Still going through RTK 1. At this point I've studied 500 of the Kanji so far. So I'm close to 1/4th of the way there. Although, I've had to slow down since I hit around 300 Kanji. Once I got to 300 Kanji I went from doing 50 a day to around 20 a day. Simply because the Kanji seemed to get substantially more difficult to memorize. Is this normal and have others encountered this kind of scenario? Also, I heard in another topic that a lot of people say not to stress too much over remembering all of the Kanji.

Many posters said that Remembering the Kanji is just a means to an end, but not quite the end itself. Mainly considering the book to be there to at least memorize a good portion of the Joyo Kanji's meanings. Obviously, remembering all 2042(Note I am aware that there is more Kanji to the Joyo Kanji in total, but my version of RTK 1 has that many total) Kanji after finishing RTK 1 is impossible. Nobody is perfect and even the best and brightest are going to miss a few Kanji. Around what % or number of Kanji should a person be able to remember the meanings of after RTK 1 is completed in your opinions? Thanks to those who post and help.

I finished the new total of 2200 kanji about a week ago. I usually have about 50-100 kanji come up in reviews each day since then, and remember about 90% of them no worries, usually even with 100 kanji, my reviews take less than 30 minutes.

When you say the kanji are becoming more difficult to memorise, what exactly do you mean? Is it that is was difficult to come up with a story that lead to a memorable image? Or did you make a story ok, but you can't seem to remember it when seeing the keyword?

If your problem is the first, I'd recommend checking out the stories on this site for inspiration. However, the best stories I've found are the ones related to what you first think of when you see the keyword. For example, the keyword "everywhere". The first thing I think of is that Michelle Branch song "Everywhere", so I made a story and image associated with that, instead of using the ones on this site.

If the second problem, your image might not be vivid enough. Remember to spend even up to 5 minutes making sure your image is the most amazingly vivid thing you can. It will save you so much time in the long run, because you won't fail the kanji often, if at all.

Remembering the Kanji 1 is a very solid foundation for your kanji. Many people go off and find their own ways of adding in the readings. But just learning kanji is not why people learn kanji. They learn kanji because they are learning Japanese. In that sense, it's not an end in itself, because proficiency in Japanese is probably your end point, a part of which entails proficiency in kanji, if you see what I mean?

I hope that helped!

90% success rate for mature cards is normal.