おめでとうございます！すごっく頑張ったね！乾杯！

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

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

Hey congratulations! You did really well to get through those last few so fast! Good luck with getting them all into box 4!

Chadokoro_K Wrote: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.

You deserve them all - especially the beer! I will be posting here soon to report I am doing the same. I have a couple of long train journeys this weekend, and I always get loads done on the train, so am cautiously optimistic about finishing imminently!

I finished today and like everyone else, I want to thank Fabrice for such a great site, as well as everyone else who contributed stories. I didn't contribute any myself (I'm a big leech), but I didn't need to as there were so many great stories already there. It would have taken me so much longer to finish making all the stories up myself.

Thanks!!

Congrats to those who just passed, hopefully we'll see a few more in this thread next week (including me).

Congratulations, fluxcapacitor! it feels great to have completed RTK I, eh. It is a major milestone.

synewave, yes another kan ken sounds fun. I'll have to look into that. Right now I'm near San Francisco, California. So the nearest testing center is LA, right? If so, that will be an obstacle. As much as I'd like to tackle another kan ken, I don't want to make a trip to LA to do so. Perhaps they have broadened the US testing sites. (You'd think they would have one in San Francisco!)

fiminor, i hope you had success with your studies on the train. i'm looking forward to seeing your post here soon. As well as akrodha's and suffah's.

of course, like others who have posted here before I don't feel truly done. I'm still reviewing and I've even done stories for 60 some kanji from RTK III (but not in order). Some of these are incredibly easy and others, well they take more time. Especially because I'm trying to figure out what vocabulary (compound word or not) might be the most useful as well as to see where Heisig pulled his meanings from. But certainly there are large numbers of them that look simple and straight forward.

Cheers to all.

I'm done! I'm done! I'm done! WHEEE!

Man, this feels good. I'm usually the kind of person that likes to start new and exciting things but loses interest before finishing them. But thanks to the book and this excellent website, I worked out stories for all 2042 RTKI kanji in about ten months. I'm surprised at how steady my pace was... I guess that's pure tortoise style!

Now I can devote some of my limited free time to the actual Japanese language. My next long-term goals are to finish my copy of Teach Yourself Japanese and complement that with Tae Kim's site, focusing on grammar and vocabulary. Hooray for Anki!

Thanks go out to Chadokoro_K and fiminor for the home stretch. (You can do it fiminor!) And of course thanks to Fabrice. It's amazing how the abstract ones and zeros you skillfully put together have had a noticeably tangible effect on my leisurely Japanese studies. You rock.

All right, akrodha! I knew you'd be here soon.

Congratulations and a funky dance back at you. ... It is time to celebrate!

Yes, the support that you, fiminor and I gave to one another during the home stretch helped immensely. Yet one more fantastic aspect of this website and the people who use it!

Have fun with the Japanese language (any plans to visit Japan?) and Anki. (I still have to check that out).

Right now I'm going through RTK III (I stopped jumping around the book and am doing it in order), but it feels so loooong to that next goal. I think I'll use your tortoise style to get the job done!

Visiting Japan would be awesome. But I've promised myself for years that I'll reward myself with a long trip to India once I get my Master's. Besides, Japan's too expensive for me right now. Until I make enough money, I'll satisfy my Japanophone urges by playing old SNES classics in Japanese. (That is, if I'll be able to make out the pixelated mess they call kanji.)

Good luck with RTK III! Seriously, I think a tortoise's pace is the best way. Just keep thinking to yourself: slow and steady wins the race.

akrodha Wrote:I'll satisfy my Japanophone urges by playing old SNES classics in Japanese. (That is, if I'll be able to make out the pixelated mess they call kanji.)

Because the only thing better than kanji is poorly re-sampled, highly aliased kanji!

akrodha Wrote:Good luck with RTK III! Seriously, I think a tortoise's pace is the best way. Just keep thinking to yourself: slow and steady wins the race.

Oh, I always thought the moral was simply to not take too many naps.

Anyway, congrats to the two of you.

SNES graphics rox0r. I've been meaning to play through FFV in Japanese, but every time I start, I feel like I'm wasting a huge amount of time.

JimmySeal Wrote:SNES graphics rox0r. I've been meaning to play through FFV in Japanese, but every time I start, I feel like I'm wasting a huge amount of time.

I plan to try a computer game in Japanese when I complete the kanji. I have a friend who worked through one of the FFs in Japanese, looking up words as he went to understand it. It took him forever to get 1/4 through the game, but he kept at it, and by the end of the game could understand most things without looking them up. I guess this is because it's a limited vocabulary and the same things will come up again and again. Like anything though, you've got to have the desire to play the game to pull/push you through the beginning stages where it's more studying than playing.

You know, we should probably make a side-topic for this (even, was it synewave?, someone else mentioned Grim Grimoire* just recently), but, I, being the lazy person I am, won't take the initiative.

One of my main problems with games so far is that it really is too much work when I just want to play, so the temptation to just mash A and simply ignore the copious amounts of text is pretty strong, especially since common sense is more than sufficient to beat most RPG's, even more so if I have already beaten it in English.

*Never heard of this, but it comes out in a few days in the US and sounds fairly interesting. A JRTS?

Megaqwerty Wrote:One of my main problems with games so far is that it really is too much work when I just want to play, so the temptation to just mash A and simply ignore the copious amounts of text is pretty strong, especially since common sense is more than sufficient to beat most RPG's, even more so if I have already beaten it in English.

I know what you mean. I just don't have the time/patience for video games like I used to when I was 12.

Man, I finally finished RtK1. Took me two tries, a lot of blood and sweat, but I made it! Thanks everyone who posted a story publicly, I was pretty lazy and rarely made up my own story. I would read through the stories until I found one that "clicked" and just borrowed that one. There were some times when I had limited internet access and had to create my own stories. I always ended up going back and "borrowing" a better story down the road with these.

So, thanks again to everyone that has contributed to this community. I know there is absolutely no way I would have made it without you guys. Now I can finally start cracking with Kanji in Context, that I bought many moons ago.

to suffah:

i just read about the Kanji in Context.
"the effective use of Kanji in Context is that the learner has mastered the 200-300 kanji normally taught in a typical beginning course".

what are "the typical 200-300 beginner kanji" and how far in RTK do u need to go to know them all?

::u

[Katsuo]

twincy Wrote:what are "the typical 200-300 beginner kanji" and how far in RTK do u need to go to know them all?

::u

The Kanji In Context books list 250 kanji that they expect users to be already familiar with. I've just posted the list to your email address.

Congrats suffah! Isn't it nice up here?

"up here"?

don't be so condescending

nycity Wrote:don't be so condescending

Don't deny what you know to be true.

[ファブリス]

Hey it can get pretty high at the top of that huge pile of flashcards

Hey, congrats suffah!

And good luck with working on "Kanji in Context." I am going through it now as well as doing RTK III.

Do you have the reference book and both workbooks? I like this set because it introduces all 1945 jouyou kanji (plus two additional useful kanji). With the three books you get a solid vocab base of 8,000+ words and example sentences for the majority of these if you use the workbooks.

The only thing I don't like about "Kanji in Context" is that it is a pretty passive approach mainly geared towards reading -- not enough writing practice IMHO.

Depending on your Japanese level you could also use the "Basic Kanji Book", vols 1 and 2, as well as the "Intermediate Kanji Book", vols 1 and 2 put out by Bonjinsha.

I especially recommend these to people who have done RTK I, but don't have that much Japanese language ability yet. And I think they are worthwhile even for people with...lets say...intermediate Japanese language skills. You'll fly through the two volumes of the "Basic Kanji Book", but it will be a more active review of the material (in context). Once you get to the "Intermediate Kanji Book" you will slow down unless you are rather proficient in Japanese and do a lot of reading already.

The main drawback to the Bonjinsha books is that they only take you up through their version of the most used 1,200 kanji. (So I used to look down my nose at them.) But the series requires more active work from the the student when it comes to the kanj. I keep hoping they will put out an "Advanced Kanji Book" that will finish off the jouyou kanji as well as add in other useful non-jouyou kanji.

Anyway, good luck on your post-RTK I studies!

And it is indeed, nice up here on top of this huge pile of flash cards.

Hey guys, thanks for the congrats. Super happy I'm done with RtK1.

Chadokoro_K, yes I have both workbooks and the reference book for Kanji in Context. I'm glad these are geared towards reading, my main reason (originally) for learning Japanese was so that I could read Japanese literature. I think I'll stroll down to the local Kinokuniya and check out the Basic and Intermediate Kanji books. I like your idea of using these to actively review the Kanji. My grammar is pretty terrible, too. I'm sure these cover grammar? Anyways, thanks for the tip!

suffah,

Oh, I know that super happy feeling.

If your goal is just reading then you may find "Kanji in Context" enough. However, I believe in the Heisig principle of "bagging two birds with one stone." So by doing more active study that requires me to write the kanji in sentences, I'll definitely be able to read them. (Whereas the reverse doesn't always hold true, eh? Especially when one is concerned about speed as a part of fluency.)

Neither series introduces grammar, per se. I feel that the "Basic and Intermediate series will offer more grammar that you can pick up on simply because it offers reading passages, while "Kanji in Context" only gives isolated sentences.

I do like both series, for different reasons. Some people don't like to lay out the money for all 4 volumes of the Basic-Intermediate series when it will only take them through the top 1200 or so kanji, but I say it is still much cheaper than lessons, and will do a lot to improve fluency of both reading and writing for those 1200. (A very nice base upon which to build, thank you.)

Enjoy your stroll to Kinokuniya and let me know what you think.

がんばろう！

やった〜！
A little over my goal of three months, but I'm still very happy.
Thank you to everyone who submitted a story, I probably used one of yours.
Of course, thank you ファブリス; I don't think I would've done this if I hadn't found this website.
皆さん有難うございました!

I'll continue my studies via the method described at http://alljapaneseallthetime.com.

Congrats uberstuber!