Good to hear, most people winge XD

I used to be terrified of kanji but now it makes sense. :) It’s a fun challenge!

RTK for the win! lol

It’s a book by a guy called James Heisig. It’s a course that teaches you how to remember kanji through mnemonics. The first book is concerned with remembering how to write all the jouyou kanji + a few extra (a total of 2200). The second book deals with readings, but it’s widely regarded as not very good (I haven’t used it personally). The third book deals with the writing and reading of a further 1000 or so kanji – I feel it’s unnecessary for beginners because a lot of the characters aren’t commonly used, and by the time you’ve finished the first book you should be able to use those techniques on your own.

Opinion is heavily divided on the series, but I thought it was pretty useful. It’s more a process of familiarising yourself with kanji and how they are comprised of different radicals than it is about “knowing” them. It really takes the edge off the “scariness” of kanji, and it’s an immense feeling after completing it :D I could go on and on about it (as I have done in the past), but I’m sure you can find out more about it yourself :P

There’s also a site called Reviewing the Kanji that is fantastic for mnemonics in place of Heisig’s own ones, so make sure to check it out if you do start on the book :D

RTK also refers to a website called Read the Kanji, which is apparently pretty good as well, but I don’t know much about it.

Edit: http://www.fluentin3months.com/2k-kanji/
I was just reading this blog post, and some of the comments infuriate me (specifically Vamp898) XD He’s talking so much shit about learning kanji, I just… grrr…
Like I said, opinion is highly divided on the matter :P

• This reply was modified 11 years ago by  MisterM2402 [Michael].

Well, there actually is an RTK deck on Anki (I’m assuming it was ported to Anki 2). The Reviewing the Kanji site have their own flashcard system, but it only works in one direction (i.e. seeing the English keyword and answering with the kanji). I used RevTK’s site for reviewing for a while at first, then I used both it and Anki, but I don’t use either for that deck any more – I actually have 2172 cards due right now because I haven’t used it in so long :D

Before discovering RTK, I went through TextFugu’s kanji section, up until about halfway through the 4-stroke section (that’s all there was at the time, I think). It was ok, but I much prefer the method of getting all the writing part done first (through RTK) then learning readings through just normal vocabulary learning. There can be slight benefits from studying kanji readings on their own, but I don’t feel it’s enough to warrant doing it that way. If you ask someone else, they will tell you the complete opposite :P Really, you have to determine which way you prefer, maybe even a mixture of both (not sure how that would work haha).

Well, my method is “do RTK 1 and THEN just learn vocab”, so close enough :P