You should definitely recall it stroke by stroke, preferably in the right stroke order and direction. Knowing the stroke count is a powerful tool when searching for an unusual character, and knowing the correct stroke order and direction is a powerful tool when trying to read handwriting (or fonts that imitate handwriting, or really any written kanji that aren't the common computer fonts.)

It does not take long to learn the strokes correctly, since you really only need to learn them once for each element and the same order keeps getting reused.

Also, I think practicing writing them at least a little helps tremendously in recall and recognition. And one day, you will probably want to write something, if only to make a note to yourself when you see something out in the world and want to copy it down to look up on the computer later.

I'm not interested in learning how to write either, but I do it anyway because it doesn't add much to the effort. If I'm going to invest that much time into something, I'd rather do it 100% right than 50% right just to save a little time.

The problem with not writing them when you review is that you trick yourself into false-positives.

Not to mention, a big strength of RTK is your ability to notice the difference between very similar kanji, and you lose that if you're only trying to do a vague recall of the kanji in your brain. (My girlfriend is Japanese, and just three days ago on Christmas Eve I called her out on incorrectly reading 露 as しも.  It should be つゆ, しも is 霜.  That's RTK for you.)

It doesn't take much time to write them anyway.  Just do it.  Cutting corners doesn't help your studies in the long run.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 December 26, 6:04 pm)

Not to mention it is also easier to remember the strokenumber as well.

Plus I feel that it helps me in the vocab phase when I write the words down at least once.