やった！！

I just finished! Heartfelt thanks to Fabrice-san and everyone contributing to the site!

I actually finished the book back in 1992 when I first moved to Japan. I had a job with very little to do and basically studied kanji for 7 hours a day; it only took a month to finish. However, I never really did that much reviewing. Over time I forgot how to write a lot of the kanji, and I couldn't even read the less common ones.

After some years in New York I moved back to Japan last May and I started going through the book again. I was not really making much progress, until I stumbled across this site. I didn't really know what the site was about, and I added all 2042 RTK1 kanji a couple of minutes later. As I explored the site I quickly realized how good it was, and I got motivated to try to finish. Having added all the kanji, the first thing I had to do was review 2042 cards! That took quite a bit of time, and by the time I got rid of the expired cards I had about 1440 failed kanji. I've been clearing them a little at a time since then, trying to at least make it through all the expired cards each day.

The last RTK get together added to my motivation and I set a goal to do 10 cards a day until I finished-- I had about 650 cards in the failed stack at that point. Other than a couple of business trips, I stuck with that pace, never doing more than 25 in a day. I also added all of the RTK3 to my failed stack, and have 919 left of those to clear. I'm going to try to keep the RTK1 failed stack clear and keep up with the reviews, but more than finishing RTK3, I am aiming for the JLPT 1kyuu this December. In that regard I am starting a JLPT1 thread and I hope people who are studying for it or have already passed it will contribute.

[ファブリス]

Congratulations dingomick and brose!

やったぜ！　Made a last sprint and worked my butt off to get the last few hundred down before the 7th of april. I started the 7th of Januari, so I made my own deadline of three months. It'll probably take another month to get my first two boxes empty though.

I personally want to thank Fabrice a million. You are awesome! I don't know if I could've done it without this site, certainly not this fast. I hope the few stories I posted will be of help to some people, so that I contributed a bit.

On to reading and vocabulary then. Can anyone give an estimate on how long will it take to finish RTK2, following the same study habit that will get you to finish RTK1 in 6 months?

Omedetou! Tell me how RTK2 goes for you.
After RTK1, I just decided to learn words by reading stuff like manga and articles.

3 months is much faster than I got through RTK1.

Similar to chamcham, I much prefer getting into manga than real studying! I went through the RTK2 pure groups chapter which I found beneficial. I now use RTK2 more as a reference.

Study-wise, I am learning readings by Kanji Kentei grade, which is similar to the way kids at Japanese primary school go through them.

I reckon RTK2 is really good but it wasn't holding my interest enough to do is straight.

Good luck with your future studies.

Congrats !

chamcham/synewave, how's the retention when picking stuff up through casual reading? do you guys make sentence/vocab lists or just come across these words enough to just store it into your memories?

suffah, JimmySeal has posted to a few threads e.g. this one.

When I read, I don't know every word but as I'm reading manga (Detective Conan) you can work out what's going on from the pictures. As far as retention is concerned, I don't know the answer. But I find reading manga really enjoyable. Studying per se doesn't turn me on as much. Actually being able to read Japanese manga is an end in itself. Conan actually has furigana over almost all the kanji which is pretty distracting. I conciously don't stop to put words I come across into my word lists.

On the other hand, I do make word lists from words I take from 漢字学習ステップ books. Put them into Twinkle and get going. I make 2 kinds of flashcards:

1. vocab that I don't know the meaning or reading for I do kanji / reading / meaning card, e.g. 破損 / はそん / breakage

2. vocab that I'm comfortable with, I do some kind of gap fill card, e.g. 新＿線　/　幹

There are a few good threads on learning vocab, the longest is this one, I think.

I don't ever make any word lists.
I figure that if I can't remember a word, then it's not important.

After a while, you'll realize that you don't need the biggest vocabulary.
Even when you don't know the word, you can just describe what you're
talking about to a native speaker(which I find is actually is a very
underrated skill).

After a few months of reading(or even now, if you're so inclined), I'd
suggest finding a native Japanese speaker to practice conversation with
every week. It's much easier to remember words that you use in real conversation
(like that ultimate attack by Kenshin with 8 or so kanji mashed together :-).

I generally feel that there's no use in memorizing word lists if many of the words may not be useful in speaking or reading. So all my vocab is from words that have been used often in conversations, manga, and TV dramas.

Also, it might be a good idea to have a Japanese person to look at your wordlists and tell you which words they know(or don't know) and which they find useful(or not useful). You'll often be surprised at the results.

Yatta! I finally did it. I just have to celebrate a bit and no one else understands like the people here exactly what it means when I say I finished the book. It took me one year and 4 months of on and off study but I added my last cards today. This site really saved me - I was 9 months in and starting to crater under the pressure of my not so fabulous paper reviews. I had stalled at about 1100 before finding this site. Thanks Fabrice! I don't think I could have done it alone.

I know some say that it's better to do it fast if you can but for me one of the best things about the Heisig system is that you can take periodic hiatuses and still retain most of what you had learned. I took at least 3 breaks of at least a month each for travel and an intensive course I took and when I came back my retention rates were still 70-80%. Another plus of taking it slow means that I already have close to 1900 cards in my 4th stack which feels really good. So for all the slow and steady folk out there - just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....

fragileshards,

congrats on completing! i'm on my 2nd go-through right now, i have some business trips planned in the next couple of months where I will probably have limited internet access, and dread coming back to huge review blocks. thanks for the words of encouragement and hopefully i'll join you in a few months.

Congratulations fragileshards!

I too appreciated that I could take a break. I finished the book in 8 weeks of study, but took a month long break over Christmas. The most recently added cards hurt coming back in, but everything else was alright.

I just added the last kanji! =D
I'm done with the first book! ^o^ Though there are still like 100 kanji reviews to do everyday, it'll get lesser though.

I started out last year. I found this site, but I didn't really understand how to use it, and after going through with the book until about 700 kanji, I lost interest and stuck.

Then earlier this year I told myself I'll definitely finish the book, for the sake of easiness in reading kanji. Since I have basic Chinese, at some parts it was easy.
I started again in early march this year (so about 2 months for 1700 kanji?). I finally understand the way the stack works, and has been diligent since, in doing reviews and adding kanji. =3

I check the progress page each time and try to accomplish 1 or half of the chapter each day. Yes, that page is helpful! =)
So many nights I tried studying kanji, fighting my sleepiness... =D

So thank you so much for making this wonderful site and for the people who put up inspiring stories!

suishoo - well done on getting through.

Congratulations! You're right about the reviews getting smaller and smaller - and that feels great too. As does watching stack 4 get bigger and bigger. Good luck with the rest of your studies!

Over the weekend I hit the half way point in the book. I then proceeded to work out that if I do at least 40 new kanji a day I should finish the book by the end of May. So, for this month nothing else matters. Just kanji, kanji, kanji.
Fingers crossed I'll be back on this thread soon

*this public announcement is a way of making sure I don't fall behind!*

Someone will have to give you an email or something if your "congratulate me" post doesn't show up! ^^ Good luck with it!

Just finished, finally. I really want to thank all the people who's stories I used. I think I probably used at least one from everyone who has shared. In particular, I want to thank, dingomick. Your stories were so often exactly in line with what I was going for. Through the last 500 or so I think like 15% (or more) of my stories are from you.
I started this back in September and I know I would never have made it this quickly, if at all, without this site and the people who use it. Thank you everyone. And most of all thank you Fabrice.

I'm going to Disneyland!

Congrats!

Thanks for the props. I feel honored. (m-_-m) I'm glad that they have helped someone else succeed.

Hey congrats to dilandau23

*purposefully forgets to mention how his own kanji battle is going...*

Good to hear you made it!

dilandau23 Wrote:I'm going to Disneyland!

That might make a good RTK get together!

I am in too... well at least I am now reviewing all 2042 cards and there are about 50 cards in my first stack. Thanks a lot to Faburisu and all the people who contributed stories.
As a matter of fact I am now not learning Japanese but Chinese (my gf is Chinese). So before seriously starting I decided to finish RtK. Chinese writing is a little different than the kanji and there are a lot of basic chinese characters I have to learn from blank, but still RtK was a good start. Maybe I will tell you about it once I am more advanced.

HerrPetersen Wrote:I am in too... well at least I am now reviewing all 2042 cards and there are about 50 cards in my first stack.

I've added the last card (and actually gone on to RtK Vol. III), but I'll withhold saying, "I've just finished RTK1!!" until I clear out my second box which currently has over 500 cards.

I'm very happy to say that I've finally "finished" RTK I.

Hurray! Much rejoicing!!

I've got stories for all of the kanji, and I will do the "box 1" test of my final batch (lessons 55 & 56) tomorrow morning. It feels so good to have made it through to the end of RTK I with a 95-96% accuracy rate.

My accomplishment this time around (my first was back in the "salad days") is the result of my putting in a lot of sustained time and effort (as it is for everyone who sees it through) but it is also a testament to the RTK method coupled with spaced repetition learning AND this fabulous site!

Even this time around I stalled a few times, I let life get in the way as well as got tired of the whole process. You were (are) all a wonderful support. Not only for your great stories and ideas, but also for lending words of encouragement and advice when I found myself at yet another "wall of procrastination" about 300 kanji ago.

Thank you all!

Now it is only a matter of putting in the time to review to get all of the kanji in box 4 and beyond!

Hmm... I think I will enjoy a beer, a nice relaxing Zen Shiatsu, reading a Japanese novel (sans dictionary as much as possible), handwriting some letters to Japanese friends, and starting right in on RTK III.

Chadokoro_K - well done on getting through.

From what you've mentioned on other posts I get the impression you relationship with the Japanese language goes back a bit. I find it interesting that Heisig can be of benefit to us all regardless of how much Japanese we already know.

How about another kan ken?

Woooooo hooooooo! Go Chado! Go Chado! ::does a funky dance::

Hopefully fiminor and I will soon be able to make our marks on this thread as well.