so i studied, for example, the kanji 安 (relax) and saw in my rikaichan that it means "cheap".

huh?

it means that when i'll read a japanese text and find the 安 kanji will read it like "relax' instead of cheap, right? can't fit it together...
sounds mighty-o-baaad to me.
i enjoy reading and try to do it as much as possible though i'm only not far above the 200 kanji mark here... wouldn't it be quite a problem in the long run?

thankies.
::twincy

Yeah, it means cheap, but it can mean a whole lot of other things as well. Look at this character in compounds and you get a better idea of it's "essence".

安い - inexpensive, peaceful, quiet
安全 - safety
安住 - living peacefully
公安 - public safety, public welfare
安上がり - economy

(I pulled these from EDICT)

So Heisig's keyword of "relax" isn't quite right, but neither is "cheap". Try not to get too caught up in nailing a keywords meaning, most of them are slighty off anyway. It is simply impossible to find words in English that capture a characters possible range of meaning. Just keep reading and seeing characters in context.

ah. cool.
so i kinda should wait with it until i get to RTK2 when i'll start with the readings?

Nothing wrong with that route, just hammer through RTK1 accepting the keywords as they are (they may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing... ) and then start reading afterwards.

You can think of something that is cheap as having a very laid back or relaxed price to it. I don't think that's much of a stretch from the RTK meaning. The essence of the kanji is somewhere in the middle. English keywords are only an approximation of a kanji's overall flavor. This might sound like some sort of flowery/artsy explanation, but I assure you there is quite a bit of art in language.