Hi There!
I am Amin and I live in Iran which is like a hell for someone who wants to learn anything through Internet.
I thought WaniKani is a completely free platform (my fault!) and I have started to learn this beautiful (yet tough) language of Japanese which is [and was] one of my wishes through these years.
But unfortunately today I saw a notice on my dashboard which said I have to buy a Premium subscription to continue my learning process.
You know one thing about Iranians? we can’t buy things online! not that we don’t want to pay for things, nope, we can’t and we don’t have access to MasterCard or Visa or …
Today I fed up. really. Seeing that notice was like another reality check at the start of a new day.
So i decided to open this thread and (with no hope at all) ask you for an alternative way to pay for premium suscription via Iranian Rial (or I don’t know maybe washing the dishes or sweeping the floor!)
I hope you understand, I am one of those people who love Japan and Japanese and I really like to support quality work of yours but this is my situation and I hate it.
Thanks guys, I love your work and no matter of what I continue to promote this amazing website and community.
I’m sorry you have no access to online payment methods; I hope things would change soon and you’d be able to subscribe.
But even until then you can still get quite a lot of use from WaniKani. For one thing, you you can explore all WK items without subsctiption:
For another, this forum is a veritable gold mine.
There is Japanese Only section where WK staff ask questions in Japanese and read and correct your answers.
There are various book clubs. There are threads for grammar questions and so on.
And there’s also Campfire section where you can just relax. We have a very nice community here and if someone misbihaves towards you - you can flag them - and the moderators would deal with them.
As for your original question, however, unfortunately, I don’t know of any alternative payment methods… There might be a way to purchase a virtual visa card, but I don’t know whether it is legal in your country or not…
I would say your best bet is to send an email to hello@wanikani.com explaining your situation. The team are very accommodating, but I understand your situation is very difficult so I hope you can get something worked out!
I think the best course of action here is to mail them at hello@wanikani.com
They’re a very understanding bunch and will work together with you to find a solution that works. One thing that might work for example is payment through PayPal, as PayPal can also take money from debit accounts.
Plenty of good tips in this thread already, and I know the feeling. I’ve got it way easier in Europe, but some things are locked behind regions etc. – and it’s always a royal pain in the rear.
It’s nothing I’ve looked into myself, but I’ve heard that there are preloaded Visa cards. Could that be an option?
Thank you for replying to me (which is very helpful), this means the world to me.
You are right, I can somehow have access to materials and manage to learn Japanese on WaniKani.
I should work on my English too, so I can communicate with others on this platform and enhance my learning process with the means you mentioned before.
I don’t know how to express my gratitude towards you or anyone how Stopped here and heared my voice.
Thanks for understanding!
I searched about preloaded Visa and MasterCards.
The problem is that I have to pay $500 to have $250 valued gift card and that’s like sum of my 6 months of my salary (if I save all of it).
But hey, at least there is a way, and that’s my problem not WaniKani.
It’s a free SRS application that allows you to make your own flashcard decks. It would take a bit of time to learn how to configure it, but it is very useful. And, afaik, there are some already made decks for it based on WaniKani.
I’m sad to hear about your situation. Like other posters I hope that contacting the WK team will help you find a way to continue using WK.
In the meanwhile, as @trunklayer said, use the site as much as you can and there are many resources just in this free forum for you. Don’t give up on your Japanese studies!
In case you can’t get the subscription, you can try these links. You might not like their visual at first, but I hope they can help you to learn Japanese. Even though most of these resources below aren’t 100% free, I’m sure you’ll find something useful.
I would echo most of the advice in this thread, particularly the part about contacting WK and asking them if there is a way around your current issue that would work for both sides.
Also, the forum is very helpful and you do have people here who range from novices to people who I believe may be pretty fluent in the language or at the very least an upper intermediate level, which allows you to both discuss issues that you are facing in learning the language with other people who are at the same level and at the same time seek guidance from those who have already mastered that issue (no reason to reinvent the wheel).
Yeah I’m just like you Amin I’m Reza from your country I decided to learn vocab on my own now Idk by making flash cards and reading light novels and asking people it’s good to see people like me
