It feels like these lvl 60 posts are coming in thick and fast nowadays (well done everyone!!), and I love that I get to write my own today 
a bit about my journey
Back in January 2021, I knew 0 Japanese bar ありがとう and こんにちは - I had no previous Japanese knowledge, never took any classes, Japanese writing just looked like squiggles (hiragana) or a downright mess (kanji) to me. BUT, I started learning Korean to distract myself from covid doomscrolling 2 summers ago, and read somewhere that the 2 languages are fairly similar, so decided to learn Japanese to boost my Korean (I am yet to find out how much this will really help me).
At first it was a bit rough as I hadn’t actively studied anything after finishing university a decade ago, but I got sucked into the joys of Wanikani quickly, and here I am!
a few thoughts
- whilst WK doesn’t work for everyone, it definitely worked for me and so far this has been the most effective language learning tool I’ve ever used; I love a good goal (aka lvl 60)
- the vocab lessons are your friend; sometimes I’d struggle with kanji, but as soon as I learned them in context with other kanji to form vocab words they started to stick
- accuracy isn’t everything; my average accuracy is at around 84% overall - whilst this resulted in more reviews for me to work through, it also made a lot more stick in the long run as I repeated things over and over
- Keeping up with WK wasn’t easy - I spent a looot of hours, every day, keeping on top of my reviews (with a few hiccups due to moving jobs and flats as seen in my graph); ultimately, what got me through was how much joy it brought me, and how much I love learning kanji - not seeing WK as a chore has made a big difference in my journey
gratitude
I don’t want to sound too soppy but during the last year and a bit, WK has become more to me than just a kanji learning tool. WK has well and truly rekindled my love for languages and language learning, it’s pushed my brain to new highs (and sometimes lows), it’s been my safe haven when I had bad days, and most of all it has become a hobby and an immense source of joy. For that, I can’t thank the Tofugu team enough 
Learning kanji has also added a new dimension in the real world for me - now when I walk through Chinatown in London, everything feels a lot more… 3D? All the signs in hanzi, kanji, and hangul all of a sudden jump out at me, when previously they’d blend into the background like a pattern that my brain can’t decipher. This has probably been one of my favourite unexpected things to experience, ever 
what’s next?
- I’ve signed up for the N4 in July to see where I’m at - I expect to fail it based on my current grammar knowledge and lack of listening comprehension but that’s totally fine
- I want to hammer in some N5 and N4 grammar via Bunpro so I have a good base for…
- …immersion, immersion, and more immersion
obligatory stats
