Ten years ago I decided to “try to” learn Japanese. As an avid reader and natural introvert, I figured that learning to read first would be challenging, but would also probably be the path of least resistance.
I actually started with Rosetta Stone. It did a good job of making me feel as if I was making progress. I probably learned some basic grammar there. I don’t remember what it taught exactly, only that it wasn’t all that engaging, so I quickly went looking for ways to make the process more exciting.
I mean, they had to have some sort of “easy reading” for young children or learners somewhere right? That question set me on my journey to learn to read, and that’s what led me to WaniKani.
I can’t really remember exactly where I learned about WaniKani. It might have been a random post after searching for “how to read Japanese”. I only know that I started, saw the first few levels go quite easily, and promised to continue on.
Eventually I kind of just forgot about it. I think it was somewhere around level 15ish. I also dropped off on any study of grammar and even when watching japanese shows, I was not actively trying to pay attention to the language, instead lazily leaning on English subtitles.
Life got in the way. I finished a second stint at college, started teaching, switched jobs to software development, bought a house. Life was just very busy. But all that time, I never thought to myself that I had quit learning. I only had it on pause. I knew this was something I wanted to do, and I’ve always believed that you only fail when you give up.
In the past few years, though I still have a mortgage to pay and a job to keep working at, things have calmed down. I used that as my excuse to return to learning Japanese.
Before I came back to WaniKani I did a little internet searching to see what new tools might have been built in the last decade. Nothing really stood out to me in terms of sites and tools, but I did find a lot of Youtube content talking about immersion and AJATT and all that. Stuff I’m sure most of you have seen more of than I have.
During that period of time going down the YouTube rabbithold, I learned about Anki, which reminded me about WaniKani - I’ll get to that soon. But I also learned about the book: Remembering the Kanji… Man, what a difference that book makes. Specifically the first volume. I bought RTK and ripped through it fairly quickly. In about a month, I had myself sketching out all of the kanji from the book by hand.
The shortcoming of that book? Well it only teaches you a single keyword for each kanji - and at first it also provides some good mnemonics, just like WK does. What it didn’t teach was readings… and one could argue that the keywords didn’t always do a great job of conveying the meanings that we will eventually attach to a kanji. Nonetheless, using RTK was like pouring a strong concrete foundation for the next step - WaniKani.
When I got back to WaniKani, I had already forgotten most of what I had learned the first time around… so I did what might be unthinkable to some of you and I hit the reset button. I started back at level 1 and began that climb all over again.
That was a little over a year ago. With the help of that RTK brand foundation, when I came across kanji on wanikani that overlapped with RTK, they were always a breeze. All I had to worry about then, was readings and I could attach further meaning to the kanji from there.
I also use an app called Tsurukame… One of the most frustrating things about WaniKani is when you’re typing too fast - or like me when your thumbs are just gigantic and you miss keys all the time - so you end up being docked for a bad answer when it was really just a typo. Tsurukame helps get around that. If you’re honest with yourself, its a really useful tool for defeating unnecessary frustration. Highly recommended.
Getting to level 20 on pure self-motivation was doable. It wasn’t always easy, but it was doable. But pushing past level 20 needed additional motivation. You don’t really know at the time what the relative reading value of each level is, so I’ll help you out.
Level 1-20
- Essential, but not enough to feel like you understand much yet.
Level 21-40
- Essential too, somewhere around level 30, you’ll get to a point where you can find a lot of simple native content that you can understand. At level 40, you’re there-ish. If you stopped here, you could probably figure out the rest of the kanji just by reading and looking things up as you went. I don’t recommend stopping here though, you’ve got a great habit that you should continue to lean on as you complete the last 20 levels.
Level 41-50
- When you’re finished here, you will likely be able to recognize 98ish% of the kanji in most native publications. But there will be a few that still feel unfamiliar.
- During this bracket, you’ll encounter levels that don’t have that extra buffer time from waiting until you know radicals to pick up the last kanji to finish the level. The levels will be completable in half the time… My recommendation in hindsight - don’t rush this unless you can dedicate much more of your time to working on these last levels.
Level 60
- I’m sorry to report, but while your WaniKani journey is over, you are not a Japanese genius yet.
- You will still encounter SOME kanji that you don’t know. It will be infrequent, but it will happen. You’ll need a strategy for managing this. A lot of people recommend Anki. I use something like Anki myself, but I am just graduated, so I can’t report on whether its any good from personal experience.
- You will now encounter lots of words that you have a good shot at reading, but will not always understand the meaning. With the foundational knowledge of kanji that you leave with however, you will often find that you can decipher what the meaning of a new word is by using the context and what you know about the kanji already.
- Be careful, sometimes the meaning of the word doesn’t quite match the meanings of either kanji, and there are lots of irregular readings. But the foundation you have still gives you a big head start as long as you keep that in mind.
Next steps:
- I’ve begun using various other learning tools to continue to enhance what I know. I watch Netflix shows with Japanese subtitles a lot and have been for some time. I still often feel like I’m missing the meaning, but the repetition, along with being able to follow along while reading make a huge difference and I find I understand better and better by the day. If there is a plateau, I don’t feel like I’ve hit it yet.
- I also signed up to HelloTalk for a year. They have these voice rooms where people from all over join to converse in various languages. You can join the conversation if and when you feel confident enough, or you can just sit on the sidelines and soak in native and learner japanese as it is actually spoken.
- Note: The Japanese rooms are - as you would expect - generally quite helpful with a good atmosphere. It IS the internet though, so I have found that occassional bad actors show up. If that happens you can just skip to another room.
- Lastly I have hired a Preply tutor that I get some dedicated one on one speaking practice with a few times a month.
At this point, I’ve set a goal for myself to be able to speak comfortably in an every day situation by next year. In order to solidify that goal, I am waiting for plane tickets to open up for March 2026. ( I want to see the cherry blossoms bloom while I’m there 
)
I have been dedicated to this language learning journey since the beginning. This past year and a bit I have been able to put lots of time and heart into it, but this is something I started a decade ago. Finishing WaniKani was a big benchmark moment. I am grateful for WaniKani.
I will continue to finish my reps for unburned items, so this is not yet farewell. But it is a thank you. This is a wonderful tool you’ve got here and I hope many more people find and use it on their journey to Japanese language fluency.
WaniKani、ありがとうございました。
especially when they took a long time to get there. It gives me hope that my LONG journey will get there too some (many) years in the future.
