Are you learning grammar somewhere else? Because without grammar, it does not matter if your finish WaniKani, you will still not be able to comprehend what you read even the most basic stuff.
Wholeheartedly seconding Satori Reader. Itâs been super helpful with my Japanese reading journey. Canât recommend it enough!
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I completely agree 
have been consistent with Satori reader for around 6 months now. Absolutely amazing, however the content will never be as interesting as actual content for natives. We will get there!
Thanks! I definitely want to give FF14 a go once I am pretty comfortable reading in a year or so hopefully, how is life at level 56? how many reviews per day do you usually have? How long will it take to get to 60 do you think?
Two weeks until 60 if everything goes well.
I did one level/week until level 40, then I slowed down heavily to focus on grammar and vocab using anki, bunpro and reading a little bit every day.
Last month I reached level 50 and decided to finish WK once and for all and go max-speed again until level 60. At this point I can do two levels in a week so Iâm 2 weeks from over. Obviously thatâs pretty intense, but itâs only short term and since I was going relatively slow for the previous six months or so my overall review count is not as high as when I was going at one level/week for so long.
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Thats awesome. good luck! I just hit level 4 this morning! One level a week seems fast, but it looks like as long as you do the extra study / recent mistakes after reviews, things arent too bad.
How are you learning vocab? Does knowing kanji make it any easier? I know a good amount of words from reading with Satori reader and using Anki + jpdb.io, but everything im learning shows furigana, so not sure if that is hurting me or not. Thanks!
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I try reading every day (I actually havenât done that in the past few days because of the increased WaniKani study time, but Iâll return to it more seriously when I reach 60). You can pick up a lot of common vocab just through exposure.
I also have a âminingâ anki deck where I put vocab I struggle to memorize through simple exposure. I tend to add a couple of words every day. Iâm very selective with that, I donât put every unknown word I encounter, I generally wait until I see it a couple of times and Iâm sure that itâs worth it.
Massively, yes, unless the word is spelled with hiragana of courseâŠ
Iâve been reading this manga lately that as a lot of esoteric or even made up words for its lore that are spelled in kanji, it makes it super easy to remember what they mean even if I would be incapable of remembering what those words are if said out loud or written in kana.
Having to learn kanji early on really slows you down in your Japanese studies compared to most other languages, but once you reach a critical mass of about a 1000 or so kanji it flips around and turns into a huge advantage for parsing written Japanese.
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This is great. Super excited to get there!! Thanks for the reassurance
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Iâve been buying rando stuff from manga republic trying to find something I can settle into. Chainsaw Man was way too âover my headâ , while Yotsusbato was a complete snorefest. Unfortunately a tennis manga (my favorite sport) I ordered didnât have furigana and also felt a bit beyond my skills and Doraemon was not compelling to me; however, I think I hit the sweet spot with Hajime no Ippo. I almost never see a kanji that I havenât studied through WK, the grammar isnât super complicated, there are few specialized/made-up words, and it feels pretty down to earth. I had also watched some of the anime like a decade ago, so I have a passing familiarity with the story beats. I still struggle but not enough to discourage.
I am routinely amazed at the amount of kanji-less adverbs(?) Japanese has. Thereâs probably a name for them, but stuff like ăŻăŁăă, ăłăŁăă, ăăŁăă, ăăŁăă, etc. I canât keep track of them and there seem to be maybe hundreds. Add those to the next round of kana vocab please, WK!
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Youâre level 57, you donât need furigana!
I know it can be a bit scary at first but most of the content I read doesnât have furigana and itâs not that bad. Yes sometimes I wish I could easily check a reading without having to type it on my phone but itâs a good workout.
That and the many onomatopoeic words like ăŽăăŽă, ă«ă©ă«ă©, ăăă etc⊠are a real pain.
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Wow! I need your WK powers! Nice work.
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I think reading starts to improve really quickly without furigana because you are forced to start looking at the kanji shapes quickly and really start recognising them quickly. That said itâs such a pain in the ass that you canât just look at something and know how itâs pronounced⊠thank god for instant lookup software⊠JPN truly playing on hard mode
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Huh, never heard of this. Cool site, thanks for sharing! Only read a couple but looks like a good one to read when NHK news gets a bit boring.
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Yeah, Iâve only seen it recommended a couple times around the forumâs, which is where I heard about it. Maybe itâs less well known? But I like it because itâs a nice bridge between the more formal grammar taught in beginning textbooks and the more colloquial grammar in manga and novels. (Plus, itâs less depressing to read more than one article about lighthearted things like ramen or shaved ice than multiple articles about the earthquake aftermath⊠I can usually only handle about one of those every couple of days.)
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Watanoc is pretty much dead, right? It doesnât seem to have been updated since I went there a year ago. I hope it stays up as an archive but I wouldnât be surprised if it vanished.
re: furigana, yeah I can mostly get by without, but I still prefer it 
Have you tried reading the tennis news in one of the Japanese papers? Since itâs current news it might be more interesting, plus youâll be able to crosscheck against English coverage of the same event.
I havenât. Any recommendations? Itâs fun when tennis shows up on NHL Easy, but itâs pretty rare.
(sorry for apparently hijacking this topic, OP)
I donât follow tennis myself, but all the Japanese papers have sports sections. Or you could search for ăăăč ăă„ăŒăč (tennis news).