I was thinking to take a day off from adding cards, knowing I was going to get slammed with reviews one of these days, but I couldn't resist and added 56 cards (lesson 40). Then 185 expired cards showed up. Ugh!!

1541 kanji, 1541 pictures.

Will enter 11 cards to get just beyond 3/4 tomorrow (through 1539), but only 1133 cards mature as of today -- so not really 3/4 AFAIC. However, stories written already through 1706, so I can clearly see the end of that process at hand. I checked out of curiosity and I only have something like 23 primitives left to assimilate. Getting there for sure.

Just made it to 1540, I'm at the peak of motivation right now. I'll be finished on the 31st. If you've made it this far then you know you're going to make it, but for those who've just begun or under 1000 just remember to keep your mind straight on doing some everyday and you'll make it.

I have been going SOOO SLOOOW, but I finally made it here.
Started in February or March (really? seems so long ago), and I thought I was going to blast through RTK like it was nothing.

Then schoolwork kept piling up. I said I would blast past it when summer came. Well here it is, and I'm even lazier than I was when school was on.

500(ish) more, I can do this!

I'll be posting in this thread in 1 week. (Am i cheating?) Im doing this post as a motivator so as to not humiliate myself.

I'm currently at 1026, still clearing up my huge review pile, I was at 1200 before but I had to delete that stack because I had not reviewed them upon addition.

liosama Wrote:I'll be posting in this thread in 1 week. (Am i cheating?) Im doing this post as a motivator so as to not humiliate myself.

I will be paying attention. I love nothing more than a good public shaming.

Just hit 1575 after a 100 kanji run today. Will finish by monday/tuesday! =)
See you then!

Haha, looks like we're almost neck and neck. I'm in an in-between-learn-and-review session right now, and I just got to 1610. I'll be done with 1647 by the time I finish today.

Looks like you are my partner in crime...or motivation...or rival.
頑張れ！

edit: I figured I may as well finish lesson 42 rather than just stopping.

Hahaha!
It's on, man! Hoho! Let's finish, and celebrate soon!!

Today was tough. I had a lot going on, woke up late, landlord wanted to show the place to prospective renters, blah blah blah.

BUT! I did get done another 3 lessons. I start at 1757 tomorrow morning!
Its ridiculous to think I was at 1504 like 2 days ago.

edit: Check this out, most encouraging thing ever:
http://i27.tinypic.com/2j51d0o.png

I've got a word doc of all the kanji so anyone can make their own "poster" if anyone is interested.

I passed the 3/4 mark today on my second pass of RTK1 (actually 3rd, first time I only made it to 650 or so, before I found this site).

I finished RTK1 last may after taking a whole year, but stopped reviewing soon after finishing - BIG MISTAKE. This time I'm back to 3/4 in just (!) 3 months (full time job, girlfriend, aikido, KO2001 + JLPT2 grammar during the same time, so not too bad).
It's much easier second time around, my reviews are around 95% every day and a lot of my misses are mixed up keywords.

Best day so far was (re)learning 150 Kanji the day before the JLPT test (along with reviewing about 500 sentences in Anki)! Long day, but surprisingly those Kanji seem to have stuck just as well as any others.

No way I'm going to stop reviewing after finishing this time!

avparker Wrote:I finished RTK1 last may after taking a whole year, but stopped reviewing soon after finishing - BIG MISTAKE. This time I'm back to 3/4 in just (!) 3 months (full time job, girlfriend, aikido, KO2001 + JLPT2 grammar during the same time, so not too bad).
It's much easier second time around, my reviews are around 95% every day and a lot of my misses are mixed up keywords.

No way I'm going to stop reviewing after finishing this time!

I am having the same experiences as you--a second time reviewing at 95% and also studying other materials--and it's amazing how motivating it is to do reviews each day when it requires much less effort, failed cards don't pile up, etc. By the time I finished initially, I was so completely burned out on daily kanji reviews that I HAD to study other things for a while but this time, it's really a lot of fun.

Go Asriel and Zorlee! You're almost there!

@Zorlee--cool avatar. I'm a big Hiromi fan too.

Just did 1545, so more than 3/4 of the way done. According to Anki my deck was created 3 months ago, and I had planned to finish it in 3 months when I was beginning. Buuut it doesn't matter, I'm happy to reach this far, with an avarage of exactly 17 cards a day.
Now to finish the 497 remaining

Finally made it to 1550. The period from 1/2 to 3/4 seemed to take forever, but now I'm more motivated than ever. In a way that long stretch was good because I just kept doing my reviews without adding a lot of new cards, and it kept pushing everything over into the final pile. It's pretty satisfying to see that big green column dominating the others.

I'm on pace to finish exactly at the end of the month and I'm so excited to move on to the next step--tackling the actual language. Congratulations to everyone who has made it this far. Thanks for all your great stories.

elmaestrokgb -- I had the exact same thing. 1/2 to 3/4 was a killer stretch. It felt good to make it to 1/2, and then things just slowed down for one reason or another...

But trust me, I just finished yesterday, and I know you'll be done in no time!!!

Alright, 3/4

To think I was in this same spot 6 months ago ><

Then I fell off my reviews and forgot most of everything except the stuff that was in my 4 or more reviews box, just goes to show.....

Anyways, just ordered KO2001 for when I reach 2042 ^^

Asriel Wrote:elmaestrokgb -- I had the exact same thing. 1/2 to 3/4 was a killer stretch. It felt good to make it to 1/2, and then things just slowed down for one reason or another...

I'm with you guys, exact same thing happened to me. But hey! Now we're over the hump. Just 6 more days and I'll have added #2042!

Put me down as another one who experienced the exact same thing. But I just now crawled over the 3/4 mark and have 1540 cards indexed, all reviewed at least once, none in the failed pile. I think the last 500 took me the same length of time as the first thousand, if not more.

Granted I did slow down quite a bit, due to both work constraints and sitting in on a Japanese class. There were several weeks over the past few months when I added no cards at all, just did my daily reviews. I think I averaged adding maybe 50-60 per week. On the other hand, 1299 of my 1540 cards are in the rightmost pile now as a result, so maybe it's not all bad.

I was hoping to finish RTK1 by the end of the (northern hemisphere) summer, but I guess that's a pipe dream. No matter, I'll be glad to finish it by the end of the calendar year at this rate. It isn't a race after all.

Congratulations to everyone else who crossed the 3/4 mark! I think it really is downhill from here. I'll catch up to the rest of you at the finish line, eventually!

3/4 of the way there. it's all downhill now.

and at this rate i should be done in less than a week!

and then maybe real japanese? hahah

Keep it up everyone. Now 9/10ths of the way done, and the last 500 are flying past, relatively speaking. It's always fun to see new primitives go from being strange squiggles I saw when I peeked at the back of the book, to reliable old friends. Don't know how big a nerd anyone else here is, but it reminds me of learning all that crazy stuff at the back of the calculus book when I was in school. Hopefully I can remember these squiggles a little longer than I remembered that calculus.

I got to 1400 today. That's about 100-something kanji shy of 3/4, but since I pace myself at about 100 or so a day, I'll have finished well over three quarters in two days or so. Maybe some of us fellow RvTKers will graduate around the 10th of August?

KaitouJS Wrote:I got to 1400 today. That's about 100-something kanji shy of 3/4, but since I pace myself at about 100 or so a day, I'll have finished well over three quarters in two days or so. Maybe some of us fellow RvTKers will graduate around the 10th of August?

I might finish around 10th I'm at frame 1550 now and it took me exactly 30 days, not as impressive as yours 100/day but still quite fast.

Never thought I'd get that far, I wonder how some people could quit at this point after doing all this work with the last stretch in sight :/ I slowly phase in into a Japanese environment and at this point I begin to recognize a LOT of kanji seen in anime, what better motivation could I ask for? The only thing that's on my mind now is "I want to finish fast and start learning how to read those darned things"

thurd Wrote:

KaitouJS Wrote:I got to 1400 today. That's about 100-something kanji shy of 3/4, but since I pace myself at about 100 or so a day, I'll have finished well over three quarters in two days or so. Maybe some of us fellow RvTKers will graduate around the 10th of August?

I might finish around 10th I'm at frame 1550 now and it took me exactly 30 days, not as impressive as yours 100/day but still quite fast.

Never thought I'd get that far, I wonder how some people could quit at this point after doing all this work with the last stretch in sight :/ I slowly phase in into a Japanese environment and at this point I begin to recognize a LOT of kanji seen in anime, what better motivation could I ask for? The only thing that's on my mind now is "I want to finish fast and start learning how to read those darned things"

Hahaha! Yeah, there's no greater satisfaction than seeing what you study pop up in the media.

Also, I generally recommend to others that they don't go at 100 a day like me. I say it's not a lot of work because I'm guilty of modesty and understating facts. It IS a lot of work. I spend 5 hours a day on kanji (1 hour review expired + failed, 4 hours on new) and I have a lot of failed cards in my deck currently - 94, to be precise. The good news is that it's not all grouped up in one specific area, it's sort of spaced out.

To answer the potential question, "why don't I slow down", I don't slow down because there's no need to. Once I finish the book, there's plenty of time to revise what I know and get better. Some people like to progress cleanly and efficiently (like the guy up above who did 50-60 a week and got no failed cards), but I like getting my hands dirty.

Also, there's also the fact that learning how to write and remember the kanji is only one small, small step, however significant.. you can't spend all your time on it or you'll have wrinkles on your face before you even reach the next steps in learning the language.

KaitouJS Wrote:Hahaha! Yeah, there's no greater satisfaction than seeing what you study pop up in the media.

Also, I generally recommend to others that they don't go at 100 a day like me. I say it's not a lot of work because I'm guilty of modesty and understating facts. It IS a lot of work. I spend 5 hours a day on kanji (1 hour review expired + failed, 4 hours on new) and I have a lot of failed cards in my deck currently - 94, to be precise. The good news is that it's not all grouped up in one specific area, it's sort of spaced out.

To answer the potential question, "why don't I slow down", I don't slow down because there's no need to. Once I finish the book, there's plenty of time to revise what I know and get better. Some people like to progress cleanly and efficiently (like the guy up above who did 50-60 a week and got no failed cards), but I like getting my hands dirty.

Also, there's also the fact that learning how to write and remember the kanji is only one small, small step, however significant.. you can't spend all your time on it or you'll have wrinkles on your face before you even reach the next steps in learning the language.

I have to agree it is a LOT of work, at first its easy to manage 100/day but later it starts to pile up and you spend even more time on it and then you just burn out or at least I would.

But as you said going faster is definitely more efficient way of doing RTK since in later stages you will also be seeing the same kanji just in their natural environment and review them anyway. RTK is just the first step on a long journey to master kanji and you don't want to take too long taking the first step.