Learning kanji

Since January, I have been studying kanji using Anki (a flash card program). Before I started studying in earnest, I only knew maybe a dozen or so of them, but now I know many more (I've recently started learning the kanji that students learn in grade four so that probably means I know somewhere around 400 of them).

Well, at least for the definition of know where I can understand roughly what the character means in English, I know them. Not so much for the definition of knowing the kanji where I know all the ways the character is read (some of them have way too many readings for that). I also know how to write them for the most part because I actually bothered learning the rules for stroke order, but it's definitely harder to think of the kanji I'd want to draw than it is to see it and recognize it.

One thing that I've really enjoyed about learning kanji while living here is that a lot of the time, it means that I go somewhere and I see one of them that I've just learned. To me, this is pretty exciting because I can pass by the same sign and suddenly understand it (or at least more of it) when I couldn't the day or week before. It's like I'm suddenly able to see the sign in an entirely different way, if that makes sense.

I wonder if this is the sort of experience that other people have when they move to a place before learning the local language. I haven't really asked anyone else about their experiences with this, mostly because I don't think about it unless I've just seen a new kanji and if I tell anyone, it's probably daid who hasn't been studying kanji. It would be interesting to know if this is a common experience though. If anyone wants to share their experiences in comments, I would definitely be interested in reading them.