I finished going through N3 grammar recently. I know around 2000 words or maybe a little less. I was going to start studying kanji after I finished N4, but I was having too much fun with grammar. I’ve previously learned around 50 kanji, but now I’m going to try to learn all 2200. I’m taking a break from learning new grammar for a while. The only resource I’m currently planning to use is RTK, but I’m open to advice. Are there any particular methods, other books, websites, or apps I should know about?
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Wanikani has a cult following for good reason. It works really well for those who respond to the method of using mnemonics for memorizing things. the first three levels are free so check it out and if it works for you then stick with it.
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I tried RTK, actually got through the book, but they didn’t stick. I have had much more success with Wanikani. It uses a similar method but it teaches the readings at the same time. It is much better than RTK in that respect. It also throws a lot of related vocabulary so you can get used to the different readings. They let you try the first few levels for free and there is usually a sale on around Christmas/New Year so lifetime will be available for a reduced price (recommended).
I currently study kanji through wanikani and I made a companion Anki deck so I can practice writing the kanji when presented with the reading/meaning.
Good luck in whatever method you choose!
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Ringotan! 
It’s free (for now, I think) and helps you draw the kanji, and in the process you get very familiar with each kanji.
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I use this deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/215365929
Went to 1500 and stuck -_-
I recomend making memory palaces based on kanji, it helped me a lot, reduced my time significantly and increased retention, compared to kanji remembered with created stories without particular place associated with radical. Not only that, but it’s much simpler to create mnemonic for kanji that why, when you know place for it.
If it’s a bit to much just create a few memory palaces and feel them with kanji until they are full, it’s again will make mnemonics creation much faster.
I love remembering the kanji (I mean the act and not the method) and hope you will like it as well)
Maybe then try wanikani Anki deck?
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2072613354
One thing is that remebering kanji was easier then words like 10 times, if I can remember 7 words in an hour with retention 60% for young, I can remember 30-35 kanji in the same hour with retention of 80 for young cards. At least feels 10 times better)
I can get behind the slogan The best way to learn how to read kanji - and make it stick - is to learn how to write it.
My success criteria for kanji cards used to be “draw full stroke order correctly”, without app support, just in the air / on the screen.
After some months I’ve relaxed it “quickly visualize the components”. It helped with review speed and therefore motivation, although retention decreased a bit.
Also I’m a big believer in having two most common readings (on+kun) on the front of your card as part of the keyword. So you don’t have to remember which variation of similar English keywords corresponded to what, and instead mostly disambiguate by onyomi & phonetic components.
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Ringotan is quite nice (especially the free part) personally though, I’ve come to really like Kakimashou since its web based so I can use it on my PC without needing to install anything. It also has a variety of curricula to choose from like Wanikani, Heisig’s, Genki etc. So you can use it in conjunction with what you use to study. I honestly wish I started learning how to write kanji when I first started studying Kanji. I’m almost certain it would have helped with retention a lot more. I’ve started to notice that kanji that I “burned” more than a year ago have become a bit fuzzy when reading, especially the really similar ones. Writing them out definitely helps with making things less ambiguous in the long run.
edit - the original link is for the curricula page, but there is also a short tutorial if you are completely new to writing kanji/kana that finishes up with a writeup with how to use the site and an explanation for each of the directories.
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Thank you all for your kind suggestions! I have heard about Wanikani for a long time, so I’ll definitely try that. I’m also intrigued by Ringotan and Kakimashou thanks to your suggestions, so I guess I’ll experiment with these and see what works.
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I’m late to party, but I’ve also recently added jpdb.io to my mix as well. Obviously you have a nice collection of words under your belt, but I’ve been finding this useful to understand the kanji in context of a sentence. Many words/kanji can have similar meanings and this has helped me out with understanding how to use one or another.
Anki decks have the advantage of being free, and customizable. If you can use python a tiny bit, you can customize the hell out of your kanji deck. I used the anki-connect plugin to add a flag to each card depending on some criteria. If the kanji has a lot of example words but multiple onyomi readings I set its flag to blue. If it has the opposite situation it’s red. If it’s a common kanji (many words) and has a single onyomi reading then it’s an important and easy one (green). But this is only scratching the surface of what you can do. You can pair your deck with an example sentences dataset. You can add hyperlinks to dictionaries and much more.
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I have a strange recommendation, but…
I’ve been using a kanken study ‘game’ on the Nintendo DS and am having good luck with applying kanji knowledge to real world stuff. Since they are designed for Japanese children, most of the example sentences are very concrete and it’s great to see the kanji in true context. It’s fantastic for reading practice too.
That being said, it is an immersion intensive part with a lot of vocabulary. And I am using Anki as well to reinforce the knowledge.
Here’s a good overall of the different Kanken games.
I’m using 漢検プレミアム since it has both a study mode and a question mode.
so, there are 3 ways to learn kanji
1 “all in one” you learn kanji, 3 vocab words that use it, and 1 or 2 pronouciations
2 “seperately”. you learn vocab and kanji seperatly until they catch up. so you can learn the vocab word 鉛筆 ✎ without knowing the kanji yet and know the kanji 又 with out understanding the vocab また.
3 “back burner” on bunpro do reading reviews with furigana on hover. guess the furigana, check, guess meaning, check. only grade your answer on part 2.
Wanikani is a type 1. so are most textbooks.
RTK and Kanji Damage are a type 2.
I studed kanji seperatly with Kanji Damage, all three methods are great, so try each one out and see what you like.
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It’s an excellent idea to move kanji learning at the stage you are at, you shouldn’t wait any longer as being familiar with all 常用漢字 it makes vocabulary learning way easier and logical.
I would strongly recommend Kanji Koohii : https://kanji.koohii.com
Not as known as wanikani but IMO more interesting and free.
It is a SRS platform based on RTK with customisable kanji cards.
Its main strength are the user published stories ranked by popularity that help a ton (I’d suggest always to make the effort to build your own whenever possible though, but if you fail the best voted ones can be an amazing help).
It also an integrated dictionary with related words related to each kanji appearing on the kanji page.
I completed RTK a while back but still use this website daily as I am learning vocabulary, not for the SRS anymore but just to build my own kanji reference database. (I now add vocabulary words that are important to me on each character’s page, so it is filtered of anything else).
Whenever I see a new vocabulary word, I automatically check / improve its koohii page.
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My advice would be - don’t use RTK. 
I started out learning kanji with RTK. I bought into the basic premise of learning to write first - and within 6 months I had learned over a 1,000 kanji - printing them and one meaning keyword. Then I burned out.
A major problem with the approach, as I see it, is that it frontloads the process with learning meaning and printing them. It leaves a major stumbling point for later: the sounds.
First of all, climbing “the whole mountain” before you get to the sounds can be terribly frustrating at some point because it’s easy to lose sight of the goal - learning Japanese, not kanji.
Then, the topic of sounds is almost bigger than the kanji themselves and having looked at RTK2 I think it’s didactically horrible. The further you get in the RTK course, the lazier it gets, leaving all the work to you and merely providing structure. It gets so sparse, it’s - to me - not really helpful.
Coming up with mnemonics of your own can be a good way to internalize them, but once you are challenged to do that for 80% or more of them (because the course no longer does), you have a lot of work cut out to you. That nobody (slight hyperbole) likes to do that is clear from the many Anki decks out there doing it for you.
Next thing: There are several Anki decks out there for RTK and they save you a lot of time and work. But there is time and time again stuff in them that you wish you wouldn’t have exposed your brain to. Same goes for Kanji Damage… If the mnemonic sticks, all the worse. You’re going to look at the basic kanji a lot in the future, so I don’t want bad associations I need to “unlearn” later…
After “learning” to write 1,000 kanji and associate meaning from RTK + Anki, I changed to Wanikani. It took a while until I met some of them again. Retention of kanji was negligible! I had written some of them a hundred times, I did an hour of kanji writing each day towards the end, and yet when I encountered them again after stopping, I more often than not learned them anew.
Also, some 800 or so in, I couldn’t shake the feeling (with RTK), that I’m not learning Japanese. I could “meaning-read” parts of sentences, but that quickly lost its shine as without being able to connect it to sounds and vocab, it does surprisingly little (at least for me) for learning to understand the language unless you sit through all of it. That’s what I meant when I said I “burned out” on it - I was seriously questioning my choices and if I felt I was making progress towards my actual goal.
Having said all that, I’m not entirely sure about it, but I think RTK2 misses out on Kei-Sei (semantic-phonetic grouping) of kanji. The majority of kanji, some say numbers like 68%, are not made up so that they mirror meaning but they mirror sound (at least more than meaning). A kanji belonging to the Kei Sei group will be composed of at least two more primitive kanji (or their simplified radical form). One will imply a broad category of meaning (like for example finger having to do with actions done with the hands) and another will be there not for its meaning, but for its sound.
Apparently this thing is even more common and evident in Chinese, but Japanese is a Troy of past languages (layer upon layer) - retaining and grouping sounds from the original Japanese language and multiple dominant Chinese dialects (Japanese-pronounced), so a fair share of Kei Sei have been overwritten or sound-shifted over time. Still, Kei Sei is a fantastic tool for looking at whole groups of kanji and retaining their sounds.
Having said that, Wanikani has extension scripts (by users) that tap into a big DB of Kei Sei goodness that I haven’t found elsewhere and that I find vital for retaining sounds easily. Any resource for learning Japanese should as well, unless you want to needlessly tie sounds to kanji over and over again.
I’m a fan of Wanikani besides its flaws. If you don’t mind going by their pace and order, it’s a great tool. They put a lot of work into their mnemonics, and users added the rest with scripts.
I find that with Wanikani I learned a lot of basic vocab that I retain well. For any kanji I can typically immediately recall its most common sound, whether on or kun and/or one basic meaning, and for many all of that or even rare meanings. I found this much more useful than being able to print them. And considerably less time-consuming!!
I think the retention is higher with any course teaching kanji in context with sounds as your brain ties to them multiple times. Kanji with kun sound. Kanji meaning with mnemonic to help you along. Kanji with on sound. Kanji with another on sound. Vocab 1 using kanji this way, vocab 2 using kanji that way. You will always retain some of that in the least and can work your way back to that.
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Thanks for your reply. I started Wanikani yesterday, and my immediate impression was that it was easier to use and probably more efficient than RTK. I’ll keep those Kei Sei extension scripts in mind. I might experiment with some of the other methods that users have posted here. On the topic of learning vocabulary with sounds, I delayed learning kanji for so long partially because I wanted to learn the vocabulary by sound alone rather than by seeing the kanji. Also due to the pacing/waiting on Wanikani, I started on N2 grammar here 
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I think knowing a some vocabulary by sound is massively helpful with kanji. Especially if you start with those kanji that you already know the words for, and expand your language net from there.
By the net I mean, for example, let’s say you know that えいが is the word for movie. So now you already know onyomi for both kanji of 映画, and can learn them and associate them with “ah, that’s the first/second one in eiga”. Which opens the way to more easily remember 映像, 反映, 画面, 漫画, and in turn their other kanji, etc. I’m thinking of it as “JPDB approach”, although there might be other or better tools to direct it.
Of course if you choose the approach of learning in a predetermined order (RTK or WK), it might not help that much, but eventually those words you already know will come up.
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I am one of the Wanikani cult - took me 368 days to finish (it was intense though, doing reviews from early morning to late evening to keep the process going). I found it a wonderfull method.
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I’m a big advocate of just learning vocabulary and let the kanji absorb passively. Also it’s a great idea to understand what’s possible with onyomi and kunyomi so you’re not always starting from zero. Compounds are pretty much always onyomi so when you know what to expect it gets pretty easy to guess.
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I found this thread really helpful that discussed learning kanji: I studied kanji for 2 (and a bit) hours every single day for two years
It’s a sequel to a previous thread which was also worth reading (linked in the original post)
I’ve been following the method discussed in these threads, along with my kids. It’s been really good and helpful (thanks @Asher!)
I’ve already been beefing up and adding features to the deck shared in that thread, adding content from other popular kanji decks, and it’s been a good ride so far.
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