It is finally over!
As of writing this post it has been 1014 days since I started learning with Wanikani and I finally finished level 60!
As you can see from the chart above, my progression has been quite chaotic at times. It was sometimes grueling and I’ve had to get back to my reviews after months of little to no work but what mattered is that I always got back to it.
I actually started to learn Japanese on and off in 2015 but since I didn’t really hold onto a daily routine it was mostly a slog.
I chose to start Wanikani about two years and nine months ago because I felt like I NEEDED something to get me to work on Japanese every day if I wanted to progress. And Wanikani definitely delivered on that front.
At the time I didn’t really feel like just immersing myself in the language because having a lot of complete unknowns in texts really put me off.
I guess I carried that idea a bit too far because while I could have probably started reading a lot more some 25 levels ago, with Wanikani and Bunpro (which I started around lvl 20 of WK) taking a big chunk of my days I chose to not get into this just yet. I also really wanted to find out where Wanikani alone would get me.
While I still have a lot more to do to make Japanese usable, having gone through all of Wanikani, I’ll at least be able to recognize the vast majority of the vocabulary I’ll read or have something to latch-onto to quickly search words I forgot or don’t know yet.
This was what I was aiming for with Wanikani, a base of knowledge that would let me comfortably take the next step in my journey to learn Japanese.
I’ll still continue to do reviews on Wanikani until I’ve guru-ed everything at least once but after that I’m probably going to go on a (well-deserved) permanent vacation to focus on all the things I’ve been meaning to read for the longest time (and finish Bunpro cuz’ that’s still going on).
Maybe one day I’ll come back to Wanikani to see how rusty I am on some odd vocab’, maybe not.
I’ve been lurking a bit around this forum and it feels a little weird that my first post is the one giving closure to my Wanikani experience but might as well make my first post my most important one.
Overall, Wanikani has given me something to strive towards which made it an empowering experience and I have only one thing left to say.
