So, I’m still relatively new to Wanikani (I started in October) and am currently at level 5 about to be level 6. Is there anything I should watch out for in future levels? Any tips to help me get through them? B/c it’s starting to get harder now. I do my reviews daily, but somedays I don’t do lessons (most days though, I do between 5-15.)
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What you should watch out for is when burn reviews are going to start, that’s when your review load should reach its peak since they’ll drop on top of the rest.
Sounds reasonable. Not doing lessons if you feel like you have too many reviews is perfectly fine, what you don’t want is fall behind on reviews.
You’ll probably find that difficulty comes and goes. I remember finding some levels much harder that others for no obvious reason.
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The most important thing is to do other things while doing Wanikani.
To put it into perspective:
- JLPT N5 requires only 80 Kanji
- N4 requires 170 Kanji
- N3 - 370 kanji
- N2 - 380 kanji
- N1 - 1136 kanji
So to reach N2 you need only 1000 kanji in total, that’s around 30-35 levels of Wanikani. Wanikani is a kanji learning tool, so it’s important to take it slow while also doing other things to help you with learning japanese, like Grammar, Vocabulary and Output.
In the end it depends on your goals, but what I’m trying to say is that there’s absolutely no need to rush Wanikani, and finishing Wanikani fast won’t make you fluent in japanese, and not even close to it. You need to do other things while doing Wanikani.
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Doing your reviews at least daily is best for remembering things - if you do them less you’re going to forget things by the time they come up for review more and SRS is going to be less effective for you.
Lessons on the other hand, you can pretty much adjust to your desired workload. It’s perfectly valid to do Wanikani at a rate where it takes you 5+ years by doing something like 2-3 lessons a day. It’s also possible to do it in ~1 year by doing all lessons asap (but that does mean by a couple of months, you’ll have hours of reviews a day, so it’s not recommended unless you have a loot of time to spend).
The important thing is Wanikani is best used as “part of a balanced diet”. It’s a good kanji tool primarily that secondarily is a middling vocab tool (because the vocab is chosen to give examples of the kanji, not based on what vocab you’ll commonly need), but it does nothing for grammar, for example, and even that vocab and kanji will stick a lot better if you put it into practice with some native content (be that fiction like anime/manga/novels, real world content like podcasts/news, or actually talking with Japanese people in real life).
So I think the best amount of time is the amount that gives you time to also explore other areas of Japanese without feeling burned out.
The one last comment I will add is that although lesson count is the best way to control workload, it’s not an instant signal, so it’s best to figure out how you feel about the rate your workload is changing and then adjust lessons based on that, as it will take a little while for lessons to take effect as you’ll already be getting reviews from your in progress items.
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How fast depends on you. Some people go really fast (basically a week per level) and some people go much slower (months per level) and neither is wrong as long as the person is learning.
I would say keep in mind the following:
- try to get your reviews done every day
- If your apprentice count gets really high, consider stopping lessons. This varies per person but 150 seems like a good limit.
- If you see yourself failing a card a bunch, slow down and read all the stuff on it: mnemonics, context sentences, everything.
- the better your accuracy, the faster you’ll finish cards and get them to stay out of apprentice. That means practicing what you’ve learned in WK outside.
WK is a kanji learning tool, which means it’s most helpful for reading (of course it can be helpful for other skills too, even speaking). So I encourage you to go try to read. It might seem scary at first, but here are a few strategies:
- Learn grammar in a textbook and/or online course. Try to learn from resources that are considered high/good quality and comprehensive so you don’t have to restart with a better resource later on.
- Participate in book clubs for your level (or above your level if you want a challenge)
- Watch anime or podcasts with Japanese subtitles. Some learner podcasts will have human-made subtitles with furigana to make them accessible.
- Consider novels. I know manga is very popular, but novels can be perfectly fine for new readers, especially if it’s something you already know from your own language. For example I started out with book adaptations of Disney movies and even now as an intermediate learner, I still read them for fun when I feel like having an easy day.
- Stay away from content aimed at kids under 6 years old. Kana-only content will not help you practice kanji you’ve learned in WK. I would even say if you go for children’s content, try to aim for content that’s at least for a 10 year old, or content that’s meant to be “for kids of all ages” which are more likely to include kanji but have furigana on everything.
- If something is really hard, it’s ok to just challenge yourself to locate kanji you recognize on a page instead of going for overall comprehension. Baby steps.
- It can be healthy to go back and forth between hard content and easy content. Just as long as you don’t get stuck always doing stuff below your level.
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I think how fast you should go is up to you to decide.
I am going through Wanikani at full speed now by spending 90 - 120 mins per day on it, I do one big stack when I wake up, review all mistakes twice , and then small stacks every single hour until I sleep
I am level 24 now and I expect to be 60 by august
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Just do lessons when you want, but keep up with your reviews. And i would also say apprentice not over 100. But in the end it is up to you 
Just remember there is no too slow. I just today realized i’ve been on my current level for over 200 days. But i guess it is the classic “it’s a marathon not a sprint thing” and if you don’t have any deadlines (as in you have a study abroad year or a job offer or whatever) you can start and stop climbing levels whenever you want.
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I would also recommend keeping apprentice items around 100. If you ever feel overwhelmed, just take a break from lessons and try to finish reviews, then resume learning new content once you’re comfortable again.
gah dang props to you bro you are committed! I’m really busy w/ extracurriculars and school, so if I really wanted to I could probably do like 45min-1hr max on school days. I usually do them when I get up, since I have like 3 hours to get ready.
Yeah, that makes sense. I would think that sometimes just being able to maintain knowledge is progress in and of itself!
Yeah, I need to do that. I’ve been able to keep my reviews under control (normally not passing 100, which is about the max I’m willing to do at one time), and by doing that sometimes I just try and maintain that knowledge and do my reviews to hopefully help avoid burnout later
Thank you, that’s great advice for me, especially since sometimes I’ll try and bite off more than I can chew and do wayy to many lessons in a day that I forget instantly and then my reviews skyrocket, then I get overwhelmed, and the cycle continues. But I will try and implement this, to just try and adjust my lessons based on how I’m feeling that day and if I think I can do/remember them.
Wait what is “burned” items? I still don’t quite understand that lol. And why does it make my reviews skyrocket? Also I will look out for this once I get there, thank you 
Wow! The way you compartmentalized it actually just relieved some major anxiety about this process and its effectiveness. So thank you
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Yeah, that just answered another major question that I had. So far, I started trying Japanese in July, where I learned Hirigana and Katakana pretty fast. Then, I did Duolingo, which I did all the way until October, when I realized I really wasn’t making much progress w/ the slow kanji progression. That’s when I found Wanikani, and since then that’s all I’ve been doing. I tried an Anki deck (I think it was core 2.3k deck?) but I just couldn’t really commit to both that and wanikani lol. So, yeah I’ll try and look for some external resources that I can use, especially about the novels and picture books that you were talking about! I used to have an app on my phone called “yomu-yomu” that was to practice Japanese reading and comprehension on vastly different skill levels ranging from begginer to expert. But now that I’ve heard what you had to say, I think I’ll start trying to do yomu-yomu again, and look for other books if possible 
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This may help:
I haven’t heard of Yomu Yomu, but if it’s stories at different levels that might be good.
Other ones I’ve heard of are:
- Satori Reader (their “easy” is more like upper beginner)
- Shinobi (mobile app only I think)
- NHK Easy (web)
- Comprehensible Input Japanese (it’s more of a listening resource, but the transcript on the website version is human-made so it can be used for reading as well)
And of course don’t get discouraged if you have to use the dictionary a lot. It’s completely normal and what you should be looking for is progress. First in recognition of kanji (“I’ve seen that, but I’m not sure how to read it”) and eventually progress in how many words you know without lookups. Eventually you’ll get to a point where some words you totally know 100% and others you kind of sort of recognize the kanji but you still have to look it up and that’s ok.
No need to decide. You can do both fast and slow
it’s much nicer to have only 50 apprentice level items in the long run though
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“Burned” is last stage when you see a review after 4 months period. If you answer correctly, WK considers that word learned and doesn’t offer it for reviews anymore.
Theoretically, this adds the same amount of items as other stages, however keep in mind that higher stages will have higher failure rate. And because failed items will appear in several reviews in the future, over time this snowballs into much more reviews thatn you would expect. Even if your rate is 80%, you are still getting about twice as many reviews as at 100%.
Ahh, ok. Thank you for explaining!