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+--- Thread: The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. (/thread-95.html)
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - bombastic69 - 2012-09-16
Tomorrow will tackle the last lesson and set of kanji for RTK1, thanks for this awesome website and anki for making it possible.
Question for the ppl who've already completed this as well: after finishing RTK1 should i go for the "RTK1 supplement" or start with RTK2?
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - NoSleepTilFluent - 2012-09-19
supplement
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - nooaia - 2012-09-19
bombastic69 Wrote:Tomorrow will tackle the last lesson and set of kanji for RTK1, thanks for this awesome website and anki for making it possible.continue reviewing ... then start the supplement. ( I did them because they are already in the 6 edition )
Question for the ppl who've already completed this as well: after finishing RTK1 should i go for the "RTK1 supplement" or start with RTK2?
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Phlail - 2012-09-19
Woo just finished! Spent 59 days of my summer break religiously doing kanji and managed to finish just in time before I go back to University. Now time to sentence mine! >_<
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - undead_saif - 2012-09-19
Phlail Wrote:Woo just finished! Spent 59 days of my summer break religiously doing kanji and managed to finish just in time before I go back to University. Now time to sentence mine! >_<Congrats mate! Big warning: don't let go of reviewing them, even if you have to postpone sentence mining until later to let the reviews numbers diminish.
Good luck!
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - haitike - 2012-09-21
I finished the book + the 2010 reform suplement now. That is, 2.200 kanjis. I have the spanish edition (Kanji para recordar). I had a mess in my mind with the different keywords when navigating this web
Im starting real japanesse now. One friend gave me "Minna no Nihongo". I dont know it is a good textbook, but I like to have a "physical textbook". Im in the chapter 4 now
Furthermore I'm starting to study Tae Kim Grammar and Core2k vocabulary in Anki now.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - PrettyInScarlet - 2012-09-21
Congrats everyone!
One tip: never stop.
I have finished RTK in June and since then I am trying to do at least the smallest thing possible everyday, even when I'm dead tired. I just open Anki and do at least couple of sentences to make this day "count"
That keeps me motivated.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - ridley - 2012-09-23
I'd like to echo PrettyInScarlet's word of warning: don't stop. Or at least make sure you have a good reason for it, because if you want to learn Japanese now, chances are that desire will stay with you even after you've abandoned your studies. To this end, a few new kanji a day or even one is much better than none. Likewise, relatively short bursts of contact with the language most days may be more productive than an hour or two every couple of weeks. If I had understood that first point from the beginning, I might have finished RTK much sooner than just a few days ago.
Incidentally, a side effect I've noticed over the last couple of months of catching up and adding a lot of new cards is that I now see many of the characters and their components upon various surfaces (e.g. stained wood and stone), fabrics (worn towels etc.), and the like, as one does with faces. Have any of you experienced this? How about those lifelong 日本語 learners, the Japanese?
Edit: a big thanks to James Heisig, to our host, and to everyone who shared stories. Data and Dracula I found particularly useful as stand-ins for 'state of mind' and 'person'.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - NoSleepTilFluent - 2012-09-24
When I just got to Japan and was trying to grasp real listening practice I would see flashes of kanji for words or readings I knew but that fell off as I stopped reviewing or if I knew the words very well. So I'm sure it happens to others as well in different ways. It's probably just memories of writing the kanji so many times in my notebook that is really flashing like constant life subtitles kinda distracting and I wish I could switch them to Spanish to practice that while living in Japanese.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Andufallah - 2012-09-24
I FINISHED TWO DAYS AGO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Daimio - 2012-09-24
I just wanted to say: I FINALLY FINISHED!
It took me a little over a year to do it. I had many long breaks, but I managed to plow through the last 800 in one last spurt. And I'm so glad I did.
Thanks to everyone who shared their wonderful stories through this site. It would've taken me much, much longer to do it without your help. Really, thank you very much.
Now to do lots of reviews, and then onto the next step!
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - ShadowFanX - 2012-09-24
Ah, finally. After about 3 months, I have finally finished RTK1. On to RTK3!
If only I hadn't procrastinated so much, I would have been done learning new kanji (including RTK3) about a month ago. But I guess 50 kanji a day is a hard goal to maintain for very long, so yeah.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - OzarM - 2012-10-14
You count as "finished" when you add the 2,200th flashcard to the deck, correct?
If that is the case I am "finished."
..And have little idea what to do next, much like before I started this. Probably need to re-learn proper writing of Hiragana and Katakana (Anything like RtK for that? Anki I guess?) After the initial "Write the letter over and over for two lines" part I concentrated on keyboard based flash drill identification rather than replication of those, so while I can "read" them for the most part, reproducing them on command may be more.. difficult.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - comeauch - 2012-10-14
There's the "Remember the Kana" book! But just starting to learning vocabulary without using romaji is probably going to be enough!
Congrats!
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - NoSleepTilFluent - 2012-10-15
Congrats OzarM!!
I just finished my 2210 card. This was my second time through RTK and I can't let myself stop reviewing. I have a sentence deck that hasnt been added to for a year and it's down to 3 reviews every couple days I want that for my kanji deck. I finished the second round in 37 days for an average of almost 60 a day. I kept my reviews under 200 for most days. Tomorrow I will have 235 reviews and it will just go down from there.
My next step is to catch up on my core deck while reviewing my kanji.
Thanks again to this forum best resource in my Japanese career. You guys are awesome Japanese geniuses but You still need to work hard/smart =P
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - gluaygluay - 2012-10-18
Congrats all on finishing, and for those who haven't finished yet - ganbare!
Yatta! Finally unsuspended and reviewed all 2042 cards. It took 90 days - I tried to add a steady 30 cards/day but had to skip some days due to travel and work. However, I never skipped a day of reps.
I think people have given some good advice here. Never stop and keep reviewing.
I would add:
Try to be the tortoise rather than the hare, slow and steady beats going in spurts.
Never skip a day of reps, I think letting due cards build up is a massive de-motivator and also defeats the SRS algorithm. I'd rather scale back on adding cards than skip doing reps.
Reviewing several times a day really helps. I think this also helps the SRS algorithm.
Being able to do reps on your phone during dead time (waiting in line, waiting for the train, etc) is really helpful. I wouldn't have been able to get my reps in on busy days if it weren't for my phone.
Don't worry about cards that you miss over and over again. Somehow, they eventually stick.
Seeing Japanese in the wild definitely helps and will make your reps go more smoothly. You'll also get a sense of which characters are more important, whereas in RtK they all kind of blend together.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Fragas - 2012-10-21
やった！！！
I started learning japanese on around August 15th. So I made it in about 2 months. I've been trying to do 20-25 every day but on weekends I'd do twice as much.
I still have to finish 100 of those new ones, but I'll take a rest off it for now. Now let's get to learning vocab... 
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - warrigal - 2012-10-26
Hell to the YEAH!, folks (and especially gluaygluay, who hit the 3/4 mark around the same time I did). Congratulations and felicitations to y'all, and you give me hope that I'll get here yet ....
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - gluaygluay - 2012-10-26
Thank you Warrigal, I couldn't have done it without all the great stories here. I've high hopes that you (and everyone else doing reps when they'd rather be relaxing) will make it!
I'm definitely in a more relaxed mode now. I used to spend 2 hours a day learning new kanji but that has now dwindled to 30-40 minutes/day of pure reps - partially thanks to the fact that my kanji recall is quite a bit faster so I can crank through them. I'm going to consolidate my kanji knowledge a bit before (1) moving on to vocab/sentences/grammar and (2) learning more kanji (gulp!).
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Zlarp - 2012-11-01
I just finished and added that snake! Still have the supplement to go, but I think I'll wait until I have my reviews die down a bit. They'll be hell (though not so bad that I'm not adding new cards anymore. Still, that 600 review day looming ahead is scary)
This took me all of three weeks, but it felt like forever. Retention is about 60%, and it should be getting higher from now on. Go me!
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Haych - 2012-11-02
Haych Wrote:Another reviewer just crossing the RtK finishline here. Its been quite a journey, I can tell you. From the very first moment I came across Remembering The Kanji about four months ago, I knew it was definitely a good resource. However, I never imagined it could take me all the way to 2042 with such high retension and virtually no reliance on visual memory. I only wish that I had found this site sooner! I didn't even know what a srs was when I started, and thus had the great idea of working my way through all the kanji at once.. making 2042 flashcards with absolutely NO review. The plan was to get my stories over with to refer back to, and reinforce their memory by seeing them in context. When I finished this horribly grudging task, all I had to show for it was 2042 mediocre stories, and a retension of maybe 400 of them. So, while working my way through my first set of reviews, I decided that it wasnt going to work, and began to look online for any sort of tool to help... Of course, when I found this site I was excited, but reasonably cynical. They have a nice setup.. but I just knew the next line would be something like "all yours for ONLY 5.99$ per month!!". Needless to say, that never came, and when I found out it was free, I signed up in an instant. I am sure today that I never would have made it without the site. Heisig's system is great and all.. but there is definitely such thing as a "good" and a "bad" story and without help (and none from Heisig's odd primitives and keywords either), you will likely end up with a whole lot of the latter like I did. But two months and a whole lot of srs'ing later and here I am. At the finish line once again, yet this time feeling like I might be able to recognise a few more than those of the first few lessons. So thank you everyone here for your great stories and encouragement. And to all those people who are still working their way through: Good luck and hang in there! If you keep a regular schedule you will be here in no time. Now for me, the fun has only begun. Once I get most of the stragglers up into deck 4, its onwards and upwards into sentence mining! (and hopefully knowing more the handful of phrases that I do now hehe)Aaaaand crossing the finish line for a third time today! (the above is my post from the 2nd attempt)
But really that first time shouldn't count. I just made a bunch of paper flashcards with horrible stories and did pretty much no review. I think I might still have them somewhere... I should burn those.
But the second time was real. I was elated to be done. But after finishing, I just ignored my reviews after everything was in the last box. I figured exposure could keep them in my memory, and the reviews would just slow me down. Whaaaaat a mistake that was. After 3 years of very inconsistent study, and 1 year of flat-out resignation to pursue Japanese further, I had next to no retention of RTK. I could still sort of recognize words by their general shape, but I couldn't for the life of me remember a single keyword.
But I wasn't ready to give up the fight. This summer I picked up RTK 1 again to begin the long grind. As I made my way through, it was obvious that the keywords were truly lost from my memory. It was new to me once again, yet I managed to get some pretty good retention rates (usually over 80%), so I think some of the intuition at least was still there.
And now, around 3 Months later, using a standard 20 new cards/day, here I am once again. This might seem like the latest in a long proud line of failures, but I feel good about this one. I have a new weapon, and that is CONSISTENCY. I used to have periods of extreme zeal followed up by months of relapse. It was horrible. The fact that SRS need to be used EVERY DAY is something that never really sunk in for me in the last 4 years of study. I've come to realize now that it is not a burden. Doing it like this makes things EASIER for you in the end. Just look at me, I went through RTK 2 full times! High retention rates aside, that's much much more work than 1 time and the dwindling reviews of a 3 year span.
The lesson to learn here is basically DON'T do what I did, but if you find yourself in that position, go for it and do RTK again. It's not that bad. To be honest, I had a lot more fun this time around. It was almost nostalgic.
And now its right back into the fray for me. My kanji-to-meaning recognition is sharp as a tack and it feels great. Also, the nice thing about my method is that I was able to study other things in parallel. RTK didn't have to be my sole focus. I'm up to speed on grammar again too. As for my plans from here, RTK3 (but at a slower rate of 5-10/day), my quick and dirty vocab deck (my preferred method), and lots of exposure (hope to get my first japanese novel under my belt soon).
So good luck everyone! Its a great resource you've found here. With a little diligence, I believe we can assure that we WILL all get where we're aiming. Just don't let yourself lose sight of the goal.
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Zlarp - 2012-11-02
Congrats on finishing, everyone! Today I burned through the last remaining 157 Kanji of the supplement, meaning I have finished RTK in 21 days. Today's reviews were only about 180 cards.
For tomorrow, Anki predicts almost 600. Wish me luck! If I can get over that hump, I think it's all easy going from there. All I need to do now is keep up with reviews, which feels like way less pressure than doing new Kanji every day, interestingly enough
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - undead_saif - 2012-11-02
Zlarp Wrote:Congrats on finishing, everyone! Today I burned through the last remaining 157 Kanji of the supplement, meaning I have finished RTK in 21 days. Today's reviews were only about 180 cards.Wow nice, very good job there! Congrats and ganbatte!!
For tomorrow, Anki predicts almost 600. Wish me luck! If I can get over that hump, I think it's all easy going from there. All I need to do now is keep up with reviews, which feels like way less pressure than doing new Kanji every day, interestingly enough
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - Zlarp - 2012-11-02
I actually feel rather lazy doing it this way. My retention is at 60%, so this is not exactly perfect, though that's still what, over 1000 Kanji?
The thing is, I envy people who can commit to doing RTK in a space of months. I think if I'd had to stick to it for even one more week, I'd have quit out of frustration. All that kept me going was to do more and more Kanji every day, which in the end would have crushed me either because of the reviews piling up or because of the fact that at some point I reach my limit of "number of Kanji I can learn in a given day"
What I'm saying is that I consider myself lucky to have finished before that breaking point. From what I see, many others have gotten far into RTK quickly only to run out of steam before the finish line.
Maybe it's because I turned my Gmail and Steam client's language settings to Japanese and I don't know how to turn them back... and I really wanna be able to know which one's my spam folder and finally get to play XCom, which the sadistic Steam client decided to install in Japanese...
I *need* to be able to read this stuff
The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread. - wiresinabox - 2012-11-03
Today I added the last cards to the deck!!
I have had my RTK1 since spring 2008 when a guy I had a very big crush on recommended it... I did about 70 frames or so back then before I lost interest, I hadn't found this site or any other SRS-system and didn't really know what to look for either. Then I took a break with all my self-studies because other things came up in my life. I had almost convinced myself that I didn't want to learn Japanese after all, because the Kanji put me off. One year ago, I devoted myself to self studies in German instead but as I looked for resources, I found myself clicking on the "Japanese"-links instead of the "German" ones.
What really got me was in the end of May this year when I took part in an art project at "Östasiatiska Muséet" (the East Asian museum) in Stockholm. We was in this fantastic library and conference room of theirs, the walls were covered in book shelves with all kinds of literature about art and culture from all the East Asian countries. In the conference room they look like this. And it was so bright and the whole room smelled like the paper in my Japanese manga books. I wanted to move in there! And then I decided that I really need to consider my decision about never study the Japanese language again.
The I got a summer job that really kept me busy the whole summer, but September 14th I picked up my ol' RTK again and as I read some reviews I found this site. Since it was the Kanji that had scared me away last time I decided that I'd better start with them, get to know them and become their friend. Even thou I'm also searching for jobs and writing a novel I have been able to keep a fast tempo in my Kanji studies so here I am, 7 weeks later, finished! Thanks for all the great stories!!
I have some ideas how to go on from here, I think I will start refreshing some basic vocabulary and grammar and then go on to authentic material and take it from there.