I did, but what exactly is your question here?

I did it first, before learning words and grammar up to about frame 500 or so. Then I was taking some Japanese class in college at the time and found I barely needed any kanji to get an A, and my Heisig experience let me either already know the kanji we did learn or I was able to quickly develop a mnemonic to remember it. Essentially, I was aceing the class, having some fun in Japanese, and felt that if this is enough then I'll use the spare time to party college style.

Looking back, I wish I didn't slack off in my studies in the beginning. The class lured me into a false sense of security, and it wasn't until the end of my second year of college where I was partying with Japanese students a lot and I finally realized that I might have a perfect score on everything in Japanese class, but I wasn't able to converse or do anything in Japanese at all outside of that. So, I got serious, returned to RtK, and did it right.

However, it's never too late for Heisig, I think. So if you want to write now, go ahead and do it. It doesn't take that long, really. I was just a lazy freshman all those years ago. Now I have a job where I use Japanese daily.

I'm surprised at how many compounds I can guess now just from looking at the kanji and already knowing the vocab.  It's never tool ate to do rtk.

Now that you can do custom keywords on this site too, I've already started replacing some of them with japanese keywords that I know instead, since they make more sense to me to use!

I'll throw in a cautionary tale: I did RTK fairly late on (post-JLPT2-pass), and although I completed it and was able to do keyword->kanji with a 90%ish pass rate, it was completely unconnected to anything else I did in Japanese so it was basically useless to me[*] and I've now forgotten a lot of it. (I did retain a few things but looking back I'd have been much more productive spending all that time studying vocab instead.)

[*] By this I mean that RTK gives you keyword->kanji, but I'm never in a position where I have a keyword and want the kanji. Either I'm reading, in which case I have the kanji already and want reading and meaning, or I'm writing, in which case I have a word in Japanese, and I don't have a map from Japanese-word to keyword.

I think that if I were doing it again I'd want to use the Japanese-keywords stuff (and probably start with the "RTK lite" subset too) and make sure I tied it into vocab study.

I'd been studying Japanese for a long time before I did RTK.  I was probably around JLPT N3 level when I did it, and I think it helped a ton.  But, I just couldn't bring myself to study the traditonal way, so it was really my only option to get the kanji down. 

If you can bring yourself to do more traditional it's not so necessary late in the game.  I hear the White Rabbit flashcards are great, and looking back now I think I could have also done quite well using them instead.

Too long to read? Please skip to the Bottom line.

I started out learning kana, then working through げんき1 and the workbook, did all exercises in there, which took about a month. I thought about doing げんき2 after that. But i decided that now is the time to learn how to recognize and to write the kanji. So i started RTK in late October last year to get that out of the way. So i know the basic grammar taught in げんき1 some vocabulary, and now i am on a good way with the kanji.

If i had to recommend someone who is interested in learning Japanese how to start out - i would suggest going kana -> some book to see if they are really interested in learning the language, and only after that working through RTK. Doing the whole set, or RTK "lite" whatever seems fit to the person.

The reason for this is that RTK is somewhat of the ultimate proof of will and determination to spend time and energy to learn one part of the language. If someone is willing to do that, then they are on a good way, to learn the rest of the language as well. Meaning the readings either with RTK 2 or some other method, like vocab learning, and what not. Going from basic to intermediate to advanced.

I sure am glad that i choose this path. Because ultimately all i wanted to learn is how to write, how to recognize, and how to remember the kanji. I am sure that it will make the rest of my learning adventure a whole lot easier. Having that out of the way, and only needing to fill the "empty containers" which most of the kanji are right now for me, with meaning and sound.

Since i am very close to completing RTK i will soon have a proof if it was really worth spending my time and effort on doing it. One thing was clear to me all along, i would outright shoot  myself, should i decide to stop learning Japanese now or in the future.

Bottom line
It is never too early or too late to learn something which is part of what you have to learn. I can't say much about the effects of learning the kanji the RTK way after having reached an intermediate or advanced stage. If you wish to learn how to write the kanji, do RTK, do RTK, have i mentioned do RTK already? I think i have. Anyway since i, being the Japanese newbie that i still am, are not there yet can say no more about that. But i will get there.

Last edited by Nagareboshi (2011 January 05, 9:04 pm)

zigmonty wrote:

完壁 is common enough to get a WWWJDIC/rikaichan entry. It's marked as irregular kanji usage but meh.

You're going to go by WWWJDIC/rikaichan?

"全然いいですよ！" is a common saying. It is, of course, grammatically wrong. 完壁 is definitely wrong. And just like myself and the 東大 graduate sitting next to me did, we laughed at the girls (don't worry, they loved it).