Today I hit 1100, so I am half way (6th edition) and very satisfied about it!

finalllllly hit the half way in the 4th edition of years of off and on studying. hoping to power through by a hundred a day to try to finish before school resumes! so stoked to be over the hump!

Hit halfway...but still have problems with complex words/kanji. Need to get the story to stick.

sansa43 Wrote:Hit halfway...but still have problems with complex words/kanji. Need to get the story to stick.

One technique I use for that is to try to see what image pops into my mind before I actually look at the kanji. Then if it fits, try to use that. One less step for your brain to need to make when it can use its instincts.

Just hit 1600 today I can see myself hitting 2000 by the end of January a year after starting RTK who would have guessed I would actually keep up with this.

Finally made it half way! Working my way through at around 30-40 per day. Started on October 28th and plan on finishing by the end of January.

I'm at the halfway mark too. Well sorta. I have successfully gone through 1000 kanji so that they're in my "due" pile in my flashcard app. However, I am ambitiously rushing it and I can't say I've really learned half the kanji yet. For examply I am going to go review now and it will take several hours - I have over 600 cards due cards waiting for me O.o.

Anyway, good luck!

I originally hit halfway sometime last year. I was without internet for a long time, and I don't use Anki, so I forgot a lot of them after 1000ish. I was around 1300 before my internet went down. However, I'm back to about 1200. *-* The reviews are killing me and to be honest I've gotten to where I ignore them since I probably already know them. It's a bad thing to do, but it's helping me get to the ones I'm not so familiar with, again. My resolution for this year is to finally finish RTK 1.

Good luck, guys!

Today I realised that I'm already over three-quarters through - I've reached 1615!
And to think that only six weeks ago I knew, what, five kanji?
Seems like I'll be through with RTK1 (plus supplement) by the end of the month. Really looking forward to sinking my teeth into the language at last - the little I know about Japanese grammar so far looks endlessly fascinating...

Way to go everyone! I realized today that I've hit the halfway point too! I started in October but took a long break last month due to other stuff in my life. I'm back on a schedule now and hoping to finish in the next month or two.

It's been a little more than 1 month but I'm halfway through the 人 Kanji set lesson which means I'm very close to halfway the entire thing (6th Edition book has exactly 2200 Kanji). So only about 50 kanji to go which is easily done within the next 48 hours.

I could've hit 1100 earlier (3 weeks to 1 month) but after passing 1000, I realised that without doing reviews, I run the risk of learning new Kanji at the cost of forgetting old ones. Therefore, I devoted about a week to getting my reviews up to date. Only once I did that, did I finally pick up from where I left off: the 人 chapter which leads to the 1100 halfway point.

I listened to Heisig's advice by only reviewing from Keyword to Kanji but I noticed that even if I can reproduce the Kanji if I have the keyword, if I was to guess the keyword while looking at the Kanji, somtimes I forget it (the keyword).

So it seems that it would still be necessary to review in two ways before I can feel fully confident about recognising a Kanji:

1) Keyword to Kanji
2) Kanji to Keyword

Having said that, the Keyword to Kanji review method, along with Heisig's book, does massive ***king wonders for one's Japanese writing skills.

Kanji I seem to have consistent trouble with include Kanji that has 木 as a primitive on the left side. Not sure why though.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:I listened to Heisig's advice by only reviewing from Keyword to Kanji but I noticed that even if I can reproduce the Kanji if I have the keyword, if I was to guess the keyword while looking at the Kanji, somtimes I forget it (the keyword).

So it seems that it would still be necessary to review in two ways before I can feel fully confident about recognising a Kanji:

1) Keyword to Kanji
2) Kanji to Keyword

I think this happens to everyone, but the point is you will be going kanji -> to meaning so often, you will pick it up naturally.

I can't speak personally as I rushed the 2nd half of RTK (unlike you), so am having to spend extra time re-learning failed cards for a while before I can move on. I wouldn't worry about spending extra time reviewing kanji to keyword though, especially as the meanings are often be a bit off.

Yes! Finished learning 1000 Kanji. Got this far in exactly 3 months, really looking forward to finishing. It's nice to know the same amount of Kanji as a Japanese 6th grader.
A helpful tip I got (from AJATT.com) was to only compare yourself to a Japanese baby born on the same day you started learning. My J-baby is 1.6 years old, so right now I'm beating his socks off! Keep in mind a 2 year old can only put together simple sentences of a couple words. But be careful, they improve really quickly after that!
ヤッタ！！
僕は一千個漢字を暗記した！
３ヶ月で僕は日本の６年生の学生と同じ量の漢字を暗記した。
そうして、半分を過ぎてからはずっと下り坂です。
二千個漢字の終えるのが楽しみですよ

amillerchip Wrote:I wouldn't worry about spending extra time reviewing kanji to keyword though, especially as the meanings are often be a bit off.

Good point.

I don't know about other people here, but I did a respectable amount of Japanese studying (grammar etc) before I started Heisig's books.

Before I did Heisig, I can recognise certain common Kanji when I see it (eg. 私、君). But if you were to ask me to write the Kanji for watashi (私), I wouldn't even know how to write it, even though it's practically the most common Kanji of all time. I don't need Heisig's help to recognise those Kanji, but he sure was helpful in allowing me to visualise those Kanji out of thin air and then write it.

Now about Heisig's meanings/keywords. I don't even remember Heisig's keywords for 私 and 君. I literally did 君 (Kanji number 1000-something) a few days ago (in reality of course, I already knew it but cannot write it), but even still, I cannot remember Heisig's keyword for 君. I have a feeling it's not that good a keyword anyway. But I've already got my own keyword for it: kimi. And that's already enough to allow me to see the Kanji in my head and write it. And that is perhaps why Keyword to Kanji is good, but Kanji to (Heisig) Keyword is not necessary. Just a sign that I'm making good progress perhaps?

I think this is also an argument to make use of Heisig's books by seeing the Kanji in context in real Japanese books. Actually, I periodically peruse (but not properly read because my ability is not there yet) Japanese books after a good session of Heisig. Kanji I didn't know before suddenly looks familiar.

I'm just past the halfway point as of yesterday, but I'm finding I need to take a couple days to review all my stories before I can go forward, I think I rushed a bit the last week. And there are so many kanji for "going" and "wheat" and "person" that it feels easy to rush through making the stories, especially since I'm so busy with other things and am getting eager/impatient. :/

well i did some thinking about my methods, about how i need to visualize more, and i realized that once i passed about the 800 mark, and the stories started coming more easily to me, i would get them out of the way and then go study iknow lessons or read in a grammar book or read some manga or collocations. i think this was confusing me and when i'd see a kanji i would get confused and couldn't necessarily remember the story because i was thinking oh that's the kanji from okiru or whatever. (jeez why do i write in run-on sentences whenever i use this forum?). So i realized that I had kind of set RTK off to the side as a thing to do the minimum of or to crash through a bunch of kanji, feel good, but not spend enough time reviewing. So i wasn't focusing really on RTK for the last 200 kanji or so. so i think i need to shift back to focusing just on RTK until i'm done. my impatience to move on has created double work for me so i will finish later than expected because of this.

On 1044 now slowly regaining momentum after 500-1000. Can't wait to finish now :p

Finally hit 1026, only took 4 months, on and off, haha.

Half way done! Feels much easier from here and since im not rushing, i easily can remember ~95% from what ive learnt. Going 30 per day from now, was 20 before. I dont think that more than this is a good idea, i could study 50 or more each day, but that would probably bite me back later. GL every1 above!

Thanks to learning kanji by Heisig's method, my english vocabulary increases quite a lot everyday;d I write down each kanji in my own notebook with english keyword translated to polish, but again, it's in english in Anki. 2 languages at one go, why not?

Hit frame 1044. It's been rough since I did it in just 18 days. It's been taking me about 2 to 2.5 hours a day for studying and review time. I'm going to attempt to learn about 50 Kanji a day until I finish the 6th edition book. I left the new 2010 Joyo Kanji out for now so I'll have to tackle them at the end. I've also been going through Genki I with about 2 hours of additional study time a day. I'll probably finish that textbook in about 1.5 weeks and begin Genki II. After Rtk is finished I'm planning to start KO2001 study. I just ordered the materials from CosCom the other day. The materials should arrive in about a week so I should have them in plenty of time before I will need them.

whats your secret? (what do u eat etc lol)

or I dont think u are really a beginner

I'm a beginner. But I have been "cheating" at the reviews compared to what to what the folks recommend to do on this forum. When I do the daily review, I don't write each Kanji on paper. Since I am primarily interested in reading and speaking, I am slacking off on the writing a bit. I'll get around to making sure I perfect each Kanji at a later date. This is saving a ton of reviewing time. Others moving slower are better off since they will remember the Kanji exactly and be able to write it perfectly. But I'm finding that I'll lose interest and patience if I don't finish the book in 2 months.

[Zgarbas]

Also, lots of time. I salute your dedication!

Zgarbas Wrote:Also, lots of time. I salute your dedication!

Thanks for the encouragement! I do put in up to 6 hrs. a day total sometimes if I'm free. Hopefully I'll get somewhere with this before I burn out

[s0apgun]

I think I hit halfway a while ago...

whatever