Hey fellas,
I've gotten really into this RTK thing recently, and I've been curious of the reasons that other people began the whole thing. I personally read about it on reddit in March, grabbed the book and got to 500 before I discovered this site. Now at 1375 and going strong thanks in part to this site. I currently live in the US and the reason I began is because I need to learn this language because I'm going to study computer and electrical engineering at Tohoku University (東北大学) this October, and I'll be there for a year. I'm trying to pick up as much of this language as I can before I get my ass shipped over there. I love doing RTK but I really can't wait to be done with it and start learning how to actually say the sentences and read things, haha.

So why did you guys start and where? Did you already get to Japan before you started, or have no plans of going?

It's nice to hear to your story

I don't even remember HOW I got started or heard about it. I guess I read about it somewhere online, or maybe I just stumbled upon the book on Amazon? I started some time last year and I finished within a few months or so. Afterward though I took a long break from studying Japanese so that I forgot a lot. I went through it a second time just recently. When I first did RTK I did not even know about this forum, though I used the website for my reviews. The second time around I was using Anki, which, in my opinion, is much more effective due to the customizations you can make.

Before I started RTK the first time I had already studied Japanese for a while, maybe about one year. Though I never took a formal class, I had many Japanese friends and went through university textbooks by myself. At the time I had been to Japan a few times.

Have fun at Tohoku.

I started a couple months ago. I'd read about the Heisig book many times and always blown it off because it seemed like a lot of extra work. What I didn't realize is that all the extra work actually makes for much, much less work in the end. Also, I didn't understand about using easy kanji as components to build more complex ones, which I think is the real heart of RTK. His ordering is brilliant.

What motivated me to go for it was the AJATT site. Everything there just made so much sense to me and he's such a motivating writer that I jumped in head first. I've made some major modifications to how I'm working through RTK now, and I'm quite happy with it. I'm currently putting together an Anki deck using this method, and I'll share more when I complete it.
I want to learn Japanese because I'm a buddhist and I want access to texts in the original language, and I'd like to translate many of them which have not been translated yet. That's a long way off though. I also really enjoy japanese pop. culture, as well as many things about their culture at large. Once upon a time I had planned to move there and do my doctorate Buddhist Studies at Hanazono University, but two kids (3 and 5), a divorce, a major shift in academic interest, and a disabling disease later and that plan has been largely altered.
I've been studying japanese about 6 years now, but on-again, off-again. I had three years of it in college, but learned less than a hundred kanji and not much vocabulary either. My comprehension of grammar is high, however. The class expectations just were not very high, so most of what I've learned has been through self-study. But, I'm awesome so I can learn whatever I want on my own.
I'm probably more committed to learning it than I've ever been. Something about reading through AJATT rekindled the fire inside me, and now it's burning so strongly this is my major activity all day every day, although most of that time is just spent in immersion, not "actively" studying. Also, because of my disability, I have days when the pain prevents me from doing much activity, so I just maintain my immersion on those days. Anyways, I'm rambling at this point and tired of typing...ganbatte.

I found Heisig a couple months ago on amazon.com, I think. Before that, I had worked through a couple textbooks (Genki 1, Hasagawa, Human Japanese) plus some iPhone apps, but kanji had always left me mystified. My attempts to learn kanji were haphazard and discouraging. Then I found RTK, and lo and behold, the kanji now make sense to me. I'm up to about 1500 in RTK1, and I'm really looking forward to the next step, though I'm completely confused about what the next step should be: Tae Kim, KO2001, Core 2000, Kanji in Context, Minna no Nihongo, who knows; but that's a subject covered in other threads.

As for why, I have been interested in Japanese for years, since I visited the country a couple decades ago. But I didn't really start studying it until I picked up Genki last year. I don't have any immediate plans to return to Japan, but the culture fascinates me, and I'd like to read newspapers, literature and manga and watch Japanese media with some degree of proficiency. I hope that's reason enough to keep me going! It's even possible I might use it professionally, but mostly I just want to read and understand.

I started Japanese ~3.5 years ago, when a friend started studying Japanese and so got me into the subject. For the first three years this was very casually. My main problem was not really finding an effective method and resource to study it, plus it was 'merely' a hobby so I wasn't super serious about it back then.
A bit less than a year ago however, a friend from school made a blog post about how he was learning Japanese and mentioned AJATT. I started reading through Khatz's posts and liked his idea, so I though I'd give it a try and thus ordered my copy of RTK.
I started out by manually entering the kanji etc in Anki, but that was quickly becoming too cumbersome for my likings, that's when I discovered and started using RevTK.

Just over a year ago. And I'm still at 1380. Given I took about 8 months of(f?) from around June last year. I went without breaking from 0 to 700, then it all kind of came apart. However, since coming back and getting to 1400 with only a few hiccups, I'm determined to finish before July.

I started after I had a passing interest in anime, and I came across AJATT. I'd experimented with language learning, but never really got anywhere. Khatz convinced me I could become at least conversationaly fluent in a language. While I'm not really following Khatzs method, he's definitely been influential, and motivational to my studies.

I really wish I had more sticking power. To think I could've been done with the kanji almost a year ago makes me think of how much time I'm wasting. But those thoughts aren't helping! I'm just going to keep pushing on.

Last summer I decided to learn a second language, for no real practical reason. I narrowed down my choices to French and Japanese, found AJAAT, and he sold me on Japanese and RtK. I worked through it in 3.5 months with Anki, no sweat (inch by inch it's a cinch!).

I actually stopped studying Japanese about four months ago, because I didn't end up finding too much I admired about Japanese culture outside of the language itself (that's not a blanket judgment of Japanese people, it's just that I can't really jive with their culture). I still surf these boards for generally applicable language learning info though, because now I'm studying French and loving it.

A suggestion: RtK is really easy if you set a specific time, place, and # of kanji to learn every day (I did 20 per day at 6:00pm at my library every single day until I finished).

Good luck!

When: 2005

Where: I searched around and found the reviews of the books on amazon.com

Why: I missed the application deadline for that year's Japanese course. Since I had no experience with self-study methods and did not want to risk learning something important wrong (such as pronunciation or grammar), I had a year to prepare myself for learning Japanese. RTK was exactly what I wanted and I would lose little if the approach did not work for me. I crammed the kana just before starting the course which was trivial after learning kanji.

The assembly line self-study approach made sense to me (first read about it and Heisig with regards to Japanese via some Amazon 'so you want to' list), but not doing all my own stories and not a conventional flashcard system (I had a sketchy idea of spacing via Pimsleur), so I researched and found this site via a Japan Times? article, and between the motivation of sharing stories and this newfangled "SRS" stuff, I ended up doing RTK fairly steadily, while keeping an eye on the forum and learning about Anki, and, as I had read a kuro5hin article on learning French but found the 'look stuff up as you read' approach needed refining--I wanted to learn things piece by piece (i.e. take stuff from the books but keep the context somehow according to the tips at kuro5hin about "surrounding linguistic structures"), and using the SRS--reading about the 'sentence method' on the forum just clicked. The rest, as they say, is history. But I digress. ;p

Oh, and I guess I started this process months before signing up for the site, off and on losing interest in Pimsleur because even then I felt multimodal integration with transcripts made more sense than pretending we live in a primary oral culture like the ancients did (or having some pseudo-creationist notion of a 'language module' that made speech and language interchangeable and primary ;pp), so about all I knew was how to deconstruct a sentence from the end to the beginning, how to pronounce the ら・る・り etc. sounds, and that spacing made sense but needed to be scaffolded better. Oh and I had completed Heisig's kana books over a week or two before starting RTK. I had also bought that JMW book because of the Amazon tips.

hehe, Just found the article: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/e...016a1.html - It was posted on the 17th of October, 2007, I thought "I really need shared stories", searched right when I had that thought and found the article, and signed up here two days after its posting. Damn, talk about serendipity.

My first try at learning kanji is here:
http://thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewtop...15&t=11629
I am poster #1 in that topic (it's not very good).
You can see there that someone suggests to me Heisig (I do not take this advice immediately). Late that year (like December 2008) I started. Finished a couple months ago. Like anyone, I started with the sample chapter while waiting for my book to arrive.

What got me started was AJATT.

When : January 2010 (2nd try)
Where : Japan
Why : After learning 1200 kanji on my own everything was getting blurry and I was looking for a system to help me recognize kanji better.

When: Around september 2008.
Where: I don't see how this is relevant, but where I live, Sweden.
Why: After having studied Japanese in Japan for a year and being home for half a year, I realized just how easily one forgets kanji and how much "traditional learning" sucks for kanji, especially writing. I found that if I didn't get the kanji down firmly, I would always have problems with them. By doing RtK, I could just forget about all that and focus on keeping my Japanese ability up to speed.

When: Fall 2007
Where: Japan
Why: I worked on learning to speak Japanese before moving here but didn't put much effort into learning to read because it was "too hard". Arrived here and decided I could get by with limited speech and sign language but I HATED being illiterate. Tried various methods but everything quickly ran together in my mind. Found RTK book and finally had hope. Found this website and knew it was possible. Haven't regretted it at all.

Found the book randomly while searching the remebering the kana books online. I think I had just finished level one of japanese course at my school. I wanted to learn the language more and I felt that at the time, the courses weren't going to teach me much, let alone get me fluent. I randomly found AJATT and basically gave that a go. And then I did the kanji up to 3007+a little more. It worked really well, without it, it would be very difficult.

When: Last summer
Where: London
Why: I finished secondary school with no idea what to do with my life so I ended up having a gap year. Watching TV all day was just depressing so I decided that I'd learn a new language. Japanese culture always interested me and I wanted a real challenge so I started learning Japanese and luckily stumbled upon the Heisig method about a month later. Since then, I've done 1861 kanji (having trouble motivating myself to do the last 200), quite a bit of vocab and most of Tae Kim. Also watched a bunch of dorama and I'm understanding more and more of it every day which is really encouraging. My ultimate goal is to be fluent, not sure how I'll achieve it with no speaking practice... I'll probably end up going to live in Japan for a few years which should be fun.

When - January 2nd, 2009

Where - Colorado

Why - In the Fall of '08 I decided that I would make a trip to Japan (many other things led to this, but it was always something I wanted to do since I was a kid), and I felt out of respect for the people there I should learn a "little" bit of Japanese (I didn't want be one of those stereotypical american tourists). Having never tried to learn a language, I was pretty clueless as to how it is best done, so I started where I could-> by ripping the Pimsleur CD's from my local library and doing the lessons on my ipod. It was a totally new experience for me and I enjoyed it! But after a while I realized that I wanted more then what it was teaching me, and that having a "little" bit of Japanese was just not enough. At this point I was getting more interesting in really learning the language.

So I went on the web to try and find a class in my area -> this was the only logical step I knew to take. I can't remember if I found any classes or not, but I do remember typing something like "how to learn Japanese" into google..... and there was AJATT. I must say it was a pretty incredible feeling to go from the limited robot world of Pimsluer, to vast, vibrant, unlimited universe of the self study model that khatz described! Reading his blog awakened something bigger inside of me, not only the idea that fluency was possible, but literacy as well! I honestly had never even contemplated the reading and writing angle, because it was just too far outside of my self expectations. All that changed in one night, and at some point not long after I just knew I wanted to go all the way with it (whatever that is).

And even bigger then that for me was just seeing the power of self study! That has changed my life more than Japanese itself - but Japanese was the beginning of a chain of positive life changes for me (and remains an important part of my daily life).

So long story short -> AJATT led me to RTK, and this site. My RTK journey took 4 months, and about 1300 in or so I started to SRS sentences, study grammar, learn the kana etc. But in June '09 I had to go to Alaska for the summer with no study tools, and lost a lot my ability to recall much of it. So I restarted last September when I got back, got most of the way through it (fairly quickly) but at some point I lost all motivation for the english key words, and I quite RTK. I'm not sure if that was a good or bad move, but I just couldn't force myself to spend more time on it when I was learning real Japanese. Sometimes I feel like "man it would be nice to be able to remember that key word for that kanji", but for the most part I feel so comfortable with Kanji now that I don't miss the key words much (I just train writing and reading each new vocab word). And if I really want one, I just look it up on this site and get a "oh yeaaah, I kew that!" moment. This has actually shown me how people (gasp!) don't use RTK and still learn to read and write Japanese (LOL)! But I love RTK, and it got me to know the structures of Kanji and empowered me to tackle them. Now even brand new kanji feel like old friends.

I started last Summer. Finished last October, just finished Tae Kim and am antsy to start boosting my vocab (kinda frustrating I still don't understand anything =/ )

So about 2 years ago I decided I have some extra time and that I should learn an extra language. I kinda choose Japanese on the whim. I knew there was a lot of media in Japanese, and it was also a non Western language (I already know Russian and French) so that really attracted me. I did Pimsleur for about a year and a half, but I noticed that thing where going really slowly for me. So I found AJATT and then he said RTK and I found this website. Unfortunately, the main reason I was learning it was because I'd already invested so much time in Japanese that giving up would be giving up on myself. But now I've taken a few class on Japanese sociology and history and I've really developed a interest in the culture. It's a little weird how first I stared learning the language and then I appreciated the culture.

I also started to really really like the characters. There is so much depth and beauty in them. I'm really interested in calligraphy, and I'm hoping to be able to get into that. My uni doesn't have classes in it (other then a chinese art history class) but I hope to study on my own eventually. (if anyone has tips on this, please tell me =) )

Last year, I made a New Years Resolution to learn a new language. Chose Japanese because it sounded cool, and I like Japanese movies and video games.

Started studying with a private tutor in Feb 2009 but found hiragana very difficult to memorise. Looking online I found 'Remembering the kana', and through that 'Remembering the Kanji', this site and AJATT. Started April last year, finished it in September.

I worked through at a very slow pace (many days of not adding new kanji), it is quite boring but you just have to go for it and get it out the way.

When: ~ May/June 2008

Why: I've been studying Japanese on and off ever since 2002 intentionally (and unintentionally even long before that through songs, TV, karate training etc.), but wasn't happy with my progress at all. One of my biggest problems back then was kanji. I moved to Japan in March 2008 and it really was a big problem that I couldn't read and understand my surroundings, so I decided to look into other "alternative" methods. I found Heisig, ordered the book, started studying and in no time the world around me became less confusing.
Of course, that was only the first step.
I finished the book in September 2008, then went on to do on-yomi, then sentences, now I'm focusing on grammar.

Still, there's a loooo~ng way to go.

I've always been a fan of language learning. I was having an intense brainstorming session while sitting on the toilet seat. Everything came out all nice and easy, and so I thought to myself, "Why can't language learning be more like that." I took out my laptop, that I bring into the bathroom for... other reasons, and started looking way to make learning hard languages substantially easier. As I was ready to wipe, I accidentally dropped the laptop on the floor. I took a few steps, picked it back up and then sat back down.

Upon observation and passing a slightly watery second load, I noticed the browser had stopped at a site that outlined the difficulty of the three languages considered most difficult for a western to learn. The site then linked to an article on remembering the kanji. I made the decision to start using the book as I wiped. The rest is shall we say history.

When? late 2008. Where? Canada eh. Why? Saw the word Heisig being thrown around, was curious to what it was and stumbled upon this site. Seemed like a fun challenge at the time, I didn't know I would eventually get so sucked into learning.

ropsta Wrote:I've always been a fan of language learning. I was having an intense brainstorming session while sitting on the toilet seat. Everything came out all nice and easy, and so I thought to myself, "Why can't language learning be more like that." I took out my laptop, that I bring into the bathroom for... other reasons, and started looking way to make learning hard languages substantially easier. As I was ready to wipe, I accidentally dropped the laptop on the floor. I took a few steps, picked it back up and then sat back down.

Upon observation and passing a slightly watery second load, I noticed the browser had stopped at a site that outlined the difficulty of the three languages considered most difficult for a western to learn. The site then linked to an article on remembering the kanji. I made the decision to start using the book as I wiped. The rest is shall we say history.

LOL, thanks for the laugh

I'll add my own story of how I started.

I had got Japanese in Mangaland a while ago and was working from there. I had learnt the kanas when the Kanji chapter started. In the back, they have about 160 kanji that you should know. It took me three days just to learn numbers 1-10, with onyomi and kunyomi and stroke order and all that. I figured: there must be an easier way.

Japanese in Mangaland also mentions RTK, but as I was searching on the internet I also heard loads of good things about it. So I decided to give it a try.

After the first day, I had only studied 15, and I was convinced I was doing it wrong, because it was so easy! I didn't think I could possibly study 15 on one day. XD

I got to about 150 before discovering this site, and I've been using it ever since. I finished RTK 1 in late January. Currently doing Pimsleur and RTK 2, though the latter is harder for me, because it doesn't have such a defined way of studying and reviewing.

I haven't been to Japan before, but I'm going for three weeks in August!