An apology to the theJapanesePage.com

It's not always entirely ease to rely on your past experiences. In my second post here I wrote

This project owes much to James W. Heisig’s “Remembering the Kanji” (RtK). This book could be the Kanji Bible (Koran or whatever) considering the amount of controversy it has created across the Japanese community seen online. There is a very vocal community of Heisig advocates and there is an almost as devoted Anti-Heisig camp, not least among the rather bully folks – some moderators, not the owner - at theJapanesePage.com. Mentioning Heisig there is as close as you get to swearing in the church online J. It’s a welcome relief to go to the other side of the coin at the Reviewing the Kanji forum http://forum.koohii.com/index.php, . No matter how devoted the members are there, they are at least polite.

Recent experiences show that I was delusional here. "No matter how devoted the members are there, they are at least polite." was absolutely nothing but a joke! After spending a couple of days there I have learned that 1) the youngsters at RtK forum is nothing but a mob spitting out invectives if their faith is imaginary assaulted by something "new". It's IRONY that I started my very first post ever with a

My first post so I would like to offer my thanks to Fabrice for setting up this enormous site and maintaining it year in and year out! I would also like to offer my appreciation to all users/members able to maintain a very pleasant atmosphere here. (I haven't been to the page where one cannot mention Heisig and which Fabrice doesn't want us to mention here :-) )

What an utterly unfounded optimism. You can easily judge by yourself, but I would consider it a waste of time to wade through eight (8!!) pages of filth to merely check if I am telling the truth.

The next irony is that yours truly get reprimanded for taking the liberty to not allow pure lies stand unchallenged: TOPIC CLOSED. As far as I can tell, those spewing invectives, unfounded insinuations, and a generally childish and ugly language, were NOT reprimanded. A fair and balanced way to handle a public forum?

Since the forum manager can't remember what he is posting in his own forum, I felt the need to fresh up his memory and posted a copy of an old post on theJapanesePage.com (original found here)

I'm fed up with this. KanjiHanzi you are banned

And by the gods, please do not email me, I have no time to quarrel with you by email.

I will try to post something later about this, out of courtesy, certainly not out of "duty".

Silly boy. What an utterly stupid way to present the Heisig Method to the world: By all means post any praise of the method, but DO NOT challenge any of the tenets of Our Faith leading to Kanji Heaven, the only way there according to OUR gospel.

It's not even true that he "banned" me, i.e. prevented me from logging in. He BLOCKED my IP address so I couldn't even read a single line about what was said there. That's very fair and balanced too, isn't it? As you can see this is nothing that isn't solved in a matter of seconds, but don't imagine that I will care to post or write emails.

No. I am rather pleased with the situation as it is now: No more wasting of time there. And despite all the accusations of being there only for the sake of self-promotion, I had no intentions of anything like that. I thought it would be possible to discuss the work I will do here with those already familiar with The Heisig Method. It wasn't. But as it turned out, I got better PR for this blog than I could have dreamed of!!! **If** I had dreamed. :-)

So, yes: My regret for posting the intitial opinion re the politeness level of these two places is indeed sincere. If I only had had a single hint about what I could expect posting on the Reviewing the Kanji forum, I had not touched the place. Not even with a stick nose covered. Sorry.