First of all if the title of the post is not correct, can any english native speaker correct it?

Some days ago I was talking to a girl here at university. She was studying japanese and ask me some questions about grammar and vocab.
We were talking and there was a blackboard in the room, so I started writing some words and drawing some kanji on the board. It was the first time I
have showed my RTK skills to someone. I got surprised by my own skills!!! Almost everyword I wrote on the board I wrote in kanji [and put furigana].
It is not like I was trying to show myself to the girl, but it was very natural to me to use kanji instead of hiragana. Usually hiragana is very natural
and familiar, we can write it without thinking, but kanji is different... or it was different! Althought I was writing very basic kanji,
I was writing without thinking, the kanji seemed to be part of me. It was absolutelly rewarding and I thought about all the work we have studying
RTK and reviewing our SRS every day. Another thing is that I have about 1200 kanji on the last stack and 600 failed kanji! With 600 failed kanji
I already felt that confidence and familiarity with kanji. I can't imagine for those who have like 2500 or more kanji in the last stack!!!!
It must be great! Even though I am taking a break from my japanese studies (need to study more english!), I still doing RTK revisions and plan to master
all the 3000 kanji from RTK vol1 and vol3.

Anyone have similar stories about showing your abilities to other students or even japanese language teachers?
I have not taken japanese classes for a long time, but I am dying to see a RTK graduate at a japanese class!

mairov Wrote:First of all if the title of the post is not correct, can any english native speaker correct it?

'your' instead of 'you', but I assume that's a typo and not a real mistake. I also think it should be 'shown' instead of 'showed', but unless they're an English expert, it'd trip up most native speakers anyhow. (I could be wrong about it, anyhow...)

As far as your experience went... That's great. I'm very much looking forward to the day I can use my Japanese knowledge to help or impress someone. I'm still quite a ways off from that, though.

One of my Japanese teachers told me that I need to work on improving my Kanji. I plan to blow her mind when school starts back in a few months :p

Way to go!

I have a different story to tell:

Some time ago, my buddy was writing some kanjis to a japanese girl to read. I could not read any kanji at that time, but as soon as she speaked I'd laught. And she could not understand why I laughted.

The thing is that he was writing portuguese words (not family friendly ones) for her. Finally about after the 4th word she got it.

btw, mairov. Donde vc e'?

I'm not done RTK yet due to lack of time, but I'm slowly working my way through it. I do a language exchange twice a week and even with the ~1200 I actually know my language buddy is frequently impressed with my ability to recognize and write the kanji he uses, as well as guess the meaning of words.

Despite the stereotype of Japanese people being distrustful of the RTK method, he thinks it's great and keeps encouraging me to finish.

Don't forget that you can't really "trust" Japanese people's surprise or their being impressed that you can write kanji. Very often it's just oseji. Way back when I had friend who was all surprised that I could write 猫. When the comments stop coming, or they go on nonstop and it turns into a conversation about kanji etc is when you know you've made it.

It's the same thing as 日本語お上手ですね and はしお上手ですね.

Jarvik7 Wrote:はしお上手ですね.

I'm getting kinda sick of this one...honestly, I have yet to meet a foreigner in Japan that couldn't use chopsticks.

Back on topic, I have a Chinese friend who's at about the same level of Japanese ability as I am. My favorite RTK experience was matching her kanji for kanji when trying to read a sign - neither one of us had any idea what the readings were, but RTK put me on par with her as far as guessing the meanings. She still owns me at non-Jouyou/RTK1 kanji, but I have a significant edge on 訓読, so the rivalry goes on...