Inspirational!
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I’d be interested to hear more about what your routine looks like. I know you mentioned learning three new kanji a day. How many repetitions do you do for each one? Is it ten apiece like you mentioned above? Do you just try to write them exactly as they appear on the card or do you try to work in a little shodo?
After some of our past conversations, I actually took your advice and started writing new kanji that I learn in WaniKani! I’ve been doing that with every kanji for the last three or so levels. I use my tablet, though, just because I don’t do well with that much physical paper all over the place! When I get bored, I like to go to a Japanese font testing page and try imitating different fonts as I practice.
Personally, I’ve been doing eight repetitions of each kanji, then I’ll do the same with kanji that I saw a while ago but forgot. I have to admit that my confidence with kanji has increased since I started doing this!
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For the first 400 or so kanji, I was doing about 8 a day, then dropped to 5, then went between 3 and 4 depending on my review forecast.
This is my review forecast for the next month. When my daily reviews goes over 70, I drop to 3 (as that is the number that my total reviews will very slowly decrease at). If it’s under 65 or 60 I push it back up to 4 again. If I stay at 4 the reviews always stay at around 70 unless I have a week or 2 of really difficult to remember new kanji that I keep forgetting.
I don’t do a shodo style, but I do write quite carefully and slowly like this. This is because I remember better if I write carefully and really think about the radicals. It’s 10 a piece but I am not so strict. Usually between 8 and 15, depending on my confidence.
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Okay, this might be a stupid question and I’m not trying to be rude, but… why?
For what purpose would you ever need to be able to recite 10 readings of a kanji in isolation? 
(That kind of drilling seems like self-punishment to me - no offense 
)
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@Asher Real question - how do you find the time? I struggle to put in 30mins of actual studying per day.
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Congratulations on improving so much within 1 year! Not many people feel like they go from N3 to N1 within 1 year.
I am wondering, did you stop reviewing/adding vocab cards or do less immersion during this time? Because, if you stack reviewing and learning vocab and doing reading and listening immersion on top of that 2.5 hours of writing kanji it must have been a lot of time each day, right?
If you only had 2.5 hours of time to study per day, would you still do this? Do you think it would be worth doing if you only had that amount of time?
I want to learn how to write the kanji eventually too and to have more sharp or explicit knowledge about the kanji, but right now I’m lucky if I have 2.5 hours a day to study so it seems like immersion and vocab give more bang for my buck.
I’ve found that just learning more vocab in kanji and immersing over time in content without furigana also gives you intuition about the meaning and readings of kanji so I’m wondering when it would become worth it for me to try doing something like this.
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Not a stupid question. I guess one of the main reasons that I was able to keep so consistent was that I treated the whole process like an experiment. Meaning that I wanted to see if writing/recitation worked better than mnemonics (for me). After doing maybe the first 200 kanji this way, I started to get a clearer picture of how important knowing all the readings was for really understanding the nuance of a specific kanji. For example, if 5 kanji have the same kun yomi, if one of them has a different yomikata in addition to it, it helps to give the nuance. Here’s a more obscure (but helpful) example. 却って（かえって） is also read as しりぞく、 which is one of the readings of 退く. かえって is the grammar point for (instead), but knowing 退く highlights that the nuance is more of retracting your initial statement, rather than simply (instead).
As I noticed this nuance stuff more and more, it became easier to ‘drill it’, like you say. The only reason you’d ever need to know all the readings in isolation is for exactly that reason, deciphering nuances of new kanji. As for why I physically recited them… not sure… The act of moving my mouth was one extra layer of forming a long term memory I guess.
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I started in the height of the Tokyo lockdown so I had butt all to do most days. I decided to make a routine and really give it a shot, as I didn’t think I’d maybe ever get such a good opportunity to focus on study again.
During that time it became like going to the gym, just kinda a habit. I did have some days that I was up til 3 am doing it though, and there were certainly unpleasant days… I think what helped me find the time the most was the thought that there was an end. I knew if I focused really really hard now, I’d potentially save myself years of struggling in the future.
This was on top of full time work (after the initial lockdown). Definitely thinking about the finish line kept me going.
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Kinda like that, I still did a bit of new vocab, but only vocab that was using the kanji I was learning, so that they married together well.
I still did lots of immersion though… But I would not count that as study, it was just enjoymemt time for me. I would say that I did between 3 and 3.5 hours of active study a day, and at least an hour of ‘fun’ immersion.
If I only had that time I’d still do it 100%, as it makes other aspects of learning the language much much easier. Kanji is the biggest wall to learning, but it’s definitely the one thing that (once finishing) will make your life a hell of a lot easier… Provided you learn them properly the first time.
If the method you’re doing now works well for you, that’s great too!
If you want to know if my method works for you, I’d say that you should do at least grades 1,2 and 3 (school learning order). If you don’t feel a huge benefit, then perhaps it’s not the best for you.
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I know this is a weird and possibly intrusive question, but what are you thinking about while you write? I ask because sometimes I’ll write kanji and not remember them in WaniKani just a few minutes later. It feels like I’m thinking suboptimally, but I’m neurodivergent and it’s difficult to figure out how to focus on the task while I’m doing it.
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Please! It would be great!
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I finished 18 months of intense study on March 22nd 2020. I feel it was badly timed for many reasons, but chiefly among them was that for the first 6-8 months of lockdown I didn’t want to do anything, wasted time really. Well done @Asher, i admire your consistency, something I never had even back in my prime (yeeeaaarrrrs ago)
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@Asher I’d love to try out your method, but I must ask how you learnt readings using this method? Just writing them out along with the kanji?
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Hi Tibon, for the readings, I just said them out loud as I was writing the kanji, I didn’t ever actually need to write the readings themselves out, because reciting the reading became a part of ‘writing the kanji’, remembering them together went hand in hand.
I do think it is very important to actually say it out loud, as opposed to just thinking it in your head, though. There is a layer of memory involved in the physical motion of your mouth making the word.
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I love this idea and it’s something I really need to make myself do. I feel like I already have so much going on with SRS (WaniKani even though I’m 60 now, Bunpro, a custom sentence mining Anki deck, and Koohi Cafe to complement my light novel reading), plus I like to leave as much time as I can for immersion, so I just can’t see setting aside 2.5 hours a day for this.
But I could probably manage something similar with a muuuuch smaller daily time investment. It will just take me longer to get through 1500+ kanji. Because of WK and LOTS of reading, my kanji recognition is really pretty good, but I think being able to write them from memory would really put me over the top in terms of speedy, native-like recognition. Plus I just love kanji and would really like to be able to do it. 
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I’ve always heard so much about Koohi but never really did TOO deep of a dive besides from just briefly checking out one vocab list to get a decent understanding of the site. How did/do you use it? Import your WK & Anki vocab decks to count as words you theoretically know and then just learn new ones for each novel/anime before you actually consume the episode/chapter? Curious!
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I did make sure to indicate on there that I’m WK level 60 so that it doesn’t give me any WK vocab, but I didn’t bother to import anything from Anki because of the way my Anki deck is structured - I don’t think it would be the easiest thing to do, and it’s not a big deal to just ignore words I already have in Anki as I go.
I usually aim for 30 new words per learning session (which I try to do daily, but sometimes this is not possible). I go through the current book (I haven’t used it for anime at all) and continue adding new words and ignoring already known words until I hit 30. Then I use the search function in my kindle app to see how far that will get me. Depending on the book and the day, this can vary wildly - sometimes it gets me only 5 pages, other times it gets me 20+. If it’s going to stop me somewhere that isn’t very convenient (like say 1 page before the end of a chapter) then I might press on and add just a few more words to end in the spot I want. But yes, I prelearn the words and quiz them before I read the new pages so that I don’t have to stop and look the words up as I go.
Shortly after I’m done with the day’s reading, the first review for the new words will come up, and it’s usually easy to 100% them since they’re still fresh and they now have context behind them.
The site has some issues here and there that I won’t get into for now, but overall I really like it and feel that it has made a huge difference in my reading ability. I used to find light novels very difficult, and I can now read many of them pretty comfortably.
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@Asher I may have missed it, but what exactly was your method for practicing writing the Kanji? Did you write out the Kanji for each Anki card, then check to see if your stroke order was correct? Or did you simply write out the Kanji multiple times for each card?
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Yo! Sorry for the late reply!
The way my cards work, and the way I practiced, is this:
1 - My Anki deck displays a kanji in a regular font, no other information is given.
2 - I try to guess all of the readings before I press reveal. For example, if 鋼 is displayed, I will say to myself in my head (こう、はがね、steel). Then I try to draw the kanji in the correct stroke order.
3 - I press reveal, which then displays the kanji again in a ‘stroke order’ font so that I can see if my stroke order was correct. All readings and the English meaning are also on the reveal side.
4 - After confirming if I was correct, I write the kanji another 10 (give or take) times, reciting the readings to myself as I write. (physically reciting as you are drawing the kanji was the most effective memory step for me, because you are really focusing on the shape as you speak/write simultaneously).
5 - Move to the next card and repeat.
In regard to the stroke order, although it is an important part of the process, you don’t actually need to put a lot of effort into remembering it. I initially thought that memorizing stroke order would be hard, but in hindsight it is actually the easiest part by far. Your hand just gets used to the correct order and you do not even have to think about it (especially since almost every radical repeats itself in many other kanji).
I hope this answers your question, if not then let me know.
Have a good one mate!
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Awesome thanks! That sounds like an effective method. I will definitely give this a shot as I often mix up visually similar Kanji. I want to be able to write as well because I have too much pride to be half-illiterate
Edit: perhaps doing the inverse, reading/meaning on front and stroke order on the back could be helpful as well.
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