wildweathel Wrote:I'm honestly just as impressed with the people who take an unusually long time as those who take an unusually short. It takes real persistence (obstinacy?) to keep going for so long.

Yeah, I do believe I'm obstinate (a bit), but I'm also admittedly slooooow ^^ When I started out with RtK1 I've done like 50 kanji/day, but the numbers steadily got lower and lower on the way, as I realized that there is no merit in that if I "fake-learn" like 50 kanji/day and I've to do 100 review on them individually after that. Someone said before me in this topic, that he/she has a pile of waiting reviews around. For me, in average, there is ~30 kanji waiting daily to review (nasty primitive element positionings :).
Also I had more stuff "in the works" for this two year--actually it wasn't as long as two years, but anyway--I've taught myself to play the guitar in the mean time (or I taught myself some japanese between guitar sessions if you like :), sooo I wasn't idling around ^^

Also, thanks for this link to Yamasa dictionary (and thanks for the explanation Katsuo), up to this point I always failed to find handwritten kanji forms with google--it only find handwrite recognition programs... so thanks! :)

Wow.. finally.. really slowly grinded these last 300 out in this half month. 2.4 months after beginning, I am done on my second try at it I cannot believe that RtK1 was that... short. Now to review :]

I cannot wait to start RtK 3, if I find the will power

I am finally done...Wow, that took way too long. (Stopping for extended periods of time sucks)

I make this post to say that even after 10 months of RTK on and off, I have finally finished it.
Some of those stories were hilarious! (Like DurablePants's for "Tatami Mat", and Shibo's for "Bomb")

I'm not sure if this feeling I'm having is addictive or not.=D
I'm going to ghost around these forums and Tae Kim's site now, seeing what more Information I can pick up.

Now It's time to really start having fun!

Oh, and I want to thank everyone here, for both RvTK and this entire forum. The stories and the information have been invaluable to me as a resource, as I'm sure they will continue to be in the future.

As I said in my final story: "Today is the day I finish RTK1" =) (Wooooo!, celebration time!)

Today I finished RTK 1 after 95 days of study. My celebration is short lived as I know I need to carry my momentum on to RTK 3 (did the first 7 today) and Tae Kim's grammar site (or maybe Understand Basic Japanese Grammar because I kind of like studying out of a book)

Bring Japanese. Bring it world.

Done, done, done. Done. Screw you, poor health, I beat you.

Through hospital visits, chronic pain, countless cookies tossed, head fogs endured, new medication side-effects and all else, I sloughed through RtK1 for over two years before reaching 2042 tonight. Seeing all the commemorative comments on Sign of the Snake was great.

I can't sing enough praise for this site. It's really made a difference for my (very extended) recovery.

★☆★ It's all easy street from here. ★☆★

Done! No more adding cards from RTK1, not a single card. Just added all 2042, and have reviewed all of them at least one time. I have... oh, 236 reviews tomorrow, but... Y'know. It's all good. I can do reviews. Took me 19 days (3 days later than I intended, but oh well, 3 days makes such a huge difference...), so about 107 kanji a day. I usually did more like 130 kanji a day; there were 4 days that I did sub-40, and I guess about as many that I did more like 150-170. I started with the intention of doing it in about 3 months, I think, but by day 3 I said "**** it, I'm going to go as fast as I can!". Seems that I had a pretty stable 85% retention rate.

I'm going to knock out the kana over the weekend, and then, as a student with absolutely no financial responsibilities aside from some meds, get a bunch of books that seem useful based on observations here, then move on to KO or Core. Or both; I seem to have extra willpower reserves for things like that... And of course, lots of stuff going on in the background. Lots of podcasts, lots of music (I'm too lazy to import, so I'm just going with shoutcast Japanese stations and last.fm 'jpop'), some anime, blogs, manga...

The interesting and culturally relevant stuff gets to start now! ...'Now' being after I do the kana. So Monday or so.

Finally reach the sign of the snake, I feel quite relieved. I rushed the last 200 kanjis, so there are still about 180 cards in the first box. Took me about 2.5 months, still a lot of reviews though. Many thanks to the stories on this site, I couldn't have done RTK1 without them

Congrats to all recent finishers, I've seen this thread on the recent posts constantly that last week must be a lot of people getting to sign of the snake.

I'm done too! After starting very slow in August, I managed to get the final 1000 through in the past 2 months, finishing on the last day of January, as was my New Year's Resolution!

Now it's time to dig my way out of the kanjiland abyss and make it over to 'real' Japanese study-world and learn me some grammar and vocab!

A BIIIG thank you to anyone who posted stories here! I couldn't have made it without those. I starred every story I used. And I hope my own stories will be usefeul to many people as well.

Congrats Koos83!

Thanks kame3!

I'm making my first post here as I finish frame 2042! Like others have said, it was great to see the congratulations stories with the last kanji I'm guessing all of those who've finished recently are fulfilling their new years resolutions?

Congratulations mcdreamer!

I also got to share my euphoria, DONE!!! After 13 months, puh quite a long time, I've finally finished.
In the beginning I was pretty fast but after frame 1100 I couldn't wait to do real Japanese and started sentence mining with those kanjis I already knew. This was much more fun and I most often only reviewed kanjis. So It took me 8 more months to make it to the end.

Altough I have mined more than 2700 sentences so far and have gotten quite a good vocabulary, it was frustrating to have to skip a sentence because a kanji in it was yet unknown and not to know some of the basic vocabular like 悪い, 船 or 鳥 because they appear pretty late in RtK.

So the day before yesterday I was at frame 1862 when I saw the "sign of the snake" alluring at the finish line, I said to myself "C'mon 180 to go, do 60 a day and you're done." It was quite a pain but I feel so reliefed now. No more skipping of yet unknown kanjis. I can't wait to learn the basic vocabulary to the new kanjis and then break into japanese literature in parallel text.

Well, thanks a lot Fabrice for this great site, to all of you for sharing your storys (without this help, I guess I would have never gotten that far) and for reading this.

And congrats to those who achieved completion of RtK1 before and to those coming after me, great job! I had a great time with you and your storys. See you at RtK3 someday.

Congratulations Artur83

God daaaammmmnnn, son! Finnaly done! Gratz to everyone who made it before me, what a ride it was! And in the end it really feels good, man

RTK1 check See you after RTK3.

Congratulations to all the recent finishers!

Congratulations everyone!

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributed to the study section of the site. If it wasn't for you I probably would not have been able to finish RTK1. It took me about 8 1/2 months (I blame moving from Gerogia to SC, then from SC to Japan, having a baby, and starting a new job for the slowness with which I completed this task) but I'm done and now I just have to keep up with the reviews! You guys and gals are all awesome. I love you all.

Finally! After approximatively one year of study, learning 6-7 kanjis a day. I've completed RTK1. This wouldn't have been possible without this truly awesome website!
Now I have 700 kanjis in box 8 and 700 in box 7, and 1960 kanjis above box 4. I have to say, I am impressed by those who study more than 20 kanjis a day! 10 per day was definitely my limit.
And now comes the reading part :-)

[ファブリス]

Congratulations jolliet and everyone!

jolliet Wrote:Finally! After approximatively one year of study, learning 6-7 kanjis a day.

That's a more realistic and very steady rate, congrats on your persistence.

Finished!

Now I look back and think how tortuous my story with this book was...

I decided to start studying Japanese about two years ago. I was not following any method, just trying to do everything (grammar, vocab, kanji) simultaneously and on my own. In May 2008 I went to my aunt's house and found the book by chance, abandoned on a shelf. I thought it was interesting and took it.

But I couldn't understand the method well enough yet. "Six weeks, Heisig? You're kidding me... This is way too fast!". And as it stresses one must focus on the kanji first and tackle the other aspects of the language afterwards, I thought if I followed RtK I would never get to learn any Japanese. So I kept doing it my way.

By the end of the year I discovered this awesome website. I read lots of posts concerning the method, and realized some of my misconceptions. I decided to put a serious effort on RtK, but still had issues with the "imaginative memory thing", and mainly with how fast one could move through the book.

So I did the first 400 frames in a sluggish pace (I would read each lesson over and over again) using word-plays solely. Meanwhile, I continued reading the posts on this forum, and finally, in July 2009 decided to speed things up.

I was on vacation, so I had plenty of time. I quickly advanced until frame 900 something, and better than that, I found out I was already unconsciously picturing images for the characters. Things were moving well, but then, classes started again. College got in the way, I had to dedicate some time to other activities as well, so unfortunately, I had to take a break.

Last December I came back and what do I find? Over 600 expired kanji! I felt so lazy... But I took care of them, and moved on. Since then I progressed adding 20+ characters a day, good retention as always, 95-100%. And here I am...

Sorry for the rant, thank you all for the support, stories, etc. Congratulations to everyone else who finished the book!

Congratulations!

I tried stopping for a couple of days when I was doing RTK and I found
A day's break = at least 2 days of catch up.

Congratulations seminotti! It's not the journey that counts this time, it's that you've finally reached your destination.