I started wanikani last month only doing 1-2 lessons a day but it took me a month to finish the first level. That’s way too slow. As i’d only be able to do around 12 levels per year. I don’t want to be on wanikani for 5-6 years. My goal is 2 years or 3 years max. I’ll gladfully put in an hour a day but I’m reluctant to do more, but will if I have to.
So I’m wondering how many lessons do I need to do a day to finish wanikani in a year or so? and roughly how many hours a day that is…
15 lessons a day it is probably.
I’m going pretty much at full speed and I spend about an hour a day on WK, roughly. So you could be done in a little over a year.
For 2 years, probably 10 to 15 lessons a day.
I never counted the time I put into it, but it didn’t really feel like much. I did all the available reviews around three times a day, it probably takes around 20 minutes to do 100 reviews.
The purpose of SRS (like Wanikani) is specifically not to spend hours studying. You take a few minutes to do the reviews and once they’re done you don’t have to do any more studying if you don’t want to.
My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK)
Make sure you take the time to read this post so you understanding WaniKani’s SRS timing, how you should be structuring lessons throughout your days, and good userscripts to use. Before I read it, I spent at least 2 weeks on each level, now I finish each one in around 7-8 days!
Personally, I’m a big fan of the 14 lessons a day plan. Set your lesson batch size to 7 in your settings, do two batches of lessons a day (preferably at different times), and catch up on reviews each time. Manageable workload and accomplishes a little more than two levels a month. Honestly, going much faster than that only makes sense if you either
A) already are fluent in Japanese but don’t know kanji
B) want to learn all your kanji before you start learning grammar and starting to read (You can totally start reading way early and just deal with ambiguity for some words and kanji. I’ve learned many kanji just from reading them repeatedly as well)
C) You have more than four hours a day to study Japanese to adequately balance your ridiculous kanji pace with other disciplines such as listening, reading, and associated grammar study.
[Edit] I also feel like noting that I think B is a really bad idea that will make everything you learn on WaniKani fall out the other end
Not to mention that OP will forget alot of the kanji if he doesn’t get them through immersion, so when he gets to a point where more advanced kanji appear he’d already forgotten them since he neglected other parts of his study.
I’m in the C-group.
WK takes up 1/4 of my studies at the most, most days 1/8. I wouldn’t spend more than 1/4 of my total time on WK. The rest going to immersion, grammar and vocab SRS aswell.
Two years is my goal as well. I do 15 lessons per day and my review load is about 150 reviews per day. It takes some time for the reviews to stack up to that level, though.
There are approximately 9100 lessons (radicals, kanji, vocab) in WaniKani, so just divide that by the number of days you want to spend to find your ideal lessons per day. For exactly two years, that number is around 12.5 lessons per day.
You can get a rough estimate for how long it will take with a little bit of math; WK has 9060 items (radicals, kanji and vocabulary altogether). Divide that number by the amount of time you want to take and you’ll get your lessons per day:
e.g. 2 years = 720 days so 9060 / 720 = ~12.4. So round up to 13 and you’re close to the 14/15 that people are recommending
3 years = 1095 days, 9060 / 1095 = ~8.2, so 9 lessons per day. Round up to 10 lessons a day and you can easily finish in 3 years.
In practice this requires that you use the reorder script so that you always have lessons unlocked, otherwise you might find that you don’t have enough lessons some days because they’re locked behind kanji you haven’t guru’d yet.
SRS is supposed to aid you in helping you remember things without so much effort. Try to do more daily lessons and you will be surprised what sticks after regular habit forming around reviews and, of course, a couple extra reviews for the kanji that just wont stick 
I think it’s sometimes useful to ask what the ultimate goal here is. You mentioned that you would be reluctant to put more than an hour. Is that an overall time constraint or the amount of time you would be willing to put into WaniKani alone?
If the former, I would not recommend doing WaniKani at all. It’s useful as a supplementary tool, but not as the main study resource.
Truthfully, a real answer is “accuracy”. If you can’t find a way to remember, at least Kanji and vocabularies somehow, they will quickly comeback, and you will get overloaded. As you have just started, you might not really understand piling up and backlog workload yet.
As for radicals, there may be some excuse to cheat (ignore script) after a few months’ period; but for the other two, I don’t think you have any.
For the rush, it is indeed 1 year; but if you don’t rush (like doing once per day), and have a good enough accuracy, 2 years is very reasonable.
If all you care about is the level, then as soon as you hit a new level you need to do all your lessons for your radicals then kanji.
Radicals open up for new kanji once they’re guru’d - therefore starting them asap make for getting the new kanji sooner
Then work on learning on the kanji and guruing them as they are what stop you from leveling up.
Then whatever vocabulary lessons you have, do ~ 10/day (or however many you want. They are the most useful for practical application)
This script allows you the filter your lessons to do them in whatever order.
What everyone else is saying is 100% true about studying and learning the language well, but this is just manipulating the order you study for the level up.
I’m also in the C group. But I take italki lessons and other stuff which occupies the rest of my study time which is why I want to do around an hour a day. I might try 14 lessons in two sessions a day. Thanks.
The second. I’m also doing other things to learn Japanese and want to restrict my time on wanikani to an over or so, because I don’t want to get burned out studying too many hours a day.
Big thanks for clarifying! I think an hour+ on WaniKani daily is doable, but that’s really pushing it and assuming you are able to retain most of the info you learned. As many mentioned before 10-15 lessons a day consistently should get you through WaniKani within 1-2 years.
But since you mentioned you’re studying Japanese with other resources as well, I think 1/3 of the time being devoted to WaniKani would give you enough room for developing in other directions than kanji. You also don’t necessarily have to finish WaniKani if you at some point notice that it doesn’t work well with your other resources. Mostly because A) there is more kanji than WK teaches and B) eventually you may hit diminishing returns on reviews.
Probably a stupid question - but what is the C group?
To finish a level in about 8 days (this does allow for some mistakes, you don’t have to be perfect) you should do all your radicals and kanji in the first day or two of the level, and then you can slowly work through vocab lessons as the level goes on. It’s okay if it doesn’t feel like it sticks while you’re doing the lessons, the first few times you review your kanji it’s not too big a deal to get them wrong, so it’s alright to just kind of power through them. I finished in a year and a half and the work wasn’t that bad, though it slowly increases as you go on.
I finished Wanikani in just over two years and consistently did about an hour a day. You can see the details on my Level 60 post:
The relevant graph for a typical week:
Some days near the end were longer but since I did 3 sessions per day a single session was never more than maybe 25m.
I think the biggest factors for speed outside of accuracy are daily split sessions and consistency.
same here a stupid question but what is a C-group?
