Halfway, never thought I'd make it this far (every time I've tried in the past I've stalled out around 400). Restarted in April.

You can do it - stops and starts aren't failures, they just show us something about our learning style, what works, what doesn't, what we need to do to stay with it. Keep reviewing!

It's interesting that you've previously hit the wall around the 400 mark, and I wonder if this is some kind of natural short-term limit for brute-force memory. I had the Heisig book and was using it almost casually up until that point, but at around frame 400 I started taking his method seriously, as it became apparent that "just remember it" was what I was really doing a lot of the time, and as a result I wasn't benefiting from the imaginative memory approach.

At last. Over halfway. Reached 1044 today and just finished all my reviews.

It took me 4 months and 25 days. I did the initial 600 in six days but from there I only kept on reviewing for two weeks. I started from where I left on May 1st and have kept reviewing and learning new Kanji since then.

I tend to learn Kanji in large bulks when I have the time. Until now I haven't been able to keep a steady pace (e.g. 10 per day). Tomorrow I want to l want to learn 100 if I can because now I'm just eager to see this pain in the ass through.

Hi, I'm new to the forum!

I reached 1300/2200 (6th edition) today, so it's a little bit more than halfway for me!
I started more or less two weeks ago, and I'm doing the best I can to finish before the end of the month.

Good luck to all fellow RTKers! Keep up the good work.

Welcome to the forum, Killua! Wow, you are sure making some quick progress if you're that far after 2 weeks! Way to go! Show them kanji who's boss ^^

Thanks!

To be honest I planned to finish in 22 days straight, but reviews are starting to slow me down a little bit.

Woot, finally got to the halfway mark! Just finished lesson 27. I'm determined to complete the first volume of RTK within a bit less than a month, before summer break's over. ^.^

I learned 10３７ Kanjis in 19 days!! Now, I have to just learn the remaining 1000 xD

yayPanda28 Wrote:Woot, finally got to the halfway mark! Just finished lesson 27. I'm determined to complete the first volume of RTK within a bit less than a month, before summer break's over. ^.^

I'd love to finish before my summer break is over too. But even though I only have 795 left my motivations really running low.
I know it's gonna be a huge reward getting through this crap. But I want to study grammar and vocabulary now. I'm starting to get fed up with these small Kanji devils!

Just reached 1100 in the sixth edition!!! This is my third time starting Heisig in the past decade. Reached about 400 the first time, 800 the second before the realities of life took over. This time around I have time, motivation, and a purpose, and it's happening! 2200 seems far but doable.

timaki Wrote:Just reached 1100 in the sixth edition!!! This is my third time starting Heisig in the past decade. Reached about 400 the first time, 800 the second before the realities of life took over. This time around I have time, motivation, and a purpose, and it's happening! 2200 seems far but doable.

And even if you fail (after reaching 1600, presumably), evidence suggests you'll successfully complete RTK1+3 on your next attempt! And KanKen level 1 after that...

1000 today, thanks to AnkiDroid and the stories here. I have a day job and two kids so it is 14 new cards only per day (100 per 2 weeks). I review on my bus commutes to work. The first time around, without electronics, I got to just 300.
皆さん、ありがとう!

Northern_Lord Wrote:I'd love to finish before my summer break is over too. But even though I only have 795 left my motivations really running low.
I know it's gonna be a huge reward getting through this crap. But I want to study grammar and vocabulary now. I'm starting to get fed up with these small Kanji devils!

just do it! I was in the same position but I knew I was more than halfway and that I couldnt stop. set a pace and stick with it. At 20/day you only have 40 days left. Once you get withing 30 days you can taste the end.

Recently passed the half way point on the RTK (6th ed). I moved to Japan 4 months ago but of course due to work, RL, etc I haven't devoted as much time to finishing RTK as I originally planned. So I have not been learning new kanji every day. Reviews you can nicely do on the trains while going to work, hobbies and so on.

I also started 1v1 Japanese lessons with a good teacher, 90 minutes twice a week. Actually learning the grammar, vocab and speaking has been nice and given me more motivation to finish the RTK.

Because of the Heisig order, some of the kanji I learnt during the lessons instead of RTK (actually words, not only the Kanji, including readings) but that is not really a problem.

Anyways, 1236 done and 964 to go.

Just reached the half-way mark. To be honest, stories are becoming more arduous to make either because of burn-out or because of the fact that I am a perfectionist and spend a lot of time on each story (and even more on the stumpers!). But all I can do is push forward at this point and remind myself of my commitment.

There ain't going to be another Japanese hiatus for me.

First time posting on these forums. I'm usually just a lurker on the internet, but I just had to post this time to share a few words.

I just hit that 1000 kanji milestone, starting early November (now being early Jan) and it feels so damn great. Having studied three years of Japanese in University, I was always put off by kanji and to be honest, never did anything about it ... I suppose the idea of reading and understanding thousands upon thousands of combinations of kanji sounded very insurmountable. Reading and writing have always been huge weak points of mine, and I'm glad I'm finally doing something about them now.

This is the first time in a LONG time in the past three years of learning Japanese that I've felt so positive about learning the language. Feels really rewarding, and now I'm STARVING for more.

I only wish I had known about this method and website BEFORE I finished my Japanese uni courses.

Thank you, to Heisig for this brilliant approach to kanji recognition, and to the community on this forum/site for your amazing stories and helpful advice. I've never seen an online forum with such a friendly, well-mannered and humble bunch of people

To those of you who are self learners and are doing RTK on your own: DON'T STOP! KEEP AT IT! At this point, you've already got a significant advantage over your peers at university/college IF you ever decide to take Japanese class. Trust me.

I'll see you guys at the end of RTK volume 1

At 1062 kanji at the moment after starting in November and I'm really happy to have finished the Mr. T chapter so easily. I've been really looking forward to it because I've seen that primitive so many times and never had the slightest clue what those kanji meant.

RAAARRRGHHH!!

Half-way there, yay! No more 4 month burnout sessions for me (or at least that's the plan). Definitely going to finish RTK before the end of the semester

1100 in the 6th edition. I agree, Mr T is a very common primitive and learning them opened up a lot of very useful Kanji.

Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!

Just reached 1021 just now!
I can do it!!!!! just half more.

I'm also really seeing the benefits of RTK as I can recognize many kanji in so of the visual novels I'm playing. . . .imagine when were done. Good luck to all the others too completing the book.

Half way! I hit #1100 today.

According to my obsessive spreadsheets it took 60.4 hours between 12/4/2013 and today. When I do my Anki reviews I seem to get ~80%-85% right.

I hope to finish around the end of April or early May.

I hit 1200 this week, don't know what the exact number is now but I'm doing 20 new ones everyday after doing 50 until the first 1000. I just watched this new kids' anime called 妖怪ウオッチwith no subs and understood 90% of it! I'm so excited!

頑張れましょう　みんなさん！

Congrats @ everyone here
So I guess I am half way through RTK 6th ed + Jalup RTK Mod:
so basically RTK1 + the most "common" RTK3 kanji (2266 kanji).
I'm using the pen & paper method and not the "finger in the air" method, I just admire great handwriting... and calligraphy and such (for this I have installed the semi cursive & cursive fonts in Anki).
My retention rate for young cards is 90.8% and for old cards 91.73%
I've been studying for 2 months now. So maybe, just maybe, I won't be able to beat the 10 days record

Oh yeah, and I've used Russian "leaders" instead of Mr T/Chuck Norris: Lenin, Stalin and Putin. Because of all the propaganda which has been poured into me since childhood about these three, I could come up with really funny and memorable stories.

Passed 1100 this week!

Reached the half way point yesterday. Another half to go. Hopefully it will not take me as long as the last half. I have a couple of days free now and will try to rush to 3/4 in the next two weeks.