700 in 3 days?

Congratulations. Must have been very intense...

Yeah, on the last day I went to bed sometime after 8:00 AM.

Of course, that's only three hours later than normal, and I was also watching out for some people to be breaking in (long story there) so it's hardly like I noticed. Heh.

I just finished it! 巳!!! ROARRR!!!
I remember having started it in April's 25th, but I was at a really slow pace, I restarted twice since then, becaume my internet is so slow, I couldn't review properly. And then I got Anki. Anki changed it all. I have Anki since July 16, 2009, that was the last time I restarted. I just realized, since then, it took me less than 2 months to finish it.

Now off to reviews and grammar! And college that starts in less than 2 weeks (mandarin majo and japanese minor)!

I don't know why, but I don't feel happy. I feel normal. I made a big grin when I finished it, but now I'm normal. Weird.

Thanks you so much to all of you, the ones who created the stories and the ones who post wonderful advices on this forum. Thanks Heisig!

Just finished, right there. Feel good.
took me about 6 months, started using this site but then, at 1700 went cold turkey a few weeks and had to start again, but decided to push myself and made an anki deck 50 new cards a day and kept with it until today.
thanks for all the stories.
think ill do KO2001

I wanted to post in this thread for a LONG TIME!!

Aaaaaaaand here I am!!!! Just finished RTK1, the first and hardest step in the Japanese literacy and fluency journey 　

I've started in August 2008, but stopped twice for a long time, finished more than the half of it in the past month!

Thanks to God, and to everybody here for the stories and the HUGE support.

I can't wait to finish Tae Kim's and start Smart.fm, someday I'm gonna reach a native-like level in Japanese, wait and see ＾＿＾ 巳。

undead_saif Wrote:I can't wait to finish Tae Kim's and start Smart.fm, someday I'm gonna reach a native-like level in Japanese, wait and see ＾＿＾ 巳。

I feel like I'm watching Naruto.

Good luck, man ;-)

Well add one to the count, cause I've had the pleasure of adding my last kanji today

It really feels like it was just a few days ago that I started. My copy of RTK arrived somewhere in the first week of July, just a day or two before my short but intense intern started.
Working full time plus a lot of travel time effectively took around 12 hours each day, and staying over at my brothers house for the time being didn't really helped my study environment either.

Anyways, that lasted till half of august, after which I had learned the first 500 kanji. I know had a small summer vacation lasting 4 weeks, so I did some calculations, figured I needed to learn 50 kanji a day to get done in time, and here I am

Its nice that I have the kanji wall out of the way, and it feels great to start the new year - ready to begin actually learning Japanese stuff!

I've just added the last kanji from RTK1.
Even though I had rote-memorized about 1300 kanji before even opening RTK1, I think it was really worth it. There are still tons of kanji that I can't pronounce, but now Japanese books became more accessible - knowing the keywords helps to maintain the gist of what's going on. What is more, many of the kanji that are not in RTK1 look kind of familiar, since they often contain the primitives that we love and hate.
From now on, I intend to work my way through Kanji in Context from the beginning, but this time I'll use the workbooks as well. Before RTK and after Basic Kanji Book 1&2 it was my sole kanji textbook and almost all the vocab it contains is great.

Thank you everybody for your great stories. I had to be on my own for about 300 kanji in the middle of the book, and it was tragic. In the end I had to redo that part. Because of that, for a moment I had thought I wouldn't make it, but here I am, finally posting in this topic!

I've learn a great deal of English word in the process - my rtk spreadsheet has 460 words!

I think I'll try RTK3 somewhat in the future, when most of RTK1 kanji sink in well.

Let it be said that I have now entered 2042 into the review cycle, and now time to nail the reviews down on the head.

Thanks to everyone who put up their awesome stories. They really are the reason that makes this site such a perfect method to slog through the book and re-inspire my seemingly dead imagination.

Here's to the next step on the journey towards whatever ambitions we all hold. All it takes is the dedication to act, and not to blindly allow the world to pass by.

Here we go!

Grats mate, Ill catch up with you soon and have a beer to celebrate. A significant milestone towards your dreams finished, good times.

Phew! Finally done. It took me about 2.5 months, and it was well worth it, but boy am I glad I made through all 2042. Now I can finally plow ahead into more grammar/Smart.fm. It feels like the biggest prep work is over and I can finally get to expanding my Japanese base.

A big thanks to everyone who contributed to this site. It was a huge help. There's still a ton of reviews to do, but I think I'll be alright now. Thanks a bunch.

Great to see so many new names added to this list. Congrats to all! Keep putting in the effort that you've put in to RtK, and you'll be awesome one day.

Consistency is the key- keep doing Japanese everyday, even if it is only small things.

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

Oh man, I'm feeling ecstatic. I added 35 Kanji each day, no breaks, and now I'm here. I'm doing AJATT, so now I'm on to bigger things. Thanks so much for your stories and encouragement everyone. Hopefully I'll see you in Shibuya some day...

I finished a weekk or so ago. Been working on RTK3 since then. Took me about 3 months. It was easy to find the motivation as I am feeling depressed as hell since coming back from Japan and got another job that starts in January. I also quit smoking halfway through, and replaced my addiction to smoking with my addiction to japanese.

on a side note, i have also been eating healthy and running 3 miiles every other day, so accomplishments all around.

undead_saif Wrote:Thanks to God, and to everybody here for the stories and the HUGE support.

Now why did you have to go and bring the supernatural into it?

futnuh Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:Thanks to God, and to everybody here for the stories and the HUGE support.

Now why did you have to go and bring the supernatural into it?

If this is a joke it's a terrible one.

this long nightmare is finally over

Whoah - 700 in three days... must be some kind of record! How are your reviews holding up?

そして、おめでとう皆さん！！！

futnuh Wrote:

undead_saif Wrote:Thanks to God, and to everybody here for the stories and the HUGE support.

Now why did you have to go and bring the supernatural into it?

Don't wanna start any kind of argument here, but I want to take that as a question and answer it.
Because everything is thanks to him!
For example (just one) if he didn't give me eyes, time or even my life to do it , I wouldn't have done it, so Thank God I did it

And congratulations to everybody who did it and encouragement for those who are doing it, it REALLY pays off

my goal is to read 神は妄想である　in Japaneses......

I think it's time for another religion war!

zazen666 Wrote:my goal is to read 神は妄想である　in Japaneses......

Thanks for the sentence!! BTW, I would be an idiot if I've seen a solid proof and ignored it...

Codexus Wrote:I think it's time for another religion war!

Dude, it's not worth it! Everybody has his own free will to choose what they want to choose, I don't force anybody to believe in what I believe...

Ok it's 8.09pm on a Saturday night, and I've just finished RtK1!! Thanks to everyone, couldn't haven't done it without Heisigs book and everyone's stories (Out of the 2042 I probably made around 30 of my own). Honestly what a feeling to get to the end, LOVED all the comments on sign of of the snake!!

Now quick retrospective (hopefully helpful to newbs):

According to the study section I added my first story on April 10th - so 5 months 16 days. Could have finished earlier but I was really slow and lazy about adding new kanji, especially when things got tougher. Heisig really runs out of ideas for keywords/primitives in the last 1/4, and there are some real obvious errors.

Still critisms aside, RtK is an amazingly efficient and simple process. Really the only battle was with motivation - you seriously have to keep up daily reviews and pushing on adding new stories.
I know I won't fully have finished until all cards are in box 5, but screw it; tomorrow I'm going to test the cards I added today and then start on KO2001.

Right, I'm off out to celebrate.

jacf29 Wrote:I finished a weekk or so ago. Been working on RTK3 since then. Took me about 3 months. It was easy to find the motivation as I am feeling depressed as hell since coming back from Japan and got another job that starts in January. I also quit smoking halfway through, and replaced my addiction to smoking with my addiction to japanese.

on a side note, i have also been eating healthy and running 3 miiles every other day, so accomplishments all around.

wow, congratulations on all of that. Good luck on the RTK3, I know I'll get there eventually . Slow and steady is my motto .

-wulf

I finally finished RTK1 for the second time after I stopped reviewing last year.
The good thing is it was a lot easier second time, and I already have 1800 in my "Four+ reviews" pile.