Seems pretty natural to feel burned out by the end of a long slog like that. And it’s probably good to take the time you need to recharge your batteries. You probably don’t hear it enough: congratulations! Learning all that vocabulary in such a short time is pretty great for you and for any of us who manage to do it. Put your feet up and let all that knowledge sink in for a while. I think your plan to forget about WK for a while sounds like a good one.
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Yeah, I think going full speed definitely comes with a price. These past 8 months since becoming 60 I really have been feeling with WK burnout. I’ve used vacation mode soooo much since I could never use it while I was leveling. I was using it even for like 24-hour spans because I was just getting so sick of doing reviews. My leeches just keep piling and piling and since they’re not anything new, I have less motivation to really learn them. The spark has gone out of my reviews. I’m just trying to get my money’s worth until my subscription runs out.
Now I’m just focusing 90% on learning grammar/reading books so I still have that magical feeling of learning again.
Oh also @Ninkastmin Stoooop, you’re too sweet.
I was pleasently surprised to have been @'d not once, but twice in this thread. <3
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It’s a time commitment. One that won’t even let you reach a full mastery of Japanese. Even with Kanji, it doesn’t really become a mastered unit until you can reproduce its form while knowing how what it means and how to read it. At the end, Wanikani does a great job of teaching readings connected to Kanji so that you can read at a fair pace. To read as fast as your native language or help reproduce Japanese words, however requires a firm understanding of their shape through drawing them (which I recommend after you are done with WaniKani)
I’m probably one of the few people in this chat who didn’t really regret going at max speed, which is saying something. You need to have a strong reason to go as far in Japanese as level 60, let alone a year. Just keep in mind it will likely take years, then adjust your daily schedule accordingly. (On the bright side btw, you can probably get to a fairly decent level within a year that will let you take use the language in a bevy of different and useful ways)
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I made it to level 10…Depression really kills motivation. I don’t study every day. I also reset a few times. I haven’t given up yet though.
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Being here now for nearly 400 days (396 to be exact) and I’ll soon make it to level 35 or N3 Kanji Niveau ^^ so it’s going really well this year. I had some pretty darn long levels in between, but I guess life gets in the way more often than not 
mandatory progress chart
tl,dr: I’ll get my 2nd 1 year subscription very soon and I’ll probably spread the next 25 levels over this year… or go really fast to “graduate” Wanikani… the plan is not made yet 
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no need to hurry. you got the worst here behind you 
take your time, we’ll be here when you get back
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According to my notes from last year I reached level 31 on November 29th. This year on the same day I was level 54. So 23 levels within a year. But life happened, as it usually does, and I’d say I lost about 2 months worth of studying, soo.
I’m not doing all of my lessons the moment I unlock them and chose a kind of slow pace to begin with, so that’s why it may not seem like much.
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Hello I’ve been using WaniKani for 328 days now so almost a year! I’m on level 25 and it usually takes me about twelve days to level up which seems to be a nice pace for me personally. Level 12 took about a month because I was travelling in Japan then. Like others have said, different people advance at a different pace. That said, I pay yearly and I think that’s a great option
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I started in July and I’m almost done with level 17 (regardless what it says in the forums). I’m not particularly fast, but in general, I’m more or less close to the average completion rate. As I’ve written elsewhere, I’d probably be a level higher if I didn’t make so many typos in the readings (going too fast without proofreading is one of my issues, especially when using my iPad to do my reviews instead of my computer). Of course, I intend on getting the lifetime when it goes on sale, since I definitely will need more than a year to make it to level 60 (and that’s not including any eventual resetting for reviewing purposes).
Though I should spend more time studying, not just doing WK, at least I can recognize many kanji now. It’s interesting to read a manga or playing a game in Japanese and seeing a word that I recently learned in WK (it happened to me last week, as one of the level-17 vocab appeared in Rose of Versailles vol. 1).
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I started at the end of June (170 days ago) and just burned my first items.
By looking at the graph, you should be able to tell when I started uni. As it turns out, taking 6 classes as well as studying Japanese ending up being pretty difficult, so there were times where I would not even touch WaniKani for 3 or 4 days when I got slammed with tests or papers. I generally go at a slower pace anyways (reviewing about once a day) so I’m far from optimal. Hopefully I’ll pick up the pace soon, time is money.
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I kinda did a HUGE post regarding my first year in WK 
…
All things put together I reached level 32 in WK, readed 19 books (including Graded Readers for learners) reaching 小学 level, change my flashcard system to use japanese definitions instead of english translations…
In the end I went to Japan and tried using all of the above; a great way to actually realize where my weakness were (… kinda everywhere still 
) …
I’ll be back to Japan next year and celebrate my 2 year anniversary with japanese there… hopefully the 2nd year will be a totally different experience 
my experience so far feels more like … it doesn’t matter the time you take here in WK. I’ve felt along the way that progressively WK feels more like reading the manual, the instructions about kanji usage, just to go later and actually use them. So I think people doing the speedrun here probably are ok… in terms of available time later to actually use the language (expecting they aren’t too burn from the run 
).
A nice run for the first 20-30 levels seem a fair compromise to get yourself able to do something else… then follow the pace you see fit regarding your actual needs with the language…
So the mentality changed from “I’m gonna own those kanjis” … to “I’m perfectly fine to know they exist and I’ll be bumping with them along the way, having maybe a blurred notion on how they sound” …
I choosed to do somewhat of a speedrun now, probably because I want to be over with it and just dodge as many SRS apps from my routine as possible now
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i’d probably burn out if i went slowly, and wk turned into an endless string of reviews, every day, for who knows how many years to come.
learning kanji is a pain. especially after the point at which your knowledge wanes and more and more new kanji are introduced, it hurts to strain yourself and force yourself to go that extra mile, but this way, there’s an end in sight, and every review brings me closer.
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heya i will take a bit longer than a year because i didnt do toooo much last two weeks huh.
edit: besides that i dont remember u how come u stalk me wwww
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Active Japanese classroom
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I signed up for monthly last year at this time…so in a whole year I made it to level 11. I’ve taken a lot of breaks and reset a few times also.
Not enough.
I’m definitely going to be signed up for life.
I work two full-time jobs and have a difficult time finding a work/life/study balance. I ended up resetting at level 6 the first time, and only just recently passed it again. Counting the reset I was at level 6 for 212 days, and took a total of 300 days to get this far. So, off to a rough start I’m making more regular, slow-but-steady progress this time though, and in retrospect it’s still a lot to learn for how little time I have so I’m proud of that.
Same goes for general study. It’s my understanding that Japanese I usually takes about two semesters but it took me the equivalent of three (self-studying). But, again, no time. I think in the future when my work life doesn’t look like this, I’ll be really proud of that one year that against all odds I got a decent start on Japanese and got hooked.
I’m really happy with the improvement I made in 2018 considering I work full time, I self study Japanese, and 2018 was a big year full of stuff (Narcolepsy diagnosis and tests, broken collarbone, Grade 3 sprained ankle, broken relationship, concussion, moved out of Parent’s home).
My progress in 2017 was the same as 2016, so I feel most of my improvement happened in the past year. I also passed the N4 which I sat in Dec18.
Because I’m lazy and it’s a Friday evening, I’m just going to copy and paste something I posted on Reddit in a similar thread the other day.
- Then - Late 2016 and most of 2017, bought manga, picked up manga, had to write down 80% of the words and look them up in a dictionary, very slow, very boring, only read a chapter or two. Now - Picked up same manga, can read without any dictionary, know at least 95% of vocab, some grammar points I’m still unsure on, but I can assume what’s happening from context.
- Then - Late 2016. Went to Japan. Japanese limited to basics like ~がありますか and ～をください. Couldn’t understand any spoken Japanese. Now - Late 2018 to early 2019. Went to Japan. Greater vocabulary expanding spoken Japanese, able to grab key bits of information from spoken Japanese and reply accordingly. Still not super confident though.
- Then - 2017. Know like maybe 20 Kanji. Now - According to WaniKani, 1141. Which seems like far too many.
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I went from level 60 to level 60
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I have got to level 33 in just under a year. Reading Japanese is now possible - although I am constantly looking up vocab and Kanji so very slow (manga with furigana is much easier). Definitely a lot better than this time last year although to be honest I need to do more grammar and exercises. Haven’t done much since getting back from Japan.
What I really need is to move to Japan and be forced to speak it everyday (was how I learnt German). Not happening anytime soon unfortunately but one day I hope.