Personally I just rote-memorized hiragana and katakana over the course of 2 weeks while procrastinating instead of doing my exams last year . Its probably not worth putting any great effort into learning them though, since you only really get good at reading/writing them after using them for a few months.

I know what you mean about wanting to learn the words in Japanese instead of English, but it is much easier (when you don't know the Japanese words that use that Kanji of course) to use English keywords and then link them to the Japanese word. When you start actually learning Japanese words though you won't even bother with the keywords any more. Like whenever I see single I instantly think  どくしん、or thing I think こと etc... Soon as you pick up the words that use those Kanji, you will begin to think in the Japanese instead of the English and can change the keywords accordingly.

About small fonts, I really struggle with them in DS games . Most of the time you can make it out from context/other kanji etc.. But with some that are on their own and are the key part of the sentence I get royally screwed and have no way of knowing the sentence meaning!

Basically just stick with RTK, even though it may be boring and you may want to learn some real Japanese instead, you will struggle massively with reading Kanji and will impede your literacy if you don't do it! I still haven't finished RTK and regret not completing it when I got to ~1650. Whilst I recognise a fair amount of Kanji in my sentence deck there are a good 100 or so that I have never studied in RTK and tend to struggle with when trying to write out the words from memory.

Maybe the point gets clearer as I learn more Japanese, but for the moment, learning individual kanji before words seems really weird. I keep thinking of it as like trying to learn English by writing down half of words. "Hmm, the first part is 'fore', so it could be foreclose, foreshadow, foresight, or maybe even forget, forlorn or forge!" Why is the kanji called "spine" used in so many words involving bathtubs?

I'm only about a quarter of the way through RTK 1, but all I'm really remembering are stroke orders from writing them all down and the author's apparent smugness over the obvious flawlessness of his method is kinda bugging me.

Is there a point in learning the meanings of individual kanji first thing at my very beginner stage of learning? It seems like it would be easier learning words, then looking up the kanji they're composed of to see why they're written that way. I have no idea what's going on.

Is there a point in learning the meanings of individual kanji first thing at my very beginner stage of learning?

Yes.

Less smart-ass response: By making the kanji one of the earliest aspects of your study you accomplish a couple of things.  First, you get over the most intimidating aspect of Japanese study.  As you've mentioned, the way your currently progressing through the book your learning a lot about stroke order and very little else.  By attaching an English keyword to each kanji, it creates enough "kan-text" to give the kanji a hook in your mind.  As you create more of these hooks, it becomes like the little hook-n-loop devices on velcro products, and it becomes easier and easier for Japanese to stick.  Now, when you start learning vocabulary, the kanji you've just learned are already present in your mind, just waiting for the "loop" part of the velcro, ie. the word/japanese meanings, to come along.  Vocabulary becomes much easier to learn AND because you know the kanji as you learn the word, much easier to reinforce through reading immersion. 

Now, I'm not a fan of creating really complex stories and spending time trying to "visualize" them and all that stuff.  But, using simple one sentence stories that tie the keyword and all the components making up the kanji in a neat, logical bundle are really helpful.  They are what allows you to remember how to write/read the thing.  Then, over a short period of time, they actually fade away and the keyword itself is really all you need.  Then, when you start studying vocabulary, even the english keyword fades.  It's like a ladder you pull up after you when you get done climbing up.
You don't have to imagine a cow in the shape of the kanji (and shouldn't, that's missing the point), just remember that 牛 means cow so when you get to another kanji that has 牛 as a component in it (like 告), the word "cow" in your sentence-story reminds you to write that part.

Also, I wouldn't say heisig is smug, exactly, he just observes that he has come up with a method which can teach non-japanese the kanji more quickly than anything anyone else has come up with so far.  And, he's right.

If your having problems with RTK, I'd highly recommend RTK Lite. It goes by much faster. I think it's most important to learn all the basic primitives that make up a Kanji, that way when you find a kanji you don't know, you can break it up based on it's primitives.

I wouldn't worry too much about the entomology and patterns of why the kanji are shaped the way they are. With how kanji has evolved, quite a few things are archaic or just have plain been lost. It's a little like worrying about why the letters in the roman alphabet are shaped the way they are.

I also find the most important thing about RTK is the basic logical order of everything. There is a post somewhere on these forums about someone who just brute forced all the kanji into his head without stores but in the Heisig order. So if stories aren't working for you, you could try something else while using the same order.

The one other thing you could try is Japanese keywords instead of English ones, but I have any experience with it to comment on.

Most of the keywords are good aproximations of the japanese usage for the kanji, some are more arbitrary.  Dunno if anyone has made a list of which is which.  But, that really misses the point of RTK.  The point is learning to break each kanji up into the component parts that make it up so that you can quickly recognize each of the 2000+ Joyo Kanji, making it much, much easier to learn vocabulary and readings later.  The keywords simply provide a hook for your mind.

Have you looked at this, btw:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/bl … ment-37226

You can find more about "Lazy Kanji" on that same site, and there's a thread about it here somewhere.  Maybe this method would suit you better. It takes Heisig's ordering, primitives, and the basic idea of stories and simplifies the process in certain ways. I have been experimenting with it and found it works well for me.  Although it does take slightly longer to solidify each kanji in my head, the actual process is far less "painful".  Others disagree vehemently.

I will say this: a huge percentage of non-japanese who become literate did so by working through RTK in some way, shape or form.  Most of them doing it exactly how he instructs.