(Book one that is)

Yeah I did it! I finally finished book one a couple days ago!


I have been working thru that book for about nine months. It really feels like a major accomplishment.

I have already started carrying around book two. It feels so good to look at a green KO2001 book after staring at a blue one for almost a year.

Sorry to start such a self indulging new thread, but its been a heck of a long haul, and I wanted to share the news.)and yes, recieve some congrats!)

Everyone that contribute to the KO project-thanks you! I did half the book by myself, which is partly why it took so long.

Thanks to this site , which got me thru Heisig, and Anki!

Now for the juice----

The book no doubt works. My reading has shoot thru the roof. One year of Heisig plus KO is way, way better than 5 years of japanese in college.

I think the book really shines if you are living in Japan. Some examples of recent activities where I though, "Wow, I just understood all that!" are:

-When I went to signed the contract for my apartment.
-When I took the drivers lincense test.
-Every time I go to the city office, reading whatever new crappy paperwork I have to do is a piece of cake.
-When I went to get internet hooked up.
-Often, when I fire up my yahoo.co.jp homepage and see the news.


Baically, all the day to day things you do in your own langauge with out thinking, I think
KO2001 and thier priority frequency Kanji compounds set you up well to live here.

Now on two book two........

Hi there,

So you did RTK1 and then immediately went onto this kanji odyssey? From the looks of your post, 2001KO is the way to go.

Where would you say your reading/writing level is after doing 2001KO on the JLPT scale? i.e. level 1, 2, ect.

Thanks and congratulations on finishing the first book!

Is it really that good? Let's say you already know the onyomi readings, would it still help as much as it did you?

Replicator Wrote:Hi there,

So you did RTK1 and then immediately went onto this kanji odyssey? From the looks of your post, 2001KO is the way to go.

Where would you say your reading/writing level is after doing 2001KO on the JLPT scale? i.e. level 1, 2, ect.

Thanks and congratulations on finishing the first book!

1. Yes went straight to KO, but I did have 5 years of grammer under my belt from college.
2. Not sure, cause I am not interested in the JLPT, but having just a quick look at the books at the book store, there doesnt seem to be a lot of unfamiliar kanji there. Grammer is a different issue of course.

alyks Wrote:Is it really that good? Let's say you already know the onyomi readings, would it still help as much as it did you?

1. Yes, it is really that good!
2. I am sure even if you know all the onyomi readings the book can still help, since it countaings a TON of vocabulay that is very useful.

Congrats, zazen666. That is great news for all of us. I'm glad to hear KO is so effective.

Do you think the spreadsheet is now safe to use without more checking? I'm stalling around the three hundred already double checked kanji mark, worrying about how safe the rest are.

PParisi Wrote:Congrats, zazen666. That is great news for all of us. I'm glad to hear KO is so effective.

Thanks!

phauna Wrote:Do you think the spreadsheet is now safe to use without more checking? I'm stalling around the three hundred already double checked kanji mark, worrying about how safe the rest are.

I think all the sentences with Kanji are fine. It seems somepeople used some kind of atomatic reading sysytem to get the hiragana for many of the sentneces in the spread sheets and some of thoose had errors.

I never put a whole sentenece in hiragana in my cards, just the words I need to know.

Cool, thanks, onward.

Awesome job! Sounds like KO2001 is really useful. I've heard a lot of great things about the books Oh well, gotta finish RTK1 first though!

Good job once again!

nest0r Wrote:Congratulations senpai. I'll get here, one of these days.

Thanks! You will make it!

FlyingFin Wrote:Awesome job! Sounds like KO2001 is really useful. I've heard a lot of great things about the books Oh well, gotta finish RTK1 first though!

Good job once again!

It IS useful, no doubt. When I look back a year Im really suprised (suprised actaully, that I didnt always read this well. It has started to feel so natural.)

Its motivated me to continue on seriously with KO book 2!

Congratulations! It's good to hear that even without doing volume 2 yet, you're already seeing major benefits in your ability to read. I just started the book last night and will be trying to do 2 pages daily.

Good luck with book 2!

Thank you-I appreciate the congrats. Seriously, they are nice to get.
It was a lot of work to get thru book one, and there isnt too many people around me that share my enthusiasm to learn Kanji, so your guyses support and congrats apperciated!

I just finished book one today, it took quite a long time considering, something to do with so much new vocabulary. I also went through two other books at the same time, though.

I've been going back and fixing any mistakes I found on the google spreadsheet, so I think the whole thing has been checked twice now, it's pretty safe to use. I found a lot of mistakes, especially around the 500 mark, but I can't guarantee I found all of them, of course. Major ones have definitely been put to bed though.

Hey congrats! It must feel really good to have knocked book one out of the way (as well as the other two).

I like to put the books up around my study area (RTK as well), and put a little mark in the back of the book with the date of when I finished the book, sort of as a trophy and motivation.

I was hoping to be the first on this blog to have finised book two as well, but seems someone beat me to the punch. Oh well, each to thier own pace.......

How about feed back? how has the book worked out for you? What kind of cards did you make? How do you feel about KO2 and beyond?

Congratulations to both of you. This is very motivating to hear.

Well I just did them recognition only. Kanji to kana with invisible English. I feel it's made my immersion more productive, I often have those 'a-ha' moments when I finally hear a word and understand it. When I have a conversation a similar thing happens, I hear a key word or two which I hadn't before. Also, I can speak about most things and even about weird things, like the economy and science and such. I think KO has a lot of useful words that I wouldn't find anywhere else for a while. Like 'evolution', 'fossil', 'dinosaur' etc.

I'm definitely going to start book 2 soon, I just think it's more productive to see all these words once, and then any future reading can ram them into my head. I mean, I don't want to learn everything about a word before I move onto the next one, just the pronunciation and a meaning is enough to start with. There is my whole life to learn the rest.

OK finished both book today an hour ago !!!
it took me 8 months both way (recognition and production) with the completion of the kanzen master 2kyuu in the meantime my studies and a bit of laxism during summer time....so I feel as proud as when i finished RTK1....

for those wondering about the results :
Hell yeah I feel A LOOOOOOOOOOOT better than a few months ago : i can read mangas, anime script ,website ,video game quite easily .
-about video game : for instance I'm playing at hotel dusk right now , It's an adventure game so it's not like playing mario kart in japanese....especially since there are a lot of traps and game over can come out of nowhere if you're not focused on what NPC are saying and your answers.... ) . I took a look at the trial game serie 逆転裁判 ace attorney and I didn't feel in a alien world either.
-contrary to the well-spread belief news aren't really a hard nut to crack : once you feel comfortable with kanjis it turns out quite easy . Grammar is basic ,presentation standard , there is a lot of hints and background . Listening is another deal though even if I improved in this area too (not to the same extent though) ...
- I didn't venture much to light novel .... This is a whole different world . ....Maybe it has something to do with the very lightnovel I'm reading :the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya. As GITS it can be quite litterate sometimes especially when nagano is speaking . But I don't have as much trouble with the "melancholy " manga so I guess light novel are simply harder : phrases can be insanely long , a lot of pretty advanced kanji can pop out and grammar is far more complicate .

So yeah it works . Definetely .When I look at my fellowcamarads 's sluggish pace , the repetitive failure , the despair I can't even imagine another way of proceeding (even if the classic method works : it's a just a LOOOOOOOT longer and way more painful)
:- RTK1 with RVK
- a bit of beginner formal studying (it was minna no nihongo for me but from what I heard geki or japanese for busy people, japanese for everyone, aren't bad either)
- KO2001 with anki (by the way it won't hurt to use TTA technology : I batched files in text aloud and even if the pace isn't totally natural , even if there is bunch of mistake - the soft has a a hard time with 方　今 for instance - most of the time it's quite good . And it's very important to HEAR japanese. )
- a 2Kyuu grammar manual (it was kanzen master for me but here again the array of books available is just mesmerizing .If I had to do it again maybe I would have choosed unicom manual as it's provided with a cd .... maybe i'll do it if I find some people to type in the same way we did with KO2001 ) with anki

currently I'm slightly behind the top of the class who has been studying japanese for 5 years : she's obviously stronger than me in kanji reading but when it comes to writing (thanks to RK1) and to grammar (thanks to the 2Kyuu manuel ) I'm a lot better than her . And I only spent 1 year and 4 months while she spent 5 years in university on it devoted exclusively to japenese . It's also a fantastic slap in the face of anyone denying the efficiency of the RTK1 method . You just have to complete with another method for the reading (frankly I'm a bit skeptic about RTK2 I side with kathzumoto on this one . That's where KO2001 is a perfect parter to RTK : as you learn according frequency of the kanji all the stuff you learned becomes immediatly usable . You have a maximum efficiency) but separate the writing and the reading is not only good it works better than the classical way!

That rocks man! You beat me on book two (im a bit side tracked with using Iknows sentences).

Congrats

First, congratulations!

I'm wondering though, what google spreadsheet are you talking of? Link?

Thanks,
Marcel

Oh, nevermind. I found the answer in the other thread. Good way to handle it! If I got that right, this looks like a good book to try after RTK1. Bookmarked, thanks!

(and sorry for being off-topic...) o.O

It was precisely my point .
It's more than a good book after RTK1 . The two of them are simply a perfect pair .
Roughly speaking there are only 2 problems with kanji :
1 : the writing is awfully confusing . You can practice for years and still forget almost everything about them if you don't practice (with the traditionnal method)
2 : there are a f..... bunch of them to learn before having a decent grasp on a basic natural japanese text (gaijin-friendly book doesn't count . ). Most of the time 1000 kanjis is spoken of as the bounder .
- Except it's a lot (that's why a 2B or 2-3kyuu is to be created within months . The gap is just too great for many people.) .
- Except it depends on WHICH kanjis you are learning : and the official classification is neither based on writing construction (see point 1) nor 100% based on their frequence.... for a japanese guy as he's living in a 100% kanji environment even if his classical education is failing the daily situations provides him with the important kanji.


So now with a RTK- KO2001 system
1st point is taken care of by RTK : best proof of this is that even if I didn't practice the RTK kanji for months (well I'm not a wizard ... I couldn't manage to deal with my studies , a 2KYUU grammar japanese book ,KO2001 and RTK1 . Maybe when I get a shot at uberman- polyphasic sleep...As I was confident about the RTK method I didn't pratice them after a while and even now out of 2000 about 800 of them still remain to learn for a latter use...It's not like I will forget them ) when a new one came up within my KO2001 studies It took me barely a couple of minute to rebuild the link with the story laid out for months now . Because it's good story , good memory. Sure it's not as vivid as it used to be but it stays here and eventually I have ALWAYS remembered the story . While the inaccuracy of the gesture memory (which is still important , it's just not enough) leads to start almost from scrach if you didn't practice for a long time and you' re still a beginner.
2nd point is the job of KO2001 : You really learn what you need to learn in priority :NOTHING MORE ! here what i learned of the jouhou kanji
Grade 1: 75 sur 80 (93.8%).
Grade 2: 152 sur 160 (95.0%).
Grade 3: 188 sur 200 (94.0%).
Grade 4: 180 sur 200 (90.0%).
Grade 5: 168 sur 185 (90.8%).
Grade 6: 138 sur 181 (76.2%).
JuniorHS: 350 sur 939 (37.3%)
as you can see I don't even know all the kanji for the 1ST F.... GRADE! and I hardly noticed it while I was reading : simply because while they're rated 1st grade, 2nd grade , 3rd grade maybe in fact they're 9th grade in practice (I'm counting out jimei and nanori meaning : if you need to learn japanese name those kanji can be useful but considering even the japanese themselves have trouble with the name... I don't think it can be acknowledeged as a "priority") .
and on top of that you don't learn simply kanji (at least if you do it with anki) you learn phrases : even if it will never be as natural as japanese for japanese , it's still good japenese : what adjectives goes with wich noun , which adverb goes with which verb , wich noun goes with wich verb what are the difference between very close notion ... you learn about links and background . The same way as Kanji in context except it's considerably easier (I bought KIC recently I know what I'm talking ) not to mention the "frequency point" .

for the stuff I read (video games , anime script , sport website ,seinen mangas ) 9 out of 10 times I understand what's going on : and of those 9 I'd say 5 are native-like comprehension . (You have to take into account that i'm also 2kyuu grammer level yet: if you just know kanji sometimes I guess it won't be enough )
As i said previously I can't talk much for novel or professionnal stuff. But I'm rather optimistic about the prospect . I'm still looking for a good angle , right now I guess reading light novel won't be as fun as the rest ... But starting from now on work is on a downhill it's just a matter of time . The hardest point is already behind me cause i have a whole new playground : I don't learn japanese , I live with it . It's not an ordeal , it's a challenge (as I know I'm going to get stronger ) and a great pleasure (when you begin to watch matrix and star wars in japanese things become really fun ).

as far as I'm concerned RTK and KO2001 should simply be sold together.

N.B: by the way if anyone is interested by typing in KIC we can do the same thing we did with KO2001. Slot and all the stuff...KIC is on 2000 kanjis and I want the 800 whose I don't know the reading

Ghinzdra, wow, great job. It's embarrassing a bit that I helped type up the spreadsheet (oh my gods, almost a year ago) and never got into the triple digits on it. So yeah, outstanding.

So, do tell, what method did you do for studying reviewing KO? Rough number of new items per day? Dictation? Reading?

I know I won't restart much less finish KO now. It's too similar to iKnow in what it provides ultimately. Still, roughly 3000 sentences covering 5000 vocabulary (actually more than that if you consider unique vocabulary in sentences that are not covered by the 1100 kanji) makes for a compressive baseline.

Man, what a motivating post. Got me all excited.