According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jōyō_kanji)
"As of 16 Jan 2009, the list of 191 additional charaters can be seen here:[http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0116/TKY200901160297.html]"

What do you think about this?

It won't be called jouyou anymore. And they shouldn't be added to RtK3, RtK3 is unimportant compared to the jouyou list. It should be added to RtK1.

Personally, I don't think it's worth thinking about. For anyone who has cleared RtK1, learn the new ones with the same technique. For anyone else, complete RtK1 and then do the same.

I did a quick glance through those 191 and I believe most of them are already included in RTK1.

Shirow66 Wrote:I did a quick glance through those 191 and I believe most of them are already included in RTK1.

Either that, or you probably already know them anyway from reading, if you've finished RTK.

To keep things simple, I say keep Heisig RTK1 and RTK3 seperate from the Jouyou list. By the time you finish RTK1, you should have the ability to add any and all kanji you desire on top of that. Yes, I know RTK is in large part on the jouyou. We've known for a long time that the jouyou is lacking (and includes some wonky kanji on top of that).

In addition, woelpad has plug-in that allows re-arranging the order you learn kanji on RevTK that can take into account the new kanji.

Not knowing a few jouyou kanji does not magically make you illiterate (no would knowing all of them make you literate).

[Katsuo]

I made some documents with details of the new Joyo kanji, including suggested names for those not in RTK.

For links to those documents, see the section titled Joyo Kanji Information here.

Wow, nice spreadsheets with all the needed information! Thanks, Katsuo!

Good to see 俺 and 誰 are finally in there, these have to be 2 of the most common kanji ever and I can't imagine why they weren't included before.

Katsuo Wrote:I made some documents with details of the new Joyo kanji, including suggested names for those not in RTK.

For links to those documents, see the section titled Joyo Kanji Information here.

wow thanks!

Paludis Wrote:Good to see 俺 and 誰 are finally in there, these have to be 2 of the most common kanji ever and I can't imagine why they weren't included before.

Well, they weren't that common when the jouyou list was created. It should also be noted that a lot of people didn't want 俺 included since it's still considered a bad word by some and including it in the list sort of "accepts" it.

俺? Bad word? *Seriously*?? O_O

They don't seem to be too bad. At any rate, plenty of these are on RTK1 (And if not, they all seem to be in some document or other in my computer, including Mac's Dictionary files).
This was just from a quick sampling though, however the number of characters doesn't seem to be awfully intimidating, especially not when seen on Wikipedia.

One thing I noticed they did was add the kanji for all the prefectures in Japan; I always thought it was strange that 13 of the names of the prefectures plus Osaka couldn't be written with the Jouyou Kanji (茨城県, 栃木県, 埼玉県, 神奈川県, 山梨県, 岐阜県, 静岡県, 大阪府, 奈良県, 岡山県, 愛媛県, 福岡県, 熊本県, 鹿児島県). At first I thought that maybe Jouyou excluded all name-only kanji and so some of the prefectures could be written just by happenstance, but 滋 and 潟 seem pretty suspicious under that criteria. In any case, what's the point of having 県 on the list if you can't even write all the 県?

All in all, the additions seem just about as arbitrary as the original list -- most of them are comparatively common among rare kanji, but there are a couple that I scratched my head over (Why does 瑠璃 need to be Jouyou? 冥 was added a couple of years too late, now that Pluto's not a planet anymore. 辣 seems to have been added only for 辣油, but that's already written in katakana about half the time and there are so many food related terms that use non-Jouyou kanji already I don't see why this one in particular was chosen. Maybe the compilers like ramen. I guess they added 丼 as well, and　酎 for 焼酎 and 酎ハイ. Perhaps the committee met in 居酒屋...)