hardcore vocabulary, so...

Anyway, good luck with it.

Personally I look at the keyword, the kanji and then I make up a very short story in my head, usually based 100% on what Heisig has written. I then make a vivid image of that really short story in my head. For example, for 敗 (the parts are shellfish and taskmaster and the kanji has the meaning of failure) I don't simply think the sentence "A taskmaster is beating a shellfish for failing", I really see the image in my head. I see a big taskmaster screaming at a shellfish. It probably varies from person to person, but it took me less that 10 seconds to make this vivid image from the sentence, so I spend like... 1 minute or less to learn each kanji. That way I can add 30 kanji into this site in less than an hour, and because the stories are vivid, I rarely have below 90% retention.

EDIT: I should point out, I only write kanji when I review them to see that my retention is correct. I never write them when I'm actually learning them in the book.

Last edited by Tobberoth (2008 September 09, 4:52 pm)

I find that I am most efficient when I stop thinking of things  like "number of kanji/hour" or "how much time I've been studying". When I get really absorbed in kanji study, I tend to lose the concept of time and just let things take as long as they need to be.

I know it sounds funny, but try it out. Forget about everything except for kanji study and let everything take as long as they need to be. If you feel like you need to take a break, do it immediately and then come back when you feel ready.

Heisig isn't a 100m race. Take your time and do things well the 1st time around.

This is true, unless you are learning all aspects of the kanji at once. Just getting them in there with the minimum is more than enough so long as you review.

I don't think forming a vivid picture is possible for all the kanji. Some words are just too abstract. Forming catchy phrases helps with these.

Not so true, plumage. You cant memorize what you have not learned. Mnemonics are a way to trick your mind so it thinks you have learned something that is somewhat unlearnable.

I'm up to 94 kanji (about to start lesson 5) and I've only had to review once or twice per every 20~30 or so kanji and I've only failed about 4 cards (which I passed on my last review). Initially I had serious doubts (at least subconsciously) that I could even learn more than 10 or so a day. So how am I doing it? I break the stories down to the bare elements that I need to associate with the kanji and the key word. Many of them don't even make sense (ex. "possession" of "shells" you can "BRIBE") but in this way I don't have to remember so much and all the other words in the story don't get jumbled up in my head so much. Also I sometimes think up funny images (ex. a freakish one eyed shellfish / short little shellfish shaped employees running around with their mouth open) instead of stories. Another thing to remember is not to get ahead of yourself. What I do is review until I can write each kanji almost immediately without thinking about it much. It may be slower but the way I look at it is "Quality over Quantity" because even though you may never use some of them, if you don't learn them well it may be a problem later.

I can't really say that my way works any better than other ways since I'm only up to 94 but it seems to be working for me.

Yeah rich, keywords are evil sometimes. I'm switching the most evil ones to japanese in hiragana.