@chantellis brings up probably the most important tip: keep it fun! If you keep having fun, it’s only a matter of time until you’re fluent. 
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I’ve been having fun for 5 years now and im still just vanilla >:(
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I didn’t say how much time? Also, people love vanilla.
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I was level 17 when I last went to Japan and I was astounded by how much I could understand in terms of signs etc. The moments that really stick out for me were being able to figure out that there were two different queues on the train platform for the next train and the subsequent train, and also being able to read a very useful ‘please mind you head’ sign in a historic house!
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I’d say once you’ve conquered all of JLPT N5 Kanji and about 95% of all JLPT N4 Kanji (by Level 20), you can read as well as a 1st-2nd grader. This isn’t bad progress at all, it takes less than 6 months to get to that point from scratch. From Levels 20-40 that’s where stuff kicks in. I’m level 26 now and I can read about 50%-85% of any news article, but it depends on the difficulty of the article of course.
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Just the a few months on WK can be a lifesaver in Japan. Kanji and Kana knowledge made our trip so much easier, and averted disaster lots of times. Often there was plenty of English around, but plenty of times their wasn’t. 東西南,北, 入り口, ラーメン, 交番 all helped us to stay on track comfortably.
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For me, reading is a bit of its own muscle. The best way for reading to become easier is by reading itself (IMO). That being said, Kanji and vocab on WK and grammar also aid in unlocking reading. Reading requires putting a lot of pieces together, and once your brain gets used to solving that puzzle, it becomes easier.
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Not to mention that I wouldn’t even know how to address someone if WaniKani didn’t teach me stuff like この野郎
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Oh yes, I used that one all of the time.
It is why I ended up on the deportation plane home.
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I follow a Japanese friend’s Twitter feed. Because I know him, I’m able to figure out a lot from context – it’s a lot easier than a news site’s feed, for instance. I’d say I’m at the point where I can understand around 70% of what he writes. I get common phrases like “what I had for lunch,” but still miss many of the more subject-specific words related to his work and hobbies.
(Also, because of the character limit people tend to use more kanji on Twitter than they might in “normal” text.)
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That’s a good point. I should probably have qualified my answer more.
I have definitely found it useful from the beginning.
I’d guess part of the reason that 30 seems to be the inflection is that it coincided with learning N5 items and being halfway through N4 for me.
That’s where text started looking like a mountain instead of a wall.
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- Real life in Japan? or elsewhere?
- When I reached lvl 60 I struggled a lot reading articles because my grammar knowledge was poor. Even if I knew all words in a sentence I could not make much sense of it. Now that I study more grammar, reading is such a pleasure. In sum, kanji knowledge without grammar knowledge is not that useful.
- I struggle a lot with subtitles because they are very fast. I get to pick one or two words but it is easier to understand the whole sentence by hearing (without subtitles) it in Japanese because I cannot focus on hearing and reading at the same time.
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I’m currently translating both よつばと！ and Alita. I take a photo of a page, put the photo on a google docs slide deck and translate by typing out the sentences next to the page photo and then translating the sentence. This works well for me as I can have jisho.org open in a separate window for the constant lookups necessary at my level.
However, related to this thread, I started the process at about lvl 8 and I’m often surprised at how much I can recognize without jisho.org and it’s continually fun to tackle a new page and almost immediately find a character I learned in the just the last couple weeks. So I’d say it’s just an evolutionary process, that, depending upon your goals, can be deemed useful quite early on.
Note also that level 7 is when the WK workload got serious for me.
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Indeed. 1) I wish Netflix had more non-anime content, and 2) that pausing would not partially obscure subtitles. But I still like watching stuff just to catch the characters I know. Terrace House is good for this because a lot of the conversation is banal and simple.
And I wish Amazon would bring more stuff like 福屋堂本舗 to their service and NOT cut out the 日本語 subtitles. What’s up with that? That show was gorgeous and I’d love to be able to rewatch it with Japanese subtitles.
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I can read simple things, think level 0-1 graded readers and bits and pieces of other content. I’m level 9 and have also been studying grammer on the side.
I wouldn’t wait to start trying to read. You can pick up a lot of useful vocab and things just by practicing. It also helps increase your speed at reading Hiragana and Katakana.
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On Netflix: Now Netflix allows you to choose playback speed so subtitles on Netflix may not be so bad if you are willing to tolerate slow audio. One of the reasons I got a VPN subscription is not only the content of Netflix JP but also for subtitles in 日本語 and also 日本語 dub for US shows (it is very weird to watch say Sabrina in Japanese but some shows with bad dialog sound better in Japanese…)
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Excuse me, what is NHK?
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Literally immediately. Even if its small at first, if you make an honest effort to incorporate reading material into your studies you’ll start seeing results right away.
I’m currently reading Yotsubato! and many of the kanji/vocabulary have shown up. Granted, I also used a vocab SRS alongside WK so I am not just waiting around to learn new words with Kanji.
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I will note however, that I have a firm grasp of grammar already. So I am able to parse sentences and differentiate particles, new words, and phrases from each other. So if you’re not comfortable with grammar yet, I recommend you study grammar points alongside WK/vocab learning. That, and using graded readers can help you learn grammar while utilizing early level kanji in context.
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