I’m just starting out on Wanikani and i’ve so far followed the steps in Tofugus Learn Japanese Guide and i can read Hiragana and some katakana. My goal is to play games like Final Fantasy, Octopath Traveler and Scarlet Nexus in original japanese and read visual novels and manga in japanese. I also want to watch anime with japanese subtitles. Will Wanikani be sufficient once i finish LvL 60? And what tools should i use alongside Wanikani if i need any? And how long is it going to take? I’ve got plenty of freetime to invest into learning japanese
You will need a source for learning grammar. Feel free to search on the forums for posts on what grammar resource to use; there are a lot of popular options like textbooks (Genki/Minna no Nihongo) or SRS (Bunpro).
As for Wanikani, if you have plenty of time and want to level quickly, this post has all the details on what kind of time commitment that takes:
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When should i start learning grammar? And do i need to know a lot of kanji to start learning grammar?
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You should start learning grammar right away. You won’t need kanji knowledge for any beginner textbooks or resources, so don’t worry about that.
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WaniKani alone will not be sufficient (you’ll need grammar, and also vocab that WK doesn’t teach). On the other hand you don’t need to wait for level 60 before you can start doing the things you want to do – by the time you’re about halfway through you’ll already know the most common kanji.
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Think of Japanese the same way you would another foreign language you’re trying to learn, in order to read you need to know the words and the grammar. Kanji are pretty unique and good to learn but they’re maybe best compared to root words in English. Astro means star, but the words astronomy and astrology are very different even if they’re both star related.
Learning the kanji taught by wanikani won’t be enough on its own to get you reading fluently as there’s a lot of grammar stuff to learn and many words that are important aren’t written with kanji. Out of a page of Japanese text maybe a third of the words on the page are written using kanji (source is hearsay from a study log here) so kanji alone even when knowing them well doesn’t guarantee the ability to read.
The good news is that if you balance your kanji studying with your grammar studying you can read sooner than you might think so definitely don’t wait until level 60 to try reading. There are some graded readers available for free from Tadoku that have very basic grammar and vocabulary so in terms of what you want to start reading you can either go for the easiest things available or whatever you feel comfortable with and interested in. I might recommend not immediately trying your favorite jrpg series since I tried that with limited success before doing wanikani, but as long as you keep up with some kind of routine of study and reading you will be able to get there.
Good luck, you can do it.
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WaniKani is a good stepping stone, but won’t be enough. You will still be doing lookups after level 60 as there are quite a few words not on WaniKani. You also need grammar too which for that I recommend MaruMori. In general there are Japanese language learning videos like Koe 声, Nihongo Quest N5, Shujinkou, and Wagotabi. Koe 声 is out right now. The other 3 games you have to wishlist, but you can become a beta tester for both Nihongo Quest N5 and Wagotabi.
By the way I highly recommend the visual novel Taisho x Alice as you can toggle between english and Japanese while playing.
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As for myself, I’ve found the amount of kanji at my current level is sufficient for playing quite a lot of games. Currently I’m playing Splatoon 3 in Japanese and having a blast. I can understand item descriptions, abilities, menus, etc. I’ve been watching YouTube and Anime in japanese with japanese subtitles too.
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only vocab is not enough, you need at least grammar N3 to understand sentences.
I recommend bunpro for srs grammar to do alongside wanikani.
If you want a guide to see what level is a manga for example, you can check learnnatively. It’s very useful.
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Oh really? That’s amazing. I’m planning to go slow with learning japanese as i am currently still in high school, so i got plenty of time… I’m planning to be Level 30 in about 10 months. I will hopefully be able to play simple games in japanese by then! So far(just finished Level 2) WaniKani is a great thing i can spend my time on during summer break and i’ve already learned about 53 Kanji and 153 vocab words with WaniKani and all Hiragana and Katakana with Tofugu. And all that in under 16 Days! WaniKani works like magic, the level system is addicting and learning Kanji feels like playing a videogame.
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