Joeni's Journey (A Study Log) 🗓

[Joeni]

Hi, I’m Jerry!

I’ve maintained this study log in a very on-again, off-again way for nearly four years and I seem on track to do the same for the foreseeable future. In the past this has been more journal than study log, but I’m very grateful for those of you that have kept me company, made me feel seen and supported over the years.

A bit about me; I live in Bath, in the South West of the UK, where I work in computing at a research university, with a special interest in automation and cyber security. I’m an AuDHDer, have a school-age son, and am very much a tinkerer and a maker. I spend a lot of my free time reading, playing cosy games, or making lego. I’m fortunate enough to have a really great D&D group too, which I play with every couple of weeks.

Oh and I also maintain Smouldering Durtles, a popular Android client for WaniKani
I actually almost exclusively use Apple devices… it’s a long story, hehe

The Past

Some irrelevant stuff about other languages.

I consider my journey with languages to be disjointed and fragmented and for this I fully blame the British school system. I learnt French in school, in the same way that you learn any language in school, with a complete lack of focus. This is fine, as it turns out, because by the time I hit secondary school, they were teaching me Spanish instead. None of that stuck either, as you may expect. By the time I was doing my A-Levels, I had met my first real girlfriend and she introduced me to British Sign-Language. I did evening classes, got my BSL Lvl 1 certification, but by then she’s moved off to university to do Deaf Studies and after a year we broke up and I never really used the BSL and so promptly forgot everything but the alphabet and how to say sorry and thanks. I worked in retail management some years later, so that was actually more useful than you’d think.

I left languages alone for a while, had some hit and miss experiences with Rosetta Stone, etc. and didn’t really do any self-motivated studying until about five years ago, in my late-twenties, when I came across Duolingo for the first time. I started out trying to learn French and found the service pretty good for that; there was a website and an app and I didn’t have to think for even a moment about planning anything. After I while I thought “why am I learning French?” and reasoned that I much preferred Italian food and so switched. I got most of the way through the Italian tree and then we got invited to our friends wedding in Sweden and so I started learning Swedish. I really enjoyed it and actually go to the point of completing the Duolingo tree, but I never reached any kind of conversational fluency and short of being able to read product names in IKEA (the ones that aren’t the names of Danish towns, anyway) I completely stopped practising and so failed to retain more than 50% of what I learned.

I reached Japanese mainly through becoming interested in playing visual-novel games, always having enjoyed story-telling elements in some of my favourite games. Games like Mass Effect were always more about the characters relationships and firm favourites like Life is Strange or The Longest Journey, that rip your heart to shreds, were always something I loved. I found, naturally, that most of these games are in Japanese with poor English translation for the most part and so I decided at that point to give learning it a try. There was also the fact that my mother is Buddhist and so I’d grown up hearing her chanting in Japanese every morning and night for my entire childhood, which meant that I had little fragments of Japanese floating around my head like those ‘learn a language while you sleep tapes’ just without any context.

I’d never touched a language outside of the Germanic families before, so the challenge was exciting. My first port of call was Duolingo, but as many people have found, it’s just not great for Asian languages in general. So I quickly turned to google and /r/LearnJapanese and some highly ranked posts about learning Japanese. One of these posts recommended services ReadTheKanji for kata learning and so I did that for a while, but then stumbled across recommendations for WaniKani and finally began this wonderful journey in worship of the Crabigator.

Just because it has been wonderful does not mean that it has been smooth and this little section of my massively gappy heat map can reveal just how stop and start I’ve been.

I got up to Level 7 and then stopped. I can’t remember why I stopped and it seems extremely silly in hindsight, but there we have it. Past Jerry, you have a lot to answer for! Eight months later, I returned to WaniKani and, upon realising that I’d broken SRS completely, I reset back to level 1 and started all over again. I had a good three months of learning, got myself up to level 10, but then started neglecting the reviews, which then piled up and up.

Then in late March of 2020 we were struck by a global pandemic and I realised that I’d be working from home for a while. What I found after two months of lockdown was that I didn’t actually have all that much working to do from home and that I was just in front of the computer most of the day. It was a perfect time, I thought, to knuckle down and clear through those reviews and give myself a fighting chance at progressing. It worked for a while, but then petered out again.

I was then diagnosed first with ADHD, and started medication, and then with ASD, and there has just been generally a whole lot of chaos in life between 2020, when I started this studylog, and now in 2024.

The Present

2020 Archived Present

At this point I’m probably still going to be working home until January since the university where I work is likely to have limited on site personnel and I have a child at home and therefore have got time a plenty. So over the past ten days, I’ve managed to clear over nine-hundred reviews and so am currently at the stage of working through all the shock-waves of recurring reviews, about two-hundred today for example. One the swells of that wave subside, it’ll all seem a bit less hectic.

I had about three-hundred lessons pending and I worked through sixty of those before realising I was being incredibly stupid and doing some filtering to clear out specifically the Level 10 kanji. I’m going to be a bit more cautious with how I clear through the remaining vocab lessons so I don’t give myself premature burn out with the number of reviews.

I’ve also, perhaps foolishly, decided that not keeping my Swedish knowledge practised is a massive waste of the months of Duolingo time I spent on it the first time round, so I’ve committed myself to trying to get to the point where that tree is 100% gold again. Doing two languages at once is perhaps somewhat misguided, but since one is North-Germanic and the other is Asian, there isn’t really much there that can cause language muddles and it’s probably fairly safe. I’m primarily focusing on Japanese though, so if I let anything slip, it will be my daily Duolingo. I decided after about two months that doing Swedish alongside Japanese was just too much language at once. So yes, it was foolish.

2021 Archived Present

By November of that year, I had hit level 24 and was maintaining a great average of around 8 days per level. Unfortunately… the new World of Warcraft expansion came out and then I had a bout of horrible dental issues that made it hard to concentrate on anything and so I completely lost my streak.
I didn’t put vacation mode on and I still did a few reviews every now and then, but I otherwise just let things built up until I had over 1700 reviews.

I’ve jumped back into things now and will try and do at least 200 reviews a day to get through the back log before I move onto the mound of lessons I need to clear before I can start levelling again. Taking these breaks has made my Wanikani Timemachine grap look a little skewed. It was a train before, now it’s a train chasing a smaller train, coming out of a mountain tunnel.

2023 Archived Present

While lockdown was the major motivator in my life in late 2020 and early 2021 a major upheaval happened in my life which caused me to completely lose track of my language learning as well as a great many other things. As of today, 1st Jan 2022, I’ve reset back to level 1 and intend to start fresh as I enter my third year on WaniKani.

I won’t deny that part of the reason I’m resetting and picking back up again is that it’s becoming really hard to properly feature test and debug Smouldering Durtles without review session happening regularly, but I’m also feeling in a better place with myself than I have been over the past few year, and at a good point to start studying again.

The Future (or My Study Plan)

Archived 2020 Goals

So my plans for the near future are as follows and I’ll try and comment below to keep my progress updated and accountable. If for no other reason my own fear of failure being a motivator; if I’ve said I’ll do something, it’s easier to be motivated to do it. One of the reasons a monthly fee is sometimes better than a lifetime sub; it feels like you’re paying, so you’d better keep up, hehe.

• Reviews at Zero -I’ll try and end each day with my review count at zero, no matter how many I have to get through at the moment. I know if they pile up too high again, I’ll feel that same failure to resolve guilt and so I’m determined to work at this. - I mainly managed to do this
• Clear Those Lessonns - I’m going to try to do at least a dozen a day so that I can clear all remaining lessons by the end of June. Done ^-^
• Get That Grammar - I’ve got a lifetime LingoDeer sub that I always forget to practice with (see above point about monthly fees as a motivator) and so I’m going to aim to complete one topic a day, and complete at least one 5 Minute Review a day. - I didn’t really manage to do this consistently
• Take Notes - I’ve got a BunPro subscription and I’ve got a dotted journal, Muji pens, and Mildliners. I sure do love stationary. So I’m going to try and get into the habbit of working through BunPro lessons and reviews when I can and making notes about each grammar point. LingoDeer helps to reinforce these through their grammar notes too, but it’s proven that you recall more clearly what you write with your own hand, so I’m going to try to do that as much as possible. - Likewise, I didn’t really manage to do this particularly consistently - I was writing things down for a while, but in the end I didn’t fine it very helpful.

I made some plans in 2020 and half of them worked… half of them didn’t. That in mind and with a greater idea of how WaniKani fits into my life, these are my 2021 2022 2024 study plans. They’re the same as last year and I’m keeping them because they’re modest and because it’s good to set achievable goals, hehe.

• Reviews at Zero - I consider this pretty crucial to my succeeding and staying motivated. When I was maintaining a 0/0 streak every level, I felt much better about my progress in general. I’m going to try to get back onto this streak in order to keep up that feeling.
• Consume More - I’m enjoying watching anime in Japanese and I’m going to continue to do this. I’d like to also try and watch more regular Japanese TV.
• Learn Japanese Prefectures - There’s a great prefectures map deck on Kitsun that I am determined to complete I consider this my white whale, since I’m terrible with maps in general!

If you’ve read all that then most sincerely thank you!!

[Joeni]

Oh and non-japanese-related-targets:

• Actually keep to my Goodreads book challenge target this year and stop getting distracted watching Netflix instead
• Since I have a cyber security focus at work, keep up with reading my Cyber related RSS feeds in the app that I paid £8 for just so I could get full text, and not waste that by letting the feed rise to over 100 like I have it right now.
• Make my office wall look nicer, we’re getting there but could be much better. It’s the small things and I’ll be spending a lot of time in here over the next months.

[Omun]

Hello hello, welcome!

The Crabigator is a merciful demon god …Crabigator that welcomes you back with open pincers.

@jerrycooke

I’ll try and end each day with my review count at zero, no matter how many I have to get through at the moment. I know if they pile up too high again, I’ll feel that same failure to resolve guilt and so I’m determined to work at this.

You could also use something like the expected daily review script to keep an eye on your workload. ^^

[Userscript] Expected Daily Reviews

This is a third-party script/app and is not created by the WaniKani team. By using this, you understand that it can stop working at any time or be discontinued indefinitely. What This script calculates the expected number of reviews you should have in a given day with the current SRS distribution and displays it on the dashboard. [Screen Shot 2020-03-11 at 5.24.08 PM] As you see, with my current SRS distribution I should expect to do 102 reviews a day. Disclaimer: this is not i…

Welcome again, and best of luck!

[Joeni]

Thank you for the recommendation! I use a few things already like the Ultimate Timeline which gives a fairly good overview, but I hadn’t considered something for estimating daily reviews, so I’ll give @Kumirei’s script a go ^-^

I’ve got to say, extendability has always been my favourite thing about WK. I am trying to avoid getting in toooo deep with them, hehe.

[MissBerry]

Welcome back then! Thanks for sharing your journey. It was an interesting read and props to you for taking care of a 3-y/o while WFH. Don’t know how parents are surviving this right now.

@jerrycooke

If for no other reason my own fear of failure being a motivator; if I’ve said I’ll do something, it’s easier to be motivated to do it.

Maybe consider joining @Marifly 's list here to stay accountable with WK during this season, too? Level 21 before 2021!

I totally understand when things are started and you end up not really seeing it through the end (e.g. full mastery) because life happened or more focus was placed on something else.

Summary

Ie. Attempted:

Cross-stitching and knitting: hands starting cramping, left it. Probably had the wrong needle sizes, too.

Painting: takes up too much time (albeit it is very relaxing. Thankfully, I bought cheap paint, so it is not much of a waste…) I still have empty canvases hidden in a box somewhere.

Fountain/calligraphy pens craze (I blame online ): I have not been writing as much as I am typing now so, they are hidden away in my Lihit case for another day. Maybe when I pick up the strokes, I will use those again for kanji. (Side note: For cursive writers, it is interesting to see how one’s script changes throughout the years. Wonder if learning Japanese will affect it? )

Languages: When I was in grade school, I tried to self-study French and little bit of Spanish (was curious with learning Esperanto but there were not that many resources before). But, the retention was lacking. (Accent/pronunciation are easy for me to mimic but, do I really understand what the words mean? And can I actually converse in French? Nope.) At one point, I was also curious about Polish and studied casually online but now I can only recall saying, “Do you understand English/Polish?” and the common please/thank you/excuse me greetings.

Then, I dropped all of it when I focused on learning a musical instrument (read: obsessed). Afterwards, I went to college. Although, I still play occasionally at church, I was not interested enough to become a professional performer. (I probably should have minored in a language or music to stay motivated but enrolling in private lessons “to level up faster” in terms of repertoire is .) So, the self-study route it is, just like with WK…

Now, I am working full-time and a lot of these have become side hobbies. Thankfully, due to WFH, it now seems possible to revisit all of these (including karaoke and practicing–sorry LingLing, it’s not 40 hours but 3 hours a week at most… - pity the neighbors’ ears…) and be more intentional.

But, I think my current main language goal this time round (specifically with Japanese) is to really reach that “finish line” by having better comprehension and retention to the point of fluent conversation. No excuses!

TL:DR: Talked about failed attempts in summary section. We are all here to move consistently forward in this WK journey, one kanji at a time. May we all reach cake day one day! 頑張りましょう!

Oops, I did it again…Thanks for surviving yet another long post from me, everyone.
すみません

[Joeni]

Thanks for sharing your own experiences with starting and not finishing, in a funny way a few things reminded of the things we learn in school but never take into adulthood.

I have distinct memories of handwriting lessons at school, special calligraphy pens, learning to write in proper cursive. I remember very much enjoying the precision and flow. Then I took a graphic design class in later school years and learned print handwriting for labelling and promptly lost all cursive ability and have never managed to regain that ability.

I remember violin lessons in school, but I also remember being terrible at reading sheet music and not practising enough, so I never continued those lessons and now the only instrument I use is my voice, which is really easy to practice, doesn’t mean carrying a hint, and has plentiful sheet music (or lyric websites, rather)

I relate on the ‘just reach the finish line’ sentiment. I think that’s what I’m trying to challenge myself to do this time, because I think at this point not doing so feels like a waste, hehe.

[Joeni]

Update for 8th June 2020

Level 10 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ 20/34 Kanji
Lessons 280 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I’m on track to level up to Level 11 tomorrow provided that I don’t mess any kanji up during my reviews. I’ve been staying away from lessons until I get my first Level 11 ones so that I don’t get overloaded with reviews. Once my first day of those is out the way, I plan to set a new target: At least 15 lessons per day

I’m hoping that this will allow me to clear the backlog within a month or so and be able to return to 0/0 status after such a long time away from the site. That said, I’m not overly fussed since it’s 100% vocab. I’m going to try and make these updates daily so that I have a ‘diary’ of how I’m doing. I’ve been having on average 200 reviews per day for the past three, as I get all the kanji that I knocked down to Apprentice IV when I did my nine-hundred reviews upon my return.

[Joeni]

Update for 9th June 2020

Level 11 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 365 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I levelled up to 11 finally, my very first painful level. I made a mistake with my reordering script, so ended up doing 36 total lessons on one session which was tiring to say the least. What I’ve done however is used the back of my new notebook to start making a note of the meaning and reading of each kanji I learn from this level onward. I’ve left space so I can elaborate with the mnemonic if I get it wrong too many times to really get it set in my head. I actually started out writing that for each kanji, but I’ve got osteoarthritis in my dominant arm from an old parkour accident where I shattered my elbow joint, so I thought less writing in one go was probably a good idea.

I got nearly 100 items up to Guru today, which meant that my lesson count jumped from 280 to 356 as I unlocked some new vocab, but as I said yesterday, I shall plan to simply do 15 or so lessons per day (on non-level-up days) to try and chip away at this number as best I can. I’ve seen some level 60 people ending their run with vocab left to learn, so I figure I’m in good company with a little stack to do.

In good news, I’ve got a new iPad Pro 11" arriving in a couple weeks with the new pencil (I sold my old Pro and 1st Gen Pencil when I got a work issued Galaxy Tab with S-Pen, but as it turns out, they’re terrible, so I’m going back to what I know best) which means I can take some of my note taking digital again and also use the PDF version of the Genki books I have with LiquidText to work on my grammar. Whoop!

[Joeni]

Update for 10th June 2020

Level 11 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 364 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

Level process still at 0, but I’m at Apprentice III for all the items that I did lessons for yesterday. I think that writing them down in my notebook helped, because recollection has been better. Then again, these are the first radical and kanji lessons that I’ve had in the past eight months. Lessons continue to rise, currently up just eight from yesterday, so not that bad. I’ll recommence doing a dozen or so each day from tomorrow. Apprentice items now down 37 from yesterday, so I’m on track to get just my newly learned items as Apprentice soon enough.

[Joeni]

Update for 11th June 2020

Level 11 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 349 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

Finally started to chip away at those lessons, with fifteen done today and a plan to do fifteen more each day from now on, except for my level-up days where there is a torrent of new radicals and kanji to learn. My 348 vocab lessons are all from Levels 8 + 9 + 10 and I’m somewhat aware that the number will grow when I level up my remaining kanji for this level to Guru tomorrow, but hey ho, the stack will go down with time!

My Apprentice levels have gone down by 1, though I’ve managed to to get a dozen extra back up to Guru, taking fifteen new lessons means the apprentice number will continue to rise, alas.

[Joeni]

Update for 14th June

Level 11 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 401 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I wrote this last night, but completely failed to post it, just as I have failed in updating this thread the last couple of days, doh! Level 11 is fully in swing now with all my second batch of Kanji on Apprentice III and so long as I don’t mess up more than a few reviews, I’m on track to level up in 2d 9h.

Lesson count has gone up by 50+, as is to be expected when unlocking vocab from guruing kanji from your current level. I’m continuing to take a dozen or so lessons a day to try and get this backlog down, but I have to accept that it will always be there, haha. Apprentice items are now down to just 56, so I’m doing good in that regard and am fairly safe in terms of taking more lessons now.

[Joeni]

Update for 16th June

Level 11 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 401 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I’m too darn forgetful! Because I posted my last update in the morning after, I totally forgot to post an update in the evening, oops! Oh well, progress was made regardless. I was looking after my toddler all day today while my wife did sewing upstairs and was super tired because he woke me up at 5am, so I didn’t have mental or physical energy to do my reviews. It got to 23:30 and I knew I had to do them, so I cracked through 130 reviews in half an hour, phew! I’m in that period between Apprentice IV and Guru on my remaining Level 11 kanji, so will level up tomorrow!

I haven’t taken any new lessons on today because my brain is a bit like mush. I managed 88% over those 130 reviews, so clearly I’m still functional, but I don’t feel up to lessons today. I have the day to myself in my office tomorrow, while my wife looks after my son, so I will do some lessons tomorrow ^-^

Apprentice is up by 20, because I messed up reviews on some items that were at Guru I, alas. I have moved a couple dozen items up to master and two up to burned, however. I’ll write that off as a victory for today at least. Incidentally, I’m enjoying how these are forming a sort of learning diary and thank you if you’ve been following on, knowing that anyone at all is reading these helps me stay on task!

[Joeni]

Update for 27th July 2020

Level 13 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 598 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎468 Reviews

I’m truly ashamed to say that I have fallen back into a state of disrepair. With my son going back to nursery, I’ve been in a bit of a slump as my days are now spent entirely in front of my computer doing work and I’ve had a hard time forcing myself to focus on WaniKani. I am hereby prostrating myself publicly so that I can motivate myself to claw my way back to regularity!

My hope is that if I force myself to do 20 or so reviews every hour for the next few days, I can claw back to a review count of 0 and get on with my first level 13 kanji and radical lessons. I’ve got a new iPad Pro now with Magic Keyboard, so I can do my learning anywhere with ease (I used to get saw thumbs from doing all my reviews in Tsurukame on my iPhone) so I’ve really got no excuse. I’ve taken to using GoodNotes to take hand written notes of all the kanji as I learn them, which has been helping. I actually started off with a dot journal for this, but switched to GoodNotes as it proved easier to manage that way.

Since my last update, my number of Guru items has shrunk by about 400, while my Masters have risen by 300 and my Enlightened by 100 (with my Burned staying static at 475) so I’m in a better position with less regular reviews than I was over a month ago when I last updated, so the future doesn’t look TOO bad.

[Joeni]

Today has been a day of recovering from a shameful lapse in worship of the Crabigator!

I can’t say that I did particularly well (only 59% correct) but I soldiered through and got those 600 reviews done so that I can get back on track.

[Joeni]

Update for 21st August 2020

Level 13 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 638 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

Back to zero after a month of barely keeping on top of things and ending up with 600+ reviews. All recovered now though, as my post from yesterday indicated. Gosh, I really suck - what was intended to be daily updates had ended up being kinda monthly instead. I shall recover though. I shall recover.

Between summer heat waves, water drenched camping trips, and sundry other real life stuff, it feels good to be back to cooler days and to be worshipping the Crabigator once again.

Since my last update, my number of Apprentice items has increased by 70 as I’ve been getting some leeches wrong again after leaving them so long. My Guru numbers are reduced by a commensurable level and likewise my Master, but my Enlightened has increased by around 250 as I’ve had some of those items come around for review finally. Phew. I’ve added one burn to my pile; kind to small amphibians am I. I’m going to try to get 90% of those apprentice items gone before I start Level 13 lessons.

[Joeni]

Update for 22nd August 2020

Level 13 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 598 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I’ve ignored what I said yesterday about not doing lessons until I’ve got apprentices down to zero, because I really need to chip away that stack of vocab lessons before I can start doing level 13 lessons in earnest. The community advice seems to be not to skip vocab lessons, so I’m going to get them done. Better to extent my time-on-level than to let the stack grow any further.

My Apprentice numbers have remained largely the same, because I did 40 lessons today. My Guru numbers are up by 60, thanks to nailing a bunch of reviews on stuff that was slipping before. My Master numbers have gone down by 20, but my Enlightened are up by 15, so I’d call that pretty zero sum change.

Life wise, my toddler woke me up at 5am, so I’m tired as hell, but other than that, all is well!

[Joeni]

Update for August 23rd 2020

Level 13 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 598 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

I’m trying a new format, which should make this require not quite as much scrolling to get through if I carry on adding updates, as well as require significantly less image loading, haha.
That won’t make any sense if you’re visititing this for the first time after I made the edits, but I used to have screenshots in each post

Today was spent vising some friends, so I couldn’t do reviews until later, but do them I did. I’m still fully caught up, whooo. I’m going to start on my Level 13 kanji lessons tomorrow, as the work week begins, and try to get back on track to my old rate of about eight days per level if I can. We’ll see how that goes though; I’m likely to be working from home for the rest of the year at least, so I’ll be mostly distraction free (apart from work… obviously) on work days, so can do my reviews as soon as they come in.

A 85 (-83)‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ G 343 (+63 ‎‏)‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ M 101 (-3) ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ E 440 (-2) ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ B 476 (+/- 0)

[Joeni]

Update for August 24th 2020

Level 13 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎0/34 Kanji
Lessons 560 ‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎0 Reviews

Today was a busy work day, but I still managed to fit all my reviews in. My first 21 kanji and all the radicals for Level 13 are now at Apprentice 3, so they’ll hopefully be Guru by Thursday… we shall see! I’ll be doing 50 vocab lessons a day until I hit level 14, to try and get these all cleared through. Yes, it’s a lot, but I’ve also got plenty of time lately, so I think I can manage.

I want to throw out a kind word to all the folks in the POLLs and self-control threads for making life brighter lately; the people of this forum are some of the funnest I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with on a forum platform since my late teens, so thanks for that y’all.

A 95 (+10)‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‎‏‏‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏G 370 (+27) ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‏‏‎‎‏ M 101 (-1) ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎‎E 440 (+/- 0) ‎‎ ‎‏‏ ‏‎‏‏‎‎‏‏B 476 (+/- 0)

[KyokaJiro]

Hi Joeni/Jerry,

Glad to have you back with us.

[Joeni]

Thank you!

Never again hopefully shall my worship of the crabigator fall into the shadow of disrepair!