Congratulations taijuando!

Congrats, yo!

I am not exactly sure what the process is here. I also didn't understand what Heisig means by a signal primitive.  I think I understand that Heisig wants you to review only the onyumi first.  Does that mean you go through all 2042 cards before you study kunyomi?

Last edited by taijuando (2006 June 21, 7:27 am)

Yes, you are meant to do onyomi first and move on to kunyomi afterwards. RTKII deals almost exclusively with onyomi, then has a small DIY kunyomi section that is really just meant to get you started. Just memorize the words given like Immacolata said.

The reasoning behind that is that there's a lot more uniformity in the onyomi as there are patterns you can follow for a good majority of the readings. Kunyomi has no such patterns to catch on to... it's pretty much individual readings which have to each be treated seperately. I think the easiest way to pick these up is through reading and repetition, but Heisig gives you a method to use mneumonics there as well if you want.

Ah yes I see what you mean. How do you keep track of them, then? ITs a lot of cards O.o
How is the quality of the cards? I read on amazon.com that one buyer was unhappy about the flimsy quality of the cards. Thin paper, not cardboard.

Last edited by Immacolata (2006 June 22, 5:38 am)

I bought the cards about a month ago but i barely used them since I found this site.  Helsig says that you shouldnt shuffle the cards out of their groups of 100.  Since the cards are organized sequentially according to RTK I, how am i supposed to use the cards to review readings for RTK II???  Are you guys shuffling the cards out of order even though the instructions says not to?

Just wanted to report that I'm still using the blue box.  I definitely erred in taking the whole big box to Japan, because I only really studied 100 out of the 2000+.  I've even set up a little bit of a Leitner system by using post-it to put expiration dates on cards that I have reviewed over 3, 7, 14, 30, 60 days.  It's slow going since I only carry ten around with me every day, including expired cards that I failed.  Maybe I should be doing the kanji chain but this only takes about 10 minutes every day and at this point I really need to focus on vocabulary and grammar in my Japanese studies.  Is there anyone else out there with the cards or am I going the way of the dinosaur?

In addition to making cards for all 2042 kanji in the first book (I didn't discover this site until a few months after I finished), I was adding the information to my cards as per Heisig's instructions when I started working on the second book.

I was working on the yomi for a few months (on and off, got busy with other things), but I ran into another problem: I had to sort all my cards into numeric order, because otherwise it would take forever to find each card as I went through the second book. This pretty much made the cards useless for reviewing the first book, because when they're all in order, it gives away the answers.

I came across this site about a month ago, when looking for another way to continue reviewing the first book without messing up my cards for the second book (and besides, once you've accumulated over 2000 cards, it takes a good hour to shuffle them all!). I had forgotten a lot of my stories! I've now got about 1500 in the last box, and the other 500ish sitting my failed pile, so I should have all 2042 done again within the next few weeks. Thanks for this awesome resource, Fabrice!

But back to the point. I still am using my cards for working on the second book, and I also found it very helpful to make and have the cards in the first place, because I did a lot of my reviewing on long bus trips when I was teaching English in a bunch of small cities spread around Yamagata prefecture. Since I've been doing a lot of reviewing of the first book again, I'm progressing pretty slowly on the second book. I'm still going through the "pure groups", currently on groups of 3.

As a side note, living in Japan really helps too. You start to recognize common words like 非常口, 交通安全, 株式会社, 不動産, 大塚愛 (heh), and so on, and these are great ways to remember several yomi with a single word. It's great to do a lot of messaging on your keitai as well, since you can just type in kana and have the kanji appear (and it's usually pretty easy to know which one you want).

Aah, a young lady. Big hillocks eh?

November and almost december....I'm continuing to use the blue kanji box while at the same time winnowing down my failed kanji  (300 down to 80 now--a good reason not to rush to finish) on kanji.koohii....I'm not doing any kanjitown stuff because I really only have 30 minutes or maybe a little more to study...I'm only studying the onyumi....I use post-it strips to mark when cards expire (3 days, 7 days 14 days, 30 and 60 days later)....I usually try to keep 10 cards in a little plasticine envelope that I carry every where to study on a bus or train, etc...on a good day I only review three times...if I fail more on review of all the expired cards I go ahead and carry more than 10 but for some reason it's great to have a smaller number....slow going but steady-going....would love to hear from more blue box people

Hey, I made it thru the book with my own cards. It was fun, actually. I had to break for a week or two after every 500 cards to review, but it worked. I though I was at 90% when I finished, but it was really hard to tell. That's one really good argument for using electronic cards. Now I have everything in supermemo, and I stay at 90%. My daily reviews are usually about 20 characters.

You can get older versions of SuperMemo for free from their website. I tried it out to remember some things other than Japanese. It's truly amazing how botched a job they've done of the user interface. Perhaps the internal mechanics are sound but I think it was designed by an angry chimpanzee.

Basically it's just a flexible flashcard program. Remember text, audio, video or whatever. You design your own flashcard layout and make whatever cards you need for that day. Run the program daily, it keeps track of your progress, and supposedly arranges their review dates to maximize the chances of remembering them.

Mnemosyne is a freebie that works similarly (not as powerful as SuperMemo) but at least the interface makes sense.

Last edited by aircawn (2006 November 19, 6:59 pm)