Welp, i guess i did it. Man I really got a bit emotional when i did my last batch of vocabs yesterday.
Normally im not really someone that starts a topic, so im not sure what to write.
Maybe just a quick summary of my journey to lvl 60.
A few years ago I started watching Anime and Manga and got the great Idea as many did before, to learn japanese. Well I started learning hiragana for 2 weeks, even opened up a wanikani account but never did even one lesson.
Timeskip to October 2024, I was the first time in my life in japan and travelled the basic route (Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and for me Nagoya was also added).
At that time it was even a bit fun to be reading all the hiragana that i saw, though i didnt understand anything xD. That wasnt the problem, since we could just talk in english and everything was fine, until we wandered just a little bit outside of the city centre in Osaka to a really new museum. There I had a little special question and even though the staff knew a bit of english and all the standard answers, no one could help me there, no one…
Thats when i realised, that i need to practice japanese, if i wanted to come back and wander into the not so touristy places. Fast forward im back in germany, and at the start of november i started my real japanese journey with wanikani as the core.
My goal was to at least do all the reviews +10-20 new lessons every day. At lvl 11 and at the start of lvl 40 i got a bit of a downfall motivationwise but i at least did all my reviews. At around lvl 10 I also started with the gramar cours of Bunpro and shortly after i read my first Manga. (with a lot of translation and furigana).
At the same time I participated in a biweekly japanese/german tandem in Düsseldorf for the first time in my life and was completely lost. At the start i only listened and after the tandem my head hurt so bad, but slowly I got better and better to the point where i can now watch all my anime just in japanese without subtitles (even though i still turn them on when its an important convo and i dont understand it) , read my manga with at most furigana and occasional lookups and even talk for 2-3 hours in japanese with new friends that i connected with. Though not the really deep topics, thats still a bit too hard.
My goal at the start was to be as fluent as i am in english within 3 years. Now almost 2 years have gone by, im gonny finish bunpro grammar until maximum the end of this year and then i want to only read, watch/listen, and speak as much as possible. At the moment i still believe its achieveable.
Of course thanks to wanikani, I have the least problems with reading and when i was back in japan in january i could already talk to locals, especially when i was a bit drunk in an izakaya and read most of the signs and menus in restaurants.
Though dont forget, that i almost learned for 1 to 2 hours a day on average.
What also helped me was starting a new Tiktok account with only japanese videos that i would watch, it really helped a lot. Also Nihongo con teppei was the best podcast for me at the start.
Tbh this post is a bit messy, but if you have any specific questions about my way to lvl 60 and being able to confidently speak with japanese people, dont hesitate to ask away.
Thanks a lot for anyone that read all that brain dump, i appreciate it. Thanks also for the wanikani community where i was able to get so much free info while just lurking and not really contributing.
Cheers, Nileon
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