Good post! I can't believe how much more accessible Japanese has become since learning Kanji. Not being able to read Kanji left me with only being able to read what was in text books as a beginner, but after doing RTK first I am able to, albeit slowly, branch out to real Japanese media.

The only stumbling blocks I have now are when very little kanji is used: I have to do a couple of passes unless I recognize the words, and when a word is in kana and I look i up to discover that it can have 3 different kanji that all mean roughly the same thing.

However I've made more progress in the past 6 months or so than I ever have with Japanese so far.