Just finished the book!
Man, I've learned over 400 kanji just this week... Been kind of lazy, so it's taken me since December to go through the whole thing, but I'M FINALLY HERE!

Of course, they won't *really* stick just yet, but I've gone through all of them, and I'm quite happy with that :) Will continue reviewing on this site for quite some time though, I reckon.

I finished today as well... second attempt, getting first time to 1200 (about 1 year ago), this time complete, about 3 months (March 22nd - June 5th). Bit of a challenge, but doable. Now to try the rest of Japanese...

Yay!! After exactly 90 days I'm finished with RTK1 plus supplement . Now onto the real fun part of actually learning to understand Japanese!
Thank you for all the great stories, would have been a lot harder without them!

Finished it. Started on April 4th. So 2~Months.

Honestly, this has got to be the most studying I've ever done for one subject this diligently in my life. It feels good, knowing I'm capable of starting something like this and doing it nonstop until the end. With this under my belt, I'm confident I can get over the hurdles in the stages to come on my way to fluency.

Basically, my mindset the whole way was "As long as I don't stop, Ill finish it!" I told myself this a lot around 500~. Because that's when I really started to burn out, but I couldn't stop.

I don't want to be someone who says "Oh yeah, I tried learning Japanese but it was too hard" and I didn't want to drag the process of learning Japanese over the course of 2+ years..(Well, getting comfortable with it anyway.) So, my goal was minimum 25 new a day. (For a while I actually did 40 untill reps went over 300 consistantly.)

So, I used Anki Warrior, and timeboxing to get over this. (before I actually did the whole thing in one sitting, it was brutal..) It really helps! Timeboxing has got to be the best thing to happen to Anki. I looked at 200+ Reviews and went "Awee man..", but with timeboxing, it became a challenge I could face without (too much) dread.
By about 1000~kanji, doing reps was like second nature to me. I wake up, finish reps, and the rest of the day was mine. (Whatever was left of it)

Before I knew it, I was at 1900~. And I was like "Wow, I'm almost there." I didn't rush or anything though, continued my pace of 25. I knew how painful the sight seeing how many reps you had to do tomorrow was.

To be completely honest, I still dont know any Japanese. (Seems like some of you know a little already, I'm jealous.) And I haven't completely finished all the Hiragana and Katakana, only started them. I decided to do those at this stage. (After I finished reps in RTK, I didn't have a lot of energy to do those.)
I'm hoping that once I start doing the sentences, some clarity will set in. :]

But as for the Kanji, it feels like I can recognize them all. Even though I can't read them, they feel so familiar. It's weird.

Anyway, now that I'm done. I'm thinking I'll a little time reviewing RTK, but I want to get into sentence or whatevers next asap. I don't want to stand still, I want to keep moving.

Also, I want to thank you all for all your hard work. Your sentences were wonderful and I'm grateful that you shared them with me. The forums have all been helped me so much, a lot of the posts here have helped with my uneasiness on how I reviewed. With a community like this around, it really fills me with confidence as I read about everyone difference experiences. Thank you.

Sorry for the long post, this has just been all the feelings I've pent up inside of me this whole time coming out.

Last edited by CloverJoker (2012 June 10, 3:13 pm)

CloverJoker > thanks for your post, I felt exactly the same way! The most important thing is just to continue... Even on very busy days I would try to do at least all the reps. Congrats and good luck!

Meeatcookies > I just finished RTK1 and at the moment I'm also starting with Genki and Tae Kim. Can't wait to start vocabulary and "actual" reading, I've already got some easy manga and light novels to keep my motivation up Thanks for sharing, I am following the same path so it is very interesting to read your experience.

haha omg im finally done. took me forever! so if you can do it less than that, then your going pretty well

やった!!
finished RTK 1, now just the supplements and never stop reviewing!

After a loooong journey (I really mean it, it took around five years or so, probably I set a mark hard to beat), I finally finished RTK1 a couple of days ago!

But before I get you bored by all the "congratulations" stuff, I want to ask you one question. It seems I'm being specially stupid today, because I'm sure it's profusely answered somewhere in the forums, but can't seem to find it, so here we go:

What now? I mean, the first step is clear: I'll learn the supplement jōyo kanji, but what then? What do you think is the best next step?
I downloaded the RTK2 book to evaluate it before buying it, but I'm not very satisfied with the first 15 ~ 20 pages. Maybe it's just me, but seems that I'll be better investing my little time in learning some vocabulary (and let the readings stick in my mind by itself, at least on a first stage) rather than go through RTK2 (I already know a little grammatic and I'm reading Tae Kim to refresh it and learn new things; I also have a very very basic vocabulary which finally I'm starting to learn how to write). Isn't Kanji Odyssey or anything along those lines better?

Before you reply, please keep in mind that I'm learning Japanese for no good reason: I don't plan to go to Japan anytime soon (I'd wish T_T), I don't have a Japanese girlfriend, I don't plan to use it in businesses... I just love the Japanese culture (I practiced 空手道 for many years when I was a child and a teenager, I love their cultural ways of expression: manga, anime, Kurosawa and Kitano's films, their seafood, and many, many other things -- I'm sure a lot of you do too) and prefer to kill some time with the challenging task of learning this hieroglyphic and appealing language instead of doing sudokus (which I love too, nonetheless ;-).

That said, I want to congratulate everyone who's also finished before me! And I hope to see more and more people posting here soon! (I'll let the story of the path that led me here for another post, if there is popular interest ^_^; this one is already too big).

So many thanks to all of you, I'd swear I used at least one story by everyone else ;-). If we judge by the number of posts here (and taking into account replies by the same people and such) I'd say Fabrice work has helped to achieve this goal to more than A THOUSAND people (and more coming ;-), so I have a special "thank you" for him. BTW, another one goes for Katsuo, I've been using his lists of "forward primitives" [ http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=178210 ] on a regular basis. But again, thanks to everyone, you are so supportive and encouraging, and your stories helped me so much... Even if I almost didn't use the forums, and barely had contact with anyone, I feel like I'm bound emotionally to all of you somehow (and to Spiderman, to the taskmistress ^_^, to my Person -which strangely enough works way better than Mr. T for me, even when he is a really memorable person-...)

Good luck and best regards!

Thank you, captal! Do you have any advice or any pointers regarding my question about what to do next?

Regards

EDIT: Finally someone turned on the light inside my head ;-). I found this tread [ http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=9916 ] which in turn lists links to nukemarine's threads about vocabulary and such [ http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=95122#p95122 ].

Last edited by faneca (2012 July 03, 4:21 pm)

WOO HOOO!! 2042 kanji bite the dust!  Ahh.. I finally feel like I accomplished something in the never ending Heisig grind.  There's actually light at the end of the tunnel!  well at least the first book YAAAYYY!!!  I finally get to post here *pats myself on the back*.  what shall I do to celebrate..... start the second book, watch anime... maybe do some iknow.?    I already bought myself the third volume as a reward-- and it came!  .. no no.. I should go and treat myself to some nice dinner ^_^ .  .. wow, after doing heisig i am so used to talking to myself lol...

Thank you so much to everyone that's paved the road with their stories.  I wouldn't have been able to move as quickly through RTK 1 had it not been for your stories before.  When I finally got a grasp for the method I did 1000 kanji in the last 28 days because of stories I didn't have to spend time to make up and also figuring out the elements of a good story that make it stick.  I could come up with a good story myself more efficiently.  And I can't imagine how much more difficult it must have been when there weren't so many stories floating around.  There were many times where my imagination was at it's limit and wits but there are so many smarter people out there.  Why re-invent the wheel   I'm really grateful for this site as well for making the sharing of stories and reviewing with flashcards possible!   I started RTK with making my own physical cards as Heisig illustrated in the book before I discovered this site and man it was a pain cutting the cards to the same size before I could even start writing on them.

Last edited by Miyumera (2012 July 20, 10:47 am)

Hah, I finally finished! I did some AJATT, Tofugu and part of a Core deck in between. Not ot mention watching lots of anime and movies to at least get a feeling of Japanese, but finally I'm done!!
Thanks to everyone for putting up the stories, I would have had a hell of a time coming up with good ones all on my own! :-)

Just finished the book, and my happiness can barely be contained right now!

Started out with this book back in March, and I'm actually really surprised I managed to do it in just over 4 months. I started during my last semester in high school, so I had a bit to focus on in school as well, which would explain why I had to keep a quite slow tempo to start with because I didn't want to get burned out. As summer break came along, I went from doing 10-20 frames per day to doing 30-40, and soon milestones started flying by so fast I can't believe I'm actually at the end of the book by now!

Think I'm gonna take a break for a few days now and just focus on doing reviews and reading manga, and then I'm gonna do the 6th edition supplement as well. Oh well, that should be done in a few days. Gonna pick up RtK2 after this as I find the method of learning via signal primitives one that could work well for me, so I'm looking forward to doing those chapters of the book!

Huge congratulations to everyone else who have made it here and a huge thanks as well; I'm not sure I would have been able to make it here without your tremendous help in stories and inspiration! You're all awesome!

Last edited by maruru (2012 July 18, 8:06 am)