HAHA
done XD
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lol, it’s unusual to see luffy without a massive grin!
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HAHA I know right? That’s why I love it so much.
He was in a really bad mood.
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An update, for whoever is interested 
Two weeks in, and just finished doing 93 lessons for the start of Level 3.
So far I’m encouraged; I know most of them before I read them, and I can still read and understand the sample vocab they give you when you learn a new kanji.
I know things start getting less rosy once you hit a certain level, but for now I am feeling a little better about my memory. Writing kanji is a completely different matter, but at least I’m recognising them still.
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Don’t fret too much about quitting and starting again. Learning a language isn’t something that easy, and it take A LOT of time. The most important thing is to keep yourself entertained to continue 
Motivation comes as a byproduct imo.
If it helps in any way, I’ve stopped my studies for an entire year ( or even more ) two times at this point. I’ve been on WK since 2014, and have reset my account 2-3 times since I was getting 50% on my reviews or something like that due to such a long break.
Only recently, have I found a schedule that works, and activities that I like doing to keep me motivated to continue studying ( reading in my case ). If you do enjoy reading try some graded readers after you feel like you’re back where you used to be in terms of Japanese abilities ( maybe even sooner ).
Haven’t tried to too much but https://www.satorireader.com/ is pretty good for beginners Once you want to get into native content I personally use https://jpdb.io/ to select what to read/play next
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Checking in after another week.
I’m still on Level 3 due to a couple of pesky radicals and some spelling mistakes/ slip of the fingers on some answers. It’s interesting on this time around; I am not really paying attention to the radicals at all because I already know the kanji on seeing it. But that isn’t great in a way because I know the stupid stories help you with writing etc. I guess I’ve just been worrying about reading them this time.
Anyway. Thanks for listening. XD
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You mean that fantastic stories that help me stay positive every day and make me feel heartbroken already on level 31 because I know that in a foreseeable future I have to live without them?
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I don’t really get this. Did you mean the mnemonics as the stories because I see at level 60 you still get radicals?
I like the mnemonics a lot. And at some point I will have read all of them, and that makes me sad.
Like reading a good book, when it’s over it is sad, just that.
Of course you can reread everything, but there is still a wish to know more about the characters.
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Now that you’re saying this, it’s getting to me too, but not character-wise. It’s the fact that i won’t be getting any more silly images put together that make me let out a chuckle in surprise. Yeah, that bitter sweet feeling, but still, you can bring them up anytime right here and recite them to people and bring a smile to their faces 
By the way, I came across someone saying that mnemonics like WK’s can be applied to English. What do you think? I think it’s quite impossible cause you can’t really break down English words and assign repeatable patterns to create a full system like WK did
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I stopped doing anything Japanese related between 2011 (right after graduation) and 2019 (right after divorce).
After being around N3 level, I had to study 10 months to get back to that level and did the JLPT in December '19 for N3 and passed it. It was still rough.
In 2020 I had to take another break due to global reasons and school (for my daughter) being out really did nothing to help me. But I’m back on that horse. It’s never easy, but when you keep going, it’ll come back and eventually you’ll reap the rewards and damn if it isn’t satisfying as heck.
I think in the end everything you memorize is using a mnemonic, but mostly unconscious. Not a story system like for Kanji.
I have the most difficulties remembering the English answer in WK, but I remember parts of the answer like eg. the position of the first letter on the keyboard (upper right, lower left etc.) or that it has only three letters or is extraordinarily long. I also somehow attach colors to vowels, eg an A is blue for me and an E red. It is a mostly subconscious system and I started to notice it only recently. It seems it also connects feelings to words. Like “melee” eg has something very soft and wooly, please don’t ask me why 
If I wouldn’t have checked the dictionary, I would think about something very cute a three coloured kitten is doing, because it is also stripy (I know this only applies to me, and seriously I don’t know where these associations are coming from).
So I remember: starts in the lower right corner, very soft and wooly and red, and lot of similar vowels of which there is a repeated one and the repetition happens in the end or something like that.
For me, English is easy to remember, but as I am writing this I will try to map it on Japanese words. Eg I could imagine to feel a color connected to radicals. And soft/ hard to rendakued things.
Actually I thought about making a script to show a different background color for each Onyomi. That would make an instant memorization possible, like red for こう, blue for あん, green for うん, yellow for き. There must be some kind of logical system but I haven’t thought about it yet because I can’t code. But I could try it in my Anki deck! Sorry, I also realized that I am thinking while I am writing. Maybe that’s because I don’t have a person to talk to in real life who is interested in learning Japanese
The character I like the best in the WK world is the anti heroic “you” in the mnemonics, I love how “he” (I) stumbles through this mysterious world, I want to be more like him. 
I actually “Woah”-ed out loud while reading your reply! I’ve never thought someone’s memorization way would be so interesting (and so different from me), so much that your ability to attach feelings to words is like a superpower! Amazing 
That is making me so excited to discuss how I memorise things too. I have a routine that starts at the very beginning of the day to go on WK and learn a few words, then, around dinner time, i’ll take a pen and jot down all the words, their meaning and spelling, which i didn’t have a second look after finishing WK’s quiz. They don’t come out immediately, I’ll have to somehow trigger my memory, and they start to come as single, scattered sounds like ち or つ. I really don’t know a better way to retrieve them, and take this as a fun memory-training game. But the interesting thing is, my brain could only remember 2 words short. Eg if i learned 12 words, i could only remember 10, and some days i learned up to 16 words I managed to remembered 14, which is way a lot more than 10! It’s like a psychology thing my brain is playing 
Prior to Japanese, I had learned English and was very keen on expanding my vocab. But sometimes I’d want to remember a cool word but it’d just come in letters. Like when we’re having a conversation and i say to my friend “Agg that word that contains “d” and “e” or “a” but i can’t remember”, and they’d make weird faces to me
So, happy to have shared this, and you can always discuss interesting Japanese-related things with me if you don’t have someone irl 
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I think that’s the same for everyone, it is just unconscious usually. The reason why I am writing about it is, that I thought I lost my memory almost completely, and there is an irreversible damage to it. Anyway, to keep a long story short, there is no evidence of the claim, that memory is “stored” somewhere in the brain and there is an alternative way of thinking every experience gets stored in a field you could access anytime if you synchronize with it (also with the field of other people 
). So far so crazy, therefore I am testing now how far I can get believing this to be true (because I have nothing to lose ).
So one consequence is, memorization happens automatically and instantly and is not restricted by the “hardware” so you really only have to focus on recalling.
Recalling is how you nicely put it, triggering your memory. I realized at some point that there is a lot of stuff connected to any memory (that’s the nature of a field). So in order to connect to a field it doesn’t matter which node you start from, you should be able to navigate closer to your goal by starting at the closest available point and feel which direction you have to trigger to get there. In order to get there faster it is a good idea to mark the position with an (in the best case unrelated) information (the more the better), that’s the function of the mnemonics I think. But it also could be some disaster striking when you learn or an intentional signal you add to each eg vocabulary like a flash of color or a smell. I am testing that now.
(Sorry I am weird )
Weekly update time (in case anyone is still interested! XD)
Apologies to everyone I made feel sad by referring to the stories as stupid in my previous post. I’m sorry! I guess they helped a bit when I first started, but I dunno; I guess my brain is just in a state of ‘too many details to remember; move on’. I could be sabotaging myself, but thankfully I’m finding this mostly happens with kanji and vocab I already know; just forgot. I do try to use the stories to remember ones I struggle with… but anyway!
It is now almost 5 weeks since I reset my account. Last night I hit Level 5, but I also hit the first bottleneck situation of new lessons and waiting reviews (does that make any sense?).
I mean this:
that is, I was suddenly hit with a million new lessons (this picture was me about 2/3 of the way through) that I couldn’t do in one sitting, and that meant that the next time I sat down to do them, reviews had started stacking up as well.
I haven’t had that until now; I guess it makes sense seeing as the more helpful kanji and vocab suddenly start streaming in at this level. But I got the familiar sinking feeling of ‘you will never catch up if you don’t nip it in the bud SO DO IT ALL NOW’ which is the main reason I guess I conked out on Wanikani in the first place; it just got too overwhelming.
I am seeing a lot more words I remember learning and using in the past, which is a good sign I think. Maybe I won’t get so drowned this time. ^^;
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If you just do the reviews first, then you don’t need to drown.
This is not a race ～
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If this is something you struggle with, have you considered trying to tackle the lessons by doing a consistent number of them every day instead of binging them? There’s no harm in having items sitting in your lesson pile! It only becomes a problem if you abuse the reorder script and have accumulated lessons from several levels back.
I do 10-13 lessons every day, and often have 40+ lessons sitting in the pile until I reach the end of the level, but it keeps the keeps the number of reviews down to a manageable level. I generally only have 100-130 reviews spread throughout the entire day, and I level up about once every two weeks, which is perfectly fast enough for me. It’s nice because I know exactly how much time WK will take me to do every day because the consistent lesson schedule means my workload is extremely predictable and I don’t have to deal with huge spikes of reviews.
Someone might have already linked this, but I recommend giving the ultimate guide to WK a read-through if you’ve never looked at it before. Even if you aren’t trying to go fast (I’m not), it’s an incredibly useful resource for how to pace yourself and get the most out of WK without burning out.
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Thank you for that; I guess I do need to learn self control and remember that in a class setting, I wouldn’t be learning that many new things in one go. 10-15 lessons a day sounds much more reasonable!!
I’m not deliberately trying to go fast; I guess things are a bit quicker this time around since I’ve already passed these levels before. I imagine progress will slow to a crawl the higher the levels go (I was previously at 13 I think before I conked out last time).
I hadn’t heard about that WK guide; I’ll definitely have a look. Thanks!
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Don’t worry, it’s never too late to come back…
Granted I did have a few periods of studying in that 2000+ day gap, but it’s quite surprising how quickly it all comes back. The knowledge you do retain is very firmly planted, and that gives you a nice base to work off of.
Others have mentioned it already, but I also second looking at the guides others have written reflecting on their experience. Tons of helpful tips in there.
Also, when you’re feeling ready to study TV, there are some REALLY cool Chrome add-ons these days to help understand and mine sentences.
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I’m currently sitting on 111 lessons pending. 0 reviews. I am not doing them all at once. That would give me 170 apprentice items and thus 170 items to review often until I get hit with another batch of 100 lessons.
I do 12 per day, plus all the reviews.
I plan on resurrecting individual items once I reach and finish level 60, just to make sure I redo the ones I forgot. But even then, I’ll not resurrect them all at once. I’ll do a batch of 20 tops and guru them before I resurrect some more. There’s really no point in doing 100 lessons and then promptly forgetting half because there’s too many.
Also, there’s no shame in resetting progress. Especially if you have a lifetime membership. The goal is to learn Japanese after all, not just to reach level 60.
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