Congrat FL1PPY! Really, I'm amazed: only 2 months. Are you a jobless person, a teen or retired person to have been able to do that?
How much time did it take you each day to make your review, and to enter new kanji?

Thanks for the feedback, dear unemployed teen. No shame on your status, we've all been there one day. But most of us were more occupied with chasing girls and playing video games than with learning Japanese

From I perceive, lightspeed progress often rely more on your capacity to focus on something than on the time you spend on it, and I guess that's where your current way of life comes in handy: allowing you to feel focused on ONE big thing at a time, enough to be able to think and come back to it all along the day. Nice but kind of unrealistic for most grown-ups with responsibilities. What I mean is that the type of process you describe should be reproductible by prisoners, jobless people or programmers having no tyrannic manager and sleeping all day long behind their computer screen in big companies  (don't tell it does not exist), but rarely by people with regular jobs demanding a permanent attention.

I'm done, I'm finally done. What a long, strange trip it's been. I've started the book 3-4 times, but alas the journey is complete. Rather, it is just beginning I feel. I am in Japan for a year on a study abroad program and I have learned a fair amount of Japanese up until this point, however I'm eager to truly be able to start the sentence method.

Good luck to everyone else who is working through the book.

Yesterbean wrote:

I have never studied Japanese and don't know a single thing about sentences and I'm pretty enthusiastic about starting on them. However I'm wondering if I should start RTK3 first and just get it over with while I'm still in kanji mode. Does anyone have any opinions about this?

If you've never studied Japanese before, and you're just going to start delving into beginner material, I would advise not to go too hardcore into it. Maybe a few a day. Because outside of the jouyou you won't cover too much non RTK1 kanji in your studies. Probably the biggest two you'll encounter are 誰 and 俺 which you could easily make stories for now. Later on when you get more in-depth, RTK3 will probably help you out. But for now I suggest a break.

CerpinTaxt wrote:

If you've never studied Japanese before, and you're just going to start delving into beginner material, I would advise not to go too hardcore into it. Maybe a few a day. Because outside of the jouyou you won't cover too much non RTK1 kanji in your studies. Probably the biggest two you'll encounter are 誰 and 俺 which you could easily make stories for now. Later on when you get more in-depth, RTK3 will probably help you out. But for now I suggest a break.

Thanks Cerpin sounds like a good idea. No need to rush the learning of RTK3 if I'm not going to be using it for a while.

Well done LorenPaul! Feels good doesn't it.

there u go
btw almost didnt write stories, just used the ones on the site, i just hope i hold something of this.

Deck criado: 9 dias atrás

Average New Seen
In last week
1622 (231,7/day)
In last month
2042 (68,1/day)

ty all for all the help and ty webmaster for making this website

Last edited by linkage001 (2009 October 21, 8:54 am)

Me too! All done RTK1. Congratulations please!

I'm a bit ashamed to say that it took me 9 months though ... let's just say motivation started to wane at about frame 1,000.

Now I'm on to KM2 and more importantly wrightak's wonderful 'after RtK' deck for learning the readings of all those nasty little kanji Though I plan to wait a week just so my RtK Anki reviews drop from the current 70/day to about 20/day ... don't want to have *too* many new things ot reviews at once

http://wrightak.googlepages.com/afterrtk1

I finished the book today !!
It took me 2.5 months to finally get to frame 2042.
Man, I feel so ecstatic, I can finally post in this thread !!

Thanks to everyone for your great stories and to Fabrice for your awesome website !!

Last edited by Xzbeat (2009 October 24, 10:16 am)

CONGRATS TO EVERYONE HERE! I just finished RTK, yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. When i first came across the idea of memorising 2000+ kanji i thought it would be really hard, but i wasn´t, it was just a matter of time, and i could have done it much faster in the beggining. Did 1100 in the last 2 months, i got used to it. Sometimes i came across kanji that made me think, this one is a tough and complex one, but looking back at those kanji now, they seem so easy=D. It was really a fun journey, thanks to all of you. I recall some fun stories, like the quest of the rice seedlings to reach the promised land, and many others. A Thousand times THANK YOU, to the community of this site and to Fabrice for all the hard work, ALL of you people rock!!!

Congrats all! Now the real study begins!

Well, old R86 has finally dragged himself over the finish line too.  It took about 9 months to the day, and there was at least an entire month this spring during which I hardly added any cards, but it worked out OK as this allowed me to shrink those earlier piles through reviews.

Like so many others have said, I could never have done this without knowing there were so many others on the same path with the same goal, and without everyone's ingenious stories.  I would be surprised if I made up as many as 50 of the 2042 stories on my own.  My favorite borrowed story still is:  "Yo momma so OBESE, she make the MOON change DIRECTION."

Congratulations, everyone, and thanks again!

(EDIT and disclaimer:  I realize that of course this wasn't exactly "the finish line."  Call it the first in a series of goals.)

Last edited by ryuusei86 (2009 November 06, 10:52 am)

Bokusenou wrote:

Well, I finished RTK1. On to RTK2 tomorrow. It's been a long road. I just thought of that Japanese saying, 千里の道も一歩よりから, The journey of a thousand ri starts with a single step. (And since everyone here knows what a ri is.) I never would've come so far without everyone's stories and the fact that I knew there where others doing the same thing I was.
Thank you everyone!
And congratulations to everyone else who made it!

Bokusenou,

congratulations!
I am still on my journey but I can imagine how proud you must feel right now, having managed the RTK1.
Looking at your registration-date I feel confident I will get there, too, one day.