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

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 02:54:08 +0000

Khatz. I first saw you through Sam. (You know Sam) It was 2008. I liked what you had to say in his 3 part video. I just never took the initiative to learn. Welp. It’s been a week and 3 days and I’ve been a mad man. I know both Hiragana and Katakana from memory and JUST started RTK 2 days ago. I’m at 350 Kanji. Adding to the chaos, the only thing that keeps me sane is the progress. I’m NOWHERE near fluent, but the fact that when I watched Japan’s 2004 film, “Nobody Knows” after a week into this immersion program, I began to hysterically laugh because I understood the majority of the movie and what was being said. How? Well let’s put it this way, this is the most English I’ve experienced this past week. I surround myself with nothing BUT Japanese. I listen to Japanese music, watch Japanese anime (ENTIRE DragonBall series is coming in the mail soon) Japanese movies, also the Youtuber “Megwin” and the Marimoeo ladies from Hokkaido. I’d like to say thank you to both yourself and Sam. I’ll see you in Japan in the next 3-4 years…u_u…

By: Zlarp

Zlarp — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:59:21 +0000

Hooray! I finished the damn book! What a slog those three weeks were… and the 600 review day is looming, but I’ve done it and I’m gonna keep it, damnit!

By: sahr

sahr — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 04:41:23 +0000

Have you ever studied the 훈음 yon readings along with the radicals? It helps me the recognize the sounds beforehand. I couldnt find a book so I ended up making my own.

By: トラビス

トラビス — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:07:19 +0000

Hey Khatz, I’ve been reading AJATT since May, and just wanted to let you know that I’ve completed RTK1 and kana, and am now doing sentences. I don’t think I could have gotten this far without the advice on this site. I adapted a lot of it and developed my own method a little differently, but the core of it came from here.
So thanks, Khatz. Maybe one day I’ll see you in 日本 and buy you a ビール。 🙂

By: Derek Blais

Derek Blais — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 03:24:31 +0000

I’ve been learning Japanese for almost eight years, but have always had trouble with writing kanji. I have some questions for those learning >10 kanji/day.

1. Do you create your own mnemonics?

(I use [most of] Heisig’s primitives/keywords, but I create my own mnemonics. It’s quite time consuming. Creating 10 mnemonics can take 15-45 min. The most I ever created in one day was 50, and I was at it for about five hours. This is why I’m curious of the methods of those who learn >100/day.)

2. Do you make flashcards by hand, use an app, e.g., Anki, or just follow what’s in RtK1 and don’t write anything?

(I use Rtk1 + Anki + Kanji Koohi [if I can’t create a vivid mnemonic; creating them yourself sticks the best])

***

I was able to read manga, elem. and some middle school textbooks before starting RtK1. It took me about six months to clear 2000 kanji with my above method (avg. 10/day). I haven’t studied nor reviewed the mnemonics I’ve created, but I’ve retained a good portion of them. I can’t wait to review all 2042! I’m scheduled to finish them this week! I’m sure I’ll fly through more than 100/day.

Thanks, Khatz. All the best.

By: How to learn kanji

How to learn kanji — Tue, 10 May 2011 18:51:29 +0000

I was able to finish both RTK I and III… it took me a bit less than a year, but I did it. And on January of this year, I stoped reviewing… which is something I truly regret. Now, if I want to get into Japanese again, I have to start all over again… form scratch… from kanji 1…

In short: NEVER-STOP-REVIEWING!!!

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: /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 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.