It’s crazy how fast even a long journey can go by! It’s been about 14 months since I started learning Japanese: I did a quick search for a couple learning options before starting with Duolingo as that’s what I was aware of. The best way to learn there was to rely heavily on the forums: especially at earlier levels they were populated with solid questions and answers. I saw WaniKani recommended by a user, and found my way here, less than a week after I started learning Japanese!
I’ve only ever posted a couple of replies, but this has still been the most involved I’ve even been in a forum, or any sort of online community. I think that’s a testament to how helpful a source of information this is, with guides, userscripts, and all sorts of learning and media recommendations. It made even me want to contribute something, even if just a like or small comment or suggestion.
So in that same spirit, I’ll mention some of my resources, stories, and general data below. I’m sure I’ll continue my lurking until all my items are burned, but probably don’t expect to see many more posts (except in this thread perhaps), and certainly no more new topics!
Data and Details
Not counting the day I made an account before actually starting, I missed only a single day: one in July 2019 while my family was camping, and I was stuck without internet access for a full 24 hours. A permanent reminder of that trip and a mar on my calendar and streak.
That would have been a good opportunity to create my highest number of reviews in a day, but it happened too early on. My actual highest review total in a day was 526 on January 19th.
It took me a little while to settle into a good rhythm, but once college started again I was able to match my schedule to the timing required to go full speed. Without the structure of school I found it a bit harder to keep my sleep schedule and activities synced properly.
In late February my Apprentice items were out of control, and I decided to abandon my attempts at full speed. I had long since decided not to take the fast levels at double speed, and at this point I gave myself two levels at about half pace (though the actual level up times somewhat distort that) before resuming at whatever speed felt comfortable. I was also getting close to graduating from college, and I needed to devote a bit less time and effort to WaniKani anyways.
You can see pretty clearly where my number of Guru and Master items leveled off. At their peak, I had 242 Apprentice items. I look forwards to watching those items start to decrease! Maybe I’ll update some of these charts in another year.
Lastly, the stats I’m least proud of. I know there’s a thread on average accuracy and potentially biased self selection in how we guess at what an average accuracy across WaniKani is, but besides all that, I wish I’d spent more time drilling items when learning them, and especially when getting them wrong. Maybe that’s something I’ll try to do now that I’m set to have a dwindling number of reviews.
A WaniKani Tip
Your accuracy has a very direct impact on the number of reviews you have. With my accuracy, it took me over 105,000 reviews to get here. With perfect accuracy, you can burn every item in under 65,000 reviews. Obviously, you shouldn’t feel bad when you get things wrong, it’s just a way to identify holes in what we know, but spending a bit of extra time drilling mistakes and lessons probably could’ve saved me a good bit of time and frustration in the long run.
My Resources
I have used Duoling and KaniWani in the past, but came to feel that neither were the best use of my time. I am currently stumbling my way through Made In Abyss, and recording vocab and some grammar points in an ever-expanding Anki deck. I highly recommending getting into native material, and wish I’d done so sooner. The beginning was painful, and knowing more kanji when I started would have eased the process slightly, but no amount of kanji knowledge will make the jump painless.
Duolingo and a year of Japanese at college gave me something resembling a basis for grammar, but I also use Cure Dolly’s off-putting but informative video series, on top of looking up points as I find them.
If I’m really stuck on some mass of hiragana that Jisho can’t break down in a meaningful way, or I just can’t understand the meaning of the whole despite knowing the parts, I find that DeepL is a much more reliable translator than Google.
With that, I must be getting back to reviews. And of course, the last couple batches of lessons. I suppose the journey continues for a bit longer.
