Just make sure to finish all reviews/faileds for the day before adding new kanji. That will ensure that you only add as much as you can handle for as much time as you have (if you spend all your time on reviews you won't have any time to add kanji that day). It's self-balancing.

100 a day is definitely doable (I did more like 150 per day for the last half of the book), but you need a lot of free time every day.

Doing 100 a day, failing, reseting, doing 50 a day, possibly failing, resetting again? Is your reason for wanting to do so many per day because you want to move quickly or so you can boast? Because if it's the former, well, you just wasted a bunch of time. Just do what you have time to do. Reviews first, new cards if you have time.

Last edited by zigmonty (2010 October 05, 7:20 am)

Yes I want to do this phase of my japanese learning as quick as possible because as I'm not really learning how to speak japanese nor anything like that, I find this phase not as... fun (it makes me want to rush through it so I can get to the next phase).
EDIT: Probably what I'll do from now on is:
1) review everything;
2) and ONLY then start adding kanji after kanji and try to do as many as I can.
Oh, and BTW... About the boasting: Why would I want to boast myself of rushing through RTK when probably almost everyone I know thinks it's stupid for me to learn japanese and gives 0 value to it? Boasting to random Internet people?... O.o

Last edited by Miguelitius (2010 October 05, 8:15 am)

Miguelitius wrote:

Yes I want to do this phase of my japanese learning as quick as possible because as I'm not really learning how to speak japanese nor anything like that, I find this phase not as... fun (it makes me want to rush through it so I can get to the next phase).

Try one of the RTK 'lite' variants that uses a smaller number of kanji. Then you can come back to the rest later. Or do some actual Japanese study alongside RTK. Or don't do RTK at all (heresy around here I know, but lots of people in the wider world have taken that approach, including me). Any of these approaches seems likely to be more interesting and effective than trying to burn through full RTK at some insane rate...

Are there more than one RTK Lite variants? I think it's a great idea! Actually I just blocked all kanji not included in RTK Lite already.

I think that the Ultra Lite version is TOO Lite, you know what I mean? Just 80% of coverage will make me unable to read 1 in 5 texts. Of course this is just an average but I prefer to learn the 1115 and then starting my sentence-mining much more comfortably. I may be mistaken though. My intention right now is to do the 1115 from RTK Lite, but I would like to hear an opinion from all of you . BTW, a big thanks to everyone who already replied, I kindly appreciate your help.

I'm personally just say go up to 3007

Says the guy who uses 真逆 instead of まさか.


Miguelitius, since you're not learning any actual Japanese during this step, I'd agree with a lot of people here and probably just go through Lite to give yourself a launch pad to get into actually reading things and learning words. You're not going to need 勅 (imperial order) in order to start reading something like よつばと. Frankly, you probably wouldn't need much kanji at all...

By then you should be able to use heisig's primitives and stuff to add kanji as you encounter them. Or...you know...go through all 3007 kanji in your free time.

EratiK wrote:

(Don't frighten him ta12121!)
Eventually you'll get to 3007, but do like, a 1000 each year.
So start with the lite, enjoy native material, and next summer, you'll want to study the remaining 1000 naturally. Same next year.

Didn't mean to scare anyone. I recommend doing the kanji slowly. No need to force yourself to do 100 per day. Only if you want that is.
20-30 is usual how people do it[and finish in 3months all 3007 kanji]

FooSoft wrote:

ta12121 wrote:

I'd personally just say go up to 3007. That way, you won't need to learn anymore. [Well you can but, the amount of what needs to be learned will be very minimum] 
I forgot what 3007 kanji is in terms of frequency[95%+?]

I'm at 3220 and I still learn a good half-dozen new characters every week (not even counting names)

are we talking about RTK-wise? Or have you really gotten to 3200+? so far. Which is awesome, if true!

So far I'm only at 2200+ so far kanji(in terms of reading-wise). This is what my anki srs deck states

I'd just briefly go through RTK1 (lite or normal) and forget about SRS/stories/writing at this point. Just do vocab instead, RTK can wait and if you get serious about your studies you can always do it properly (granted you want to learn how to write/recognize each kanji).

Your brain just needs to be familiar with kanji and information about what primitives create "imperial edict" are quite pointless to you at the beginning. In my opinion RTK is good if you want to write (by hand) but other than that its value is a little bit overrated and people give it way too much attention.

I spent 2 months doing RTK, another 4 months trying to get over my huge pile of reviews only to drop it soon after I started learning vocab/grammar. I don't feel dropping RTK affected my studies in any way (besides giving me more time to actually study) but I know I'd love to have that 6 months back...

ta12121 wrote:

are we talking about RTK-wise? Or have you really gotten to 3200+? so far. Which is awesome, if true!

So far I'm only at 2200+ so far kanji(in terms of reading-wise). This is what my anki srs deck states

We are close! I'm at 2263 unique kanji in my vocab deck, but 3220 in my kanji deck

Surely the real test of deck manliness is the number of mature cards?