I'm freaking done! Wow, never thought this day would come. Thanks a lot to all the people who shared their stories, I wouldn't have made it this far without you.
ありがとうございます！

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster here.

First things first: HUGE thanks to everyone who posted stories and ideas for primitives. I especially enjoyed the factual stuff about kanji usage etc - was a great motivator. Your efforts are most appreciated, even by lurkers like me!

Finished RTK1 today! Added last batch, and did 1 review (here and in Anki).

Time taken: 5 weeks exactly (35 days). Had a bit of a head start though as in the few weeks prior to 'biting the RTK bullet', I had browsed through the first 300 (without reviewing), and brute-forced about 200 common (i.e. complex) ones. Haven't learnt hardly a single word of Japanese in the last 5 weeks though

It was the attempt at brute forcing that persuaded me of the power of the RTK method, as there were components of the kanji that I would keep getting mixed up. I also discovered while doing RTK that I had actually been drilling a couple of the brute-force ones wrong: e.g. my version of 'utmost' had a line between the 'sun' and 'take' parts, and I had never noticed the mistake, because I didn't know the primitives.

Beasted them for the last 10 days or so, adding about 100/day. Reviews are numerous but tolerable. It was adding new ones that I found most time consuming, because I hate to give up before finding a decent image/story. Hella glad that's over. Reviews are much easier in comparison. Reviewed using Anki *and* this site, so my reviews are actually about double what is shown here. Getting 98-100% retention, though I got the run/road primitives mixed up on a couple of old ones today ('proceed' and 'surpass'), so there may be trouble ahead.

Tripped a bit after the first 900 when I switched Anki decks. I had been using a deck with RTK3 kanji merged into the RTK1 supposedly in an order compatible with the RTK1 primitives, but it turned out to be riddled with errors. Figured I'd switch decks & mark the ones I'd done as 'easy', but got stung every time those reviews came round. My review cap meant that some new ones didn't get the early reviews they needed, so errors occurred. Fortunately this site smoothed that transition.

Another early mistake was allowing Anki to add new cards automatically. This mixed 'learning' with 'reviewing' in unpleasant ways. Separating these allowed me to up the pace considerably, as did making proper use of this site (stories etc).

I was brute forcing the kanji in the Core2k sentences prior to starting RTK in earnest. 'Knee' came up early on, but didn't appear in RTK1, and won't appear until halfway into RTK3, though the primitives are easy. Lots more to do it seems . Wanted to get through RTK1 as fast as possible, fearing that I may lose motivation otherwise.

I now plan to continue with the Core2k, hoping to storm through it. I'll also add the RTK3 kanji, but at a *much* more leisurely pace. Kotegawa Yui, your humiliation has only just begun!

Why would you do that to yourself? Reviewing using both Anki and this site, I mean.

For the extra reps

Also serves as insurance in case I mess up Anki somehow (which actually happened). I wanted to get through RTK as fast as possible to maintain motivation & get back to actually learning Japanese.

anotherjohn Wrote:For the extra reps

Also serves as insurance in case I mess up Anki somehow (which actually happened). I wanted to get through RTK as fast as possible to maintain motivation & get back to actually learning Japanese.

The thing is, your extra reps are likely to confuse Anki. If you've seen a kanji two days ago on koohii and Anki thinks it's been a month, it'll probably judge the next interval incorrectly. In the end, this could lose you a lot of time.

Zlarp Wrote:If you've seen a kanji two days ago on koohii and Anki thinks it's been a month, it'll probably judge the next interval incorrectly.

That is a concern, and some of Anki's intervals are beginning to raise an eyebrow, though there is always the option of 'hard' or 'deliberate fail' to keep that in check, or perhaps a fiddle with the fudge factors. I'm just wary of relying on a single tool, given the investment of time.

I plan to stay in continuous contact with the kanji through study of Japanese anyway, so I'm hoping that only the rarely-seen kanji will ever present review difficulties, and the rest can be safely punted into the long grass, drill-wise.

I started this book back in February 2011... and just finished it today! I'm starting to have nostalgia remembering all the time I spent studying these kanji, and I honestly don't know how I'd have done it without this site and the wonderful stories everyone has contributed! It was a great incentive to keep on. Thanks to all of you people! =D Now on to RTK2!

Mark.

After 166 days and 29163 reviews 2199 Kanjis are done

bambi73 Wrote:After 166 days and 29163 reviews 2199 Kanjis are done

Was the kanji you skipped this one by any chance?

Why do you think i skipped one? 2042 from RTK1 + 157 from supplement.
Does 6th edition contains 2200 characters?

Btw "gloom" is one of easiest to remember Kanji for it's monstrosity, at least for me .

bambi73 Wrote:Why do you think i skipped one? 2042 from RTK1 + 157 from supplement.
Does 6th edition contains 2200 characters?

Btw "gloom" is one of easiest to remember Kanji for it's monstrosity, at least for me .

Yeah, the 6th edition has 2200 characters, so I thought you had skipped one. My bad! :x
Also, I guess you have a point, regarding the "gloom" kanji

[Katsuo]

璽 may be the one you missed. It wasn't included until the 6th edition.

My work here is done! kanji n. 2200.
I'm sooo tired! Now I only have to learn speaking japanese:-)!
I've decided to start with a little grammar: Tae Kim and UBJG.
And then... Core!
Thank you! You were very helpful!!!!!

sarocchia76 - congratulations on your finish!!

Thank you very much !

Not sure if you would call it finished yet or not but I was really wanting to finally post in this thread anyway. After 6 months I stopped adding cards about 2 weeks ago, but have been keeping up on the reviews. I have about ~1700 cards in Four+ and I can see that it will take a while for that to get higher. Just impatient I guess.

The last few chapters were so short compared to the middle of the book that I really ran through them much faster than I normally would, and I was so excited to finish. It really raised my review count and dropped my retention but I am glad I can move on with my studies sooner rather than later. I intend to keep reviewing here for a while anyway.

I have started getting into grammer and vocabulary by going through my old Genki books. I know that they are generally looked down upon but I used them when I was taking classes in college (before putting them down and not studying for 5 years...) and I'm happy to get back to them so I can finish. I picked up another workbook and answer key to give me some busy work to drill the grammer and vocab. In formal classes we didn't even finish the first book in 2 semesters so I am looking to beat that by a mile on my own.

I have been doing Genki vocabulary reviews in Anki for a couple weeks, and despite a bit of a learning curve, it is going well. I want to at least finish the first Genki book before picking up Core2K/6k/etc. decks, and maybe by then my reviews here will be more manageable. At the rate I am going, it should only be a couple months before I get there though.

All in all, I have really enjoyed RTK v1 and reviewing through this site. It did just what I had hoped and that was remove an additional barrier to learning Japanese, and force me to put in enough time into it to make me not want to put it down again like I did after I left school. This time around I hope to stick with it!

Just finished RTK1!

Thanks for all great stories!

Well, it took me almost four months, but I made it! I added the final kanji of RTK1 to Anki today. I don't intend to stop reviewing any time soon (I've read enough horror stories across these forums to know that's not a wise idea), although it still feels like a huge milestone.

It feels great to be able to finally take the next step in learning Japanese, although a little daunting. I'm not 100% sure on the path that I'll take, although I'm convinced that a step down any path is better than standing still. I'll probably dive into an optimised core 2000 deck whilst working my way through the Yomu Yomu Bunko graded readers as basic (fairly interesting) texts paired with audio seems like an ideal combination, albeit slightly sheltered. Anyway, I digress...

I would like to offer my most sincerest thanks to all and everyone who contributed a story to this site. I'm not sure I would have reached the end of this journey without your help. I know some of the more memorable stories will be with me for a long time and I'll be sad to see them go when they do eventually fade into the aether. Also, a huge thanks goes to Fabrice for creating this site and allowing such a wonderful community to flourish!

みんなさん、ありがとうございます！

Finally, I'm finished! I need a beer! It took me almost a year to complete. I took a few months off in the middle, and that made things quite a bit more difficult. I had to essentially relearn everything. Everyone at RTK gave me the motivation to keep going. The postings on the board were inspirational. The stories at RTK were the missing pieces of the book that made all the difference. Thanks everyone!

So, it took me over 2 years to finish, mostly due to not having found this site til about 4 months ago and having had to make do with physical flashcards until then, but I'm finally done with the 2042 kanji!! (now just to finish the supplement, but that doesn't count, right guys??)

Thanks to everyone whose stories I used, and I hope some of mine that I posted up have helped others^^

ktcgx Wrote:So, it took me over 2 years to finish, mostly due to not having found this site til about 4 months ago and having had to make do with physical flashcards until then, but I'm finally done with the 2042 kanji!! (now just to finish the supplement, but that doesn't count, right guys??)

Thanks to everyone whose stories I used, and I hope some of mine that I posted up have helped others^^

Doing RTK without a digital SRS system...!? Wow. Like, really, really... wow. You spent over a year and a half doing that.

I don't care- that's friggin' impressive. You're going to find vocabulary and such so much easier now that you are aware of being able to use Anki/etc., being on this website. Damn, congratulations.


Good luck in your further learning!

uisukii Wrote:

ktcgx Wrote:So, it took me over 2 years to finish, mostly due to not having found this site til about 4 months ago and having had to make do with physical flashcards until then, but I'm finally done with the 2042 kanji!! (now just to finish the supplement, but that doesn't count, right guys??)

Thanks to everyone whose stories I used, and I hope some of mine that I posted up have helped others^^

Doing RTK without a digital SRS system...!? Wow. Like, really, really... wow. You spent over a year and a half doing that.

I don't care- that's friggin' impressive. You're going to find vocabulary and such so much easier now that you are aware of being able to use Anki/etc., being on this website. Damn, congratulations.


Good luck in your further learning!

Haha, yeah, I'm a bit older than most of the people using this site (everyone seems to still be in high school or uni!), and still not used to how much helpful stuff like this you can find online these days! I don't even remember how I found thi site, but basically, if you only count the months since I've been using it, it looks a lot better :p

Definitely going to try to get my head around Anki and create my RTK2 cards over the spring break here^^

Good luck to you too!

ktcgx Wrote:So, it took me over 2 years to finish, mostly due to not having found this site til about 4 months ago and having had to make do with physical flashcards until then, but I'm finally done with the 2042 kanji!! (now just to finish the supplement, but that doesn't count, right guys??)

Thanks to everyone whose stories I used, and I hope some of mine that I posted up have helped others^^

Wow! Physical flashcards for all those kanji? O_O You made it yourself or just bought premade flashcards? If you made it from scratch, wow...I salute you! I planned to make physical flashcards before but thank goodness I found Anki. It made my life easier.

Congratulations ktcgx! No stopping now!

I have to exert double effort too. Must finish RTK1 asap.

bimspramirez Wrote:Wow! Physical flashcards for all those kanji? O_O

As another "Old Timer," I also used index cards at first, for the first 500 or so. Around Lesson 20, whenever Heisig decided to drop his stories, I began to depend on this site. I was lucky to find an iTouch/iPhone app--the official RTK one. There was an advertisement on this website, or mention of it. That helped a bunch. I used it everyday and I instantly gave up on the physical index cards. At some point last year, the RTK app was upgraded. That upgrade really caused me problems. The newer version had no save function/SRS and I had to turn to Anki. The instructions are not easily understandable for someone without an I.T. background. I'm one of those old geezer types who can't figure out how to text from a cellphone. Anyhow, I finally figured out the basic functions of Anki after days of clicking and reading. After that, I continued through the book until the end.

I actually still depend on physical index cards. As a matter of fact, I am using them now to write some kanji compounds while studying from another relic from yesteryear, an old kanji book that was originally published in 1976--Eleanor Jorden's, "Reading Japanese."