I did only Kanji LITE , and then moved on to sentences with KO2001. I needed to add some kanji to cover KO2001, so now I have in mi Anki Kanji file around 1500 kanji not suspended, and with Japanese keywords. In KO2001 I am in frame 310, and it will take me a lot of time to finish it, because I also do listening and a little of grammar. So, it would have been a waste of time to keep on reviewing kanji that I won't see in this year.

I'd like to say something positive about doing RTK3 immediately after RTK1.

For those folk who are actually succeeding at doing around 100 kanji a day, it will be a minimal investment of time (under two weeks) to get these kanji into your SRS.

I only got thru the first several hundred kanji in RTK 3 but I see quite a few of them all the time. (I would've gone thru the entire list but grad school got in the way 'cuz my pace was a LOT slower than yours).

Now, I must mention that I had quite a bit of Japanese language background to be able to put these kanji to use. But at a pace of 100 per day it seems worthwhile to just keep going and get these kanji into your SRS while you've got the momentum of great study habits for adding new kanji the RTK super-speed way.

You'll be switching gears and starting to make use of all this soon enough.

Of course, it all needs to make sense to the individual and what you want.

Thanks for posting that thread! I'll be sure to add the remaining RTK3 kanji I haven't covered yet from that very useful list.

Btw, I also think doing Kanji LITE makes sense. As I said, it all depends on one's goals and needs (as well as study time, pace, etc.)

Again, if I were a complete beginner to Japanese but was able to crank out 100 kanji a day and didn't have immediate need to learn other aspects of Japanese, I'd go thru all of RTK1 and then spend 10 more days getting the RTK3 kanji into my SRS.

If one the other hand, I was able to crank out 100 day (or less, like most? folks) but needed/wanted to get going on other aspects of Japanese I'd probably do Kanji LITE and then KO2000 for vocab and other resources for grammar, expression, etc. After going thru KO2000 and getting other aspects of Japanese under my belt I'd go back to finish RTK1 and recycle with something like Kanji in Context (that presents vocab for all of the Joyo kanji and hence most of RTK1).

Good luck to all with the strategy they choose.

Last edited by Chadokoro_K (2009 April 22, 1:04 pm)

Yeah I would agree that at 100 a day you need to keep up with the massive amount of reviews in order to continue learning, so be careful in the later stages that you don't fall behind. Sometimes I find myself waking up earlier just to finish the review backlog in Anki.

Usis35 point is mine too. I'm limited to 2 maybe 3 hours a day study time, at times even less than that. I'm limited to so many new cards a day just due to the build of reviews in that time. 100 kanji a day was just impossible. That limitation is what drives my thinking on efficient use of what goes in Anki that translates into usefulness in my Japanese reading/watching.

Since I have RTK in Anki now, it's no problem to just unsuspend new cards that come up in sentences. I even add cards starting at #4000 for those not in Heisig RTK. Even that I don't bother with if the Kanji is in a vocabulary word for me. Reason being, I'm going to be writing and hearing that kanji in those reviews anyway.

However, I think that having RTK3 under my belt (only 500 of them so far) helps in vocabulary sentences and reading Japanese. 500 seems like nothing but I realize that it's still 40 hours of my study time (if you add up future review times).

Regarding 100/day and going 10 more days to do RTK3...

Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about the massive reviews that would buildup from an extra 10 days @ 100/day. I think I've been too much in awe of folks even being able to do that kind of pace to the end of RTK1 and so I made the comment about just stretching that out for 10 more days.

Nor was I thinking about the strain that's gotta buildup with that kind of pace. The closest experience I had was doing a sprint of the last 600 or 700 kanji of RTK1 (compared to my much slower pace thru the first 1300 or so kanji). I found that went well for me and so I didn't really notice/mind the increase in reviews it brought me. Of course, that doesn't even come close to the massive reviews a straight through haul of 2000-3000 kanji at 100/day would entail. So I take back my first post on the subject of going on to RTK3.

I still think that RTK3 has a fairly good list -- especially after I tackle the remaining 114 in Katsuo's list -- and I would like to finish it one day. I was probably projecting that desire onto this thread. My apologies. It certainly isn't the right move for a lot of people.

Last edited by Chadokoro_K (2009 April 23, 2:56 am)

Chameleon wrote:

I think I might commit myself to upping my Kanji/day to 176 (I'm fairly sure I can do it).. means I will have all 2042 done before day 14 and can ride the wave of reviews (day 14 puts it at at least 300 reviewing per day, if I'm seeing it right, so it will be approximately 200 reviewing per day before that)

... Wish me luck for my ambitious (and probably insane) plan.
I'll come back in a few days and post whether it's possible for me to do it

I had originally aimed at 200 kanji/day over my holidays, but I quickly found that whether I put in 3 hours or 6 hours of study...I still ended up learning roughly 100 kanji a day. My brain just got too fried doing any more. But, if you can pull that off, more power to you!

Good luck!

Currently on frame 1400. I won't be adding another 100 until tomorrow though as I need to catch up on my Anki reviews. Reviewed 429 so far with 90.2% pass rate but I still need to add the last 200 cards, the first 1000 or so characters are pretty damn solid now. I think 100 characters a day is perfectly sustainable, but if your schedule gets interrupted once or twice or you wake up late it can become difficult.

Aiyah!!!!

100 a day is rough. A lot of people know this. But you know what isn't rough?
20-25 Kanji every few hours. Sounds simple. But I put a lot of thought into this.

Basically, I hate the thought of "I have to do 100 Kanji today. I just have to." It's not just having the feeling of having to, but even those, like me, who really want to do 100 a day and have the motivation, will get burned out a bit. It feels like a race, even though it shouldn't be. We all have our goals. I'll do a x amount a day, and you can do x amount a day.

The ideas in my thoughts were these, borrowed from Khatzumoto, that if we get nothing done it's not because we tried and failed, it's mostly because we didn't even try. "You didn't do a single dish." "You didn't spend one single minute cleaning your room!". And combined with another idea of Khatzumoto's, being that we never finish something, everything finishes its self. To finish something, we have just carried out many starts, or beginnings, and the rest takes care of its self.

So, the main idea is this. Tackling 100 a day? That's huge. But as you've seen, those who take 100 a day(or, at least me and Kanjimood) aren't throwing everything down in a massive 5 hour study session; everything is spread out through the day. Never think you have to do 100 A DAY, believe in yourself. Say this, "I'm just going to start and do as much as I can feel like, any small number I can complete and still feel motivation." Do a certain amount, like 10-20, and then just stop. Don't say, "I'm going to do 100 today", just give it a couple of starts with smaller numbers. When I take on Kanji, I take it on when I'm ready. Not when I "have" to. This is my life, I'm in control, I want to learn Japanese, and forcing Kanji upon one's self is only going to result in suffocated motivation.

I mean, let's face it, we all have lives. We have things to do. We all have school, universities, jobs, families, children, goals, and dreams.

But giving ourselves time, and making time for what is truly important to us is going to make us all quite a bit happier.

Yeah, I think problems only arise when you have no choice but to put 100 Kanji into a 5 hour block or whatever. When you reach this stage I think its worth considering doing less characters or waiting till you have more time. For example, I've been really busy recently and contemplating some job offers, its just become too much to do 100 kanji a day as I was doing previously. I haven't resorted to 25 or 50 a day though, I think I'll just review until I have time to do 100 characters again (hopefully tomorrow).

Today marks, according to Anki, exactly 1 month since I started adding cards to my RtK deck. As of today I'm determined to bring my pace back up to 100/day, despite no longer being on holidays. I hope to have reached ~1500 by the end of today (I'm at 1450 atm and started the day on 1400), and maintain a pace of 100/day next week so I can finished it off by next weekend. Woo, I'm pumped!

EDIT: Wasn't feeling very focused today, but I managed to get through my goal of 100. Nearly 75% of the way there! I haven't reviewed yet though- 135 old cards and 126 new cards to get through still. If I reach my goal of completion by next Saturday I will have finished RtK in 5 1/2 weeks. Fingers crossed!

andresito wrote:

@ KanjiMood,

Thx for gently sharing your experience, it makes a difference for all of us. much respect!

I SRS every day, do you see any advantage?
I think of it as gradual learning and daily exposure.

You said every day SRS is like rote review if I'm right. I work with the story and the "imaginative" memory doing it very naturally.

I've stopped at L11 and ran the review Heisig suggests to find pitfalls and it worked great for me.

I'm doing 25 per day ~1hr and SRSing everyday (haven't timed that).
I'll be done in 73 days from now at that pace.

I wrote each character 3 times while working with the story and keyword and move on ~3 min per char.

Just in regards to writing the characters out 3 times as you learn/review them, unless you are doing that specifically to improve your handwriting I would recommend only writing it out once. The reason behind this is that:

1) I found that whether I wrote it once or 3 times or however many times, it had no impact on how well I remembered it the next day. What determined how well I remembered it was my story- so I found extra repetitions of writing the character were unnecessary.

2) As you review the characters each day in your SRS, if you write them out once each time you review them, you're going to get plenty of practice writing each character anyway.

That's just my friendly advice, feel free to take it or leave it but it might streamline your process and make learning a bit easier. Good luck with your RtK-ing!

Last edited by blackmacros (2009 April 26, 4:32 am)

andresito wrote:

@blackmacros,

Wow, thx for that.
I'll try both suggestions starting today. If by the end of the week I like them I'll keep'em.

Even each person works individually it however feels like group work, thx m8!

I have another suggestion which (from the opinions I've read on this forum) appears to be a bit more controversial, but I think is nonetheless helpful for remembering the kanji during reviews.

Thats is, if you're using Anki- put the stories in your question field along with the keyword. If you can't remember from just the keyword, the story is likely to jog your memory 90% of the time.

A lot of people seem to object to this for various reasons, and I think it stems from a fear the the stories will act as a crutch that will be damaging in the long run. Personally though, I find that it makes the initial reviews much easier (I have a 90% success rate for first-time reviews) but the need to use the story drops away naturally the more you review each kanji.

Since you're in the game of making life as easy for yourself as possible, which is what including the story accomplishes, I find it beneficial to include the stories.

Let me know how you go, or if you think of any tips you might want to share yourself :-)

andresito wrote:

I agree, including the stories [Q] makes no difference in the long run... the key is to remember the kanji.

Correction: The key is to decide a Japanese word to write and be able to write it. Without a story telling you exactly what primitives to use.

An example of what I mean:

You get a question on a math test. The question is:
What is 5 * 11?
You calculate it and print the answer, 55. Good job.
Your friend however, got the following question:
What is 5 * 11? It's the same as 50 + 5.
He correctly wrote 55.

Did you both do an equally good job? Did the second guy prove he can calculate multiplication?