Done. Happy. Reviews and sentences from now on! 59 days of kanji...1.9 months according to anki. I'm not sure if it feels like it's been longer or shorter than that. :/ Mix of both?

Adding that last sign of the snake into anki is a goooood feeling. I was also thinking that learning these has definitely been a drop by drop kinda thing. I mean, at the end it doesn't feel like I've learned this huge amount of kanji because it was small step by small step until I got to the end. (Well, not the end. There is RTK3...But the SIGN OF THE SNAKE was the goal! I tackled it and won!) Heh.

The jug...It now has water in it, at least. ^_^

Also, finishing Remembering the Kanji has given me even more motivation to continue with my Japanese studies. It showed me that if I really, really want to stick to something, I can... which I never believed was possible. (I kinda collect interests and then discard them really fast because I get bored. Japanese hasn't bored me for a single moment yet.)

Thank you all so much for some awesome stories and hints, also for great resources/interesting info on the forums.

Congratulations to all those who have reached 2042! You rock!

働きマンだぞ！

http://f.imagehost.org/0767/RTK1_2.png

The journey of mastering the kanji begins here

I'm so jealous of all of you in this thread.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through. Hopefully in about 2 months time I'll be posting in here celebrating my victory over RTK1.

I'm done with RTK but I think it'll take me a few days (or weeks) for the fact to sink in... I'm so used to having this "there's X more kanji to learn today" constantly looming over my head that it still seems to be there even though I know there's no more kanji to learn today (or tomorrow, for that matter (Well, the manga I read does have *some* non-RTK1 kanji (like 弩 or 狙) but that isn't exactly the end of the world and they take a few seconds to learn anyway))

Started in the last few days of February so it took me three months... First month went smoothly and I actually thought I might be done by the end of April, but a few days into April my internet was cut off and I had to switch to Anki (which, for some mysterious reason, made my retention rate to plummet dramatically (maybe I just suck at grading myself?)). In May I got my internet back, but my computer died instead, so my Anki deck was lost... After one day of banging my head to the wall I just decided to go back to reviewing on this site. I wanted to review all the "never tested" cards as fast as possible and ended up with a 600 card fail pile... But I started studying new kanji anyway while simultaneously hacking away at that fail pile (and it melted pretty fast, I just had to refresh my memory a bit).

Now I can just focus on the more fun stuff, like stuffing the sentences from the manga I read into an online SRS (which I've already been doing for the past week or so and it's definitely more fun than RTK).

Just finished adding 巳 to my Anki Deck, closed RTK 1. I'm finally finished with the book and it will only be used for reference now. I have never completed any Japanese project that I've started so this is really something for me.

Started on Feb 27th of this year, 89 days to get to here. I did start over when I was at frame 460 because I was becoming increasingly interested in the movie method. I took about two days to figure out I don't know that many movies (over 300) so I decided I would do movie method using movies/comicbook characters/World of Warcraft (there are a lot of Kobold, Tauren and Paladins in my stories), basically anything that would work. I also decided that I liked how the kanji were presented in RTK so I continued to add kanji in the RTK order.

I had a large hicup recently when my brain started to melt and I took two days off, NEVER STOP REVIEWING WHEN YOU ARE NOT DONE ADDING. My reviews soon went over 600 and no matter how hard I tried the stack never got any smaller. I fixed the problem by suspending over 300 cards and I'm slowly unsuspending them in small chunks. I'm delighted to discover that ever though they are about 10 days overdue when I unsuspend them, I actually remember most of them!

I want to keep going with this momentum till I finish RTK3 which at about 55 Kanji a day will be around June 10th, and I've timed it so that I will have no suspended Kanji on that day as well.

This website has been a huge inspiration being able to read about many other people going through the same thing as me, as well as getting ideas for stories for the kanji with crappy primitives. So thanks to everyone on the RevTK site! Now I have to go finish adding my 55 for the day and review them .

Congrats fanty and kanjiwarrior (saw that on twitter).

I see I'm way behind on my congratulations:

おめでとう lanval & jorgebucaran & fanty & kanjiwarrior & lunatic & plumage & barrik & Dayvad!!!

Well done, 皆さん :

IT IS FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! 6 Months later, IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!!!!!!

BEAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I just added #2042.

It took waaaaay longer than I originally thought it would. (lots of other stuff keeping me from rtk for a while)

Now for months and months of just reviewing!

Congrats you two!

Congratulations everyone!

I just added {2042} into my deck.. Haha, it feels good.

The Kanji Poster is right behind me, and I never could foresee the end of it until now!.. Wow, it was fun everyone. Doing this for over a year now, there were moments of difficulty, doubt, laziness, and determination. But it was all worth it!

I want to thank Heisig as well as all the users who contribute their stories and advice here on the forum.. 　皆さん！　有難うございます！！



More recently I've been able to recognize almost every kanji I've layed my eyes on, and my personal list of known hiragana vocabulary has supplemented by the words written with kanji.. Now I think I need to start mining sentences.. Whew.. It's a daunting task, but thanks to RtK it'll be so much easier.. Daily reviews will continue of course, as well as story refining and what not.

Hm.. but I couldn't resist my curiosity and clicked to the next kanji following 2042.. It looks like it's not over yet.. There's a whole other level waiting.. RtK3.. Wonder if I should move right into that.

cerulean Wrote:Hm.. but I couldn't resist my curiosity and clicked to the next kanji following 2042.. It looks like it's not over yet.. There's a whole other level waiting.. RtK3.. Wonder if I should move right into that.

IMO, no.

RTK3 is probably only worthwhile for people who can do it full time and therefore finish it in under two weeks (perhaps while also SRSing Tae Kim). If it's gonna take you more than month I say don't bother. A luxury rather than a necessity.

For me, RTK3 is gonna start in about 3 months... and I'm gonna take my sweet... sweet... sweet time. No rushing with RTK 3. It's merely frosting.

Congrats SethG, Shadysaint, Cerulean!

About 2043 and onward, the first 30-40 or so of those are a bitch, but after that they seem really easy. A lot of kanji that you know as primitives, but now you learn them as kanji... a huge... HUGE string of "Mr. T" kanji, that dude gets around quite a bit. I'm at frame 2184 right now. Doing 55 a day trying to finish in 2 more weeks.

Keep at it!

Yeh, perhaps I should not get involved with 2043+ just yet.. There are plenty of other Japanese methods or studies I've been putting off.

So what's next? Should I delve into sentences? Involve myself with a text book?
'Breaking into Japanese Literature' looks like a good place to mine sentences, and I've been saving that on my shelf till I became more proficient.. Now may be the time to check it out.

What advice can you veterans give on planning after graduation? I'm sure you each have a different story.. I'd like to hear your methods. ^-^


Oh yeh, and congrats sethg and shadysaint!

Yes I finnally finished it and now on to Kana. One thing I like to mention is that my review piles is now about 500 today so I better get on it. YYYYYYYYYYYeSSSSSSSSSSSS. 巳

I just added #2042. Now I am fluent in Japanese! Thanks everyone, this site has been great. I've packed my bags and I'll be catching a plane to Tokyo tomorrow morning. Can't wait to talk to everyone about the sign of the snake...



In all seriousness, congratulations to everyone else who finished before me and good luck to those of you with a few left to go. Took me a little under two months, which is longer than I expected but nothing to be ashamed of.

On to Tae Kim while reviewing those last few. 1200 in box four right now and 400 more in box three, so still a way to go. But the book is done at least. Turning that last page... man what a great feeling!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeah!!! Finished!!!!

Woohoo!!!!!!!!

Victory is mine mwah ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

stevesayskanpai Wrote:Yeeeeeeeeeeeah!!! Finished!!!!

Woohoo!!!!!!!!

Victory is mine mwah ha ha ha ha ha!!!!

Congratulations! :-)

Savour the feeling of victory!

Thanks. Actually, being "finished" isn't an entirely accurate term, as I have at least 3 weeks of reviews before the new cards get settled into the long term cards, and my reviews get down to a reasonable level. Then another month or so until I hardly notice the reviews at all, I'd imagine.

Still, reviews are very easy to do every day at work on my ipod touch, and so my free time will no longer be taken up with studying new cards- yes!!

finished!
for such a long time I waited impatiently to post this reply, and now I'm not even excited, too tired after the least reviews :/
but still - it's finally done, after about 5 months. no failed cards, no expired cards, yay, I can move to iKnow and Japanese Core

inayana Wrote:finished!
for such a long time I waited impatiently to post this reply, and now I'm not even excited, too tired after the least reviews :/
but still - it's finally done, after about 5 months. no failed cards, no expired cards, yay, I can move to iKnow and Japanese Core

2001.kanji.Odyssey lists are better than Japanese Core
http://smart.fm/lists/47378

bodhisamaya Wrote:2001.kanji.Odyssey lists are better than Japanese Core
http://smart.fm/lists/47378

Japanese Core, like Heisig, follows a bit of an absurd order. Go for Kanji Odyssey. At all costs, avoid J. Core Step 3 as long as possible.

The Heisig ordering isn't too far off. Just needs some tweaking here and there. The Smart.fm Japanese Core is just completely random though. Users have commented that Step 3 is more difficult than any of the following ones in the 2000 Series. There is a huge drop off in those enrolled after Step 3. I know they follow some newspaper frequency list but that doesn't really help much as far as building on what was previously learned. May as well just start from page one in a Kanji dictionary. Actually, that would probably make more sense. :/