www.vis-ed.com/products/productdetails.asp?s_UPC=781556370816

I use Vis Ed for any language I’m learning, though I’m branching away to test this AJATT style.

>Right now, I’m trying to cram some German vocabulary right before I go to college in September, and I’m suffering a lot.
I’m not sure where you’re from, but I’m Canadian, and as you may know, Canada has two national languages: English and French. Now, I’m from English Canada, so for the first 9 grades of school, I had to take French class. (It was optional from grade 10 and onwards.)
 
Both French and Quebec are beautiful, but I never really intended on learning the language. So, I spent 9 years becoming very talented at the art of Just-Getting-By. I have to wonder if maybe you could benefit from just doing what you can with German, and accept it as something on the fringe of your chores.
 
If it’s making you suffer, you’ll end up performing poorly in the subjects that you are brilliant in (and I’m sure that is many!) as well as just causing yourself too much stress. You don’t have to excel in German, you just need to do well enough to garner a passing grade, and if there’s an issue of having to own up to a shaky mark (be it to your parents or to yourself), just tell them/yourself that by the end of the year, all that really would have mattered was getting the credit, nothing more. 
 
Also, I don’t think you really need to wait until your German commitments are over to start Japanese. I mean, Japanese is like a playhouse to me. I get to go inside, leave the outside world behind, and play with my toys. Anime, kanji, music, chopsticks; they’re all here just for play and nothing more. Hey, you could one-up me and build a Japanese tree fort (and have a sign on the front saying, “No German [language] allowed!”):D

The Lazy Kanji model really fits if you’re going the AJATT route. Using vanilla Heisig, you’ll be stuck with weak Kanji recognition, but strong production abilities in the beginning. Using Lazy Kanji, your recognition will be better than your production for a while. This helps because even though you won’t be able to “read” the Japanese in your immersion environment, you’ll easily be able to pick out Kanji and recall their meaning/keyword – this further strengthens your retention.

All of that said, they both balance out in terms of recognition and production in the end, and you wind up in the same state either way: you’ll forget the keyword eventually(replaced by proper understanding once you learn the multiple connotations of the Kanji, and their readings) but you remember the stroke order. I listened to an interview with James Heisig himself and even he doesn’t remember a single story he used.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents – take from it what you will. 😀

I don’t feel like doubting the almighty Heisig.

However, what I took from this is that “easy” = fast and fun.

This is just the same old method, but faster because it only gives the elements.

FRONT:
suspend; hang; 10%; install; depend; consult

PREFECTURE, DNA, HEART

BACK:
懸

It takes less than a minute to make a card.

And a second, more unrelated question.. When you start reading books/manga/whatever.. Do you look up every single word you don’t understand? (which at the start, is pretty much everything!) Seems like a very heavy/boring way to read.. How does one approach this?

Would really appreciate some help ^^
Thank you!

So I’m learning the Kanji from the book RTK as suggested, and I got the Lazy Mod thanks to Kendo, and it’s just for me right now, more enjoyable and fun then doing it with the keyword phrase version first.

Basically, what I’m currently doing is learning the Kanji in order from Remembering the Kanji book on the bus, subway, and stuff, and then going home and using the lazy kanji method to practice my writing and I guess remembering it.

I find that it’s more fun, cuz I remember when I did it the other way like on Kanji Koohi, I always felt like kinda of stupid for not remembering it… I kinda of berated my self.

But with the lazy method, I feel that even If I don’t remember what it meant, I still kinda of practiced by writing it out…

So lets see what happens in a few months…

Sadly, Lazy Kanji has not worked for me. I can see how this could totally work after learning primitives, but if you were to show me the primitive of “sow” or “fingers,” I could identify them, but ask me to write them and I cannot. Also my overall retention was horrible.

Maybe down the road Lazy Kanji would be more appropriate, but for my initial learning, it is not working for me.

I discovered a few “tricks” while doing this though, such as putting the sentence directly on the front of the SRS card, but using white text, therefore making it “invisible,” but available if need be by selecting the text.

If I got anything out of this attempt though, is that my frustration of doing Kanji this way has led me to try timeboxing, and I love it. I use it for everything now.

Last nite I began my process to get back into “regular” Heisig learning. I blew through 350 cards like it was nothing. Of course I already knew them (well, 91% of them it turns out) so that’s not going to be a daily average when I get into new characters, but timeboxing absolutely helped me get through it. It got to the point where I would be doing my ten minutes of “fun” and I would keep glancing over at the timer, excited to get back to the Kanji, but I didn’t jump back before the ten minutes was up because I knew I would get burnt out.

So yeah, the lazy method didn’t work for me, but I could see how would for some people. Oh well, onward to the end of RTK!