Post-RTK1 Era

It's been a while since I finished Remembering The Kanji I, and I have moved on to the other 2 writing systems, the Hiragana and Katakana. I am tackling the Hiragana first, just because its the order the book I'm using goes in(Remembering the Kana, also by James Heisig), and the Hiragana are also a little more important. I've only done about 23 of the 46 characters, but I should be done by the end of the week and on to the Katakana if I can find some 30 minute pockets of time to fit Japanese in during the week. I've also made significant improvement in my Portuguese listening skills, much due to playing some type of Brazilian music everyday or listening to the radio(I download UOL podcasts everyday on iTunes). Now it's only about a month and a half before I get the whole summer to have fun with all the books around the house and resources online. Até Próximo.

I FINISHED REMEMBERING THE KANJI!!

Today marks the happiest I have been with my language learning in a while. I unbelievably finished RTK last night. It was hardest thing I have had to consistently do for a long period of time ever(even though I'm sure I'll find something else to complain about later in life). I have gone through 2042 Japanese Kanji characters. I started in late July, and finished March 23, so that spans about 7 months. I believe I could have finished sooner if the burden of school and junior year hadn't come and complicated things. But regardless, I worked and worked and worked, and I am sure some of the few readers of this article may think I am really bragging and pumping myself up right now, but I feel like if there was ever an excuse, it would be this. Kanji was a HUGE stepping stone for me, and now that I've finished, I can finally move on to actually reading, writing, and listening to Japanese and work on language skills, with a the other 2 writing systems(Katakana and Hiragana) a very small stepping stone to get over(each writing system is only 50 characters or so). This will also free up time to work on my Portuguese and maybe start with another language I have been dying to work on.