Well how about that!
I’ve been putting off ever making an introduction or level 60 retrospective, but I guess I should finally post something!
It’s going to be pretty positive, because I enjoyed Wanikani a lot, I’ve enjoyed these forums a lot, and I’ve enjoyed learning to read Japanese a lot.
So I guess I’ll try talking about it!
Introduction
Since I never made an introduction post, here’s a bit about how I got into what I usually call Learning to Read 2: The Sequel to Learning to Read.
It was pretty much just a whim. I was never the anime and manga kid growing up, I (almost) never had any connection to Japan as a place, and I never seriously contemplated learning Japanese, until… after I was already doing it?
I started in early January 2018 (almost exactly 5 years ago now), purely because I was bored at work. My job then had a lot of unavoidable downtime between tasks, and often I’d fill that time by just scrolling aimlessly through wikipedia. Frustrated with that, one day I thought “you know, I bet if I picked pages to read with just slightly more focus, I could learn something interesting,” and wound up at the page for Hiragana…
Earlier that day, or that week, I remember I saw a tweet from somebody that said essentially “someone should translate [cool old game]. I know I could just learn to read Japanese, but [valid reasons]” and I thought “huh, those reasons don’t apply to me.” I never specifically sought out anything because it was Japanese, but by this point I was pretty heavily invested in three forms of media (comics, video games, and professional wrestling) where if you wanted a broad general understanding of them, you absolutely had to engage with works from Japan. And so it got to a point where day-to-day I was reading manga in translation, playing translated video games set in Japan, watching Japanese professional wrestling with commentary I didn’t understand… and coincidentally, my daily commute at the time involved literally walking past a Kinokuniya. So I suddenly realized it was arguably taking active intellectual incuriosity to continue knowing absolutely nothing about the language.
… And it turned out to be extremely interesting! The only language I had learned prior to any level of depth was German in high school, and so the high water mark for me in terms of broadening my horizons of how languages can be structured was like, “did you know in Swedish the definite article is a suffix?” So learning about kana and the basics of Japanese grammar was new to me in an exciting way, and it filled the downtime just like I wanted.
Five years later… from one perspective I’ve put a ludicrous amount of time and effort into what started as a whim. But I also don’t feel like I ever… worked? Or studied? Even though I’ve done things that could only reasonably be construed as studying, ultimately I’ve just passed a lot of time in a way that I found fun and interesting, and the only specific goal I ever set and paid attention to was, from the start, “I’ll stop when it stops being interesting.” It just hasn’t.
Advantages I was lucky to have
Before going further, I wanted to acknowledge some material resources I was lucky to have access to that helped along the way.
I want to avoid as much as possible making this post sound like any kind of benchmark, or “you need to do it this way too!” prescription, especially since while I’m sure that lack of access to any or all of these things could be overcome, and that plenty of other methods or resources could make up for them and then some, these informed how things have gone for me and my takeaways from it all, and it would be incomplete not to mention them.
- Time
When I started, I had so much time on my hands I was specifically looking to kill it. Even now, I have a good portion of my time available to myself to do whatever I feel like. - Stability
Although things have certainly changed, there hasn’t been any huge, earth-shattering disruptions to my day-to-day routine since I started. Which uh, seems lucky considering the window of time in question. - Money
I grew up in and around libraries, and was not psychologically prepared for this new landscape where my simplest path to surrounding myself with piles and piles of tantalizing books would cost money. To say nothing of ebooks and blu-rays and games!
I’m lucky to be able to indulge those kinds of temptations quite freely. - Access to materials
I have been consistently surprised at how easy it is to get things from Japan to where I am at, whether through Kinokuniya, Amazon Japan, Mandarake, Bookwalker, etc. - Pre-existing interests
Something I said a lot early on (and still believe) is “if all I get out of this is a reason to better appreciate the background detail in Yakuza series games, it’ll have been worth it.” - No particular reason for self-doubt
I didn’t have the lifelong “I should learn Japanese some day…” aspirations a lot of folks do that can come with misgivings from prior attempts. And I guess after a certain point I just figured I was good at Learning to Read 1: The Original, so it made sense I could probably get something out of the sequel as well.
Timeline
When I think about how Learning to Read 2 has gone, It feels like it’s been three phases:
2018 to mid 2019
Here I would have agreed with the phrase:
“I’m learning to read a little bit of Japanese.”
I remember reading during this time feeling like piecing together a puzzle. I often had difficulty from misreading kana or from incorrectly parsing the boundaries between words in a sentence.
Reading more about the language was a curiosity to fill a lunchtime, or a commute.
The language barrier to media felt solid.
Resources I especially liked in this phase:
- Wanikani
- Graded Readers
- Yotsuba
- Reading the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar like a book
- Tobira
- The Wikipedia pages for hiragana and katakana and a lot of sticky notes to write them down over and over again on
Other Resources that I remember using and getting something out of:
- Tae Kim
- Bunpro (when it was a very new site)
- Genki
- Making Sense of Japanese
- Duolingo
Milestones I associate with this phase:
- Reaching level 60 of Wanikani.
- Finishing a mid-series volume of Yotsuba and deciding not to wait til I’d reread it in English to consider it ‘read.’
- Reading all the graded readers I had.
mid 2019 to mid 2021
Here I would have agreed with the phrase:
“if given a dictionary and enough time… I can read Japanese.”
I remember reading during this time feeling doable, but slow. I found that I no longer made kana mistakes and my eyes gravitated quickly towards the words I didn’t know and needed to look up. I always, always had my phone dictionary by my side and was always, always looking things up and adding to word lists.
I transitioned from Wanikani to Anki and reading started to become doable and habitual in an exciting way. Surprised to find I had learned something, I sought out questions to answer to prove it, and started posting on this forum.
The language barrier to media felt permeable.
Resources I especially liked in this phase:
- Takoboto
- Anki
- Answering strangers’ questions
- Reading material I or a friend was especially enthusiastic about
- Book clubs
Other Resources that I remember using and getting something out of:
- Shin Kanzen Master
Milestones I associate with this phase:
- Reading the new volume of a manga series I loved before it was released in English.
- Playing the new game in a series I loved before it was released in English over 100+ hours and I didn’t think I’d be ready for it but I managed it and it was great aaaaaaa
- Finishing my first novel in Japanese
- explaining a JP->EN translation misunderstanding to a Japanese comment section once
- Finding out Bookwalker exists (and navigating Japanese websites more readily)
mid 2021 to now
Here I would agree with the phrase:
“I can read Japanese.”
Reading now feels most like reading a literary form of English: there’s sometimes words I don’t know or sentences I don’t quite understand, or outright misunderstand, and I wouldn’t be able to speak the same way the books do, but I generally feel grounded and absorbent of the information transmitted to me even with no dictionary present. I have a full range of speed options, including skimming if so inclined. I can readily access a gut instinct of what an author is conveying. Also, somehow, my listening comprehension is fairly passable.
Reading is just a habit.
The language barrier to media feels all but gone.
Resources I especially like in this phase:
- Basically as much written and/or filmed material as possible
- Magazine subscriptions
- Reading together
- Wrestling commentary
- Handwriting notes
- Answering friends’ questions
- Takoboto
- Anki
Other Resources that I’m using and getting something out of:
- Shin Kanzen Master
Milestones I associate with this phase:
- Turning off subtitles when watching Japanese movies and shows.
- Reading a new chapter of a manga series I loved in the monthly magazine it’s originally published in
- Discovering a new favorite author via said magazine
- Translating a manga myself just to share with a friend
- Connecting much more strongly with a wrestling match because I understood the commentary and had extensive background information from magazines.
I suppose these three phases would probably map to “beginner,” “intermediate,” and “advanced.” And looking back, I’m most surprised how short the “beginner” and “intermediate” phases were in retrospect, as, unaware of where the ceiling is on all this, I was fully prepared to happily stay in either of them indefinitely.
Personal takeaways
Self-study can be for fun.
I can’t speak Japanese. Because I haven’t spoken Japanese. Because reading is fun for me personally in a way that talking to strangers isn’t. And the biggest revelation for me in all this is that if you’re the one teaching yourself, you can just lean into the stuff you like to do.
If I felt like I had to learn to speak Japanese in order to learn to read it, I probably wouldn’t be able to do either right now, because I wouldn’t have bothered. And I can only assume/hope that knowing how to read it can only aid in learning to speak it if I ever do work to close that gap.
You can go a long way with a simple process you can use for any situation.
While reading anything, I look up words one way: on the app Takoboto on my phone, where I can add the word to word lists, which I occasionally (like… once or twice a year) export to a single voluminous Anki deck. I’ve avoided any medium-specific tools like automatic word extractors or annotators. And I’ve never made the jump to using JP-JP dictionaries while reading, or fancier anki strategies.
Because this one method gets the job done for literally any media I can come across (I can always have my phone next to me), and the muscle memory involved is in-grained to the point that I barely even think about it. I can immediately resolve a small uncertainty, and with a couple taps ensure I’ll see the word again in anki someday.
If a small key opens the door to something as large as “all media” it doesn’t really matter how plain the key is.
Enthusiasm matters more than level.
The biggest single milestones I can think of looking back are all cases where I stepped outside of my difficulty comfort zone out of sheer excitement for something, and it was slow and difficult but profoundly rewarding.
The biggest single disappointments I can think of looking back are all cases where I picked something because I thought it would suit my level and it was just kinda boring and I lost interest.
Language can and should be a window into new and deepened interests.
Learning to Read 2 ended up completely rewriting the landscape of virtually all my interests, because what was a passive “sure why not” interest to Japanese works in those areas, all got an across-the-board +1 boost, since hey – it’s exciting I know some Japanese! And If I read this thing in Japanese, it’s not just fun, it’s studying!
And so I’ve waded much much farther than I would have ever previously thought into Japanese literature, Japanese history, Japanese movies, etc. (while still barely scratching the surface), in a rewarding and positive-feeling way, just because it synergizes so well with learning the language. I thought starting out that reading English-language books I loved in Japanese translation would be a natural fit, but it was always much more rewarding to find new originally Japanese things to enjoy.
This is the #1 effect I’m going to be chasing if I ever pursue Learning to Read 3: The Third Time Around.
Don’t bother so much with self-consciousness.
I remember when I started Learning to Read 2, I said a number of times “okay, this is fun and exciting and I want to stick with it, but the main goal is to make sure I don’t become a weeb!”
Which seems like a really juvenile framing in retrospect.
It’s entirely possible, and not even particularly hard, to separate “loving learning a language” from “uncritically and ignorantly loving a nation state.” And I’m really glad I didn’t end up letting nebulous fear of being or looking like the latter dissuade me from the former.
Reading takes effort.
It’s easy to feel guilty for not having the wherewithal to read further in the novel you’re slowly picking through, sentence by sentence. But honestly, don’t worry about it! It’s hard, go to bed! It’s markedly easier and more fun when you have the effort to expend than when you don’t, so try to be receptive to your mood (and have options to suit any of them).
Also, people act like children are magic brain wizards built to be perfect language learning machines, but they still take like a buncha years before they’re reading books!! It takes a long time to learn to read, every time.
Whatever miscellaneous small tips I can think of right now
- You can find a wikipedia article in English and switch the language to get a quick source on something.
- Answering people’s questions and finding a source to back-up your answer is good practice.
- “とは”, “語源”, and ”おすすめ” are some pretty handy google search keywords.
- I’ve found Takoboto more forgiving than Jisho when it comes to unconjugating something you type into it.
- You can put any old thing in anki. Adding people’s names, for example, is handy for internalizing name readings.
- It pays to remember the years 1868, 1912, 1926, 1989, and 2019 and the formula X+元年-1
- It’s easy to assume stuff is more inaccessible than it is. Both in terms of difficulty and in terms of getting your hands on it.
- North America and Japan are in the same blu ray region. 字幕:日本語 will be listed in the description and on the back. If it isn’t there, it doesn’t have them.
- For digital games, the storefront will list which languages will be available if you buy it; Steam lets you switch to them individually, consoles usually will default to whatever language the system is set to. If the language you want isn’t listed, importing a physical copy may be the way to go.
About Wanikani specifically
Would I recommend Wanikani?
Yes!! Of course!
It’s difficult to imagine a single purchase going better for me than Wanikani lifetime was for me, in the sense that I bought it as a lark assuming there was a good chance I’d fall off, and it roped me into the single most sustained fun thing that I’ve ever done in my life.
I could see how it wouldn’t be ideal for someone with a definite goal and time limit, or who already knew a lot of kanji, or who didn’t want to read things generally. But for me specifically, who had no goal, no time limit, no knowledge, and no inkling that an electronic flash card system would ever be the kind of thing I would click with, I’m sure happy with how it went, and I have no idea if I would have done any of this without it.
Is there a point to reaching level 60?
Yes!
Is there a point to burning everything?
No.
After reaching level 60, my self-mined anki deck slowly but surely 100% replaced Wanikani for me, I just kept doing reviews because… well, why not. Looking back, that means that for roughly 3 of the 5 years since I started, the reviews themselves were virtually pointless.
Also, I found the last 100 or so burn reviews this way got a weird, mounting pressure, and represented the only times I cheated by doublechecking answers first, since at this point they were all by definition leeches where I had no motivation to remember Wanikani’s specific wording since I wasn’t using the site for serious gain any more. I even had a genuine nightmare last night about getting the last review wrong somehow, knowing that I’d already written this whole post and worked myself up about it! 
The godhood and supernatural foresight though are of course a nice perk.
To be clear, this isn’t a major mark against Wanikani at all! Not being useful for three years after being ridiculously useful for two isn’t something I’d complain about.
It’s just to say that if you’re looking for a reasonable finish line, it’s definitely level 60, not this.
My specific Wanikani advice:
- You’re going to see the word again. Reading is just looking at a gigantic amount of words. Making a mistake is just an excuse to look at one of them one more time. It’s fine.
- Feel free to add synonyms. I remember exactly zero specific Wanikani meaning wordings at this stage except “to compose” for 詠う, my last review, which has the following synonyms added from me knowing the word itself but not remembering that specific phrase before today: “to compose poetry” “to write poetry” “to recite poetry”. SRS is not the place for nuance, that will click in with reading.
- A personal mnemonic typed out by hand a couple of times in the Notes section will go farther than a pre-made mnemonic ever could.
- SRS reviews are best for when you have time to kill or you’re watching a show or youtube video or something. They’re to be quick, and rapid fire, and mechanical, like pulling a zipper through your brain - it’ll do the neuron-connecting, you just gotta pull the zipper. Leave the more active attention as much as possible for books and grammar and whatnot.
- The only scripts I ever used have since become irrelevant as the UI improved. I never took any answers back. And I always did all the lessons and reviews I had available. I also don’t remember ever waking up early to do reviews except today.
Scripts and working out limited review schedules and all of that are great! And absolutely embrace them if you want to – I just think sometimes it sounds like you categorically need to interact with those things for Wanikani to work at all, and this bullet point is just me saying I did Wanikani as basically as possible and I feel like it worked as advertised.
Ultimately, Wanikani is a very small part of what can be an extremely fulfilling process, but I think it did a phenomenal job at getting me from “I mean, I’m probably not actually going to learn any meaningful amount of the language but this is interesting for now” to learning actually quite an awful lot and having the tools and enthusiasm to go off and learn more.
And it’s just fun to click buttons and learn new kanji!
I feel like after this I’ll still check for reviews?? It would be weird not to at this point.
Plans for future language learning
I’ll stop when it stops being interesting!
wow, thanks! 
