The "I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me" thread.

From: Sweden Registered: 2010-07-10 Posts: 480

Congratulations everybody!

jonuhey wrote:
Finally finished this. ^^
Only 596 mature cards thou, so need to stick with it as I did everything in like 45 days.

Now gotta keep up with rtk reviews. At least for about more 3 months as I dont think rtk is THAT serious, its good to go through it but not to stick with it for the very end. I dont want to need to remember these stories everytime I need to write a kanji... even if I do it without even noticing lol

Anyway big thx for this site and all users, helped me a lot with stories I couldnt get easily. Even though I used anki and 80% of stories created by myself, cant deny it was a BIG help.

Edit: And big GZ for all that finished as well, this is a great accomplishment imo, requires such a high amount of dedication and work.

I finished back in the beginning of May, and by now, reviewing the due RTK cards takes about 5-10 minutes to do I spent quite a bit longer than 45 days to do it though, so the cards had already been spread out pretty good, but I'm saying that I personally think it's worth it to keep reviewing as it only gets easier and easier, and you don't have to abandon a deck you spent so much effort on.

I don't really think of the stories for the characters I know well anyway, even if you keep reviewing RTK cards you're probably gonna move on to having just the radicals or the forms of the characters in mind for those characters you get really used to. I think this is what Heisig is on about on page 269 (or lesson 31 anyway, if you haven't got the 6th version).

Last edited by TwoMoreCharacters (2011 August 20, 1:48 pm)

k_arashi New member

Registered: 2010-06-18 Posts: 4

YAAAAY I just finished yesterday!!!
Now I'm off to sentence mine~
Congratulations to everyone! Completing RTK1 was really worth it in the long run ne?
I'm glad I'm done but I have become so accustomed to entering 25 kanji in my SRS, it'll feel weird that I'm no longer doing kanji but I will continue to review them of course

wulfgar Member

From: canada Registered: 2009-06-15 Posts: 151

zorro226 wrote:
Finished #2042 today. I've hung out with Mr. T, saved the Pinnacle with Spiderman, joined a group of sprouts on their journey to the promised Land, and above all, spent more hours than I can count learning these damn characters just so I can maybe learn how to pronounce most of them. And it was most certainly worth it.

Congratulations! I hope you enjoyed the ride and i hope you continue with your reviews.

JapanesePod101 Sponsor

TwoMoreCharacters Member

From: Sweden Registered: 2010-07-10 Posts: 480

k_arashi wrote:
YAAAAY I just finished yesterday!!!
Now I'm off to sentence mine~
Congratulations to everyone! Completing RTK1 was really worth it in the long run ne?
I'm glad I'm done but I have become so accustomed to entering 25 kanji in my SRS, it'll feel weird that I'm no longer doing kanji but I will continue to review them of course

Congrats Yeah, I didn't like adding cards everyday at all at the time, but now I feel like I kinda miss those days... Maybe I should do RTK3 little by little? Most people think it isn't necessary and I agree, but even after doing 2042 + some extras I still hate seeing characters that I've never seen before.

gogospirit New member

Registered: 2009-12-30 Posts: 1

Woooohooooooooo~
I'm done! (well, technically I finished yesterday )
Now onto sentences....I'm going to first try aiming for 10,000 sentences and see how that goes, wish me luck!

wulfgar Member

From: canada Registered: 2009-06-15 Posts: 151

gogospirit wrote:
Woooohooooooooo~
I'm done! (well, technically I finished yesterday )
Now onto sentences....I'm going to first try aiming for 10,000 sentences and see how that goes, wish me luck!

I wish you luck . Congratulations on completing RTK . good luck on your 10,000 sentences goal. Remember, If you think a sentence sucks delete it. the delete button is your friend. I would not recommend buying the AJATT sentence pack because it's made up of very simple words you can mine out of a textbook.

Good luck.

ranibegley New member

From: Australia Registered: 2009-04-22 Posts: 3

Done!

Ironically the last kanji I finished on was "quit".

Still I'm quite happy and will move on to finishing off the katakana section of Remembering the Kana, and also completing the RTK supplement. Then it's Tae Kim time!

Going out for すし and さけ with the girlfriend tonight to celebrate.

exrulez Member

From: Sterling, VA Registered: 2006-10-30 Posts: 24 Website

Finally!!! Done with RTK1(with readings), on to RTK3(800 left)
(Obviously reviews are for life)

For those already fluent with japanese but
need to polish up, you might relate to some stuff here.

Wow finishing this feels AWESOME. A little bit of background on me.

I' am mexican , majored in comp engineering and i've been studying japanese for over 11 years as a hobby
(lived 1 year as a student in japan,
and worked 1 as a programmer/customer support agent in a japanese company)
so i can say i'm fluent.
Also, I got my 1kyu about 3 years ago,
and almost passed kanken 4 (failed by like 2 points)
about 2 years ago.

When i took the kanken, i had done only about 1000 kanji with the heisig method and just stopped
because i couldn't stayed glued to my seat all the time with the reviews,
or would fall asleep during story making.
My hunger for the kanji back then went down, and i was basically just using my japanese
and getting by fine with no problems.

The ocassional forgetting or confusing a kanji here and there.
Right now I work for a japanese company, and
do customer support in japanese/english. Business wise i am fine, conversation and troubleshooting
wise no problem,
but for some reason when i would be reading novels , i would always depend on a dictionary.
Unconciously because of that i never really read that much because
i would encounter a kanji here or there that i wouldn't understand, and look it up,
thus slowing my reading speed.
実用書 would be easy, but novels, i just stayed cleared from them.

All that started to bug me 3 months ago, and i decided to pick up what i had left undone in 2007. "My list of 1000 kanji RTK characters registered on this website"

Before I would keep saying things to myself like "I don't need this, i'm already good blah blah blah (big mistake) so
looking for a challenge i started with RTK3...
It was fun!(thanks for the customize kanji adding feature fabreeze)

After doing about 100 of the RTK3 i started noticing the necessity for RTK1 (duh).
After getting advice from this amazing forum on setting up ANKI i gave it a try.
Fell in love with it and bought the Iphone app inmediately.
Downloaded the decks with the readings embeded in it(Shared Deck->RTK 1 and 3 w/ Kanji Definition and Yomi)
because just a keyword wasn't cutting it for me.
I learned to use ANKI and customized it so i would test from keyword to kanji.
When learning a kanji i would register it on this website, and add the story to ANKI at the same time.

I was flying! Reviewing up to 100 cards in a 25 minute session,
or learning 10-12 new stories per 25 minute time boxed session.

When i was reviewing i would also test myself on the readings but wouldn't fail myself
if i couldn't remember any of them.
Just the writing and the story.
The readings, i was just glancing at them, and it worked wonders because either i knew it
or learned it right there after seeing a card pop up again and again.

This helped me with the kanji that i already knew, or
with kanji that i didn't know because
In my 11 years of study, i had never really studied kanji officially(besides heisig of course).
I just studied for the kanken and the jlpt's, and the kanji writing skill followed.
So i had lots of holes in my actual kanji studies.

Anyways all this paid off and my japanese is better than ever!
Good job to everyone, and my deepest respects to everyone that has gotten this far.

I'm gonna take it a little bit slower on RTK3 but i'll see you in that post in a while.

Last edited by exrulez (2011 August 28, 9:11 am)

smiley290max Member

From: Australia Registered: 2011-08-13 Posts: 18

Just finished RTK 1 in 23 days! Seems like i just started the book yesterday.
Also about to start RTK 2, but might need to get my 80%ish reviews up to 90%.

Tori-kun このやろう

Registered: 2010-08-27 Posts: 1193 Website

smiley290max wrote:
Just finished RTK 1 in 23 days! Seems like i just started the book yesterday.
Also about to start RTK 2, but might need to get my 80%ish reviews up to 90%.

すげぃじゃん！！－　おめでとうよ！！～　頑張りぬいてください。

Shakunatz Member

From: 東京 Registered: 2009-08-18 Posts: 97

smiley290max wrote:
Just finished RTK 1 in 23 days! Seems like i just started the book yesterday.
Also about to start RTK 2, but might need to get my 80%ish reviews up to 90%.

23 days, wow congratulations! You worked hard, didn't you ? Grats again ;P

Clasu Member

From: Finland Registered: 2011-07-14 Posts: 51

Congratulations to everybody!

Just finished RTK1 yesterday myself. Some stats:

66 days from start to finish (with 5 days of no new cards)
Mature cards: 992 (retention rate 93%)
Young cards: 1052 (retention rate 96%)

Average new cards ~46 a day
Average reviews ~178 a day
Total reviews 10411, with about 85 hours spent on the reviews.

Was planning to do the RTK1 supplement right away, but I think I'm going to wait till next week and then finish that on a slower pace (within a week or so).

Still thinking how to proceed with readings. Most likely I'll wait around 2 weeks and then start doing RTK2 (took a look at kanji chains but didn't quite like it). Meanwhile I'll continue with Tae Kim and Core2k, and start doing those with kanjis as well (so far I've been doing Tae Kim with just kana and Core2k only listening). Also starting to do subs2srs.

PS: English is not my main language, so what I did with the keywords is, I assigned each kanji a new keyword on my own language (finnish). So every time I was learning a new kanji, the process was roughly:
- Check the meaning of Heisigs keyword in case I didn't understand it already
- Check the meanings of the kanji from a finnish kanji dictionary
- Check the english meanings from Halperns dictionary if needed
- Decide on the new keyword, make sure that there are no duplicates
- Make the story etc.

This didn't take as much time as it might seem. Towards the end of RTK1 though, I started using some of the Heisigs keywords without translating them, mostly because I was having a hard time coming up with a new keyword. In retrospect, I should've done this more often. At times it was hard to come up with unique keywords because english vocabulary is much bigger than finnish, in some cases at least.
So if anyone is thinking of taking a somewhat similar approach, my advice would be:
- Use the Heisigs keyword IF it corresponds with the kanjis meaning (compare from Halpern) and it's not a weird word for you
- If the keyword Heisig provides does not correspond well enough with the meaning OR you have trouble understanding what the keyword actually means, assign a new keyword on your own language
- For all the primitives / kanjis used as primitives it might be smart to assign a keyword on your own language, makes it easier to think stories (in my opinion).

mcaruso Member

From: The Netherlands Registered: 2010-09-19 Posts: 27

Hurray! I finally made it. And it's exactly one year after I registered on these forums. That's a bit on the long side, but I restarted once, had a few long breaks and just took my time overall. Been quite a ride.

Thanks everyone who contributed their stories, and thanks Fabrice for building this truly awesome community!

BohemianCoast Member

From: London Registered: 2011-05-19 Posts: 13

OK I have 2042 stories now, though my stories are ahead of my reviews (I'm reviewing in Anki with 10 new kanji a day, so I think I'll hit 2042 there early next week). But I started learning kana on 25 May, so it's just been four months. I have not missed even one day completely, though I've had three or four where I didn't quite finish in Anki. Now I just need to keep reviewing, add in the new kanji, keep reviewing, add in kanji I don't recognise when I see them, keep reviewing, learn the readings, keep reviewing, and do RTK3. Oh, and keep reviewing.

What a fantastic website and forum. Thank you all.

Sizen Member

From: Alberta Registered: 2011-08-29 Posts: 23

Finished RtK exactly a month after I started, hurrah!

I really feel like I bit off more than I could handle (spending the first 13 days studying for 7 hours straight each day '^^), but it feels good to know that I can now recognize and know the meaning of all the old jouyou kanji (besides the occasional forgotten character that is), plus some extras, since I'll be leaving for a year in Japan in 4 days!

Gonna run through RtK 3 a bit slower though, maybe only 10-15 kanji a day, but first I'm gonna take a little break to get more mature cards.

Congratulations to all who have already finished, and to those who will finish soon. If you're wavering, just know that it is worth it and that all your hard work will pay off!

TomTomHatesCats Member

From: NYC Registered: 2011-05-22 Posts: 28

Congrats to all before me, and to those yet to post in this thread (keep it up, you'll get there)!

I want to thank every single person who contributed a story on this amazing site, without which I'd probably still be at the halfway point of RTK. Finally finished!

Now, to start learning something...

-Tom

dalmim New member

Registered: 2010-08-01 Posts: 4

Tonight I reviewed the last 18 kanji! That completes RTK1. The last two months' work has transformed the experience of reading Japanese. And, I can actually write. With a pen. On paper.

With hindsight, I offer the following advice:

RTK1 should be completed before the end of the first semester of college-level Japanese. Wait longer and find yourself forced into wasteful, weekly drudgery. Kanji lists, organized by textbook chapter content, bend students toward rote memorization. It becomes the only way to keep up with the pace of new characters.

RTK exists because of this realization. I am just one more witness to the ineffectiveness of the traditional method.

My history with Kanji:

-Three semesters of college Japanese - able to recognize 400+ kanji, write maybe 150.

-Learned about RTK before leaving for Japan to study in the fall of 2008. Unable to progress with RTK, due to the pace of a 10-week intensive course.

-Started into RTK haphazardly (without SRS) after completing the course. I reached kanji #270 or so.

-Continued active study for several months after returning from Japan. Progressed to the point of deciphering Japanese texts (not really reading as hours upon hours spent looking up kanji again and again).

-Summer of 2010, I came across this site, "Reviewing the Kanji". I decided to give the SRS approach a try. Consistent work in September 2010 carried me through #917. Writing stories proved the most time-consuming part of the process, but stories I wrote proved the best anchors for memory.

-For a variety of reasons, I fell back into periodic study and reading, letting RTK fall by the wayside. The progress made served me well, greatly reducing dictionary time. Reading became much more enjoyable.

-July 28, 2010 - Wanting to complete RTK, I came back to "Reviewing the Kanji". It took 13 days to review through the expired kanji and reduce the share of "Missed" kanji below 10%.

-Between August 10 and October 7, with breaks for holidays and the like, I wrapped up #2,042.

I plan to continue at a brisk clip this next week to get through the revised Jōyō list, then at a consistent, but gradual pace through to the end of RTK3.

Have I noticed the difference? First, I'm recognizing 90% of kanji instantly when I read. Second, starting with a rough sense of meaning before going to the dictionary has been a great help. Third, I can actually pick up a pen and write in Japanese - an anachronism, I know. But it provides a great sense of accomplishment nonetheless.

Alanymogad New member

From: Argentina Registered: 2011-07-19 Posts: 5 Website

Yeaaaaaaaaahh~!!! I finish ;). Three day ago i started to study the japanese's grammar, and now I know 2042 (+ other RTK 3's Kanjis)!!! But, I couldn't have done it without your help. I used some member's stories. So THANKSS~!! THANKS ファブリス for the page; THANKS to the people who share his stories! And THANK you for read my post :D. Aileeeeeeeen~! Greetings from ARGENTINA ;)

Last edited by Alanymogad (2011 October 17, 3:50 pm)

blndcat New member

From: Osaka Japan Registered: 2011-06-30 Posts: 4

Finished! With a bit of relief and a lot of joy. It took me about 4 months and I couldn't have done it without this site. I've heard a few of my friends who tried the Heisig methos but gave up on it part of the way though. I think I would have if it wasn't for this site and a SRS like Anki. So I will be donating the exact price of my copy of RTK in the very near future. I'll also try to contribure in other ways too.

Thanks everyone, I'm looking forward to the next 大冒険 (and the continous reviews...)

Revenant Member

From: Germany Registered: 2010-10-09 Posts: 42

Just added #2042.
Took exactly 1 year. With several break ups and a lot
of other stuff intervening, however, I am now so very glad
I persevered.

Now I am on to a complete refresh of my reviews, starting
from zero, slowly adding those 2042 cards in.
There will be many, many reviews until I start adding in the
supplement kanji, but I really need to get a good refresher on
some of the middle-ish primitives and Kanji.

Congratz to everyone else who managed this feat.
Onwards to studying Japanese!

Apache Chief Member

Registered: 2011-02-04 Posts: 39

Throwing my hat in here. It took me like 7 months to get 1300, and I got tired of it taking so long so I stepped it up and did the rest in like 2 weeks. It shouldn't have taken me this long, but I think the most important thing that came from going through the book was finally making studying a habit and a commitment. That and the massive amount of kanji. Now I take what I learned to vocabulary, and slowly work through the supplement.

Splatted Member

From: England Registered: 2010-10-02 Posts: 776

Congratulations!

waycious New member

From: Maryland Registered: 2005-11-23 Posts: 2

Finally finished last week! I went from 400 to 2042 in about 7 months, I restarted many times over the years before even making it to 400. Then I finally gained the discipline to see it to the end. Don't be like me and fall off. See it to the end, and at the very least do your reviews every day. 皆さん引き続きがんばってください。

wulfgar Member

From: canada Registered: 2009-06-15 Posts: 151

waycious wrote:
Finally finished last week! I went from 400 to 2042 in about 7 months, I restarted many times over the years before even making it to 400. Then I finally gained the discipline to see it to the end. Don't be like me and fall off. See it to the end, and at the very least do your reviews every day. 皆さん引き続きがんばってください。

congratulations for reaching this milestone in your 日本語 journey. Just keep reviewing the kanji and you will be fine.

Sp1k3 New member

From: Venezuela Registered: 2011-10-01 Posts: 2

=D woohoooo

I finished it , at last T_T took me 38 days(yes i was writing X`s on a calendar) .. if i weren't on vacations i couldn't have pulled that off xD. im soo happy oh yeah!!!.

even tho i haven't participated in this forum until now , i`ve found it REALLY helpful =). hooray for internet communities.

Index » RtK Volume 1

jonuhey wrote:

zorro226 wrote:

k_arashi wrote:

gogospirit wrote:

smiley290max wrote:

smiley290max wrote:

waycious wrote: