I've wanted to post in this thread for so long and now I can. It took a good 6 months, hours of intense SRS-ing, story-making, kanji-writing reps but I totally did it. I totally finished RTK1! It's completely surreal in the sense that at first the end seemed so painfully far away but now that I finished this book I realize that the whole journey was well worth. I'm a student so a lot of my time was already taken up by school and everything that comes along with it but I always had Heisig as a top priority. It was a bumpy road with it's own set of setbacks and falls but overall, it was a positive experience with some good memories. For me the end was definitely the hardest because I was itching to get into sentences. I'd like to thank all the stories contributed by everyone on this site. Honestly, without the people who had already been down the RTK road, I can't even imagine where I'd be. From the bottom of my heart, I hold a deep sense of respect and gratitude toward everyone on this site. And finally, Mr. James Heisig himself for coming up with this whole idea in the first place. Seriously, the man's a genius.

The road doesn't end here, it's a long way to native-level fluency but this is the first (and very important) step toward that dream. For everyone else working toward the same or similar goal　－ 頑張れ!

I started on December 14th, 2008 and finished (TWO MINUTES AGO!!) on June 23rd, 2009. A little more than sixth months. I was shocked at home fast it was to start and how just a few delays adding new cards can add up months onto your total. There is truth to "an object at..." Newton's laws.

Here's to all you married people going through Heisig. (Huuaahh!!) I had her support all the way through and it was so tough, I can't imagine having an ambivalent spouse, but I'm sure that it does happen. Keep plugging away and remember, even if you have to give up adding new study here and there get the reviews done every day and you'll always be able to pick it up where you left off!

welldone101 Wrote:I started on December 14th, 2008 and finished (TWO MINUTES AGO!!) on June 23rd, 2009. A little more than sixth months. I was shocked at home fast it was to start and how just a few delays adding new cards can add up months onto your total. There is truth to "an object at..." Newton's laws.

Here's to all you married people going through Heisig. (Huuaahh!!) I had her support all the way through and it was so tough, I can't imagine having an ambivalent spouse, but I'm sure that it does happen. Keep plugging away and remember, even if you have to give up adding new study here and there get the reviews done every day and you'll always be able to pick it up where you left off!

Woooohoooooo! Congratulations! Celebration time!

blackmacros Wrote:Woooohoooooo! Congratulations! Celebration time!

Spot on. And my first celebration, 25 due reviews. It seems so.. fitting..

welldone101 Wrote:

blackmacros Wrote:Woooohoooooo! Congratulations! Celebration time!

Spot on. And my first celebration, 25 due reviews. It seems so.. fitting..

Heh, I should very well think it's a reward! 25 reviews is your reward for saintlike patience and perseverance. I, on the other hand, was repayed for my impatience with a review load in the 300's I think it requires far more willpower to do what you have done then it took for me to rush through RtK in a month. So think of your reviews as a reward for that

blackmacros Wrote:I, on the other hand, was repayed for my impatience with a review load in the 300's

ouch. How do you find the time? I'm not really sure how the graphs in anki work but I think my due date shows about 750 cards in box 4+. So hopefully my reviews will stay manageable even though I rushed the last 600 rather hard. Although I have a deal on no housework for the next 6 weeks just in case...

w00t... I finished RTK on the first day of Summer in the USA. I started around March 1st with a simple PDF of RTK's first 400 frames and slowly but surely worked through them until I was obsessed. 14-15 a night turned into 20-21 a night and then finally it just came to an end... but not a real end.. Using Anki along the way I have a lot of 'failing-up' to do before it all starts to solidify in my mind..

I really appreciate what this book has done for me and my co-worker who finishes RTK tomorrow. We did it as a team, as a partnership, which I think is the best way to go at it!

To show my gratitude I decided, however goofy I look, to make a "Remember the Kanji Review" video and post it on youtube...

Hopefully someone like me will go on youtube searching for "Remember the Kanji" and they'll see my vid and choose to buy the RTK series.

I encourage all of you if you can to also make videos of your own telling what RTK means to you and to post them either as a response video or whatever in order to spread the word about RTK to anyone and everyone!

Cheers!
~Josh Aka R3dragon
2,042! I can't believe it!

w00t here as well. Finished last night adding my final cards into Anki, with the total time from beginning to end being a little shy of four months. Josh (r3dragon above) was the one who introduced me to Heisig's approach and as he stated working in pairs was an excellent approach to staying motivated and sharing techniques/stories. Much thanks goes to this site, all of the story authors, ファブリス and of course Heisig's book.

After all these years, I finally found Kanji nirvana: 2042. Now, onto my plethora of Anki reviews.

Cheers,
Brian

I'd say I added the snake around a month ago or so, but I didn't want to say that I had 'completed' anything until I had 2042(?) mature cards in my anki deck. It took me about 7 months since I started in January.

I've been going onto iKnow for vocab, and I'd say you have to learn probably about 20(?) nonHeisig kanji in the core 2000. I've started the core 6000 and haven't see any unknown kanji yet--it's just been compound after compound. There are also a lot of kanji in Heisig that I have yet to find any words to yet.

I'd say it's worth doing the RTK 3 if you're one of those monsters than did RTK 1 in two months. However, I've enjoyed just cherry picking kanji as I learn new words. That's one thing I like about anki that you can't do with this site.

Woo, just finished my last review of 'new' cards. This was probably my 3rd time trying to go through the book, one of which died out at around 1000, the 2nd at 1900ish (school starting back + a bit of travel = skipping out on reviews and falling too far behind), and finally now.

May 25th this year, I added the first 508 to do as part of a mass review (I still remembered at least that many w/ 95%+ accuracy), then downloaded sunbird and planned a schedule, working out to approximately 50 kanji/day, though realistically I tried to end things at new lessons so I'd have a fresh set of primitives to learn the next day. I lost a few days due to another short trip but made sure not to let it destroy my progress this time. Just over a month later.. success. Now I just have to clean up a bit in the failed pile and push everything to the last stacks.

Thank you to everyone that contributed stories, some of the ideas I got here were a major help. This would've been much harder without them.

Might need a little break before moving onto RtK3, but damn I'm glad I finally finished the first book. The burden has been lifted! I can stop procrastinating! Took longer than it should have but it's finally done. Thanks for everyone's help and congratulations to everyone else

wio_dude Wrote:I'd say it's worth doing the RTK 3 if you're one of those monsters than did RTK 1 in two months. However, I've enjoyed just cherry picking kanji as I learn new words. That's one thing I like about anki that you can't do with this site.

Hehe, I did it the first time around in 6 weeks, and then fell off my reviews a week later, for about 4 months i think? now I am back at it, 2 weeks in and I'm at 950 I am hoping to get through this time around in less than 6 weeks though I am on pace to do it in 4 if I push myself just a little harder.

Maybe I will do rtk3 then as well, only like 10/day and get done in 3 months? wow that will seem easy in comparison :o

Just finished the book! I liked how the stories for the Sign of the Snake were mostly about finishing the book. Haha, feels good knowing that I didn't give up on it! I think, in retrospect, that I shouldn't have lurked so hardcore on the forums though >.>, I would have finished them faster

I've just reviewed the final kanji in RTK 1, very happy about that. This is my third attempt and it's a great feeling that i've done it. The first time I got up to 700, second time to 1400 and now i've done it. Lots of reviews to do until things settle down and then i'll get going on reading something.

Thanks to all the people who put up the stories that I used and thanks to Fabrice for the site.

Congratulations. And you're welcome, I know my stories were the best.

Finally did it, after more than a year of dillying around with the book, I finally entered frame 2042 into Anki yesterday and drank two 40s of malt liquor to congratulate myself haha.

Now, since I did admittedly rush through the last part of the book, its all about getting stories to stick and getting my reviews down. Just so happy that I don't have to add anything new for now!

2042... I thought I'd never make it. I know it's only a small step in my studies, but dear Lord, I'm so happy to have finally finished it.

I think I'll celebrate with something small. Then onwards to reading and sentences!

I can't believe I finally finished, since joining this site on April 12 it's been almost exactly 3 months. Actually, I added Sign of the Snake about 2 weeks ago, but it took me until now to get all my cards thoroughly memorized and into Anki. Anyways, without this website it would have taken me far, far longer to do this. A few months back, when I had still only made it through a couple of chapters in the book, I actually started to write my own SRS software with a MySQL database backend and entered a couple of hundred stories into it. Then I kind of gave up for a couple of months since the overhead of writing the software or keeping a pile of paper flashcards seemed too daunting. Eventually, I figured, surely there must be something better. And I stumbled upon this website in early April, and found out about Anki from this very forum.

So a HUGE thank you to ファブリス for putting together this incredible resource. I'm sure that a lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it. And thanks to everyone on the forums for your support and encouragement. And of course, a big thanks to the granddaddy of them all, Mr. Heisig himself.

皆さん、おめでとうございます。元気で！

やった！！

Finished!! I'm so proud of myself.

I started it on April 26th, and have worked at it pretty much every day since. No breaks in reviews, about two weeks total of not adding anything.

I feel proud, ecstatic, liberated and feel like I'll miss the daily routine of kanji (until I start RTK3 that is).

I beat my proposed finish date out of the water too. I was aiming to be done by the end of August, so I've knocked 6 weeks off that. Feels good

edit: and it goes without saying (but saying it is good), that I couldn't have done it without this website and all your amazing stories. Thanks everyone!

Finally finished RTK1!!!! A long time of 10 months but of course I had month long breaks in between parts... I just polished off the last 730 Kanji in 3 Weeks after cracking down! Really excited to be on the road to fluency...

Sign of the snake hell yeah!

Interestingly my JLPT plugin in Anki says I still have 1 Kanji to go out of 1945 putting my progress at only 99.95% which is just a crying shame...

[Katsuo]

mezbup Wrote:Interestingly my JLPT plugin in Anki says I still have 1 Kanji to go out of 1945 putting my progress at only 99.95% which is just a crying shame...

The missing Joyo kanji is no. 2075 璽 "imperial seal".

But to learn it you also need the previous character, no. 2074 爾 "let it be".

Edit: (...and Congratulations on finishing, by the way.)

Didn't imagine along the way that I'd want to post to this thread upon 'finishing', but, well, it does feel good enough to want to say something.

Fwiw, 107 days start to finish, average of 19 / day, slowed by full-time job, 15,911 reps on this site (which shows how many cards were missed along the way), average of 90.6 reviews / day, overall expired-card reviews correct only 75% but rapidly and considerably increasing by the end, upon entering the sign of the snake 1345 cards in box 5+, about 2/3 of these in box 6 or 7.

I first completed RtK1 twenty years ago, home-made cards, no community, no koohii.com, of course. Took a year of doing nothing else.

Many thanks to all on the site for marvelous stories and overall good cheer, and especially to Fabrice, hat off, deep bow, for this labour of love.


Edit: For the record, it was 21 years ago that I first completed RtK1, 1988, a testimony to the need to keep reviewing: took a year to get to 95%+ retention and not much longer to forget half or more, & then more lost every year.

Thanks again, Fabrice. 御蔭様で. . . .

dewick Wrote:I first completed RtK1 twenty years ago, home-made cards, no community, no koohii.com, of course. Took a year of doing nothing else.

That is frickin amazing...