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Is RTK really fun.
At first I thought it was kind of boring and it felt like a chore, but the more I go the more I feel an unquenchable thirst to learn more かんじ. I'm up to 五百(500) frames now doing 50 a day. After I got to 300 I actually added all those cards to this website as well and have been reviewing on both this website and Anki just to drill the cards in twice, and I'm genuinely having fun doing it. I feel like I just want to keep reviewing かんじ. Am I just weird or has anyone else felt like this.
Also this website is a god send for the stories. I don't think I would be having nearly as much fun without the stories from here.
On a random side-note would 漢字 be the correct Kanji for the word Kanji... I find myself tempted to write it in ひらがな because I'm not exactly sure.
Joined: Dec 2008
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"Is RTK really fun."
Depends. Try spending too much time on it, which can happen very easily, if you come obsessed with trying to make even better stories for each kanji....that kind of misses the point, and I fell into that trap right at the beginning....so in this case, it's pain in the ass.....however, going with your speed, not missing the goal, could be I guess called "fun"....
Worst thing is that, it had developed into some kind of addiction for me, since I was so used to my high-quality stories and I didn't want to discontinue my time-burning method, although I knew EXACTLY that I was wasting my time the whole time....this is one of the mysteries of human psychology I guess....or maybe just my stupidness....
Edited: 2010-05-27, 11:29 pm
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I hated it.
The weird thing is, I absolutely adore kanji, and I love learning them. I just hated Heisig. I always felt like I had to get through it quick, or it was essentially useless. That took away a lot of the fun. I'm glad I did it, though. Having far more fun now while learning all the various readings and compounds.
Glad you like it, though.
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I thought it was fun, then faded down to neutral around 1000 then gradualy became a chore until it started to be an ass-kicking around the end.
Still, glad I did it.
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I really enjoyed it. I bet I'd enjoy it even more now that I know various ways to integrate it with other elements of Japanese learning.
Edited: 2010-05-28, 3:21 am
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I thought it was fun at 500 too. It sucks SHIT when you get to 1200-1500 though.
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But it's really sweet when you get to 2042!
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I was like you, HerrPetersen. At first it was lots of fun, then it became more 'normal' and it was like a chore and at the end I just raced through the last few hundred until I was done, just to get it over with. But that feeling when I had finally done it was amazing... until I realised I had no idea what to do next. XD Nothing was going to be as simple as RTK1 anyway.
Just one thing to arch: You're doing this website and Anki? Really, there's absolutely no need and you'll only find yourself dreading it once your reviews go up to 100/150 a day on both the website and Anki. I say pick one and stick with it, save yourself lots of time to learn more kanji. Also; if you fail a kanji on this website and consequently pass it in Anki because you've seen it on the website earlier in the day, is that really a fail or a pass?
Edited: 2010-05-30, 1:33 am
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I loved doing RTK. All those stories made me laugh. A lot.
Joined: Mar 2010
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Doing it now, after nearly 2 years of Japanese study I'm enjoying it. Didn't like it much the first time I tried it at the beginning of my studies.
Big ups to the authors of the rude stories, and the people reporting them, both amuse me for some reason..!
There are those who will enjoy more writing each kanji 200 times to spending ten minutes creating a memorable story. Then again, there are some guys who will spend the afternoon watching old men in ugly pants hit a ball into a hole while their girlfriends go lonely. The human mind is a mysterious thing.
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I tried really hard to make it fun... soaking up the "ooohs and aaaahss" of Japanese people fawning over your kanji knowledge, but eventually even that was not enough to save me. From 1000 onward... it was rough. I rushed through the last 500 or so and really burnt out. Still glad I did it, but if I could go back, I would've stopped rushing. I was (and still am, mostly) following AJATT and I thought sentences would instantly thrust me into fluency. When I got to sentences... and realized they felt about the same as kanji... I was bummed. Took me a while to recover, but I think it taught me to have fun above all else. Without fun, you're just gonna burn out and burn out leads to failure.
Don't rush it!
Joined: Feb 2009
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I generally had fun going through RTK1 and RTK3 as well. There were a couple of dips to neutral along the way (around the 1500 mark or so), but overall it was great! I really like writing the characters and had a lot of fun seeing what kind of meaningful stories people could come up with for sometimes completely random primitive groupings.
For me it's always been a like collection game. It still is in fact. I have around 3130 characters memorized now, and I still get a little bit excited when I run into a character I haven't seen before (usually 1 or 2 a week).
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3-4 hours a day of studying is a hell of a lot when you're holding down a full time job, as well as all the other responsibilities life brings; I think that much is unrealistic for most people. I do think, however, that people can always squeeze more time out of their day if they want to.
