I'm on 1660.  Trying to do 50 a day, so that I have about 8 days left.  It's hard but there are 3 things I do to help me push on.

1. I printed out the list of 2042 kanji found here (the 2 page pdf) and as I learn them I mark them off.  Actually seeing how much you have done and how little there is to be finished helps. 

2. Because I am aiming for 50 a day, I had 15 post-it notes (with 1 to 15 scribbled on them) stuck to the wall.  Each "50" day I take one down.  Again visually it drives me on.  There were 15, now only 8.  My next goal is to concentrate on 3 more 50 days, so that it will be down to 5.  When I get to 5, I might take a day or two break but then go for 2 more days.  Can you imagine how *hard* it would be not to finish when I have only 3 post-its on the wall?  I never think/thought about doing 15 days of work, that's too off-putting. 

3. I live in Japan, so every day I am out, I "read" the kanji I see.  On buses, on posters, on ads.  Of course I can't read a lot, but I can understand so much more now.  It really is like being able to see after blindness.  An alternative if you don't live in Japan, is to get some printed material, magazines or better, flyers and cross out all the kanji you do know.  At around 1500-1600 you'd be amazed at how few characters remain.  And it should drive you to finish off the little that remains. 

* the figure of 50 is what works for me. It means I end up doing between 90-160 reviews per day in anki.  I timebox into 10 minute sessions and can complete in about 4-5 sessions.  I have a retention rate of about 90%, which I am fine with.  When I am finished with adding new characters I believe I will hit 95% after a week or two of reviews. 

Hope it helps someone.  I owe a big thanks to the RtK community.

One more tip; I changed my desktop wallpaper to a kanji one (this one http://www.blingcheese.com/wallpaper/vi … lpaper.htm ) so that every time I looked at the computer it reminded me how far I'd come and just how many of those kanji I now recognised. And to think that in May this was all just chicken scratchings.

I am now at 770, and I'm starting to feel a bit burned. Until 600, I kept on with 30 kanji at day. One day, I had nothing to do, so I decided to do 50 kanji (only that day). The problem began when some days I had to review 120 kanjis + 30 new more... The reviews alone were 2 hours. Then, the next day there were only 60 kanjis to review! That was driving me crazy.

After that, I slowed down to 0 and 10 kanji a day (mostly 10), trying to keep the whole kanji studying process at 2 hours a day in the long term (keep in mind I had a lot of kanjis to review).  But I felt disappointed, as I didn't really learn anything those days. Now, I'm trying to recicle myself once again to the 10 (if I have something important to do) and 20 a day (if I don't). 20 a day is a lot, I started in october and will have learned the first 2k kanji at the end of march ! If I keep up, of course.

My goal was to study the first 1000 kanji at the 30 day pace, then continue with the 10 day pace and start studying other things at the same time. Do you recommend me to focus in the kanji? I think I might be more motivated if I keep doing this, than if I start studying something new, because I'll probably drop one of the two things.

I want to use Genki to self-learn, and I did the 4 first lessons before embarking in the Heisig's journey to Kanji. I'm starting to forget the kana, and a bit of the vocabulary . I want to get to a low proficiency level as fast as possible, so I can read very basic things and listen to anime / series or whatever. That's what has helped me a lot to improve my english, and one of the reasons I chose to study Japanese.

For the people starting, NEVER, ever stop reviewing. It's probably the most important part of the process, and you can drop it when you learn enough vocabulary and read often in japanese. Till then, you have to remember it, so review! . And always try to review, don't do a break or you will be screwed (you can stop learning new kanji if you want, but not stopping the reviews).

Last edited by Valygar (2011 November 23, 10:25 am)

Hyperborea wrote:

I just checked my deck stats and my average review time is about 20s each. With 120 kanji that means only 40 minutes. That's a big difference. I'm also writing out each kanji in a Japanese grid pad notebook (20x20 characters) as my answer. Where is the time going? Are you spending too long thinking about the ones that you can't remember?

My average is about 30 s now that I've checked, but I think before it was higher (closer to 40s). I think my problem might be that when I read the word and I know the kanji, I still try to remember the story behind so the next time it appears it's still easy to review. Maybe I should not do that at all, just do the reviews fast and "fail" the kanjis if I don't remember them in 20s (even if I think I could remember them with more time). I'll try this approach for the next weeks, and see how it works. Thanks!

I only did 30 more since that day, been busy with travels and interviews, but I really want to finish the first 1000 this year!. I'll try to separate the reviews in smaller chunks as well when I start studying Genki/whatever, gegenki's idea of doing it early in the morning is a good one .

gegenki wrote:

I've stopped several times because of life. I started way back in January and I'm on 1247 now. I agree its really upsetting when you don't learn new things, but the worst is when you stop. I usually do my work in the morning before work and last week I got hit with extreme tiredness, alarm clocks failing and general lack of motivation.

I don't know if it happens the same to you, but when I feel tired/stressed and not in the mood of studying japanese, but still manage to motivate myself enough to start studying, I actually enjoy it a lot and feel refreshed when I finish!. Try to picture that in your mind, studying kanjis is a lot of fun, don't feel like it's a boring thing because you have to do it every day!