How to RTK

Just like someone who’s failed there driving test the first time, I feel like I’m in a decent position to offer advice on how to use Remembering the Kanji (RTK).

Choose your interval 

First you need to decide how much Kanji you want to learn per day, your interval. When I first started I was doing 33 per day but now I’ve learnt to take it a bit easier so I’m doing 25. (3 months to complete all 2200 Kanji).

Choose your method

This is what I have found works best for me. It’s up to you how you do it. The most important thing is that you stick to it!

Step 1) I revise the 25 Kanji for the next day the night before.

Step 2) I then review these 25 Kanji the next day, normally after breakfast, along with previously learned Kanji.

Step 3) Return to step 1

By reviewing the Kanji the next day, I give myself a day between the first review, which for me is an effective way to gauge how well the Kanji’s story or mnemonic has stuck to memory. If it hasn’t stuck I alter the story or find a more concrete image. More on this in a later post.

How to Review

The book has an inspiring introduction, but we warned, it’s not as easy as it sounds. In Heisenberg’s day, or at least when he wrote the first edition of RTK, he used paper flash cards. You would manually write the English KEYWORD at the front of a piece of card, and the story and the KANJI CHARACTER at the back. Thankfully it’s the future now and we have Anki.

Anki

Anki is a piece of software you can use on your computer, laptop, or smartphone. It’s free and can be download from ankisrs.net.

For the curious, SRS stands for spaced-repetition-software. It’s the name given to flash card software that use specific algorithms to decide how often to show you the flashcards, depending on how easy or difficult you are finding them.

Normally you would have to input the Kanji one by one, but thankfully people have already made customs “decks” you can download for free that follow the RTK order of Kanji, (daijoubu, this is easy to do).

Setting up Anki

Once downloaded and installed, open Anki.

Make a name for your profile.

Click “Get shared” button at the bottom (or wherever they move it to).

Type RTK in the search box

Find an appropriate deck, I’m using “Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji 6th Edition”

Note there are 3 RTK books, RTK 1 is the full ~2200 joyo Kanji, RTK 2 is a way to learn the Japanese readings, and RTK 3 is the extra ~1000 Kanji which includes the “name Kanji” and extra in use Kanji if you want to pass JPLT 1. Furthermore, RTK (1) has 6 editions, which are revisions making the keywords better or adding new Kanji, ironing out mistakes etc.

Feel free to try a few decks, the deck I’m using is very plain, only containing keywords and Kanji, some decks even have the Japanese readings, and stories to help you remember it from various sources etc.

After the deck is downloaded it should appear in Anki.

Click on the deck and click the “options” button below.

Type your interval in the new cards per day. E.g. for 25 new cards per day, type “25”.

Press OK.

You are done!

Reviewing 

To review simply, press study now and follow the prompts on screen. Every day it will add 25 new cards (or whatever you set it up to do), so keep your revision up. If you need to take a break, simply go to “options” and change new cards to 0. This will mean you still have your old cards to revise but it wont add the 25 NEW cards on that day. However only do this if you absolutely have to. Missing days just isn’t fun and leads to laziness. I’ve done it twice so far and it was painful.

Now cram for 3 months and you’ll be done!

Advanced

New Kanji released in 2010

If your using an older version of RTK i.e. the 5th edition or the fourth edition it wont have the 200 or so new kanji the government issued in 2010. These are only in the 6th edition. However Heisenberg, the kind bastard, made a free PDF that includes the new supplementary Kanji. Currently available here.

Syncing, using Anki on smart devices

Using Anki on your phone or tablet. Download the Ankidroid (or something with a similar name) app for free on android or IOS. You can sync from your desktop or if you’are not using a desktop just follow the instructions in the “setting up Anki” section above and set it up on your phone or tablet.

If you want to you revise on you desktop, laptop, but would also like to continue your progress on your smartphone (great for a busy life), you can SYNC your progress across platforms. Just click the top right button (which will say sync with anki web when you hover over it), make an account on ankiweb. Then it will sync your progress.

Go to the device you want to sync to, click the sync button. Login with your account and it will download your progress to your device. Remember to SYNC when switching between devices (my desktop does it on exit but my smartphone doesn’t), so you don’t mix up your progress, or do the same review again when you’re on your phone (it’s annoying when it happens).

Final words

I will post how to make up stories in a later post (at one point you have to start using your own stories), and what resources you can use to aid you. Don’t get into the lazy of habit of just using Anki without the book, you will not only miss out on different reading for certain primitives and other tips the books gives, but ultimately the lack of discipline will be your demise, as it was with me the first time around.The daily review takes me about an hour. Learning new kanji at night, 30-40 mins. So make sure you make the time for RTK. A few months of hard work to cram all the Kanji into your head. It’s really a no-brainier.

ただいま！I’m back!

First of all I need to apologise for disappearing. This blog was intially to chronicle my mission to learn all the Kanji in 3 months using Heisenberg, RTK book and when I failed and life got too busy I stopped, so naturally the blog stopped too.

However I am back and stronger than ever! Which is a lie because I have a sprained ankle but I digress..

I’ve secretly been using RTK again and will surpass 1300 Kanji tonight. But that’s not all, I’ve also been using Pimsleur’s audio teaching method for practicing speaking and listening and, and, The Great Choko library as a way to find appropriate reading material for my level. I’m also doing a Japanese GCSE. woop…..

So here is the reason why I decided to come back to RTK. 

For those unfamiliar RTK stands for Remembering the Kanji, a book by a guy with a PHD, revered as the great DR. Heisenberg. Unless his a real doctor, which would be awkward.

Anyway it breaks the Kanji into smaller components he calls “primitives”, which sometimes are the Kanji’s radicals and sometimes not. The way to learn a specific Kanji is to make a story out of it’s primitives, which should help with placement (which primitive goes where) and ingrain into your visual memory. The whole point is it is meant to beat rote memorization and therefore you can cram a lot of them into one day. It’s a mnemonic method.

With RTK you only learn an English keyword to associate with each Kanji. You don’t learn any Japanese whatsoever. What’s the point? Well Heisenberg argued that it’s harder for westerners to pick up Kanji as we don’t share the alphabet like Chinese and Korean (used to). If we have the kanji at our disposal, it makes picking up the hardest aspect of Japanese easier, the writing system. And this is the reason I came back to the RTK method.

Whenever I’d learn a new word, I’d see Kanji I remembered from my previous study of RTK and it made learning the word a lot easier (It also showed how powerful the mnemonic method was which was actually quite scary). I didn’t have to faff around with stroke order, or copying it hundreds of times, the Kanji was just there. Granted RTK is not an easy task, but with a sprained ankle and a few months to spare I thought, well what do I have to lose? (The answer is hair, I’m losing lots of hair, RTK is not easy!). But is it worth it? I think so.

I’ll update with some more details of how I’m supplementing my study, what I think of Pimsleur and keep you guys updated about progress. Anyway, the more you learn, the more you know? Right?