I studied kanji for 2.5 hours every single day for one year

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. :sweat_smile:

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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 :sweat_smile:

Edit: perhaps doing the inverse, reading/meaning on front and stroke order on the back could be helpful as well.

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Asher, I just want to say thanks for posting about this. I’ve been doing this for about 2 weeks now—writing out the kanji and speaking the readings for each card I study in Anki—and according to my stats, I miss MUCH fewer cards than I used to when I wasn’t writing the kanji.

I’ve noticed that the act of writing makes me much more aware of the different radicals in each kanji. It has helped me with kanji that were similar, which I kept making mistakes on. I’m still using mnemonics to help me remember the kanji, but writing the radicals seems to help solidify the mnemonics better in my head so I don’t forget them as easily.

Because writing takes more time, I’m reviewing fewer cards per day than I used to—I’m doing only 50 cards per day—but since I miss fewer cards, I’m able to add about 5-10 new kanji per day and still keep it under 50 reviews a day.

I think the method has been working for me because I spend more time on each kanji, since I’m writing it out. I’m only taking about a minute per card, so 50 cards is about an hour, which is a little more doable for me.

I also like the fact that, like you said, there’s an ending. I likely won’t bother to learn any kanji past junior high level unless I come across it in a light novel, which means that if I can remain consistent, I’ll be able to finish all the kanji I want to learn in about a year. Knowing this is only for a certain amount of time makes it easier to remain consistent because I know I won’t always need to spend so much time on this.

Anyway, thanks again. This has been a really good learning method that’s worked better than my old method of just brute force memorization.

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Awesome! Glad to hear that. My recommendation is drop new kanji to 3 a day if your reviews get too high. 3 was the number I found that total reviews ever so slowly went down, rather than up. You might be different and have a bit better memory than me, but that was my experience.

For the first few hundred at least, over 5 a day should be no problem :+1::+1:.

I am glad to hear it’s working for you in addition to your mnemonics!

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So sorry! I never got the notification for this reply… Or I got it and just glazed over it somehow 🙇🏼‍♂️.

For my thinking while writing, I usually think about the radicals used, and if they have some kind of deep meaning, or about the yomikata, and whether it has some kind of deep meaning.

I’m not actively searching for anything when I say that. You just see so many radicals and read so many readings that finding patterns becomes inevitable… and sometimes actually kinda fun! Like just today I noticed that both 若 and 如 have the kun yomi ごとし, and can mean ‘to bear resemblance’. (Used to think it was only 如く). So maybe if you make a game out of finding patterns, it could become easier to focus? Making a game out of finding nuance in radicals is fun too. Obviously it doesn’t work all the time, but you can often strike a common theme eventually.

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I am now at level 43 on WaniKani (again…) and I am (again) having difficulties to remembering new kanjis (and a few old ones). So I want to try and supplement reviews on WaniKani with your method and see how it turns out (maybe by just focusing on difficult ones). However I can’t find an anki deck corresponding to your card: the most similar one seems to be All in One Kanji Deck - AnkiWeb but it lacks stroke order (which I want to learn) although the description claims it has stroke order. Do you confirm this is the deck you tweaked? It would be great if you could share your own version (I could add stroke orders myself but this would be really time consuming with not many added value I think).

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I am also using that Anki deck, and for stroke order, download and install the stroke order font from: http://www.nihilist.org.uk/. You just need to download the font file, which is KanjiStrokeOrders_v4.004.ttf, then install it.
I did that on both my computer and my iPhone (downloaded iFont free app) and suddenly the stroke order kanji font appeared.
However, to be honest, I prefer the stroke order as shown on jisho.org. They do it stroke by stroke and it’s easier to follow than the stroke order font. The Anki deck has a direct link to Jisho on the back of the card.

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Thanks for posting this @camytang ! I sent MZa a message with where to get it, but your instructions are much clearer! haha.

Are you still going well with your writing?

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Yes! I am still writing all my kanji out while using my Anki deck and my “relearning” or missed kanji has gone way down.

It occurred to me that the process of writing the kanji and speaking the readings aloud actually hits all 3 methods of learning, visual, audio, and tactile. Most people naturally favor one out of the three, but in using all three, that probably enables a person to learn it a bit better than only using 1 of the 3 methods.

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