Surely if you picture a kabuki stage, it’ll take you three hours to remember anything. 
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@d-hermit I think in some ways it’s a mechanism to try and eliminate location adversely - as in by letting objects and characters naturally appear where they have become habitually placed (in my mind) then I don’t take that extra time to conjure up the object or character that I normally would do - they’re sort of just there
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@Belthazar Love that! 
New project: Wanikani, the Kabuki play - the Shogun is haunted by spirits, his turkeys and geoducks wielding their blades and tantos must rush to save him, but instead they lasso the spirits away using thread and a tsunami
End of chapter 1
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@cloudsoft TBH when I began building the room, the radicals had become so frequent already through mnemonics and SRS that they simply needed a home in the room - for larger things like Tokyo, yes I imagine certain areas - there’s always around 4 currently: scramble crossing, Sensouji temple, Camera town and the Gundam at Odaiba - it depends on the mnemonic which one gets used.
What does stay the same though is how the ‘Outside’ of the window is framed - it’s a wooden rectangular window, the sky tends to be cloudy and the sun is usually quite hazy, shining through the cloud - there’s always a skyscraper to the right, a road in the centre and dependant upon the mnemonic, a person walking on the left or for one or two, a bowling ball (makes sense in those mnemonics )
I think the key is the room stays permanent, but the objects and scenery within play out as required - it sounds murky and difficult, but there are so many undefinables I’d really like to be able to vocalise somehow! Explaining it here has really helped… erm explain it better than I thought I could actually!
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I see. I actually am a new user of the Memory Palace method. It works now for simple Kanji and Radicals but I doubt I will be able to use it for all of the remaining Kanji. Still discovering that part. 
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Aphantasia: The proposed name for a condition involving an inability to visualize imagery.
I can picture things, but I just wanted to share that some people physically can’t.
(Irrelevant info below)
(A while ago) My brother kept claiming he “can’t picture things” and he “doesn’t dream” and after a long argument of me telling him “everyone can/does”, I did some research and discovered that he could be telling the truth.
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I tried the memory palace early on in WK but I couldn’t keep up. Personally there just ended up being too much stuff but, admittedly, it’s not a mnemonic device that I use normally.
Hopefully it works out for you in the long term. 
That’s only one of the aspects of cognition that is only recently being studied.
A similar one would be the inner monologue. As with aphantasia, there’s a spectrum of how often you have an inner monologue if at all.
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I wonder if they are inversely correlated. I think to myself using words and subvocalize when reading, but I have trouble visualizing. Maybe people who are better at visualizing don’t need words as much.
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I can’t picture anything at all in my mind. I do dream in color though, but I rarely remember dreams. I have a constant inner monologue, I’m basically talking to myself all the time. Aren’t you thinking all the time? How do you think if it’s not in words that you tell yourself?
To stay on topic: I tried the memory palace several times before, but I just forget where I place things. I don’t think I’m compatible with the technique
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Yeah, I’ve heard of people without inner monologue’s, but never met anyone with the condition.
I might see if I can try this method, but I also have trouble visualizing things.
I can sometimes get close to visualizing if it’s simple shapes or things I can graph or plan out, for instance a parabola, or a rectangle. But I cannot close my eyes and picture my mother’s face. Not even if I just saw her a minute ago.
Interestingly, I took some tests when I was younger and I am actually very good at what they call “spacial reasoning” or “spacial intelligence.” Things like being able to recognize a 3D-model when it is rotated 90 degrees, or being good at understanding LEGO set building instructions.
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There’s nothing wrong with your idea of a memory room, that’s good if that works for you.
However, a “Memory Palace” is normally a different thing for memorising things in sequence. E.g. memorise the periodic table in atomic order by going around a room in your mind past mneumonics for each element. Kanji aren’t ordered in that way, so it’s not the same technique.
Here’s more info if you’re interested: How to Build a Memory Palace
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Lol, it says you last posted “2 years ago”! Where did you go?
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Me? I don’t post in the forums often
Interesting topic! I am very visual, and my brain also talks to me all the time, inner conversations. I read a book and can visualize all of it as I read, even to the point that I can tell which side of a page something was on. Yet, in real life, I don’t notice details at all. Weird! I wish someone could explain that.
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You forgot to click “reply”, so it didn’t notify me you responded! 
Anyways, that’s too bad, the more the merrier!
Many years ago a trick I learned is you can use preexisting places to build your journey and that they don’t even need to be real. I played games like DOOM1 & 2 (90’s) so much that I know every level off by heart and since they are mostly linear levels its great for placing mnemonic journeys.
Reuse those game levels, not a waste of time after all lol
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If someone wants to become more of a visual thinker - that’s fine of course.
But if the point is to make it easier to memorise kanji then I think people are better off playing their existing strengths. There are lots of theories of learning style out there Kobl, Flemming etc - across most of them there’s general agreement that people tend to prefer a specific mode of learning over others. There’s loads of different theories about what those modes are, but most tend to break down into something like:
1.visual
2. sound/pattern
3. reading/writing
4. movement.
People who aren’t visual or spatial probably won’t get much from a memory palace, but they might benefit from something that plays on their strongest learning style - making up a little jingle, writing messages for themselves and displaying them around the house to read, matching kanji or readings to physical movements etc.
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Hi !
Quite an exciting topic - at least for me
I am also using Memory Palaces, but I do that in order to remember items in a specific order, by following a pre-defined path in my room(s). I don’t really use MP for remembering the kanji/vocabulary itself.
So I am really curious to understand more about your method !
A few questions :
- If I got you correctly, you are using one single place, not different ones. So you visualize different stories always in the same place / stage, only difference being the stories / objects / people involved in your stories, right ?
- don’t you have any interferences between some “relatively similar” kanjis/stories ? my own personal experience being that the place itself actually helps (me) in making differences.
- Do you make 1 story in that place for each and every kanji and/or vocabulary word ? or only some of them ?
- If you don’t do it for all kanjis/words, do you select the most difficult for you to remember via the SRS ?
- you wrote “walking them through” : do you mean you repeat the stories spontaneously, outside the SRS , as a way to “learn / reinforce”? or only when you are asked by the SRS ?
- are you able to recall “spontaneously” all stories with a Shogun ? By spontaneously, I mean you’re not being asked by the SRS on a kanji involving a Shogun, but rather you enumerate all kanjis/stories involving the Shogun.
- why do you have a corridor, a wall, a staircase ? I mean, do they have a specific function / role ? do you use them to place some objects / people in a certain order, or to categorize some stuff ?
- how many “items” do you have in total ? By items I mean people, objects, etc. You started enumerate a few ones : “Koichi, Shougun, Ken, Genji, A car, a pile of thread, a stool, a cage, a Viking, a spirit, a judge, a dog, an acorn”. Is it closer to dozens or hundreds ?
Can’t agree more. It’s funny how incredible it feels once you experience it yourself !
Is there not a limit between “it helps” and “it is too crowded” ? Like it’s too much and creates interferences instead of enrichment ? On my side I prefer to split a list of 300 items into 30x10 or 10x30 or 20x15, rather than packing everything at the same place. But maybe I miss some parts of your method !
Thanks in advance for sharing your experience 
For those who don’t find a visual ‘memory palace’ accessible, the same technique can be applied in different ways. What matters most is that you have a series of ‘hooks’ to connect information to.
The following info is summarised from my understanding of this radio interview. (Easy listening, entertaining, informative, much better than my notes below). She talks about using the Alphabet, your house, your walk to the shops, or a handheld object with irregular details (eg shells glued to a block of wood, or something intricately carved/painted) among others.
What I remember from the interview, but seriously, just listen to that instead.
For some, you can use the alphabet (if letters are too dry for you to connect too, you can replace each letter with the name of a character from greek mythology, or an animal, or anything that does stand out for you).
It is also very common to use a real, physical space that you are frequently in. This could be your house/room, the route you frequently walk to the shops, or a physical space that you are no longer around but that you remember clearly (your old school perhaps?) In using this space as a memory tool, you choose objects or places that become ‘hooks’ for the information that you wish to memorise.
When using an existing space, the ‘order’ items are remembered by is important. Say you use the route you walk to buy groceries. You might use a tree 1 a bus stop 2 a mural 3 the flagstone you once tripped over 4 and then a street name 5. Maintaining a pattern of ‘4 misc hooks 1 street name/sign’ (basically one set of items per block, be it 5, 10, or 12, what matters is regularity) protects your brain against loosing a ‘hook’.
When you count: “Tree 1 Bus stop 2 Flagstone 3 Street name 4 - Hang on, street names are every fifth hook, I am missing something.” It is very hard to remember that you have forgotten something, and this is a great tool to use.
You can also use anything else with a structure/order that wont change. The map for Pokemon Yellow anyone? Or, what I think could be useful for WaniKani readings and meanings, IROHA KARUTA (いろは カルタ). All the hiragana characters in a specific order, each with a proverb to get your story started.