I’m still a bit suprised. It went in the blink of an eye - I feel like I’m still at the beginning of the Japanese learning journey, yet here it is - lv 60 reached, near perfect score on N4 mock test… Clearly that knowledge stealthily creeped up on me And I kind of “fulfilled” one of the initial reasons to start learning, which was to be able to read untranslated VNs, and specifically Mashiro Iro Symphony, which I’m reading now (although still with help of text hooker) .
What now?
I think I mostly need some tools to expand my vocabulary. It would be great, if they worked similarly to WK - and I need them to work on PC, since I’m not too good with phone apps. Should I try kitsun.io? For grammar I’m okay with various online resources, to check things that I encounter while reading. But for vocab I think I need something more… solid? structured? Like WK
Also, I plan to join Japanese class in September, for some speaking practice and more structured learning.
In the meantime I also want to learn to write at least some of the most common kanji.
I also have to say - WK is great, it made kanji learning very enjoyable experience. Sincere thanks to whole team Hanging around on these forums is fun too - even though I don’t write much.
You should have no issues going up to N1 with the kanji knowledge from WaniKani (if I got it around level 40, level 60 should be a breeze). There is the pesky matter of grammar, but all I have to say about that is:
@adamstan Congratulations! I hope one day to be in the place you are right now.
@jneapan Were there many kanji you couldn’t recognise when you were at level 40, and if I may ask what did you use for learning grammar beyond, say, the level covered by Genki 1&2?
During the test I think the most problems I had were with kanji I already knew, but the reading that was asked was the one I didn’t learn. e.g. I knew the kun’yomi but not the on’yomi, or I knew the on, but didn’t know the kun. There weren’t too many completely unknown kanji. Another thing that tripped me was the fact that I didn’t have time to finish reading everything so I felt rushed.
Final score was:
Language Knowledge: 34 / 60; Reading: 33 / 60; Listening: 34 / 60;
so, pretty much at the very limit, maybe 1 or 2 points lower and I’d have failed it probably.
TBH I can’t remember exactly. For N3 and N2 my teacher structured my lessons around some kind of JLPT prep books, but for N1 it was mostly mock exams. I did “study” with the Nihongo no Mori videos, they have some great playlists for all JLPT levels, so I just watched those over and over.
Thanks for the reply! I only passed N4 (barely) having done bits and pieces of Genki so there’s still a long ways to go. I’m terrible at remembering readings, but wanikani seems to be helping so far - the mnemonics here feel easier compared to some others I’ve used before.
You mentioned kitsun.io, which I use exclusively for kanji writing practice (being able to both write and read are the most important aspects to me). What I did specifically was create decks based on the genki vocab lists and also customize a layout for “No input” and “Japanese readings → Vocab” (or whatever), which is not hard to do. I add, or at least try to, five new words every day and see if I can write them down based on their reading during reviews. I use kitsun in conjunction with “The Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Course”, which is a brilliant textbook that helps a lot when it comes to remembering how kanji are written.
This method (if you can call it that) has been working out pretty well so far. Plus, there is a lot of overlap with wanikani in such a way that I often go “O hey, I already know this one”.
The most important thing to do at your level, in my estimate, is to now concentrate on working through as much material as you’re able–the more you can immerse yourself daily, the more your brain will be able to retain. Reading should not be as much of a big deal for you because of the solid basis you’ve acquired through WK. As for writing… if you’re not keen on fiction writing, a great exercise is copying existing texts (better still if you can do it from memory) or translating texts into Japanese. Or, because that’s quite a daunting task don’t I know it, reading Japanese texts and writing about the things that you remember from the text is a great reading, writing, and memory exercise.
There are also a lot of apps out there that make texts more “readable” or provide texts for your specific level (beelinguapp, for example, which I use now and again).
God tier, of course, would be finding a Japanese pen pal willing to write on actual paper. Though, I’m not sure if that still exists. Used to be common in my parents day (required even) and still practiced when I was a young lad, but not a lot of people are willing to pick up a pen and spend diligent hours perfecting letters these days. Or maybe I’m wrong. Get back to me, O people of WK, if you know a place where such people congregate.
The hardest part, on the road to language perfection–again, correct me if I’m wrong–is finding people who are interested in having honest conversations with you instead of using you as a language acquisition device.
Then again, I’m pretty much a shut-in, so I wouldn’t know too much about that. ( =
Kind regards
Whatever moniker I used when I created my account
Ive had an account on HelloTalk (mobile app) for a while.
Of the hundred or so people I have interacted with, there are still a good 10 or so that I would consider to be valuable friends, not just for language exchange.
But in my case, I’ve been living in Japan for a year, so I have had a chance to meet them, go for a drink with them etc.
Either way, a few of them I was pretty friendly with before I arrived, so even If I had never come to Japan I would probably still talk with them every now and again.
Some people use HelloTalk to learn and study. Some are just there for the social aspect. Those using it for the social aspect will happily chat with you in Japanese, though may ask the occasional question about spelling, grammar, translation etc… Of course your mileage may vary but it’s an easy way to get in touch with literally thousands of Japanese native speakers, without necessarily having to meet them IRL if you don’t want to.
I remember you being low level. You wouldn’t post that frequently on the forums but it was always good to see that every time you’d post, I’d see your level going
On Kitsun there’s a Tobira deck, an improved version of the Core 10k deck and a katakana vocabulary deck (4500 words). Personally, I’m doing the last 2. It has done great things to my vocab tbh. After WK, my weakness was also vocab cuz I couldn’t get into Anki at all. Now vocab is probably my strength.
I also have my own deck for words that I see from exposure and find useful to learn. I use the dictionary tool to add those words instantly. Now with the subs2srs, I might take that to a whole new level
Okay. I just registered and am trying things out. I have one question for now - how many “lessons per day” would you recommend? 5 feels a bit slow, but I’m not sure what would be the safe value that would equal with WKs “keeping ~100 apprentice items” rule.
OTOH, “feeling slow” might be misleading, so maybe I should leave it at default value?
It really depends from the deck, I guess. For example, learning katakana words is easier than learning kanji words. On the other hand, onomatopoeias are even harder. I’d recommend for you to give a number of your preference a try and see how it goes. Doing 5 lessons/day on 2 decks means you’re doing 10 lessons/day after all.
One thing to note is that for the Core 10k, each word has 2 cards: one card will be for different types of recalling and another will be for different types of recognition.
For every community deck, you can see the “layouts” of a deck and (de)activate them depending on what you believe is important:
And I kind of “fulfilled” one of the initial reasons to start learning, which was to be able to read untranslated VNs, and specifically Mashiro Iro Symphony, which I’m reading now (although still with help of text hooker) 
.
Hanging around on these forums is fun too - even though I don’t write much.
