Remembering The Kanji: My First Attempt



I first tried to learn Kanji with Heisig's Remembering the Kanji around January to February 2016.

I had a long winter vacation from work and instead of traveling, I decided to take a stab at learning the Kanji.

It had always been a dream of mine, and I decided that I had wasted enough time. I had been dreaming of learning Japanese and the Kanji for over 10 years. I just needed to do it.


My progress

Read an interview with Heisig about how he learned all the Kanji in about 1 month.

I thought I could do that too.

I wasn't able to.

However, I was able to practice about 1250 Kanji before the reviews became too much.

I was overwhelmed with all of the reviews on Anki.

Then my winter vacation ended and I kind of fell off the track.

I didn't end up continuing my Kanji studies.

Now, back in 2017, I'm starting up my Kanji studies again.

What happened? Why wasn't I able to keep going?

Too much overwhelm

I wasn't able to maintain the same pace because work started.

It's easy to practice new kanji, but the long term reviews is the more difficult part

I say that Heisig's book is good for "Learning the Kanji" and daily practice with Anji is for "Not forgetting the Kanji"

There are two parts, the way I see it

It's easy to just write out the Kanji, learn a story, or "think" that you've learned the story.

However, Anki is the real test.

Did you really learn the Kanji?

Or what I think is the more accurate question: Did I forget the Kanji?