Seen posts like that and even even a promotional email mentioned it.
I don’t mean in terms of being able to learn it so fast but simply mechanically with how the system here works. At the moment even if I do all the reviews instantly I need a minimum of 8 days per level because I start with locked kanji so I need to first complete the radicals to unlock all kanji which is a 4 day process and then another 4 days for the remaining kanji before a new level unlocks.
Do later levels start with all kanji unlocked allowing to reduce the minimum time to 4 days per level?
Yes, that’s basically it. You only need to learn 90% of kanji in a level in order to unlock the next level. There are some “fast levels” later on where 90% or more kanji are unlocked at the start of the level, so you can unlock the next level in only 4 days.
You can do it in less than 7 days if you do the radical/kanji reviews as soon as they become available. It’s inconvenient however, because it’ll mean that some reviews will necessarily end up in the middle of the night.
But 7 days is doable fairly easily if you just do the reviews as soon as they become available (or as soon as you wake up). Using a reorder script to prioritize these entries is highly recommended however.
I’m amazed by the answers here. Do you really always doing all yours new lessons asap? I personally can’t hold all new kanji and vocabulary in my head so I stop doing new lessons after reaching 100 apprentice level items. The resul is that I only reached level 8 in half of a year. I guess I just too stupid to remember things faster
To go full speed, you only need to do radicals immediately on regular levels, and all kanji immediately on fast levels. The rest of the lessons can be spaced out over a level, which makes it much more manageable.
That’s not true. You need 6 days and X hours, I forgot the exact number. then the 20 last levels are also different from the rest, like the first 2 were. So, some of them have no radicals, but allow you to get through them in 4 days. So, that’s also a shortening thing.
I think it’s more interesting to consider they “why’s”, here not the “how’s” as, the why = people with previous Japanese experience, but not necessarily knowledge about kanji = speed-running ability. Basically, my first run through WK was about this, and this second one is more about taking time to try to re-learn any previous mistakes and fully get leeches.
But, for people with very little knowledge about Japanese when you start WK, you can’t rush ahead like that. Well, you can, but it will hit you hard. It’s not a good mental space to be or studying pace. Just give yourself more time to absorb the information in the lessons and just don’t rush!
I use a reorder script to do all the radicals at once on level up, and then all remaining kanji as soon as I guru the radicals.
Then I space out the remaining kanji/vocab entries on the remaining days. I think that averages out to about 20 entries/day which is certainly intense but manageable if you have the time.
Of course in practice it’s a bad idea to do only WK and nothing else, unless you already have good bases in Japanese and are just trying to cram kanjis. You also need to find the time to study grammar and vocab and reading practice…
As others mentioned, it takes 3 and a half day, not 4 to unlock the next step, so the total is 7 days (actually it’s slightly less something like 6 days 20 hours or smthg).
This post should explain in great detail the answers to your exact question above. The main takeaway is the use of userscripts. I don’t think it’s possible on the vanilla version, but I’ve yet to see Level 60 posts in a year from people who are not using userscripts.
But just keep in mind that this is BEFORE the Kana-only vocabularies were added, and Wanikani seems to want to add more than just 60 Kana in the future to reach the aim of “making reading Japanese easier”. I think it’s probably only possible now if you hardly make a mistake to avoid getting the pesky repeating leeches.
Ye guess I’m just losing a hour here and there between each review so effectively it becomes 4 days for each batch if I don’t plan things out so I can jump on the reviews the second they drop. So in the long run I will end up being about 2-3 months slower to clear level 60 than someone who has perfectly optimized the process and thats assuming I dont make mistakes and slow down more ^^
Since I started grammar from 0 and have to spend plenty of time on that and will try to practice reading after I get to like level 15 kanji and n4 grammar this pace is probably good enough. Currently I’m about to finish level 5 after the next reviews come in so I think I’d be happy enough if I can hit level 60 by June or July of 2024, will probably take me that long to clear grammar all the way through N1 too at the pace I can maintain on Bunpro since I have done that for 20 days and am only half way through N5.
Technically it’s possible without scripts of course, it would just be very demanding since you’ll have to rush all your lessons to get the radicals started immediately, then do all the reviews to keep pushing them to guru.
Wow, why even subject yourself to something like this? If I had to wake up at 4am to review I would hate my life and then promptly give up on Japanese.
I understand the desire to progress fast but… at what cost.
There is a sub-category I believe, where people share their stories on how they got to level 60, you will find a lot of people that got to level 60 in under a year, I urge people not to stick with only the so-called “ultimate guide” posted above here cause there are a lot of people with great insights that could help you in your studies (WK and Japanese alike)
Anyway, in that category you will find images like the following (this is from when I got to level 60 in 2018 it took me around 358 days)
