I completely agree, and so does Heisig. The second paragraph of the introduction in RtK Vol. 1 states just that. All it was designed to do was basically imprint these kanji in your mind with a vague meaning in english that can be used as a mental ‘hook’. So that when you come across some word like 理想 (in heisig speak this is ‘logic’ and ’concept’) you only have to learn the meaning and how to read it. at this point, you can use the two kanji themselves (which you now know) as your mental hook to remember the meaning. It’s for this reason that I feel I have been able to pick up so much vocabulary since I started learning all these kanji. I just find it so much easier to memorize a new word when I have that familiarity with the characters.

Definitely, having fun is key to be able to stick to anything. I want to improve my knowledge of japanese as soon as i can, i plan on learning mandarin after japanese but by using japanese as my base language at that point. ie. no english, from day one. for that to work, i’m going to require some pretty good japanese i imagine…

I speak Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and a little bit of French, and I do agree that they are great languages. Anyway, while you are learning Japanese or other languages, go to this LangLearner website and watch Japanese, Italian, French and many more languages. I’m learning Languages with this tool it’s very helpful and I hope it helps you.