After third attempt I finished RTK1. I would like to thank ファブリス for this great site, and everyone for great stories. I can say that without you I wouldn't be able to make it, because reviewing with traditional, paper flashcards is very hard to manage (I tried).
Learning those kanji was such a great fun for me, and right now I am almost scaried that learning other aspects of Japanese language won't give me such a nice feeling. Doubts aside. The challenge awaits

Hey all, I just finished my 2042 cards, and now will try to forget the last few weeks. It's taken me two months, almost to the day, however I started slow and paid for it at the end. Thanks Fabrice for this website, no one should be bothered doing it with paper flashcards, I can only imagine that hell. I'll be sending some dosh your way to celebrate.

The most kanji I learned in a day was about 120, somewhere in the middle of an empty weekend. Up until the 1500 mark, I was using Anki concurrently with RtK to drill them in well. When you do a lot in one day you seem to need to break up the learning into three or four chunks, with revisions in between. Usually this meant, learn thirty, revise them, learn the next thirty, revise the last sixty, etc. At 1500 I just couldn't keep up all the piles and switched to Anki so I could artificially fail some that weren't sticking well.

As for more details, I didn't make up more than fifty stories from the time Heisig left me to myself until the end. The debate on whether making your own stories or using other people's is better is moot when you are looking for speed. Clearly, using others' stories was far faster and less hassle, while still working pretty well.

I dreamed about kanji quite a lot, mostly stroke order and shakuhachi fantasies. I managed to ignore my daughter and wife a lot, and didn't feel guilty at all. The most I worked in a day was about eight hours, most days five or six.

My favourite kanji was 祭 'Ritual' 1102, as it looks pointy and weird.

My least favourite kanji was that one, you know, with the lines that are all vertical, there's a Chihuahua in their somewhere, and I know it starts with the letter B or maybe S or something.

My favourite primitive was 'the devil', in this kanji for example, 脱.

My favourite anthropomorphisation of a kanji was, of course, Mr. T.

My favourite Mr. T story was one of mine, 儒 'Confucianism' 1166, "I *demand* you do unto others," said *Mr. T*,"or I be doin' unto you, foo!". *Mr.T*, newly converted to Confucianism.

My favourite non-story/mnemonic comment was 'See book.'

My favourite writing implement was the 'Zebra Jim Meca' mechanical pencil available at am/pm konbinis everywhere.

That's it. Thanks story makers and website makers. Thanks Anki man. Thanks Heisig.

Congratulations!

I said I would finish on this day, Feb. 29th being such a nice and unique day. In fact, randomness aside, today I had my second review of the last patch of keywords. Meanwhile I'm steaming ahead into RtK3 and figuring out what to do with RTK2. This is my second attempt, the first one stranding around 1800 due to changing working conditions (no internet connection, late hours, ...), thus as far as adding new stories goes, I feel like I'm just starting.

I thought this would be a good day to release a new script. You can read more about it in the RevTK Lite thread. Yet another challenge to the Heisig die-hards: Is the sequence in which we learn these kanji really such an imperative? Up to a point, it certainly helps for them to be grouped. But just as the keywords are not as appealing to everyone, the order in which you learn them is not set in rock and stone. It's your head.

De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum.

[ファブリス]

phauna Wrote:My favourite non-story/mnemonic comment was 'See book.'

Haha, I have a quite a few of those stories reported. Sorrrryyyyy!

Congratulations woelpad, phauna, silijan!

After over two years I can finally say I finished it.
I know it's an unbelievably long time, but I'm studying Japanese on my own as a hobby and I'm lazy XD.

I just wanted to add a thank you to everyone, after about 7 months I have finally finished RTK1 with around 300 failed kanji, I've got a massive review to do but ah well. Of least I won't be in a mad rush to do the remaining 1000 as there of least slightly rarer. I spose my next step is to open Yookoso and sentence mine it and think about buying Kanji in Context. Anyway, thank you, everyone without your imaginations I would have probably given up long time ago.

Out of interest does anyone know of a school in Sendai they would suggest ? which will involve speaking that offers night classes (2 times a week) or tutors I can use which would be willing to work with me 2-3 times a week.

phauna Wrote:As for more details, I didn't make up more than fifty stories from the time Heisig left me to myself until the end. The debate on whether making your own stories or using other people's is better is moot when you are looking for speed. Clearly, using others' stories was far faster and less hassle, while still working pretty well.

I'll second that. Borrowing stories worked great here.

It's been a long, long, and time consuming ride, but I have finally finished!

Like some people here, I guess it's time for me to publish my "Heisig Story". More than anything, it's satisfying for me to reflect over all this

Last summer I started studying Japanese on my own to skip a year of Japanese in my university and take third year this year, so that in my senior year next year I could do 4th year Japanese and graduate with a Japanese major.

SUMMER
I found Heisig as I started doing self study in the summer and looked at different approaches to studying Japanese. I did it one night (~50 kanji), satisfied with the recall rate, though it was time consuming. I put it off to focus on making sure I can skip a year of university Japanese though.

5 DAYS IN September:

I pass the placement test and had a week before school. I had a job to work a few days of that week, but decided I would try to do as much as I could. I got up to 400ish kanji.

OCT-DEC:

School starts and I become busy. I had two 400 level philosophy classes. One in particular was very difficult (Continental philosophy). I tried to and did all my readings, which meant I had very little time. I was doing fine in my Japanese class, but felt my Japanese was actually getting worse because I could no longer spend so much time studying it on my own. I basically said F-U to philosophy and stopped putting much effort into those classes (my grades were fine), and devoted it back to Japanese - what I like. I started Heisig again. I was going to Japan in winter for 3 weeks and wanted to finish it by then. I reviewed those 400 again and then started going at it somewhat quickly, and managed to get 1300ish by December 1st. I had little over a week left, but papers due and seeing American friends took up my free time, so I was stuck at 1300ish leaving for Japan.

DEC-JAN, My month in Japan:

Heisig made very little progress my month in Japan. I did, however, switch to Anki, so I had to start all the cards over from scratch, and this helped reinforce the first 1300 in my head. By the time I left Japan, I had my anki deck at around 1350 on good intervals.

JAN - PRESENT:

When school started again though I didn't do much again. Once my reviews even piled up to 400 cards. I tried to finish the last ones quickly, and got to ~1650, but stopped.

Then a week ago, I decided it's time to end this. I had to redo 1350-1650 because I hadn't put them into anki and forgot the later stories. I did the last 500 in 5 days. I updated anki as I went.

I finished those stories last Saturday. Yesterday morning, I had all but 25 kanji I skipped in the review process. This morning I reviewed those kanji and put them in now. The 2042 now are all complete.

It's been about 5 and 1/2 months. But I only did this daily, adding 25-50 kanji a day, for about a month and a half. The rest of the times were powering through the material. So I feel like this has taken a long time and it has stressed me out to no ends (that "oh my god am I ever going to finish this" feeling). It was really disappointing to do a few hundred cards in a few days, but then stop there and still have more to worry about.

But it's over now and I'm content! Even though my reviews are still time consuming...

Just finished, after a six month journey. All your kanji are belong to me!

As is traditional here, I would like to thank Fabrice for the wonderful resource he has built for us. And thanks also to all my senpai who shared stories to help drill these arcane little pictures into my brain. I can only hope that the ones I've shared help future travelers without warping their sensibilities too badly.

Haven't totally decided where I'm going next with my studies. I'll keep up my reviews, of course. Need to properly learn the kana - I knew them pretty well at one point, but I've let that slip while I was focusing on kanji. I've got a copy of RtK II, but not sure if I'll start into that right away - may plug away at Tae Kim's guide for a while.

Congratulations folks! It's a great feeling isn't it - of accomplishment and ...relief!

@ Phauna: your post was 殊 entertaining. (Perhaps Resolve should change his username to Anki Man...)

@Woelpad: I recall you setting Feb 29th as The Date. And you succeeded despite the greasemonkey hours. Well done! I hope you celebrated in a way you might not want to repeat for another 4 years.

FINISHED!!!! ROAARRR!!!
Signed up at this website the 8th of november 2007. Finished 12th of March 2008.
That is officially a bit more than 4 months. But the beginning was slow, And i was gone for about three weeks in December( 10 days training in Okinawa). So a 3 and a half months of going at it every day it took me to finish it.
This was the third attempt, but only the first with this website. The other two attempts(years ago) were short lived due that i had to focus on the Japanese stuff from university. Now I have finished it, I can go back to the research in Japanese.
Thank you all for the stories!
It would never have been possible without this website (and for some reason, it has a very warm atmosphere)
Thanks y`all.
Thank you Fabrice.

Filip

I finished it about a week ago. After studying Japanese for an embarrassingly long time, it seemed as if I had hit a plateau; no matter how much I studied, I didn't feel as if I was improving. I was also dispirited by the fact that I couldn't read any "real" japanese because there were always too many unfamiliar kanji.

James Heisig's book was very inspiring. I first discovered it nearly a year ago. At first it was slow an innefficient, but after finding this site it became easy and manageable. Since then I've moved to Japan, learned all the kanji in the book, and bought a Ukalele.

My next course of action will be to memorize the remaining few non-RTK1 kanji for the JLPT, and then move on the vocabulary and grammar flashcards.

This site is incredibly useful, and I think it should be cited in RTK as a valuable rescource.

YAHOOOO!!!!!
FINISHED!
Still have some faild cards and lots of revisions, but I finished it yesterday!
Almost 8 months working on the book. Long time! Yesterday I just got crazy and did the last 120 kanji O.o!!!!

Finally finished 2042 today. Naturally, this is just the first step: continuing review and lots of in-context reading are next. But, reaching this milestone is a good achievement that should help motivate further studies.

This has been a long journey; I first discovered Heisig by accident maybe 8 years ago before knowing any Japanese nor having any serious intention of learning it. Flipping through the book in a Tokyo bookstore, I was puzzled by the lists of words and stories accompanying each kanji. In particular the primitive for "ketchup" stuck in my mind. I remember thinking, "what the heck does a ketchup story about flags and mouths and spicy have to do with learning kanji?" I put the book back on the shelf without a further thought and promptly forgot the book, its title, and author.

About 4 years later, struggling with my Japanese studies in earnest, I rediscovered the book and the method and suddenly realized that the Heisig method was the first kanji book I had at random picked up years earlier in that Tokyo bookstore. I tried it; it worked for me, and I persevered for about 6 months until getting to 1000 or so. Then I stopped for several months. My next try got me up to 1600. Then again other obligations consumed my time and I slipped back down to about 800. Finally I made one last push of about 6 months and here I am at 2042.

Good luck to everyone else on this journey and thanks to Fabrice and this community for providing a great source of motivation. It's great to know others are persevering and succeeding in this method.

I'm planning on diving into reading Japanese texts to learn vocabulary and readings; not planning on doing RTK2 or RTK3 at this time. I have been focusing too much on kanji only - it's simple, clear, easy, and fun - to the neglect of grammar and vocabulary. No more. With the 2042 under my belt, it's time for the next step. Next goal: JLPT 2!

Congratulations rtkrtk! I only finished RTK1 a month or so ago myself and if your experience turns out to be anything like mine, your studying is about to get a lot more enjoyable.

Have fun!

Congratulations!　おめでと(^_^)∠※PAN！

I just finished now. Took me almost exactly one year with a 5-6 month no study period.

I finished yesterday but I was too exhausted to post here. Actually this is my first post. I was too busy reviewing kanji to get around to it.

Anyway...it took me less than two months and I couldn't have done it without this site. Thanks Fabrice, you're absolutely awesome and this is the best site I've ever come across. Also, thanks to everyone for all the wonderful stories I borrowed along the way. Couldn't have done it without you either.

I'm off to get started with sentences now. To anyone who hasn't finished yet... hang in there... you can do it.

I can now say that I'm finally finished with RTK1. I finished going through it the first time in August of last year, but that was finishing studying the kanji and doing those wretched paper index cards a la Heisig's way. I never did get to study those cards, because I had made some bad choices in reviewing. Now I just use RvTK for doing my SRS, and nothing else. I had stopped soon after I finished the paper cards in August, and then went to Japan for 5 weeks, then got bogged down in the holidays, and finally started up again in Early January. So 3 months later, I've done all of my initial reviews in RvTK, and I've got 1588 cards in box 4 or higher. (77.7%-- not bad.)

I have to say that the last few weeks were the hardest. You get sooo close, and the material just got so much more difficult for me. Ah, well.

Thanks again to everyone for their contributions of time and effort, especially ファブリス for his time and effort.

And congratulations to Romanrozhok and Ophiucus as well as everyone else who's finished.

Now the hard part-- not forgetting all of those kanji, and moving forward. Gotta keep that momentum up!

Congratulations rich_f! So, what are your plans from now on? I'm currently at 1830, so the end is near too. I'm thinking of first finishing up my gramar book (Japanese for everyone), learn readings from the vocabulary I already know, and later this year to do RTK3.

I don't want to lose any kanji momentum at all. So, I'm debating whether I'm going to go with just Kanji Odyssey for learning readings of the most frequently used words, or whether I'm going to follow RTK2 with some sort of mashup of K.O. and other sentence sources to get all the possible onyomi down. I'm not sure about that one yet. RTK2 strikes me as a bit dense, but I get the idea that owning onyomi is a very powerful weapon to have in my language arsenal.

I'm holding off on RTK3 for now. I need a break, and I want to sink my teeth back into the language full-time.

I also plan on continuing to plunder UBJG and my old college textbooks for grammar, and then plundering some of my Kodansha books for more grammar and useful phrases.

And of course, I'm still doing both recognition and production, SRS-wise. So I practice reading kanji out loud as they pop up in Anki, and I practice trying to go from the bare reading to writing out the kanji as well. It's a lot of work, but I think it'll be pretty profitable.

And I plan on continuing to hunt down good Japanese content to feed the machine when I'm not actively reviewing. @_@

Just had to add my name to the list. Feels good!

Congrats! I'll have to drag you out of Ikeda soon - now we owe each other dinner.

Congratulations nest0r!

I also remember the boost of confidence that came with completing Heisig - "so maybe I can learn this language." I`m not there yet, but still confident that I will be someday.


Good luck with your continued studies.