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The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread.
Index » RtK Volume 1
I finally did it! I actually bought RtK years ago (~5?) back when I was taking Japanese in college. I tried a few times but could never make it past about 200 since I didn't know about this fancy SRS whatnot, haha. Man - what a difference this community makes! My greatest thanks to all those who came before me and left great stories - perhaps a few of mine will be useful to the next generations.
It took me almost exactly 4 months to get through it all, which was on top of being a full-time graduate student! I tried to add about 20/day and kicked it up to 25/day around 1100. If I can make time, anyone can!
Anyway, I took 2.5 years of Japanese in college but haven't really done anything in the last ~3.5 years with it so a lot of it has faded. I think I'll read though Tae Kim and start on Kanji Odyssey next - should be a fair amount of stuff I've seen so hopefully I'll move though it quickly. My friend picked me up ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 in Japan, so that's sitting on my bookshelf as motivation 
I'm past 2042 whoohoo!
Also, first post.
I actually swore to myself I wouldn't post in the forums until i was "done" with rtk, because I feared it would easily turn into a timesink and I had a deadline set for reaching the dreaded sign of the snake (which I missed by one day, heh).
Some big "thank you"s are in order:
First and foremost, to Fabrice without whose work I'm 100% sure I wouldn't have made it this far.
To blackmacros and his "re-examining your SRS workflow" discussion, which helped tremendously in developing my personal review method.
To Zorlee, for the totally awesome, extremely inspiring, caffeine-driven, "187 kanji in one go" post a couple pages back in this thread, which totally made my day and greatly boosted my motivation.
To the whole revtk community, for the marvelous collection of stories, which alone made it worth going through 2000+ kanji.
To those who scoffed at my new resolution (many) and those who supported me until now (few).
And, damn, I didn't want to make this post that much award-speech flavoured, but whatever.
On a side note, during the rtk journey I often found myself thinking that I probably wouldn't be willing to add any new kanji for a while after reaching #2042, I had times I couldn't stomach it anymore and just wanted to be done with it for the sake of it, to move on to grammar etc.
Now that I'm past it I actually find it hard to stop! I just HAD to add another 20-25 kanji just... because. I don't plan on following the rtk3 order, so I added characters that I often encountered while reading, and some others from the new jouyou list.
I have to say, it feels so good to be adding stuff to the SRS just because I want to and not because I feel forced to, that in retrospect I think the decision to give myself a deadline (or just having a clear, defined goal) might have been detrimental more than beneficial.
Well, I still need to review some cards and it's getting late, so I'll save the whole "I still have doubts on what I should do next" for another time/more appropriate thread.
では, これからもよろしくお願いします!
(Though I've been AEATTing for years, I still happen to make even basic mistakes when writing in english. Obviously any kind of correction is much appreciated, we are on a language learning forum after all 
)
Seizar wrote:
I'm past 2042 whoohoo!
Also, first post.
I actually swore to myself I wouldn't post in the forums until i was "done" with rtk, because I feared it would easily turn into a timesink and I had a deadline set for reaching the dreaded sign of the snake (which I missed by one day, heh).
Some big "thank you"s are in order:
First and foremost, to Fabrice without whose work I'm 100% sure I wouldn't have made it this far.
To blackmacros and his "re-examining your SRS workflow" discussion, which helped tremendously in developing my personal review method.
To Zorlee, for the totally awesome, extremely inspiring, caffeine-driven, "187 kanji in one go" post a couple pages back in this thread, which totally made my day and greatly boosted my motivation.
To the whole revtk community, for the marvelous collection of stories, which alone made it worth going through 2000+ kanji.
To those who scoffed at my new resolution (many) and those who supported me until now (few).
And, damn, I didn't want to make this post that much award-speech flavoured, but whatever.
On a side note, during the rtk journey I often found myself thinking that I probably wouldn't be willing to add any new kanji for a while after reaching #2042, I had times I couldn't stomach it anymore and just wanted to be done with it for the sake of it, to move on to grammar etc.
Now that I'm past it I actually find it hard to stop! I just HAD to add another 20-25 kanji just... because. I don't plan on following the rtk3 order, so I added characters that I often encountered while reading, and some others from the new jouyou list.
I have to say, it feels so good to be adding stuff to the SRS just because I want to and not because I feel forced to, that in retrospect I think the decision to give myself a deadline (or just having a clear, defined goal) might have been detrimental more than beneficial.
Well, I still need to review some cards and it's getting late, so I'll save the whole "I still have doubts on what I should do next" for another time/more appropriate thread.
では, これからもよろしくお願いします!
(Though I've been AEATTing for years, I still happen to make even basic mistakes when writing in english. Obviously any kind of correction is much appreciated, we are on a language learning forum after all
Hehe, glad I could be of some help! We need all the motivation we can get to get through that big-ass book! 
And by the way - my stomach still hurts when I review the "deer" kanji... Oh man, that kanji was the worst, my stomach pain was off the hook (I was on the can, learning that kanji), and I was having fever-fantasies (or caffeine-fantasies) about "The Deer Hunter" movie, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldnīt make a story for it.. I can swear Christopher Walken stood right there next to me! Hoho!
Just finished. I'll keep this short and sweet . Good luck to everyone that is still going with the first book. Thanks to everyone's stories and thanks for this awesome website. I'm gonna take on the third book nice and slow. Ciao... I mean さよなら RtK 1 forum~
Took me exactly 55 days but I've finally finished!!
Congratulations & big thank you to all that finished before me, your stories were really helpful and the fact that you completed this enormous task made me believe it was actually possible
Well its been a long journey. It took me 5 months to complete averaging around 12 kanji a day and sometimes I thought the kanji would never end.
Congratulation goes to everyone who also completed it. Originally I was planning on doing it in 3 months but I'm still happy with the result. Now on to the next challenge RTK3
Best of luck to everyone else