[mattm]

It took me three months at about 1-2 hours per day. I still review occasionally and can get about 75% recall. I think a lot of people completely miss the point with Heisig's books.

The point is to just get you familiar with the kanji so they don't look like a foreign language anymore. After that, you learn how to read them in sentences and words.

Also another point is that you don't have to "practice, practice, practice." Some characters I can remember after only writing it a few times because I have the story associated with the character. It sure beats the Asian method of writing out each character hundreds or thousands of times.

The Heisig method is just meant to be the first step.