Oh ok, that makes sense. Kind of like taking the training wheels off maybe.
In that case “speedrunning” would be kind of like doing the exact same thing, except you are taking the training wheels off at level 60 instead of 20-30, since that’s about the place you’ve reached on a similar time frame🤔.
Thanks for sharing! I really like hearing everyone’s perspective and approach to this, I’m learning a lot from everyone😄
I think that’s a very typical experience for the successful users on here for sure.
I do think that the people who are “successful” are a minority though. For some thats not so bad and they just found something they would rather spend their time on/realized the return on investment for Japanese isn’t worth it for them. For others maybe it’s not so good and is the result of doing XYZ things that led to burnout or whatnot.
For learning Japanese as a hobby, getting to even just N2 level is a relatively abnormal thing I think. Those people just stick around more and the others dont, so it’s easy to forget how many people end up dropping this language.
The way I would put it is not “you need to do this for five years before you start reading/etc”, but “don’t think of all of WaniKani as a thing you need to complete before you can start reading”. Kanji and vocab aren’t like kana where it makes sense to put in an up front investment in learning them before moving on – you’re going to be learning and remembering (and forgetting!) them your whole life as long as you’re using the language. So you want to make a start on learning them, absolutely, but you also want to make a start on grammar, which is the other big thing you need for reading, and you can definitely make a start on easy reading long before L60 – there are “training wheels” resources like Satori Reader or Tile World Chronicles, many easy manga have full furigana, and so on. And if speaking to other humans is part of why you’re learning Japanese you can absolutely start doing that early – WK isn’t very helpful there anyway.
and not get mad when forgetting becomes a thing. if you don’t encounter a word for very long periods of time in reading it’s quite easy to forget it. at the least after doing wanikani you’ll have the tools to parse out the proper reading even for forgotten (and hopefully for new) vocab.
The whole point of WaniKani is there is a doubt to that, especially Kanji.
Maybe a few hundred Kanji would be seen all the time, without direct interference of conjugation or grammar points, like vocabularies. Past 1000 or so is easy to notice learning, forgetting, and relearning. I can’t deny that.
Vocab part is more complex. Learning upfront doesn’t matter without context, so come synthesized environment, like textbook lessons. But knowing more than a few hundreds in textbooks can be helpful, in listening, or in reading with minimal obstacles. Only there that it makes sense to learn more vocabularies. Well, most or maybe half, of textbook vocab should be expected to be seen all the time too (but how to learn upfront matters).
Both Kanji and vocab can have unexpected meanings, though readings could be more deterministic? (But it still doesn’t feel effective to let forget too many without benefit.)
I don’t trust WK’s choice in teaching vocab and Kanji before textbook lessons (but it could work for someone?)
I know Heisig in his preface to Remembering the Kanji essentially recommends doing the whole set of 2000+ very quickly (he suggests that for full time study you could do this in four to six weeks!), but I completely disagree that that is possible for most people. And WK definitely doesn’t have that idea – the level gating means that even at the absolute fastest speed it will take a year to complete. I think it would be a huge mistake to do WK and nothing else for a year before even starting on any of the other aspects of Japanese.
Oh yeah, for sure, I just wanted to point out that it’s not always that. As with anything, our interests wax and wane. So sometimes it’s not even burnout or you realising it’s a huge time commitment, but rather just finding something else you want to do, and that’s totally ok as with any hobby. But yeah, the experience is often that life gets in the way somehow.
Also, I think that there’s always the question of “why” you’re studying the language. If you’re mostly just interested in, say, specific genres of manga (not mentioning which because it’ll sound like I’m throwing shade, which I’m not trying to lol 
), you’ll be totally fine with a few levels of WK + browser dictionary extension + being around advanced N4-ish in terms of grammar to read them. The vocab is fairly similar across the board, so in a way, you wouldn’t need ‘all the Japanese’ to reach your desired skill level. You will learn better as you go in this case.
And obviously, like you said, the successful experience is often to get what you need out of WK (which ultimately is just a tool) and then go out there and reap the benefits. The completion itself doesn’t matter unless you really want the golden circle and the pat on the back that you’ve completed a thing~ (which is fine if that’s something that motivates a person). That’s sort of what I was trying to say 
.
So like, if OP does WK and notices that they reach a good level when they can start doing whatever they wanted to do with their Japanese, they shouldn’t feel bad if they focus their energies into other endevours like reading actual stuff instead of focusing only on WK for years (or trying to speedrun it in a year).
Yup, I’m 100% with you on this! Even when I started Wanikani last year I was already doing other things at the same time.
I’ve gone through the Genki textbooks, delved into the Quartet books, and read other sources for grammar.
I’ve been reading manga, playing P5R in Japanese, and then texting and speaking Japanese whenever I can.
Wanikani only takes up a small fraction of my overall approach to studying/learning and it’s very noticeable that I remember things and “burn” things a lot more effectively when I see or review them through immersion, rather than Wanikani directly.
Regarding the topic of people speed running being only young people with loads of time.
Aside from my burnout in March-April, I’ve been doing levels in 8-10 days which is a fairly fast speed. Not 1-year fast, but definitely doable under 2 years.
And I have a full time job, 2 kids under 3, and I also read books, study grammar, and do listening practice. I’m in my 30s, and for the first 5 or so months of WK I was using vanilla. And no I don’t neglect my kids, we go out almost every weekend.
Is it hard? Heck yes. But it’s certainly not impossible. I just have no time to play video games anymore because any free time I can find goes towards Japanese.
Anyway, let’s not make assumptions about the lives of speed runners. We all have our own pace and no one should feel ashamed to go fast or slow.