After three years with Wanikani, I explored various Japanese learning resources without much success until discovering JLAB Anki decks, which significantly improved my comprehension, allowing me to watch anime with Japanese subtitles for longer periods. Like here if anyone wants to check it out! With nearly completed JLAB decks, I plan to transition to creating my own Anki cards from immersion experiences. However, I’m concerned about spending too much time on Wanikani instead of doubling down on immersion, especially with a cycling trip from Tokyo to Kagoshima planned for September 2025. Considering this, I’m contemplating either halting Wanikani lessons, stopping after reaching a certain level (I’m considering around level 30, but any insights on an optimal stopping point would be appreciated), or continuing slowly in the background.
I recognize Wanikani’s value but question its short-term efficiency compared to immersive learning for acquiring relevant kanji knowledge, particularly because through immersion, I can focus on learning what’s specifically beneficial for me in the short term. I’ll stick with Wanikani until I finish, even if it takes me years. I’ll keep up with my reviews no matter what, so I can always come back to it later on.
Not sure about your pace, but if it was me I would probably slow down gradually after lvl 30 or so but keep some progress up to level 40 at least.
WK is mostly for reading with the side vocab added, but I would rather focus on listening/understanding and more importantly speaking to be prepared for Japan, especially if you have already found something that helps.
Just make sure to not stop WK completely (do your reviews) - I would be worried of having to reset some levels or be overwhelmed with overdue reviews.
Some post lvl 30 users may have better advice, though
You don’t need WK for reading and learning to recognize written Japanese, absolutely not. It does help when you want to be able to specifically recognize all the building blocks, but you can absolutely learn to read without ever specifically learning single Kanji. It really depends on what you want.
If you just want to trade WK for Anki, I would say it doesn’t matter, you are just trading SRS for SRS, but if you want to put more time into actually immersing, it might be a good choice to go slower on WK or drop out.
But I would always trade Immersion for SRS, so don’t know how useful my reasoning is here.
For me WK was worth it but I took a very different approach. I prioritised WK and got to lvl 60 in about 1.5 years. Around lvl 50 I read my first novel (admittedly not a hard one ) and didn’t have much struggle with the kanji. Last 10 levels felt not very useful, too many niche kanji, including only ones used in names.
I liked the system and the structure it provided: do my reviews and lessons at time x, the times a day to maximise the levelling speed. And the SRS really worked well for my brain when I did them items are correct intervals.
Of course I forgot a lot of kanji since finishing WK, and I certainly don’t remember any mnemonics by now. But through reading I internalised a large portion of the kanji and can look up the ones I don’t know with little problem.
You are doing WK differently. Maybe it doesn’t work well for you. I don’t see why you should do something that’s not fitting your brain.
But tbh you have more than a year till september 2025. You could get to lvl 50, if not 60. Maybe try to speed up and see if it works better?
It’s much easier to do immersion after you have a solid base.
People’s needs differ and change over time, and only you can know where you want to improve your Japanese language skills.
I stopped WK & Anki for 18 months to focus more on immersion and it was the right thing for me to do at the time.
Now more in depth kanji knowledge would be useful to me, so here I am again. If you need reduce or stop new learning to give yourself more time for other things then go for it, especially if you can still do the reviews and avoid the need to reset.
Also, greater knowledge of Japanese makes learning kanji easier.
You’re lifetime, so I can see why you’ve decided to stick with it until you finish. I’ve greatly slowed down in the last year or so, but I’m still plugging away.
In my opinion, I agree that slowing way down in the 30s is a good idea… and it’s also a good idea to find a balance in the meantime. There are valuable kanji higher (and you’ll want to review the lower levels), but the efficiency of WK decreases in the higher levels. For me, I initially set a slow down pace in the 30s in order to get a good chunk of the N3 kanji readily recognizable… and I reset a couple levels several times when my load got too high… but I eventually readjusted my goals to the low Level 50s where I’d encounter all the N3 and N2 kanji.
In my opinion, it depends on your pace and what works for you. WK doesn’t review context sentences, so you have to find other means to do that…
The main reason not to halt WK completely is that it’s already approximately suited to your SRS needs, and it manages that for you, so you’d probably want to at least review… Maybe halt new lessons around 30 or so.
