I heard of WaniKani from visiting Tofugu but never tried it then. It wasn’t until I heard good things about it through my local Japanese conversational group that I gave it a try
Welcome to the WK forums. Long may you prosper in your kanji studies, but remember: reviews first, community posts later!
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Welcome!
I remember trying RTK via multiple websites (probably my first mistake), and finding that none of it was sticking, mostly because I knew the first couple of hundred kanji and wasn’t prepared to relearn them properly. I eventually swallowed my pride, discovered WK via the wonders of Google, tried it for a few months, stopped, started again, stopped and then just picked at reviews for months afterwards (I started in February 2015!)
From last December, I made a commitment to finishing it within 18 months (mostly because I need it for work, and if I can’t read customer emails or internal emails, I’m going to get myself fired) and so I’ve been going full steam ahead since then and have moved from level 22 back in December to level 29 now, and I should finish (in theory) by January 2020.
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Never. The same ones just continuously reset their accounts.
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I noticed the WaniKani stuff in jisho.org. I play FFXIV in Japanese with JP text and I was creating a large list of words and game terms, so jisho.org was my go-to. I also decided I was sick of not being able to read much and not being fluent after 19 years of first learning Japanese and looked up ‘kanji learning’ and WaniKani came up. I think I purchased after my first lesson and it happened to be on sale, too. Zero regrets and one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
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That’s how I came across WK too ^^
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I think WK is one of the popular suggestions for learning kanji these days. You often hear it mentioned on the reddit sub r/LearnJapanese and in youtube videos so I would imagine that new people come in quite often. Likely, most people who join never bother to post in the forums.
Personally, I joined WK back when it was still in beta and only had something like 20 or 30 levels. I was looking around for ways to learn Japanese and stumbled into the Tofugu blog and from there I discovered Textfugu and finally WK. I enjoyed Koichi’s personality and the way he tackled teaching and quickly got on board with WK. Fell off the wagon a few times and reset but I have no regrets - except that I ever stopped and didn’t start again sooner.
@JiltedValkyrie Yikes, playing FFXIV in Japanese? Good luck with that one! Hahaha. Even the English uses some pretty obscure words sometimes and the language is pretty convoluted at times. I couldn’t imagine trying to play it in Japanese. My husband (Japanese) tried to play it in English and he got frustrated and switched to Japanese (and his English is honestly near native level and he occasionally knows words that I don’t which is embarrassing - typically when they are historical words or the like since that’s his major but I digress).
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I first heard about WaniKani back around early 2014 mentioned in the comment section of some article about Japanese tattoos. I’m not sure if this article was on Tofugu or not, it’s hard to say. But even if it was, you couldn’t check now because Tofugu got rid of the comments on their articles a while ago.
I got really into Japanese study especially involving kanji in summer 2014 and so that’s when I remembered this site from that article and opened up an account here. Never looked back since then, and I’ll always recommend WaniKani as the best way to learn kanji for a beginner.
I’m a long time user, so probably not the answer you were looking for, but the topic doesn’t come up that much so I thought I’d share.
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@Mikki Yeah, I’ve been playing in Japanese probably since 2010 when it initially came out (mostly). I guess there’s kanji I got used to seeing that I couldn’t read but knew what it meant from repetition. I think that’s one reason I’m not having many trouble with WK levels 7-10. And yeah, there are some absolutely obscure words that surprise a co-worker from Osaka. It is an interesting experience being able to finally sound out and read the words I’ve seen for years over the course of time thanks to WK.
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Don’t remember how I found WK the first time (couple years back (OK, maybe one) , saw the price tag and saw myself out again). What made me actually try the free levels was seeing the success multiple people I met last year had with it, so, recommendations from friends, I guess…?
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How many users feel like quitting every day is also a question to be asked (says person who just crashed and burned on his latest review…)
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I took Japanese classes for a short time. One of our fellow students introduced WK to the rest of the class and after checking it out I signed up.
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You actually responded to an advertisement email? 
Getting an actual response would definitely have me trying the site too!
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Where would you fit “I learned from Tofugu when they launched the closed beta”? 
Well, I guess it’s no longer relevant, so it doesn’t really matter, I guess 
I tried this, but no one bit. 
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I heard from wanikani through twitter. Some foreigners i follow who live in Japan talked about it.
Lately a youtuber i liked asked how his followers learn kanji and i talked about wanikani, now he is using it and made videos and i assume some followers also got trapped in the wanikani world 
Its spreading like a virus through all the kanji learning people on the internet
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Mine is a really funny story - I was sitting next to someone on a plane, didn’t speak to them as they were engrossed in what looked like a Kanji app - I took a peek at the name and wrote it down. The rest is history…
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I stumbled upon WaniKani when searching for Android apps related to learning Japanese. I found it on one of the most recent blog posts about that topic on GaijinPot. After I downloaded the unofficial WaniKani for Android app I was at first weirded out by having to enter an API key, so I decided only days later to actually visit the website, sign up and use the app. Some time later I checked out the website in depth and got hooked, the community having no small part in that 
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