Wanikani is a big investment time-wise. Just to have an idea, users that reach level 60 are expected to use this program from 1 to 3 years on a daily basis. Here’s the thing: during this period, you’ll eventually go on vacation or life might even get in way of your studies. This might make you consider taking a break from Wanikani. Don’t worry, this is completely understandable. This is why the Wanikani team offers an option called “Vacation Mode”, which allows you to freeze all reviews in time so that you’re able to go do whatever you have to do without worrying about them accumulating. When you return, your account will be exactly the way it was when you left. This seems like perfection, right? Well, it has its problems too.
Imagine this situation: you just came back from a two-week vacation in Japan. You activated vacation mode on Wanikani at the time of departure. Although all the items all got frozen in time during those 2 weeks that you traveled, time still passed in real life. In other words, items that you would have to review in 8 hours, 2 days, 1 week, were all rescheduled with 2 extra weeks (vacation time). In reality, you’ll wait exponentially more to review those items.
The table below helps explain how the SRS increase can be tremendously bigger than it should in case you activate vacation mode.
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| SRS Level |
SRS Interval |
Vacation Time |
SRS Total Interval |
SRS Interval Increase (%) |
| Apprentice 1 |
4h |
+2 weeks |
2w4h |
+8500% |
| Apprentice 2 |
8h |
+2 weeks |
2w8h |
+4250% |
| Apprentice 3 |
~1d |
+2 weeks |
~2w1d |
+1600% |
| Apprentice 4 |
~2d |
+2 weeks |
~2w2d |
+800% |
| Guru 1 |
~1w |
+2 weeks |
~3w |
+200% |
| Guru 2 |
~2w |
+2 weeks |
~1M |
+100% |
| Master |
~1M |
+2 weeks |
~1M2w |
+50% |
| Enlightened |
~4M |
+2 weeks |
~4M2w |
+12.5% |
| Burned |
∞ |
+2 weeks |
∞ |
- |
Observation: The tilde (~) is used for the sake of keeping the numbers rounded. WK’s SRS intervals are actually 1h less to those presented above. The %s are also rounded for the sake of simplicity.
Notice the last column. See how the SRS interval increases exponentially, mainly for Apprentice items. Now that you’re back from your vacation in Japan, you probably forgot most things. You’re destined to spend the following days missing Japan, getting your body’s internal clock back into place, and hitting your head against the wall because it feels like you don’t know Japanese anymore.
What should I do then? Should I not use vacation mode then?
I’ve said that this increase is far more significant with your Apprentice items, correct? Notice how Apprentice 4 gets an 800% increase in a 2-week vacation. The solution is simple: 4 to 5 days before going on vacation: stop doing lessons. What will happen is that you’ll Guru a big part of your apprentice items during that time, so that when the actual day of traveling comes, most of your items will be Guru and above. The extra time of traveling won’t affect your reviews nearly as much as before.
The 24h vacation mode - an option for the most dedicated.
I know that some of you will want to try and continue reviewing during your trip. So here’s an advice: put your account on vacation mode for 24h. Yes, 24h. Why you may ask? SRS works by hours, not by timezone. So if you’re traveling to somewhere with a completely different timezone, you’ll find yourself having reviews at weird times of the day. Now, not only is the review schedule messed up but whatever you do during vacation time will make your schedule weird when you go back home. I’ll give you an example:
Let’s imagine Japan’s timezone is an extra 5 hours to yours, so your new schedule will now be 5h delayed. Instead of having reviews at around 7 pm, you’ll have them at midnight (+5h). This is why you need the 24h vacation mode. The trick is to deactivate vacation mode at the same time of the day as you activated it back home. If you activated it at 4 pm back home, you should deactivate it at 4 pm in your new country. Now, the schedule will continue as it was before. When you’re going back to your country, do the same process.
In case you actually go on vacation: please do enjoy your vacation and relax a little. If you wanna keep up with reviews, I respect that. Doing new lessons, however, might turn everything into a mess. You won’t really be focused on what you’ll be doing, and remember that your first exposure to items is important to avoid turning them into leeches.