Comments on: Congratulations to Heisig Graduates: You’re The Man Now, Dawg

By: chad

chad — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:07:22 +0000

@Barmack, a lot of that info is in other posts, if you want a “table of contents” of most of the meat of this blog you can check here: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/all-japanese-all-the-time-ajatt-how-to-learn-japanese-on-your-own-having-fun-and-to-fluency

the answer to your on/kun question is that once you finish working with RTK1, you start the sentence drilling phase, which is where you start to pickup the readings.

By: Barmack

Barmack — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:47:11 +0000

or more importantly when to learn them using what book/material

By: Barmack

Barmack — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:00:24 +0000

hi,
I don’t understand where u guys are learning the On and Kun from???

By: Mark Dawson (Reki)

Mark Dawson (Reki) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:37:42 +0000

Man reading those stories about Wan and Matt really motivated me!!!! I got my Helsig book saturday and I am at about 150 as of today. I upped my retention to .5 wans today and got a 80-85% retention rate so imma stick to it. looking to start book 3 before Christmas. I belive i can do it so i know I will be there. i’ll keep up the updates and doing the immersion in the meantime (Got Jay’ed and Exile in rotation right now lol)talk to ya laterz

By: Erik

Erik — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:08:44 +0000

Damn…I only do about 20 per day : /
I don’t mind doing more but I get the feeling that if I give myself more I won’t retain the information as well as I have been.

By: Seth

Seth — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:53:30 +0000

I’m up to 1101, doing 50 a day. SO I’ve been at work for about 3 weeks, and have about 3 more to go. Its going OK, but i don’t know the ones past 500 quite as well as I do the ones before 500, So I started putting the stories into the Question part of the Anki SRS, I guess that’s cool right? What do y’all think?

By: David

David — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:23:51 +0000

1681 Kanji and counting. Schoolwork is robbing my time, but I think given one or two more weeks and I can join the ranks of Phase 4: Sentences. I’ve been anticipating it every single day. And, it’s served as a form of motivation for me, as well. (That’s right, more Japanese serves as motivation to do Japanese. Goooood stuff).

By: Tyler

Tyler — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:40:44 +0000

I’ve been studying Japanese for a couple of years, and I’d say I knew about 750 kanji before I stumbled onto this site the other day. The second I got Anki, I went a little crazy with RTK.

Crazy = I did 500 the first day, haha.

It kind of sucked cause I had 300 to review today, but I’ve already learned so much, and even with a huge number like that, I’m remembering at least 75%. I’ve slowed it down to 150 per day, and it’s not that bad.

Also, Khatz, I took your advice, and I put Oprah (my Oprah radical is 莫) into my stories. Now, 漠, 模, 膜, and 摸 are so much easier to remember

By: Mentat

Mentat — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:45:46 +0000

Hi Mr Katzumoto,

Are you aware of http://drmoviemethod.blogspot.com/ ?

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:13:55 +0000

Personally, I found that the Heisig method just wasnt working for me and so have changed gears a little in that regards. I picked up a book called Essential Kanji, by PG O’Neil. The kanji are organized in such a way that you will never see a compound made up of characters you have not yet seen which you can then create sample sentences from for practice. My one complaint is that readings are given in romaji.

By: Frank V.

Frank V. — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 05:44:58 +0000

Sup khatzumoto! Just wanna say that you’re an awesome inspiration and a great guide in my learning journey. You keep me going man and I appreciate that to a huge degree. But man 100 kanji a day!? Damn I’ve been doing like 20-25… guess I should step it up!! My only concern is what comes after this, the sentences… I feel that it’s going to be difficult to do, tracking down sentences that I hope are helpful..yare yare… O well I”ll worry about that as soon as I cross this bridge! And I’ll give you a donation for sure (just as soon as I get this whole japanese language thing down pat Thx for everything man you rock!

By: Zi Aa

Zi Aa — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:26:04 +0000

WTF! reading those stories makes my adrenaline rush so badly, that i begin to shake of desire to learn kanji -_-;;

I’ve known about heisig ever since i started learning Japanese, but only began reading this site this week. I’ve had the Heisig book on my PC for months I had this SRS for months and never used it. WTF!

I never did because i was anxious about getting wrong meanings and confusion when learning new kanji that don’t show up in heisig. But i guess that, when you’re done, and are well into the japanese sentences bit you don’t need to make up stories anymore because then the new kanji wil be so special that you remember them and their readings anyway.

By: Ricky

Ricky — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 02:18:11 +0000

Hey Khatz, so…. if i learned kanji with heisig at roughly 1.7 – 2.0 wans would that be good or bad? It seems to be a super fast method, I only work three days a week and i’m on summer break from college so ihave loooooooaaaaaadddds of free time. I’ll become the kanji demon, maybe if I keep my motivation I can become the sentence demon too!!! Also on another note, I had the idea from your site about SRS devices, in the way that I could employ it to helping my friend learn his music theory. I think it would work do you?

By: Shaun S.

Shaun S. — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:44:04 +0000

I just finished Heisig’s RTK1. Now on to RTK3 and real sentences(which I have been cheating and doing a little of anyway). I wanted to tell the world. So, I am telling this forum. Thanks Khatz! You have already improved my Japanese AND Mandarin.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:14:43 +0000

omg…So, I finally finished this thing and like Katzu says, just keep learning new ones everyday and when you do the sentence reps, do some research behind each word to see if it has tricky kanji that aren’t usually used for example:

Apple: リンゴ　→　林檎
Lemon: レモン　→　檸檬
Rose: バラ　→　薔薇
Mandarin:　ミカン　→　蜜柑
Kirin(the japanese beer):　キリン　→　麒麟
Anyhow:　とにかく　→　兎に角

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 04:27:50 +0000

Yeah, the heisig books really works.

I got mine 4 days ago and I’ve already learned the first 7 essons. So, about 130-150 in 4 days.
Plus, it really isn’t hard at all, in fact it’s on the easy side. Plus, it makes you feel smart when you pick up a new book and can recognize a few new characters each time and guess the meanings of words right.

Oh, in case you couldn’t tell…..I highly recommend this book. You can get the paperback copy at amazon.com. Plus the intro and side notes are pretty inspiring.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 07:58:49 +0000

>the only thing I disagree is where you wrote to ignore book 3 of Remembering the Kanji.

YOU DARE DEFY ME??!?!?!?!?! .
Well, the reason I said to ignore it was that…everyone I know (ok, 4 people:. Mary Sisk Noguchi, some other people at Kanji Clinic, my brother-in-law the pure AJATT boy) seemed to have trouble with book 2 (the on-yomi book)…so I didn’t know if book 3 would help [I'm guessing you're saying that you can skip book 2 and go straight to book 3]. But yeah, the more kanji, the merrier. I just imagine that, in the so-called “general” case, by the time you’re done mnemonicking 2046 odd kanji, you want to bust out into sentences SO bad, that you don’t want to be hearing about book 3…especially if those kanji will not become necessary for a while. But, sure, those who want to should go for it: I did 4500 kanji and still counting; I learn new ones and odd ones and rare ones as I go along.

No kanji knowledge is ever going to hurt. More is always better. But at the same time, I want to give people as little burden as possible. I try not to play cop/parent and tell people what they should do because it’s good for them. I just want to tell people what they need. The kanji in book 1 are an absolute minimum, and absolutely necessary to know. Anything over and above that is up to each individual’s drive, curiosity and reading choices–you seem to be having no trouble in those fields, and I’m really impressed by you with your kanji thirst there. It sometimes seems rare in Japanese learners these days. Way to go! Learn that book 3! Heisig’s mnemonic system is excellent.

By: Nuke-Marine

Nuke-Marine — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:11:11 +0000

Khatzu, the only thing I disagree is where you wrote to ignore book 3 of Remembering the Kanji. While I think we can start going for Sentences after book 1, it’s good to get that extra 1000 Kanji under our belt. I agree that On and Kun can be gathered as you go through the sentences. So use book 3 only for getting the new Kanji. Fortunately, the good people at ReviewingTheKanji.com have the kanji from book 3 up for your learning pleasures.

Currently upto 900 Kanji, looking to post my own “congratulate me” post in a month or two after getting all of book 1 done.

As for using Heisig even if you know alot of Kanji, go for it. I’ve impressed two guys who were verbally fluent with my knowledge of kanji. They knew only 1000 kanji at their own guess, but took to what Heisig had done. Yes, go for it. If nothing else, you’ll get stroke order down pat.

By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 03:36:51 +0000

>What should I do about SRS reps and watching stuff in Japanese in the meantime?
1. Keep up the SRS reps, no use forgetting what you’ve gone to the trouble of learning.
2. Keep up the environment, it’s never a bad thing to be surrounded by Japanese. In fact, it’ll help you even if you’re not “working it” as such. For one thing, it’s great motivation. You need constant reminders of why you’re busting your tail learning kanji in the first place.

By: Max

Max — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 03:34:30 +0000

Thanks, I’ll go for it.

What should I do about SRS reps and watching stuff in Japanese in the meantime?