I think it’s not a bad idea to start out with Heisig, just to get a feel for kanji and to learn some of the most common radicals, then go learn some real Japanese, then maybe revisit Heisig to see if it’s still the right thing for you. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing.

It does really help me remember how to write each character; I have sucky visual memory, so the mnemonics can be a life-saver.

I really think some scholars should look at the things that work about the book and the things that don’t work. And then they should make something new and BETTER than Heisig. Maybe find some middle ground with the traditional kanji textbooks while they’re at it. Because it’s not like the traditional books don’t have their own bag of problems.

I tried Heisig and did not succeed. Here’s my why.
1st: I was in Japan, while learning through Heisig. The method was consuming so much of my time… and never what I was learning was actually useful.. in Japan!

2nd: the stories in the books don’t use the real kanji radicals and keys. Why Heisig doesn’t use these, instead? Why fake ones? The mnemonics would work as much as well, and you’d gain a real and serious knowledge anout kanjis. In this way, Henshall’s book is a little bit better.

3rd: The stories are cultural based (Heisig’s culture, actually). For example: Heisig uses some of his childhood memories I don’t share (what’s that train who could?) or the bible, and as I’m not a christian… it didn’t mean nothing to me.

4th: I tried other methods that worked better. Simply. So to the hell, with Heisig… What I used to remember my kanjis is Henshall’s “A guide to remembering japanese characters” Although first, I’d recommend to learn speaking before. And if you want a good drill for your vocabulary (actual words, not kanjis), there’s rosetta stones.

Oh and go read this thread, it’s useful. http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=695

After learning how to speak, writing became natural. I don’t memorize kanji on purpose, it simply has a concrete meaning now to me. Now I have a small blog, and constantly write in Japanese.

Isn’t the point of learning another language to be able to express yourself, and understand others?

I have a friend working on Heisig right now, while he works tirelessly studying from time to time I have to handle phone conversations, or make plans for the weekend, or explain about how I feel about this or that. The biggest motivation for me is being able to speak conversationally where Japanese people would usually prefer to use Japanese with me instead of English because of ease of understanding each other.

Not quite sure if it would be any more benefical for a beginner ; making up completely nonsense stories and trying to memorize them ; even before knwoing the reading – true meaning – not even a single word including it.

Regardless of I rie to get into it and make progress ; found out that remembering teh stories are way too hard and made no sense. And since they are made up ; I decided instead of trying to memorize them ; writing and reading words & sentences including the kanji(s) are much more benefical.

While it’s not a good way of studying writing and studying a word by itself since it is quite easy to forget ; let alone a single kanji ; this method does not even teach you the on readings. Studying vocabulary in sentences is a better way I believe. Take a look at this site if you haven’t

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/

Finally ; Heisig method is useless and waste of time.

You say “You see, once you change Kanji into actual words, you’re in a whole different ball game”, but to me all that says is that you don’t understand what the Heisig method is for.

No, it is not meant to build your vocabulary. It isn’t meant to teach you japanese. It has a simple purpose: teach you to recognize, write, and know the core meaning of kanji.

Just like you don’t learn to read words before learning the alphabet, you don’t learn to read japanese before learning the writing system.

You may not agree with it, but others have used it as a component in a comprehensive study system and learned japanese from scratch with it.

It’s in my opinion the most effective way to not forget the writing of kanji.

I think Heisig’s method can be used to learn vocabulary the same way that the one used for single kanji. You only have to chain the keywords of the kanji into the meaning of the word. That’s the way I learned how to write 大丈夫 or 財布, for example.
Of course, Heisig’s alone isn’t enough for nanori.

On a side note, I’ve been reading your grammar these days, and I’m enjoying it immensely. Thank you for your effort!

I think the problems don’t rely on the method, which seems good, but on some deficiencies on its implementation that either difficult the learning, or annoy the reader. I’ll try to describe both in the most objective way I can.

THE METHOD:
The underlying idea of the method consists in assigning “nicknames” (keywords) to groups of strokes, so that for each kanji, you have to remember less elements (two or three keywords, instead of strokes).

The keywords can belong to radicals, kanji, or groups of two or more existing keywords. For radicals and kanji, Heisig tries to preserve meaning and etymology, but sometimes he assigns totally random nicknames for one reason or other.

Stories aren’t necessary, but they chain together the keywords to the meaning, so that if you ever forget a character, you still have a way to reconstruct it if you recall the story (sort of like the secret question to recover a password). For most kanji, you should be able to go directly from keyword to writing without passing through the story. This is simmilar to the way japanese recall kanji, as far as I know, and allows for very FAST tracing of kanji (this is what I think Heisig meant with writing kanji as natives do).

GOOD NEWS:
- You learn kanji VERY, VERY quickly. It’s pretty impresive.
- You become familiar and confident with kanji you learn, and can easily write and differenciate very simmilar kanji.
- Most of the keywords chosen (with awful exceptions) are useful translations of a kanji, which allows you to read words that you don’t know.
For example, you might not know the word 公園, but if you know that the first kanji means “public” and the other “park”, you can understand it. (Note that you can treat this as silent reading, even though you can’t pronounce this word aloud, and the trick doesn’t work always).
- You end knowing more kanji than the average japanese.
- Additionally, I think fammiliarity with kanjis help while learning its pronounciation using the method suggested by Tae Kim.

BAD NEWS: (relative to the implementation, not the method)
- Heisig seems to want us to write the book for him. Unlike other methods, he stops providing stories after 500 or so kanji. It wouldn’t have hurt to include at least one story for kanji, and let us decide if we want to make our own, or not.
Fortunately, people with internet connection can fix this problem using the stories on the “Reviewing the Kanji” site, otherwise I wouldn’t recommend this book to anybody.
- Heisig has many poor choices of keywords. Some are ambiguous and no clue is given that could help to solve this (you must recurr to a kanji dictionary for this). Some useful keywords are wasted on kanjis that are only used for names, instead of being used where it makes more sense. For example, 吾has the keyword “I”, which would have been better spent on 私.
- Very weird order of kanji. Many basic kanjis are relegated to entries above 1500 with no good reason. As such, you either have to read the whole book, or learn the missing characters beforehand (something I recommend).
- It’s a big commitment. While working with Heisig, I find I have less time to study grammar and vocabulary.
- The first book doesn’t include the lectures, and the second book doesn’t seem to be worth the purchase (it has the appearance of a poor kanji dictionary). This is not so bad if your learning material includes furigana (as mine), as I think is better to learn ONYOMI and KUNYOMI in context.

Due to those problems, I don’t suggest to use this book as printed, but if you have the resources to check and fix its problems, it’s simply priceless, which is the reason I use it.

I hope I didn’t forget anything in this (long review), thanks everyone for their time!