Congratulations jorge!

I'm glad this thread inspired you to greater achievements!

@harhol, keep up the good work and you'll get there eventually. Consistent progress is better than bursts here and there, but you could also try doing 100/day on every Sunday or even every other Sunday (on top of your consistent effort!) to try and get there a bit quicker! You know its possible, so go and make it reality

KanjiMood, thanks for coming back and giving us an update.  I'm sure I speak for everyone in wishing you the best in your current endeavors, whatever that may be (maybe Chinese? lol, j/k).


blackmacros, I owe you an obligatory "your stats convinced me."  my thinking is now in line with what you posted in the new include-primitives-in-question thread.  thank you for pioneering a new method, and taking time to convince detractors such as myself.

I'm going at about 100 kanji a day. I started out slower and so now I'm at #1290 after a month with RTK. I kept speeding up and started doing 100/day at maybe #700 or so. I never thought much about it. I suppose my reasoning went something like "well Heisig did them all in one month, doing all the work himself... and right now I can do like 40 kanji an hour so yeah, 100 a day sounds about right". 'Course, 40/h isn't always what it's like, especially when a lot of new primitives are introduced. I do like everyone else, splitting up the time.

Speaking of reviews I do pick others' stories quite often when I can't get a good image right away (but it's usually quicker to just make my own instead of scrolling through trying to find a good one. The ones with 4+ kanji are often worthwhile finding a kohii story for)

I'm also playing japanese games already now and then where I can control the speed of messages while still having audio to go with the text. Really I would like to have that format for audiobooks too, windows with the text in different-colored text depending on who's talking with the sentence being spoken right now. Moreover, for these short intermezzos (which I always do when there's a new prim, usually about a minute unless it was a huge prim group) I like to flip through a japanese book - which I borrowed from my library and can't even read the title on yet - making out as much as I can. The main problems with doing these things would be
1) you don't really understand anything so you need to learn to enjoy it anyway 2) you need to know katakana/hiragana for it to be effective.
The advantages are
1) you stay immersed in the kanji while still letting the recently learned kanji 'rest' 2) you get started at practicing reading kanji/katakana/hiragana all jumbled together

I always review all the kanji I've done after a session meaning I don't wait until I have all 100.  This is probably just up to personal preference, myself I feel like I have an easier time grouping the kanji together; I take care to only stop just before the introduction of a new primitive and always stop, regardless of how many kanji I've done so far during the session, at the end of a lesson. But I still am prepared to - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR ANYONE DOING 100/DAY AND HAS BEEN TOUCHED ON BUT NOT SAID DIRECTLY - and am actually expecting I'll have to take my added kanji down to about 50 kanji per day to keep up with the reviews toward the end. This is completely for time saving reasons in the long run and something I decided on after reading through this thread. The sooner you decide on this, I believe, the better. Like I said I have a pace of about 100 kanji per day but I let that fluctuate a bit depending on the lessons/prims and I'm careful about not getting obsessed with the 100 kanji per day. Readying myself for a drop in the rate now will make it so the blow won't be hard when the reviews grow too large. In fact, I don't think I'll mind it at all - understanding that this mythical sign of the snake isn't all that is a good thing. I don't feel like I'm doing a marathon. I just happen to be running pretty fast right now, maybe I'll slow down later and take a stroll while I cool down, who knows?

Ah and about the reviews - today I got about 150 kanji for review. I still feel confident about my memorization and I find going on at this pace helps remembering the older ones too since they're used as primitives.

Going at a high rate, it's important you grab the opportunity for *pre*views too - I always start out with quickly looking 100 kanji ahead right after I finish my reviews for the day, then doing quick previews again of every lesson when I reach them (sometimes of the groups from prims too). As long as you don't let the first review take any more than five minutes and the secondary reviews ~2 min (timebox this so you do it right unlike me in the beginning) it has a very positive effect, making the characters vaguely familiar even before you properly tackle them.

I don't use the story text on question cards (but was curious about it) and have decided I still won't. I feel like it will work better FOR ME in the long run to rely only on the keywords. I don't know very well how to explain my reasons for that. I suspect it has something to do with the way I use the visual memory; I never write down kanji other than new prims on paper. Everything else I do in my head, mentally "writing", visualizing all the strokes as I go. Using keywords would probably be detrimental to that - I would get sloppy on using my visual memory correctly and I'd see it more as puzzle pieces to be placed right than a whole picture and that would seriously harm my fluency later on. I think.

On that visual memory technique, that's the main reason I was able to speed up. I've been learning about mnemonic techniques before and even though SRS:ing was new to me it's not really something you need to 'learn'. The reason it works so well is I've trained my mind to do it quickly, much more quickly than I'd be able to write down kanji, but at the same time - since it's completely mental and rather taxing when done as quickly as possible - being able to focus my thoughts entirely on that kanji. Another thing I've only recently learned to do is I make a kind of 'mental overload' which is basically writing the kanji very rapidly multiple times in my mind. I don't know if this is a personal trait and if it is, I have no idea how I developed it but I use it for various things and it really helps. I picture it as me forcing knowledge into my brain with a giant hammer - that's how it feels sometime. The concept is overloading yourself by presenting info rapidly, multiple times so your brain will recognize it as important and memorize it.  The key is stripping the information down to its very skeleton so you can present the skeleton in its whole many instants in just a second. Oh and as I mentioned somewhere else, a huge bonus is I've gotten much better at visualizing things to draw in general - ironically making me better at drawing by NOT drawing. This is how I do it - maybe you can use it too, in either case it's important you figure out SOME way to speed it up.

Really what I'd like to see some more focus on, that I think often is overlooked, is the raw memorization at the ground level. Saying things like "SRS states you learn X things over Y time" is only half true - that's talking about general time but out of that time a considerable part will no doubt be reviewing so it's important to work on that time too. For kanji, what you need to do is only concentrate completely on recalling the kanji (and the story during the earlier stages) for a split second. Most of the other time you spend on review is reaching that moment - one or multiple times - pretty much so it's worth thinking about for a while. I think it's especially important for these going at a slower pace to realize this - the ones of us going at 100/day will usually meet this problem and be forced to solve it somehow but if you're doing 10/day maybe you think it's not so bad, it's not that much time. But wouldn't it be nice to make that time even more effective? This is probably one of the main reasons people think 100/day is an insane task.

Learning kanji/japanese has been a very very humbling experience - there's no way to 'win' Japanese. Anyone can do this, with the right mindset and the right tools. Really, I think someone going at 20/days is more impressive than someone like me... It's a great testament to patience and planning ahead.

Last edited by Surreal (2009 June 14, 5:39 am)

Surreal let me paraphrase one of my favorite quotes by a little known man Winston Churchill:

"[Your post], by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read."



Other than that, good luck. I discovered recently that by adding in small chunks I was no longer limited by any specific number of kanji per day, but only by the length of the day itself. I have been adding 10, reviewing them then reviewing 10 due, and repeating till the early morning for the past few days. Past few days have been 70 - 80 per night, last night I got up to 90 kanji and today I only have 87 left then I'm finished with RTK for good. After a couple thousand kanji it becomes really easy to create visual images and stories in very little time. I actually stopped worrying about finishing all my reviews and thus my due pile is enormous atm, however when I get cards that are 10-15 or more days over due, I still remember them just fine save the few I already had problems with.

Last edited by kanjiwarrior (2009 June 13, 6:51 pm)

Ah hell and I looked over that post three times just to check for typos. What I meant was in fact the total opposite (GOD that's even the most important part stupid stupid stupid) - taking my added kanji down to 50. Ought to make more sense now because what I was trying to say was even if you're in a hurry to finish RTK because of time constraints it makes little difference towards the end. Blackmacros experienced this in that he had monstrous reviews to take care of after rushing through the last hundreds of kanji. People said all throughout the thread "hey dogg don't be slacking on them reviews", this is a realistic approach - count on having to knock the adding down a couple notches toward the end. If you happen to not need to do that, great! But if you do, just take it easy. Realize that no matter what, you're looking at putting in 1-1,5h to kanji study even after your holidays. Using blackmacros' technique of getting stuff done during lunch breaks etc. (provided you have a suitable tool or computer access) you should be able to do it, no sweat. There's always a little time to be found here and there.

kanjiwarrior: Yeah I know I know. But I figured that if you're gonna do this - or even start to think about doing this - it's important you think about everything I talked about in the post, sooner the better. Constancy in not only your workload/day but also your basic learning methods (even how you use the "off-time") is very important I think - and getting an overall idea about how you can tailor the methods is a key point for being able to tackle kanji at this pace which is why I talked about it at such a length. I realize it's a bit heavy but I think it's still a worthwhile readthrough - I know I could've spared myself a lot of work if I'd read something similar just as I was starting out. Besides, I think I managed to prove to these who would doubt us that yes, they can also do 100 a day if they want to and do it the right way.

Blackmacros, even though it might seem like I'm being full of myself (since I talked about it so much) I'd like to add one more point:

- Reflect over how you utilize your active study time and take care to effectivise your repetition time.

Yeah of course there's some way to keep going at 100/day but I'm not counting on it. Like the first post now correctly states, I don't see this like a stretch to finish or anything at all. I be running 'cause I happen to feel like it, that's all. Nothing more. And I especially felt this obsession with 100/day coming from KanjiMood so I want to warn people about that. You are learning kanji. That's who and what you are while you learn. You just do it, no stress, no lack of motivation, no pushing yourself for a far-off goal. You do it because it's what you do. Which sounds all zen and stuff but I have a feeling I half stole that from AJATT. Anyway that's how I see it, I just have this goal of doing kanji as good as I can every day and for the moment I've set the bar to 100 because that's the most efficient in the long run, nothing more to it.

I trimmed down my post as much as I could so now it's more friendly and tailored for people who are considering/will be doing 100/day. I'll throw this in here so it's separate (and also I want some experienced user's comments on it):

I thought of this - even though I don't want to use the story in the question, something VERY useful and smart and good and brilliant in every way would be for the definition of the keyword to be in the question. Like "party". I hated it when I didn't get the answer right for that one just because I didn't remember it meant a POLITICAL party. It would in no way be cheating and I see no downsides (except maybe the little time it takes to check the definition - I think it would be better to just white this straight away so you only check if you're unsure about the meaning to avoid distraction as much as possible). Really. It's strange this isn't the standard already, it's such a simple thing.

blackmacros wrote:

Surreal wrote:

Yeah of course there's some way to keep going at 100/day but I'm not counting on it. Like the first post now correctly states, I don't see this like a stretch to finish or anything at all. I be running 'cause I happen to feel like it, that's all. Nothing more. And I especially felt this obsession with 100/day coming from KanjiMood so I want to warn people about that. You are learning kanji. That's who and what you are while you learn. You just do it, no stress, no lack of motivation, no pushing yourself for a far-off goal. You do it because it's what you do. Which sounds all zen and stuff but I have a feeling I half stole that from AJATT. Anyway that's how I see it, I just have this goal of doing kanji as good as I can every day and for the moment I've set the bar to 100 because that's the most efficient in the long run, nothing more to it.

I trimmed down my post as much as I could so now it's more friendly and tailored for people who are considering/will be doing 100/day. I'll throw this in here so it's separate (and also I want some experienced user's comments on it):

I thought of this - even though I don't want to use the story in the question, something VERY useful and smart and good and brilliant in every way would be for the definition of the keyword to be in the question. Like "party". I hated it when I didn't get the answer right for that one just because I didn't remember it meant a POLITICAL party. It would in no way be cheating and I see no downsides (except maybe the little time it takes to check the definition - I think it would be better to just white this straight away so you only check if you're unsure about the meaning to avoid distraction as much as possible). Really. It's strange this isn't the standard already, it's such a simple thing.

Yeah the point of RtK is to learn the general meaning behind each kanji. Being a stickler about exact keywords is actually counterintuitive to that. For keywords I get commonly mixed up on I clarify somewhat. For example party [political].

I *long* ago changed mine to "political party" in Anki.  It's simply a compound noun, and it *obviously* should be the keyword.  The kanji has no connotation at all about festivity or celebration, and the oversight makes one wonder a bit if Prof. Heisig has ever attended a real party; that much the keyword is wanting in this instance.    And there's nothing inconsistent about my choice when you consider that the professor himself chose the compound noun "printing block" instead of merely block for 1213.  There are so many instances where he could have been a little more helpful I'm afraid.  Overall of course, the system works regardless.

blackmacros wrote:

Yeah a lot of the keywords can be really misleading...I only realised after delving in sentence mining that, for a number of kanji, I had gotten the nuance of the meaning completely wrong thanks to the ambiguity of the keywords.

Like "story".  I always write "hanashi" then facepalm.

Wally wrote:

I *long* ago changed mine to "political party" in Anki.  It's simply a compound noun, and it *obviously* should be the keyword.  The kanji has no connotation at all about festivity or celebration, and the oversight makes one wonder a bit if Prof. Heisig has ever attended a real party; that much the keyword is wanting in this instance.    And there's nothing inconsistent about my choice when you consider that the professor himself chose the compound noun "printing block" instead of merely block for 1213.  There are so many instances where he could have been a little more helpful I'm afraid.  Overall of course, the system works regardless.

Yeah, this is one of main reasons why I've been getting fed up with Heisig during the past few days. It feels like most of my errors in reviews are because I misunderstand keywords or get them mixed up, and not because I've actually forgotten the kanji. I currently feel that Heisig's insistence on trying to make all keywords a single word was a mistake, although I guess not being a native English speaker myself might make the whole thing more difficult too.

My last straw was drawing the kanji for "autumn", when the keyword was "fall". Nngh! Why couldn't he at least make the keywords that are verbs to be "to fall" etc. After that I started migrating the kanji to Anki instead, so I can add clarifications to all the cards.

Last edited by shang (2009 June 14, 12:03 pm)

wow 100 a day... i used to do it about 3 or 4 days ago(when i still didn't have RTK 1) well its really boggling @__@ i had about 250 already with 80% accuracy and i didn't like it so i restarted from scratch with RTK 1 and already at 170+ but this time i have 100% accuracy... so i'm happy with my progress.. but how the heck can you do it @__@ amazing... i can't devote too much time since i have school and stuff like assignments to do...

That sounds good. Just make sure you clear that review backlog and your fail pile before starting, because you don't want that hanging over you. Also, its definitely a smart idea to get through all of your reviews each day before you start adding. You don't want to be in a situation where you are adding new kanji without reviewing old ones because at 100/day this really hurts... (trust me, I've been there. It wasn't fun). I know this is in your schedule but I just wanted to reinforce it

Good luck! Let us know how you go

EDIT: Your 300-card backlog should be good practice for you actually. By the time you reach the end you will probably be averaging 200 to 300 reviews per day on top of learning new kanji. Thankfully the process is self-reinforcing in a way. The reviews build up to this level gradually, increasing in quantity day by day, so by the time it reaches that level you're used to doing lots of reviews.

Last edited by blackmacros (2009 June 28, 7:15 am)

What you're doing is called rote memorization. It's not a good idea because it will take you a LOT more time than a structured approach using stories/word play/other mnemonics.

You might be able to finish the book at that pace, but the reviews will kill you.

Also, remember that each time you fail a kanji or press "hard", you increase the difficulty of that kanji, meaning it will show up more often. With decreased intervals, that amount of kanji and rote memorization (which means you will fail a lot), you will get an insanely high amount of reviews compared to a "normal user".

Besides, making up stories is fun!

Seriously though. Rote memorisation is dull, and personally I couldn't keep up with it (I'm too lazy!) Making up a completely random story with exaggerated elements (the primitives), however...