@Kai.: Good attitude to have :)

@Cimmik: Sorry, I can’t forget that post so easily.

Re-reading your question, I think I may actually have misunderstood it, but if my answer helps…

Matthew’s answer seems to be more relevant, to be honest. The gist of his answer was “If you have multiple kanji together, use on’yomi, but if you have a single kanji (with or without kana attached), use kun’yomi. However, because the system has so many exceptions, sometimes single kanji are read with on’yomi”. That last part is what I think you were asking… was it? I don’t know, I interpreted your question differently each time I read it :P

Also, you have to understand, questions about the usage of on’ and kun’yomi have been asked SOOOOOOO many times here over the years. Koichi hasn’t updated TF in so long that these questions are still necessary, unfortunately, because the book doesn’t explain it well. Plus, the search feature (which took literally years to be added) doesn’t even work, so it’s not like you could have easily found old threads. We get kinda tired of answering them but it’s not your fault, it’s Koichi’s, so don’t worry about it.

As for disagreeing with Koichi’s kanji method, I *definitely* agree it’s better than Rosetta Stone, for sure. Most methods are better than Rosetta Stone :P But I still think there are other methods better than Koichi’s. I guess that’s a matter of opinion :)

“[...] how can a single kanji have an on’yomi pronunciation?”

電車 = でんしゃ and 自転車 = じてんしゃ, therefore the on’yomi for 車 is しゃ. There isn’t a different reading for every combination it appears in so it makes more sense to attribute the reading to the single kanji rather than the word as a whole.

Having said that, I find it easier to learn the readings *in the context* of the word as a whole. Basically, instead of learning 車 = しゃ on it’s own *then* learning 電車 = でんしゃ, I just learn the word and that tells me the reading of 車 implicitly. This also does away with the need to know which readings are on and which are kun.

@Matthew: I feel the same, but it’s not their fault, it’s Koichi’s. Can’t even tell them to just search the forum because that doesn’t even work ¬_¬

@Jill: He’s planning intermediate stuff for the future but that could be another year or more away (it’s been in the works for much longer than that), so don’t hold your breath.

@Strangeluv: There’s Core… 10k?! Since when? I thought there was only 6k :S
At the top of that page it says there’s another 15k cards on top of that, so really it’s Core 25k, which is insane – if you’ve “learned” 10k words and you *still* need to use flash cards to learn new ones, you’re doing something wrong. I’ve been doing Core 6k for way too long and I’m at around 4,500 cards in, but I’m getting so tired of it and seeing such little return that I’m considering packing it in during the summer (or at least, dropping all my current cards then blitzing through the last 1500 in a week or two, not caring if I do the reviews every day, just to get some level of exposure to all the words). I find I remember words much better if I see them while reading other stuff rather than just in the isolated context of Anki.

Damn, I haven’t seen Mars in ages, I thought this was him making a new thread :P
Wonder how he’s getting on, hope he found a house ok and is still doing Japanese.

Good luck with your studies!

“[...] but I have convinced myself that I still have the ability to self learn from this course regardless of my age.”

On YouTube, there is a Canadian guy called Steve Kaufman (username “lingosteve”) you might like. He is around the same age as you, I think, and a polyglot, having studied around 15 different languages. He champions the idea that you can learn languages successfully no matter what age you are, and he gives some very good advice on how to do so. He’s studied Mandarin, Japanese, Czech, Romanian, and French, among many others, so he’s certainly knowledgeable on the topic.

When you say you spend a lot of time on Anki, is that a lot of time *each day*? Only do the number of cards it tells you to do each day, and let the SRS algorithm work its magic. Sometimes it takes a good number of failed flash card reviews before a word just “sticks”.

I’m not sure how effective the post-it technique is anyway. It can only work for a limited number of words, mostly nouns and adjectives – what would you stick a post-it to for おどろく(to be surprised) or ときどき(sometimes)? :P

Personally, these days I find the best way to remember words is to see them while I’m reading something. Seeing a word out in the wild really helps it become lodged in your brain. I kinda regret having done quite so many flash card reps in the few years I’ve been learning Japanese, wish I’d tried reading more instead. The thing is, it’s not quite as easy when you’re still a beginner and you suck at reading (I still do, but I’m better than I used to be). For the mean time, I guess stick with Anki, but as you get better at Japanese, try reading more.