I do agree with Joel there. Some of Koichi’s Radicals are a bit far fetched when comparing it to the Kanji. This confuses me at times as I either forget the Radical and remember the Kanji or vice versa. But with Kanji like 工,  the meaning is Industry/Construction and so is the Radical which makes it easy to remember.

Another example is the “nail” radical and the “street” kanji, that one’s had me confused a couple times.

Joel wrote:

I think he meant what’s the difference between the literary radical and the writing radical…

One problem with giving the radicals different names is that I’m afraid I’m not entirely sure of what this question means. Fairly sure the answer is “there’s no difference” – my point being, basically, that it has nothing to do with dolls.

Joel wrote:

But with Kanji like 工,  the meaning is Industry/Construction and so is the Radical which makes it easy to remember.

Which reminds me, there’s a lot of radicals that are the same as katakana characters. Some mention of that could make memorisation easier, especially if he moves the katakana to earlier in the syllabus. Once you’ve memorised katakana, it’s easy to go “the radical ヨ is just a katakana ‘yo’” instead of “well, I guess it kinda looks like Wolverine’s claws… maybe?”.

Joel wrote:

Another example is the “nail” radical and the “street” kanji, that one’s had me confused a couple times.

Yeah, the 丁 radical is one of those radicals that tends to lend its reading to kanji (ちょう) rather than its meaning. The actual kanji is a counter for pages in a book. Don’t get bogged down too much in the meaning of it.

Joel wrote:

Thank you for your insight Joel :)

No problem. =)

Oh well, thank you for everyone’s help! I agree that Koichi’s mnemonics are a bit off. Things don’t always go together as they should, and I’m someone who likes to see the big picture. I need to see where things fit, where they came from, and how I use them now, so I think I will use a separate resource for kanji and such. Any recommendations?

I’m not really saying you ought to dump Koichi completely – just pick and choose what works and what doesn’t. I haven’t been using and specific kanji-learning resources myself, aside from my class textbook and an iPhone flashcard app – mostly just been coming up with my own mnemonics based on what the kanji look like, and what the radicals actually mean (because they’ve all got official names and meanings, except for the ones Koichi invented to make his mnemonics simpler).

For example, my mnemonic for 橋 (bridge) is that it’s got a tree – because bridges are made of fallen (or felled) trees – then it’s got a big guy with a rakish hat carrying a box over a box girder (which is a type of bridge, incidentally). That helps me, but the same goes for my mnemonics as go for Koichi’s – if it doesn’t help you, just ignore me. =)

Yeah your own mnemonics will always work better than someone else’s. Using other’s can be helpful though as it can be difficult to come up with so many of them on your own. So if you read one and it seems to click, use that one, or even modify it slightly to personalize it, but if it seems hard for your brain to wrap around, you need to come up with your own.

The most effective mnemonics are ones that pop into your head immediately upon viewing/hearing whatever it is you are trying to remember. So take a look at it without thinking too hard about it at all, and see what’s the first thing that pops up. Then take that thing, try to engage all your senses in it as much as you can, and then try to give it a bit of a bizarre twist.

Koichi uses the same standard rules (I can tell by how he describes them), but since he is using the first thing that pops into his head, that can be very hard for someone else to link to.