Just added the last 36 kanji last night. Normally I only try to do 20 per day, but it was a weekend and I had some free time.

I started sometime around the first day of February with the online sample chapters. I ordered the book from Amazon as soon as I realized how well the method worked.

Since then I've been through a move to a different state and a new job. I averaged about 17.5 kanji per day, and did reps every single day except for the opening night of Operation Odyssey Dawn (the bombing missions in Libya -- I'm in the Air Force) and one night when I was sick.

The most reps I ever had on a single day was 129, and that was after chewing through a good number of 'review' kanji a few days before. I typically try to keep my review kanji below 60.

I've completely filled up two spiral-bound notebooks with around 10,000 characters. I've also learned what kind of pen is best for me (fine-tip Sharpie).

Whew.

Last edited by jseverns (2011 May 29, 10:06 am)

aodeur wrote:

Tadaaa!
I wrote my last flash card yesterday, and i just entered the last stories to this site. Which means that i pretty much stuck on my plan to do the whole thing in three months. March 1 to June 1. What a fantastic time!
Now, my next project (besides learning the readings): Quit smoking. Does anybody know if there's a Heisig Method for that, too?

Congrats, aodeur!
As for smoking, this thread might have a good idea. Although it's less of a Heisig method and more of an SRS method, but still...

Congratulations.

Made it to 2042! Looking at my profile tells me it took a year and two weeks.

Congratulations and thanks to all who went before me. Without some of the awesome and unforgettable story ideas I don't think I'd have made it. Of course special thanks to ファブリス for creating such and elegant and functional site.

Congratulations.

Congratulations peeps!

At this rate you'll be fluent in... 4-10 years?  Haha.  Good luck.

Congratulations on finishing! Time to move on to the real fun, then.

Finally finished. It only took about 9 years. Granted, I was only studying off and on- and admittedly more off than on for most of that time. I still recommend the Heisig method, though. When I started, I got to about 700-800, then moved, new job, busy, lazy periods, etc, and didn't get back to it for six months or so. Came back to it, found I still remembered 5-600 of them, most of the forgotten ones being from the bits most recently studied when I stopped. Had breaks around the 1200, 1500, 1700 marks due to life circumstances and laziness. Each time I came back, my retention was still around 65-75%. A couple of review sessions, I was back into pushing on for new ones. Some of those breaks with no review were well over a year.

I found this site the last time I came back to studying a couple of months ago. With a lot going on (job interview, moving again (from Hokkaido to Tachikawa), new job, etc) I took it fairly slowly, but finally added the last ones today.

So yeah, 9 years or so. Thing is, had I been using other methods, I probably would have had nowhere near the same retention rate, and I'd not have learned them as fast as I did during those periods when I was studying.

Actually, I know for a fact that merely writing a character a few thousand times isn't enough to remember it. I've done a bit of artwork where I wrote some kanji characters very small and close together, hundreds or thousands of times to make up an image (like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/green-sabe … 0299568636). In a couple of pieces, I used kanji I'd looked up that I hadn't studied yet. Several years later, I'd recognize the kanji if I saw it, but might not have written it correctly again (it was a bit odd coming across those later as I worked my way through the book and re-programmed them in my brain with the Heisig method).

I've already started working on readings now, but with a lot more motivation. With the newest job, I'm dealing with a lot of Japanese emails. The more I can read without rikai/google translate, the faster and easier everything will be.

DONE!!! I FINISHED RTK1 Finally!!!!!!!! Congratulations to everyone for the long haul. It is worth it.

I started studying 1 day after failing the JLPT N1 last year, and finished today (a few days before taking the JLPT N1 again, wish me luck!) I knew most of the kanji readings, but wanted to learn how to write so that I could practice. It was well worth studying this book wohoo. Thank goodness for tools like anki which I used in my commutes on my ipod touch.

I targetted 150 new kanji per week (weds/thurs i did 75 new, the rest of the week i reviewed). I also just got married and so it caused a bit of slowdown but I made sure to keep my due count low and it worked.

Good luck and congrats to everyone and best of luck to you guys working out there. My next goal is RTK3 with the supplement so its just getting started. Grats guys!

Congrats to the both of you! I'll join this "club" eventually. I'm only slightly over 400, in that obscenely long lesson that has 80 kanji. Going at a rate of 10 per day so far, so I should finish in around 6 months. Maybe I'll speed it up slightly? But I'm also trying to do grammar and vocab from Japanese for Everyone at the same time.

I'm finally done!!! :'D
Not bad for a high school girl, eh?
I started at the end of summer vacation last year, so it took me a little under a year to finish, so at this point it's hard to imagine a life WITHOUT adding new kanji every day...

But once I start sentence-hunting, I'm sure I'll get over it :'D

I'm just so tired of saying "Yeah, I've been studying Japanese every day for a year...but I still can't hold a conversation in the language." Following the AJATT method, I haven't been studying any vocabulary or grammar (formally, besides my immersion environment) the whole time. So hopefully I'll see some improvement by the end of the summer, and I'm sure that knowing the kanji will be a huge help

To everybody who has finished, congrats!! And to everybody who's still studying, がんばってね！ Once you get to that last kanji, like I did tonight, it's really the best feeling in the world.

rekkia-chan wrote:

I'm finally done!!! :'D
Not bad for a high school girl, eh?
I started at the end of summer vacation last year, so it took me a little under a year to finish, so at this point it's hard to imagine a life WITHOUT adding new kanji every day...

But once I start sentence-hunting, I'm sure I'll get over it :'D

I'm just so tired of saying "Yeah, I've been studying Japanese every day for a year...but I still can't hold a conversation in the language." Following the AJATT method, I haven't been studying any vocabulary or grammar (formally, besides my immersion environment) the whole time. So hopefully I'll see some improvement by the end of the summer, and I'm sure that knowing the kanji will be a huge help

To everybody who has finished, congrats!! And to everybody who's still studying, がんばってね！ Once you get to that last kanji, like I did tonight, it's really the best feeling in the world.

Best advice I can give to you(been studying for almost 2 years). Just maintain all those reps, be honest on your reps and you should be solid. I kinda wished I started learning  Jp back in grade 10 or so but I'm heading into my last year of college. But still will continue to own Jp more and more(it really comes down to one little thing" maintain and keep on learning)

Keep up the good work, you'll be surprised if you just keep going(around the 1 year mark, I was surprised how far I'd gotten)