Thank you, mitrac! It’s always so nice to see your comments!
5 Likes
Thank you so much! It’s fun to look back on the adventure, and I’m hoping it will help keep my discipline up now. I appreciate your encouragement! I hope I will make it to 60 like you one day!
4 Likes
Ouf. I am so tired. I can’t even begin to describe what an insane amount of activity I’ve been up to for the past week and a half or so.
Nevertheless, I dragged myself here to announce I MADE IT TO LEVEL 29!! Hooray!!!
I don’t wanna be here long because I frankly need to curl up with some tea and watch a show until I pass out. These weeks have been insanely busy both at work and outside of work, so I didn’t make as quick progress as desired on the level-up time. However, I did make a few adjustments to my routine that have been helping me progress despite everything. Here’s what’s been working recently:
- Doing Wanikani and Anki reviews first thing in the morning. Seriously, my brain has so much power compared to midday. I can get through 100+ Anki cards in 20 minutes if I do them at 6:30am, but if I wait until 12, I get slow and it takes me like an hour. Same with WK! So doing them before anything else, first thing in the morning, has helped get through them faster and focus on other things during the day.
- Using the Tsurukami app… in Anki mode. And one review per item. I caved and finally enabled this. I’m super strict with marking my incorrect items as wrong, but I think having to type for a long time with my thumbs was a major detractor from using the app before. Now, because I just have to flip through the cards, I get through them way faster and am much more encouraged to get my reviews in at the end of the day before bed.
That’s all for now. Not a very tidy post bc I’m soooo tired. Time for rest. And to read my level-up email!
11 Likes
Wee little update from my phone. I’ve started level 29 and am trying out the guidelines I entered here! Today I did 15 lessons, including all the radicals, plus 2 kanji lessons, for a total of 5 kanji.
I’m going to try continuing with 5 a day and see what happens.
I’ve been going through lessons p fast these days, mostly due to lack of time, but partly thanks to having a plethora of Japanese exposure to make the info sink in faster.
7 Likes
Back again. Teeny update time. In the thick of it!
I followed my plan and completed the last of the kanji lessons for level 29 today. If all goes well, I’ll be leveling up in 4 days.
For these next four days, I’ll keep going with the vocab lessons, and when I level up, it’s back to doing all the radicals at once + 5 kanji per day.
I’ll write a more solid update and review when it’s level up time.
Let’s goooooo
6 Likes
I'M HALFWAY THERE.
I followed the lil plan I detailed a few posts ago, and it worked well! It took me 10 days to knock out level 29. I’m moving ahead with the same technique.
- Radicals on level up
- 5 kanji per day
- Roughly 3 review sessions a day
- Knock out reviews in the morning, no matter what, when my mind is Fresh
It’s been… just over four years. And I’m halfway there. That’s way longer than I would have preferred, but my life was upended several times in those years, I had to rebuild routines from scratch, I got distracted by big events, etc. I fell off pace often.
Now, despite everything, my life is a little more stable. I have no big plans to move countries or switch jobs in the next year. I have a little routine, and WK is part of it, so I think I can carry this pace for the foreseeable future. Though it’s going to take serious discipline.
One problem I can foresee happening: sometimes, work gets insanely busy. I was lucky in the past 2 weeks that work was only a regular amount of extremely busy. But sometimes the pace is INSANE, and during those weeks I tend to struggle with studying + maintaining energy. However, I have my new rule of knocking out reviews in the morning, and I have been getting them done before work. That seems to set a good feeling for the rest of the day, and a sense of relief that I took care of them.
Let’s get through the next 30!
I’m so excited to be here!~
15 Likes
Yep, serves them well xdd
I have a feeling that the ultimate goal of Japanese study should be to lift your mind out of doing work related things, so if you can prioritize them in the morning not to be so tired after work, and put Japanese on the first position, you might be grand ^^
Oh no, don’t say that, it’s the easiest way to jinx it into happening xdd
Good luck at level 30! It’s a fun level, that one ^^
6 Likes
I agree! Putting them first has made the day much more relaxing, plus I feel great about putting something I really care about first. Sometimes when work gets super busy, I get stressed out and pour all my energy into work to try and handle it all. But making time for my learning is super important and I can afford to postpone work thoughts for 15 minutes every morning.
Hahahahah and I just remembered that I’m going to Japan in a couple weeks. So I’ll be out on a 2 week vacation! I’m going to try and level up during that time but we’ll see what the heck happens with that disruption hahah
5 Likes
thank you! I’m so happy to have made it this far!
4 Likes
HURRAH FOR LEVEL 31. And lo! It is the fastest level I have done since the very early levels of Wanikani. Why, it’s the second fastest level I have done period.
After reaching level 30, I was seized with fresh motivation to get through this second half, and equipped with a study strategy to begin the attack at once (detailed in posts previous).
Despite the 忙しさ of the day, I went ahead on repeat with the same strategy: as soon as I leveled up, I carried out lessons for all the radicals + 5 kanji. I’m a little nervous about how this will affect my retention from today, but generally, things have been good, and I have been progressing just fine.
I did a little calculation and if I can keep this pace (~8 days a lesson), I will be able to reach kanji nirvana by the end of this year. Do I think it is possible this will happen? Yes. Do I think it is realistic? Probably not. There are several big changes happening this year that will likely present challenges to my WK routine. But for the next few weeks, while my life is stable at least, I’ll continue establishing these Wanikani tenets for myself so that they’re easier to fall back on in the future.
I’ve said them before, but for easy reference:
- 5 kanji lessons a day
- 15 total daily lessons
- Radicals upon level up
- Do what you need to to keep review sessions manageable
One thing is for sure, I’d like to make serious progress in 2025, and maybe even complete Wanikani once and for all. And that is going to take a continuing dedication.
In order to get through this level in 8 days, I had to be committed to the above plan, and also do reviews roughly 3x a day. I even had to postpone bedtime a few nights to get all the reviews in. Or sit in my car after errands and not allow myself out until I had gotten through the review pile. Wanikani didn’t completely take over my life this past week, I had time for fun, friends, exercise, and other activities, but I did have to commit.
All that said and done, I’ll continue through with this pattern and check back in later.
(I want to make a post soon focusing on my studies outside of Wanikani, so I can align myself for the spring and prepare for N2 studies later in the year.)
edit: I must work out!
13 Likes