Well, barring no strange surprises, in about 2 days Iām going to hit level 11 and exit the pleasants. Thatās pretty nice! Some patterns are emerging in certain words that are tricky to make stick or to distinguish ā I swear there must be 20 words here that means some variation on āareaā or āneighborhood,ā and when an unusual reading slips in among a clump like that, I can tell that all my brain knows is to watch out for āthat neighborhood word,ā haha. Hopefully the SRS will handle it eventually. I want to know every word I can as well as I can, sure, but these are small issues. On the whole, my accuracy is high and Iām remembering kanji. Still pleased to be using this system.
Iāve settled into a better rhythm for how I do reviews simply by virtue of more time on WK helping me to understand how the levels are structured. Iād say Iām going at a brisk pace but not full speed now. My last few levels have taken more or less exactly 9 days and I think Iām content to carry this forward. Leads to very roughly 20 lessons a day, it fluctuates because Iām more focused on the breakpoints of finishing all the radicals one day, the kanji another, etc, but theyāre mostly small enough fluctuations. Seems to work out well for me.
I know thereās nothing you can do but keep pushing through it bit by bit, canāt learn 2000 kanji overnight, but I am growing a little more antsy to reach a level where I will recognize more. See, in the past Iāve totally been able to brush off the time waiting for kanji because furigana exists and I donāt anticipate my reading level getting so good so fast that I need to rush to things without furigana. I am very excited to strike out into reading visual novels, but I can wait. The annoyance is just that, now that Iām doing sentence mining myself, a whole lot of very good words to learn are in kanji. And Iām still evaluating how I want to handle it, but for the moment, Iām not too interested in trying to early self-study kanji that I know is coming up in Wanikani anyway. But having limiting factors on learning words ātoo soonā isnāt fun either, yāknow? I know getting comfortable with learning kanji yourself eventually is a necessityā¦ but Iām level 10 so that feels a bit premature.
That said, Iām just musing on the challenges that arise. Overall, things are reasonably good. Satori Reader notes are teaching me a lot of things, and using with furigana tailored to my knowledge has surprised me at how comfortable I am with quickly reading most kanji words I got from this site. Itās working!
All of the above (plus anki for said sentence mining and genki word review) is my āmain studying,ā I guess. In my other time, which I still have quite a bit of thankfully, Iām plowing through Yotsubato volumes. Iām more than halfway through volume 3ā¦ the difficulty sure varies by chapter and who is involved (gotta brace myself for scenes all in the neighborsā household), but Iām steadily working through.
Iām also grinding through Dragon Quest 11 bit by bit, spending literal hours making it to the point where Iāve fought my first few enemies, haha. That game seems to average like 4 words I donāt know per sentence, which isnāt the best, but they repeat certain words SO often that theyāre pretty well embedded in my head. There are totally lines I just have to give up on, but overall even though I think itās above my level, itās not so far as to feel like a waste of time.
Can I just toss in here that I appreciate this community quite a bit? Itās a mixed bag online, and I owe some other communities a lot for lurking there teaching me the methods that are helping me to do this. But thereās a really not uncommon strain of more toxic elements among Japanese learners in some places.
Onward, to more learningā¦