Hi all, I wasn’t particularly active on the forums here, but just wanted to drop in now that I’ve finished Level 60 and am moving on. First, thanks so much to the Wanikani team. This service helped me so much both with Japanese and like…my life in general. I started with the goal of playing Chrono Trigger in Japanese. I have since beaten it, FF9, Dragon Quest 11, Tokimeki Memorial, and am currently playing Persona 4. I can’t really describe how cool it feels to be able to do that.
I think most people say something like this, but I have verified the truth of it: if I can finish this then you can too. Don’t feel overwhelmed by the size of the task, and don’t worry if you aren’t going as fast as others. Just keep chipping away at it. It took me 2.5 years! Just slowly level up your kanji, vocab, and grammar skills together, and then I would strongly recommend finding some graded readers once you’re about 10-20 levels in and just make it a daily practice to read Japanese every day.
I would also recommend experimenting with the various add-ons to make the Wanikani experience more productive. I used the skip wrong answer extension so I wouldn’t be penalized for a typo, and the radical deconstruction add-on which would points out phonetics within the radicals. Huuuuugely beneficial. I can often correctly guess the reading of Kanji I’ve never seen based on that.
To the Wanikani team I have a few suggestions:
Maybe incorporate some of those features into the base platform? I think I know why, say, skip answer isn’t included, but its frustrating when I have a brain-fart or finger slip cause me to move backwards on a card. It would be nice if this was built in.
Incorporate your example sentences into the cards. Similar to the way Bunpro works (another service I would recommend to everyone), instead of just the vocab word by itself, have the card show up within one of the sentences you’ve written with the word we’re targeting highlighted. I think that would make the reviews far more productive for both memory as we’ll have a sentence we can remember the word from, but also in terms of depth of understanding since we’ll be constantly reminded how its used.
If possible, streamline your radical stories. Sometimes the stories incorporate the understanding of previous radicals, sometimes they don’t. It would be helpful if this was more consistent.
Any suggestions for graded readers? I have a similar goal of being able to play video games in Japanese one day(along with my main goal of being fluent enough to communicate as well in Japanese as I do in English, my native language). Right now Im kinda using Wanikani, trying to converse a little in Japanese with my friends on another language learning app, watching Anime with Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles, trying to read manga in Japanese, and doing youtube grammar lessons(i also have a text book for grammar).
Also, great job at getting to the top of wanikani. Very impressive. I hope to scale the mountain one day as well. Some days it feels impossible for me to learn another language but other people have been able to and i hope i can too, despite my self doubts. Ill just keep practicing and see what happens.
I would start from Level 0 and just read all of them. Then Level 1, and so on.
I also quite liked the YouTube channel Game Gengo. His videos really help bridge the gap between textbook/learner material to understanding native Japanese. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck, knowing all the words but can’t quite extract the meaning. Content like his, which is like guided immersion, helps a ton.
But yeah just keep at it. There is absolutely no reason you can’t do it. You’re already level 17. That’s like over 500 kanji. That’s really impressive! Just keep at it.
I appreciate the suggestion. i will check those out. good luck on your Japanese learning journey as you move forward. I know personally I am excited to play some videos games that never made it to the west and dont have an English version.
