No, no youâre right! I was reading my little fuel gage thing wrong and looking at the incomplete kanji so far! Thanks for mentioning that! I honestly thought the number seemed oddly high when I typed it out too, but all logistics go out the window when you hear baby crying! 
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Even if you think you screwed up, youâll eventually find that a year is not that big of a deal. 
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I donât think youâve screwed up. I mean how much do you know now that you didnât know a year ago?! A lot. A massive amount. Donât say youâve screwed up big time, I donât think thatâs true at all. Youâve learnt masses.
I mean I do say this because Iâm pretty much in the same position as you 
Itâs because I donât find much time (energy) to sit over a textbook. But now I feel in a really good position to try reading things. Now I donât have to sweat over all the kanji as well as trying to figure out the grammar as well! Thatâs got to be a good thing. Imagine going at it with no background at all. You see youâve not been wasting your time. Youâve been putting in the preparation. Youâve got the rest of your life to read things and improve at Japanese.
Have you tried the tadoku books or Crystal Hunters, or some of the things in this thread?
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Have you?
Or have you built a foundation for reading practice?
Because Iâm leaning towards the latter. You havenât screwed up, youâve just come to the realisation that your knowledge is unbalanced. You know how to fix this - learn more vocab, learn grammar, and read.
You absolutely didnât screw up big time. Youâre learning.
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You might feel and think differently, but you havenât screwed up.
They advertise it as learning all the kanji in one year, but thatâs for a select few of people. Most either quit or spend multiple years.
So if youâve been sticking to it after one year, that is dedication and good work. Donât stare blindly at the results, look at where you were and how you are now. Itâs a bit hard to gauge where you are at that point, but youâve learned plenty of kanji where you can pick up a beginning grammar textbook and see them back. Keep moving forward, with a small step at it every time and youâll improve a lot.
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My first year of learning Japanese, I did a year of evening classes where we learnt no kanji at all and I wasnât really confident with katakana by the end of it and when I watched japanese tv Iâd be lucky if I understood one word even with the english subtitles on. Seriously, youâre fine.
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Iâm in the same boat, but spent 12hrs a day for 9 months and barely know whatâs going on in anime. If I use japanese subtitles however I get the gist of it.
Youâre probably not putting in enough effort.
Just trying to make sure Iâm reading this right. No typos?
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What typos?
I feel the same way with pronunciation.
All hope is not lost!!
Youâre not alone, i started fully dedicated to WaniKani from September 2020 and starting level 4, iâm currently at 44, itâs quite bizarre that i know almost all N2 Kanji and can recognize most of them in lyrics, on the web, still i havenât touched grammar and itâs noticeable, because i can read but it doesnât make much sense a lot of the times because of grammar, being a different structure than english/spanish, having chosen to be dedicated to the Krabigator i might take WaniKani a bit lighter and focus more on grammar.
TLDR: Iâm the same but at level 44, must balance WaniKani with quite a lot of grammar to get to my kanji reading level (~N2)
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Wow level 44 and I see this is your first time posting in the community! Welcome
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Spending 12 hours a day studying for 9 months
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Probably a bit more than that, was a cautious estimate. From I wake up to when I fall asleep (usually reading). Much of it is consuming content though.
I started putting into practice my reading only in lvl 11 with nhk easy news
and only recently lvl 33 in WK i started studying grammar with bunpro
I think every study need steps, so when I felt I needed something else, I went that path.
Also I listen to short podcasts (5min tops) every other day.
My next big step would be to read manga all in japanese, but since I confuse kanji all the time, I would mess big time trying to read without yomichan 
I quit learning Japanese for many years entirely if you want to talk about âscrewing up big timeâ.
But here we are now in 2022, and the only way is forward. Time to break out the old Genki 1.
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You only âscrew upâ if you stopâŠthere is no âcorrect orderâ to learn something inâŠif you learn all the kanji you are a step ahead when it comes to other stuff. Yeah reading is always hard in the beginning regardless, but just keep going and plant that tree now. So what that you learned more kanji than grammarâŠwhatâs the harm? Might be discouraging if you thought you were going to be able to read right away, but ⊠that probably wasnât gonna happen anyway⊠reading in Japanese is gonna take some getting used to, especially for English nativesâŠthe grammar is so different. [Book Clubs!! - Absolute Beginner Book Clubs are a great place to start]
If you think you might forget that kanji you learned when you started, yeah you might (and some you will)âŠbut it will be easier to recall if you have to look it upâŠDonât worry about the small stuff and press onwards! Youâve have accomplished more than many do when studying Japanese (most people give up!)
You can do itâŠ!!!
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I agree totally with him. Now that youâve realized that your knowledge is skewed, you can improve the areas youâre not familiar with. Try clearing the two Genkis at your own pace and take WaniKani more lightly until you feel properly balanced.
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Donât worry, thatâs what Iâve been doing for 2.5 years now. You learn the language even by just trying to translate WKâs example sentences. Sure, I canât understand spoken Japanese nor can I speak it myself, but at least I understand short comics on Twitter. 
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A year is barely any time at all when it comes to learning languages. Youâll find that having a solid base in hiragana, katakana and kanji will help you a lot in your studies going forward.
I started taking Japanese classes last year - we spent at least 6 months focusing only on hiragana and katakana. Youâre really not that far behind
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