やっとできた！
Hello, this is my first post on the WK forums. I want to share my experience because I liked reading the lvl 60 celebrations from other people when I was just starting out here. It was nice to see what other people felt they did wrong and what they learned during the journey. I learned from them and really picked up speed once I got some confidence and got more used to Japanese. This is a long post. It might be a bit messy too, sorry.
Other than learning Kana the month before, I had absolutely zero experience with Japanese as a language other than hearing かわいい〜 and 先輩カッコいい from anime. I’d say I had practically no experience with the language. I am a beginner.
Kana
I started Kana with Kana Warrior and some Hiragana/Katakana deck in Anki (don’t remember which, I deleted it long ago because it outlived it’s purpose). I didn’t intend to learn Japanese at this point I just wanted to know kana before visiting Japan with friends. When I could read hiragana and katakana I also wanted to learn some kanji and here I am. I tried out a few trial levels and decided to keep going because it was interesting.
I thought it would take me at least two years to get here if not more, but I pushed myself and proved myself wrong. This is mostly a celebration post for my hard work so I will be bragging a bit and going on about pointless things, sorry about that. Don’t worry if you’re taking a bit longer, it is also not necessary to learn 2000 kanji to begin enjoying Japanese. You can do that with the help of tools and just a little bit of grammar. Everything here is my experience and you will figure out how you want to do things over time. Start slow, start fast, doesn’t matter. Just start!
Should I do this in 1 year? TL;DR You probably shouldn't.
I don’t consider myself a “speedrunner” or anything like that and don’t like the term being used, I just enjoyed learning a lot and kept pushing my limits. I feel obligated to mention that an average beginner should maybe not expect to do it in a year unless they are willing to make a lot of sacrfifices. I am also unemployed, and quit playing online games to focus on Japanese. I don’t even know if I’d been able to do this if I had a job. Don’t give yourself too high expectations. If you have the Otaku gene in you and have the time and willpower to make sacrifices you might be able to though.
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Level up chart and some stats
391 days from lvl 1 to 60. 12.85 months so I think I can say it in one year. It is possible to go under especially if you already have some knowledge, but I was still figuring out the basics in the first levels.
You can tell when I got the courage to push myself and stick to a schedule.
I think my accuracy is actually lower than this because I used a technique for going faster up from apprentice to guru, but other than that I am genuinely learning every kanji and word. Anyways wow, counting meaning and reading as one that’s 90000 reviews on WK alone in one year! And still more to go, but vanishingly less from now on.
The review counter isn’t quite accurate because I used my laptop sometimes so I won’t post it. The most I ever did in one day in terms of reviews was around 400 on WK and 200 on Bunpro+Anki.
Lesson colors: 0 gray, 1 red, 15 orange, 20 yellow, 25 green, 30 blue, 35 pink
I also did about 13000 Bunpro grammar sentence reviews, and a bunch of bunpro and anki vocab.
I never missed a single day this entire journey. The lessons are sometimes empty because I ran out of vocab and supplemented with external sources.
Userscripts (MUST HAVE, seriously):
You don’t have to do this day one (I didn’t) so it’s better you start than do everything perfectly. Perfection is your enemy. You will slow yourself down without though. Use the scripts wisely, but use them.
I used a few userscripts to add functionality. They broke several times. It made my day or week worse every time.
Install these using a browser extension like violentmonkey. If your browser doesn’t support it, get a new browser seriously. If you can’t figure it out, search the forums or a search engine.
- WK OpenFramework (necessary for most scripts to run)
- Double Check YOU NEED THIS, You WILL make typos and sometimes quite bad ones while going fast. It will only slow you don’t to not have this.
- Pitch info Not necessary, but I like it even though I for the most part rely on listening for pitch. To get better at pitch you need a lot of listening practice from consuming the language. As a beginner, worry more about input than output.
- Heatmap Good for motivation.
- UltimateTimeline easier to plan ahead when to wake up and go to bed. No, I don’t have a job. The version in the OP is currently broken so install this version if there’s no new updates.
- ReorderOmega just so I could quickly do current levels radicals and kanji immediately. After that it was in mixed order. I consider this one vital for going fast even though I went a long time without. Much easier to do the kanji late at night and go to sleep doing the rest of the vocab in the morning.
- ItemInspector, Needs additional filters to work. I only used this to export a list of known WK words to delete anki duplicates. Didn’t really care about the quality of the cards, if I forget something I will either just leave it as a learn by looking up repeatedly thing or mine it again and delete the wk card. No biggie, one step back, two forward.
- Anki mode I didn’t use this, and I’m not sure if it’s currently working, but wow I wish I had used it after a while. My hands were cramped at the end, but I couldn’t stop typing. Would’ve preferred to press two buttons for good or bad.
Essential Software (general computer use, immersion)
Some of this can be difficult to set up and use, but it’s incredibly powerful. Please don’t ask me help how to set it up, I struggled enough myself. Search the forums or internet and figure it out, don’t give up. There’s probably some threads were people had the exact same problem as you before.
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Yomitan Install Yomitan browser addon for instant word lookups. I like to compare WK and Jitendex definitions to get a bit of a better overview of what they’re trying to say the word means when I’m adding it to my SRS. English is not my native language, but I am at a native level. Still there are some words here that I’ve never heard in either my native language or in English so be prepared to maybe look some things up. Besides, you don’t truly understand a word until you’ve seen it used in many contexts. SRS and dictionaries are tools, not the language itself.
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Mokuro I use this for converting manga to an easily readable format. You can put your converted files into https://reader.mokuro.app/ for a good reader. Highly recommended for beginner usage, manga has tons of pictures to help you understand sentences. Find manga that interests you to keep you engaged, fortunately for me I like shoujo romance which tends to be pretty easy. u shuld Dl raw manga, I’ll leave it at that.
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Memento I use this for watching anime with Japanese subtitles, also when I’m not watching without any subs. It’s a good player. Z and X to quickly align subtitles if they’re off by some hundred milliseconds. Kitsunekko and Jjimaku for JP subtitles if you need any. I get my anime from a friend’s parrot who knows a guy.
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Textractor (VN fans) I read VNs sometimes. Everyone who as tradition slogged through はなひらっ！ while I had the time of my life because I like yuri no matter how tame it is.
Also while you’re at it, make sure your computer and webbrowser is configured to always prefer Japanese over Chinese characters. Some of them differ depending on the locale. Don’t assume it’s configured correct just because it shows correct in Wanikani.
I also used Kantan manga on my phone for a little bit, but it’s pretty finicky and doesn’t get updates. I think there will be a Mokuro for phones soon, better use that.
For a phone dictionary I have Shirabe Jisho. It’s pretty good.
Wanikani Strategy
I thought about adding some impressions for each levels, but it’s not necessary. I think I found the first 20 levels more difficult than the last 20 just to put it into perspective. It gets easier even if I got more reviews to do! You should start studying grammar and immersing as soon as you can. Yes it will be difficult, no it won’t be less difficult if you wait.
I didnt use any of the mnemonics. I didn’t care about the radical names after a while. If I can recognize the shape it’s good enough for me.
Always have sound on.
In the beginning I was quite slow. I was nervous and more afraid of making mistakes than trying to learn. I got over this eventually and decided to slowly increase my daily count until I hit my limit. This is quite difficult to perceive in advance because you will get a lot more reviews months later, but I persevered through sheer force of will and unemployment. You can see that I could’ve made it in under 365 days if I went full speed from the start, but I don’t think I would have been able to in the beginning without becoming thoroughly demotivated. You get better at memorizing over time as you read more and more and some of the kanji and words you get will be words you’re somewhat aware of already making memorization easier. Readings also eventually became a bit closer to second nature.
My daily study routine started with waking up and having a cup of coffee. Learning is best when I wake up and not tired. I would do all my reviews and then do my lessons. Radicals first, kanji after, then words. Later on I would do my grammar study after this, with immersion (podcasts/manga/anime/drama/vns) the rest of the day until I got too tired. Don’t watch a bunch of videos on how to learn, that youtuber isn’t going to tell you anything new that the other youtubers haven’t already told you. I understand learning how to learn in the beginning, but move on once you know what kana is, what kanji is, how anki works, and where to find grammar resources. Just learn a bit of vocab and grammar, and consume the language a lot. That’s all there is to think about for a beginner. Watching videos on how to learn instead of using the language is not productive at all. Some of you need to hear this.
I didn’t read anything the first 8 levels or so, but I probably could have had I studied some basic grammar and used tools like Mokuro (manga text ocr) or Textractor (VN text extraction) with Yomitan for hovering over words for definitions.
I would do all my reviews every day. Continually through the day. If it was getting late and a batch of reviews was coming in and I was too tired I would just do my recent kanji+radicals to level up sooner, stop reviewing and go to bed and clear the review log in the morning. No point trying to remember a bunch of words when your brain is turned off.
Grammar and immersion Start sooner than later ( ◡‿◡ *)
For grammar I tried reading Tae Kim a little bit every day and trying to make sense of things, but it wasn’t working well for me. I ended up watching the first 12 Cure Dolly lesson videos on YouTube, only 1 a day to keep things short.
I don’t know whether I can recommend the rest of the videos, I didn’t watch them.
After that I started grammar on Bunpro and did 3 points a day (huge shoutout to Bunpro, there is a free grammar deck for anki available, but Bunpro worked amazing for me and I am very glad they had an option for native Japanese male/female voices).
It was VERY difficult in the beginning. My god how many times I had to take five minute computer breaks because my head felt like it was going to burst. I struggled so much with conjugation I used the cram feature all through N5, but stopped soon after that. At this point I started reading some manga with my bare minimum N5 grammar. I didn’t understand much at all, but I got a bit more used to reading words and kana faster for what I did know. It was helpful even if I didn’t understand much yet. It was also very exhausting. Immersion is mentally challenging in the beginning, but it gets easier.
I consistently continued with 4 points for the rest of the grammar on Bunpro (N4-N1).
When I had finished N4 I did the kansai ben deck because you’ll see quite a bit of it in anime. The deck doesn’t cover much, but it was a little help. I learned most of the kansai ben or archaic Japanese that I know from watching anime and just researching whatever I came across. I also used the custom “tae kim deck” on Bunpro because I figured the things in that deck were more important for immersion than there rest of the N3/N2/N1 grammar. So My order was N5 → N4 → Tae Kim → N3 → N2 - N1. I only did this so I could pick out a few N2 and N1 grammar because just because they’re N2 and N1 does not mean they’re that rare.
I was decent at conjugating verbs at around N3 and preferred to read so I switched grammar to reading mode so I could stop worrying so much about synonyms. I got better at separating them through a ton of immersion anyways.
I used no “ghosts” (counterproductive for SRS imo) and did roughly 100 grammar sentences a day when I was about to finish the N1 deck. It was exhausting and took me from May 2024 to January 2025. All the way from N5 to N1 grammar. I estimate I spent 1-2 hours a day on grammar each day in the beginning. Fortunately at this point the sentences I had to do daily only went down, and I toggled it so that when I got something wrong it would drop even further so I could prioritize those.
When I had finished N4 grammar I started reading Visual Novels with textractor for lookups. I spent at least 50 hours reading one Visual Novel I always wanted to read that wasn’t translated. I don’t think I had very good comprehension, but the story moved me to tears nonetheless. Lutris estimates it took me approximately 45 hours to read the visual novel that most likely would take a native two or three hours at most. By the time I had finished this VN by reading a few hours a day I was getting a fair bit of the N3 grammar and then started reading longer visual novels. I’ve spent many hundreds of hours reading visual novels and manga this past year. For listening I’ve probably spent one or two hundred hours watching anime as well, both with jp subs and without any subs at all. I started with near zero comprehension just trying to get used to recognizing the sounds and long/short vowels and pitch accent and eventually I was able to pick off words here and there. Just keep watching/listening actively every day. I also listen to a really fast talking Japanese podcast of my favorite voice actor while walking outside. Again it doesn’t really matter if you understand what’s going on, just repeat inside your head what they are saying to stay focused and eventually known words will appear.
As I went faster and faster while improving I often found myself running out of words doing minimum 30 a day (I usually did 4 extra in anki aswell) so I’d supplement with Anki every now and making sure to eliminate duplicates of WK and mined words with an Anki addon. In the beginning I thought 50 reviews was intimidating, and I suppose it was. Everything was slower and harder in the beginning! I got faster though, and I calculated I did roughly 400-500 reviews a day for several months near the end and usually woke up with 300 reviews waiting for me. I don’t recommend doing this at the cost of immersion if you don’t have enough free time and energy. SRS does not alone teach a language. Immersion is vital and why I was able to go so fast in the first place. I regularly forgot a lot of words and grammar during immersion and have to look it up, but it sticks eventually. Some words I was never able to understand at all until I had seen it many times so expect that SRS won’t work for everything.
Fast levels (43-60)
Wanikani fast levels report
43-60 can be done twice as fast because you don’t need to wait for radicals to unlock all the kanji. I intended to take this slow and just do more words in anki instead, but I gave it a go for a few levels and didn’t feel like stopping since I knew it would only be around 2 months of intense reviews before it was over. I don’t have any recommendation here.
I hit 60, what will I do now?
You looking at all the lvl 60s from the outside. 「欲しい。。。」
Well I have a tiny bit more words to do on WK because I havent gurud the lvl 60 kanji yet, but they’ll be gone before I know it.
Now my study will just be clearing up my reviews and going through new words on Anki (at a reduced pace than the past many months 30-40 words a day, might settle around 20 words a day but not sure yet. Some of those words will have unknown kanji but I can recognize them fast now) and reading/listening/watching Japanese all day. I’ll type something once in Japanese once in a while, but I’m more focused on input. I plan to continue high intensity input and potentially later on get a tutor to help me output faster and more naturally.
I have done no JLPT tests and don’t care about them. I just want to continue getting better and enjoying this as a hobby. I still suck at Japanese compared with my native language and English, but I can kinda understand Japanese and that’s cool. It’s a very pretty language in every sense.
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To WaniKani Team (Don't peek, pinkie promise it's mostly criticism in here that won't help learners. Just keep learning!).
== To WaniKani Team ==
This will contain mostly criticism so strenghten your heart and please don’t take it too harshly even if it is quite sternly written. I don’t know how else to get my points across.
I’m not sure if you’ll read it, but I need to get it off my chest and you probably need to hear it. Forgive me.
As much as I would’ve preferred to just be sun and sunshine here and do nothing but thank you (oh, and by the way thank you! I really do mean it.) I don’t think it’s constructive for the future of WK. While I don’t doubt that your product has worked for me it has deep flaws for many past, current and potential future users.
The fact that people have to (yes, have to) resort to third party scripts/programs (which stopped working several times due to site changes) for something as simple as an undo button for typos is ridiculous. There are not enough words for the arrogance and refusal to satisfy users with such a simple toggle. “This is how we want our product to be” is not going to last and if you value your income you need to step up and improve your product. At this rate a much better product will arrive one day and you will be replaced very quickly when word spreads and reaches critical mass. At that point it may be too late to improve your product. I suggest you heed this warning, it happens to many companies and it will catch you off guard how fast it can happen.
A minimum recommendation:
- Allow an undo button. It should be disabled by default with a very noticeable warning explaining good and bad usages of undo for beginners (emphasis on importance of short or long vowels etc). I “abused” this to the extreme by pushing almost everything in apprentice into correct and letting them fail when they hit guru because in almost every case by then I had already memorized it by the time I had “failed upwards” to Guru and would prefer not to do 100 extra reviews per day in things I was going to memorize either way. This was also necessary to go at my desired speed.
- Allow anki style reviews. It should be disabled by default with a warning explaining good and bad usages for beginners and recommendation not to use it. I did not use a script for this, but I have no doubt there is a market for it as I will continue with anki only from here on out and have good habits with anki. It should not be a massive undertaking to add this option. My hands sometimes hurt after doing 300 reviews every morning, I’d much rather say the meaning and reading properly in my head and press a single button than sit here typing what I already know and have to retype it because of a vaguely different way of saying the same thing in English coming up in my head that with the context of the Japanese word turns out to mean the exact same thing. The synonym system is useful, but not at all enough. This would also greatly benefit anyone with any form of physical disability. If you hate it that much at least maybe allow “unlocking” the feature at level 10 or something when you can probably expect users to understand more how words function and what makes a right or wrong.
Less essential, but absolutely helps with a feeling of a polished product:
- The heatmap and reviews timeline userscripts are very good for people who want more. There are ways to implement something like this without straining your database and I think you should. I don’t want to refresh my page and scroll down and hover over radicals/kanji to see how many hours are left until the next important stage. Seeing all the lessons I’ve done every day grow and fill up an entire calendar year is quite the motivator to stay consistent. I assume you don’t want people to “obsess” over when they do reviews, but you made it mandatory for anyone wanting to go at a desired speed with the way the system is built.
- Better reordering. If I just want to do my current level radicals and kanji and go to bed and do the vocabulary tomorrow morning I should be allowed to. The current two reorder settings are very rigid. I want critical radicals and kanji first, then everything else can be random for all I care. Some people may also want to do meaning and reading back to back, this should also be an option. If you don’t give the option users will generally prefer a service that does give the option, not say thank you for not giving us any options and not use the option.
Annoyance:
- Remove certain kana words. Why are you teaching me the kana word for stapler at lvl 48? This one is just silly. It’s the only kana word in my SRS at this stage so I don’t even have to think, it’s just oh there’s the stapler, the only kana word. Put it earlier or not at all, it’s not teaching me anything. This one is so dumb I can’t even be mad, it’s just silly.
- Not a request just a comment: I think the ability to do a few locked kanji here and there for the most common words would be nice, but I kinda get why it’s not. It definitely feels weird learning words like 寂しい so late though, a lot of the super common words and kanji are very late into the course. I’m not sure what would be best to do about this, people who read will pick up words like this pretty fast so it doesn’t really matter if they’re in the product or not. I think you should look into potential options here though. It may not have an obvious solution, but very plausible there is a good alternative to be found for some of these very common words. Wanikani does feel a bit too rigid most of the time even if it’s expected to use other resources. If I learn a word in Anki I’ll have to do it again later in WK. It’s a bit inefficient.
Please take some of this to heart. As it stands I don’t think I’d recommend paying for WK to a friend (I’d rather try to coach them a bit through Kanji elements for Kaishi and doing Kaishi 1.5k and then mining from there – Of course this might be a bit more difficult without a friend who can help clear up beginner confusions), but I am still very happy I started and finished WK. I would have done it differently if I had to restart though. Consider that every unsatisfied customer you’ve ever had will advertise on other communities for a better product one day and eventually there will be absolutely nobody left to recommend you without being flooded with comments advising to use a better product. Make some noticeable improvements before this stage is reached. I did notice you improving the kanji and vocab content while I’ve been doing this entire kanji course, so I’ll commend you on that part and it’s not like WK doesn’t work, but don’t rest on your laurels with everything else. There’s room from improvement and all the forum posts I’ve seen addressing concerns have consistently been “not a problem, working as intended” which has frankly been upsetting. Figure it out already, your reputation is noticeably getting worse.
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I’m very glad to come where I am now. Japanese is incredibly fun and rewarding. I’m glad I crammed hard on kanji/vocab/grammar and immersion my first year and can now just immerse all day after doing my anki reviews.
Thank you WaniKani for helping demystify kanji for me!
