I spent so much time at home trying to get to level 60, but only ever managed it once I got to
Japan. As every scientist worth their salt will tell you, correlation means causation. Therefore, if
you want to finish Wankani, go to Japan!
I kid, of course. It took a year, a lot of work, and now it’s the other side. Went better than I
thought, and pretty rewarding I got to say. I still remember being confused about the colors
indicating radical, kanji and vocab lol.
About me. I don’t really want to say too much about myself. But, I want to make sure people that
see this post and might be interested in trying the 1 year thing understand that, in my opinion, I
was primed sufficiently to try this.
I studied mechanical engineering and managed a bachelor’s degree. During my time there I
wrote many many many reports over very short periods too close to each other. I believe this
helped my endurance for high review count.
I also had a previous trip to Japan, where I was surprised that I could manage to understand a
lot of spoken Japanese. Speaking needs practice, but I believe my vocab is good.
So, when it came to Wanikani, a lot of time I was just matching the words already in my mind
with the way they’re written.
That being said. The fast levels still took a lot out of me to do. Literally double the work in half
the time lol. Especially after level 50, that’s when it all catches up to you.
Of course this is all if you wanted to do it. You could come up with an entirely different strategy.
Like taking two weeks to do reviews and lessons between level 50 and level 51.
Wanikani. When I started it, I thought it was going to be a good tool to learn Kanji. And it turned
out to be exactly that. There’s some improvements to be made, of course. Like a summary
page, more thorough statistics and a leech system. But thankfully user scripts were a great help
in that regard. Although, I’m not sure a community solution should be the answer to a paid
service.
This turned out a lot safer than I expected, let’s spice it up.
What I really think about Kanji after coming this far: It’s completely random and there’s no real
rules for any meaning. Similar radicals don’t mean the same meaning and meaning goes out of
the window in vocab anyway. Can you even read words that you haven’t memorized before?
I’ve seen that even natives get confused when it’s a word they didn’t encounter before. IMO,
your only path forward with Kanji is pure memorization effort.
It would’ve been more dramatic to get to level 60 on top of Mt. Fuji, but oh well. That’s just how it
goes right?
. There were no days off there that’s for sure.
