As it turns out, an upcoming holiday and just generally being very tired was reason enough to halt my Japanese studies for a while.
I knew it would be hard to keep it up during the holiday, but didn’t fully anticpate quiting a week before and not having the heart to restart for a few weeks after.
Yet:
I’m proud of what I have achieved thus far
I knew this would happen at some point
It might take a while to get back into it, but there’s no better time than today.
Where I stand now: 1575 items in the queue
Goal: < 1000 words in the queue after the weekend.
Let’s see if I can do it. Hopefully it’ll come back to me fairly quickly because it feels like I don’t remember jack atm
Turns out it’s gonna take some more time. The 1600 item review pile is very daunting! I don’t want to do it if I’ll fail everything. I don’t doubt I’ll have forgotten a lot, and that’s OK. But ideally I’ll be in the 60-80% success range. Otherwise I’m afraid the review pile will never shrink.
I’ve done levels 1-5 in the SelfStudy Script on Japanese → English. I feel like I’m starting to remember stuff and might be up to start chipping away at the Big Pile.
From 1657 reviews down to 1483 until I hit a bunch of level 6 reviews. But it does give me confidence that refreshing the items with the SelfStudy Quiz and then reviews until I hit too many unfamiliar items is the way to go.
Feels good to once again hit the review queue instead of being paralyzed by the big number.
Up to level 8 in the SelfStudy Quiz and back down to 1413 reviews in the queue. Had to redo level 8 in the SSQ as it went so poorly. It’s getting tougher from ~level 7 on. But hey… still making progress.
It really helps that items keep burning off. Any item burned is a guaranteed smaller review queue
Level 9 & 10 in SSQ soon, and down to 1200 reviews in the queue?
Did some more WK today. Up to level 10 in the SelfStudy Quiz and back down to 1341 reviews in the queue with 144 total burned. Now starting to make more mistakes which doesn’t help with reducing the big number. I do feel like I’m making progress though, so that’s something. And with level 17 just 7 more levels to catch up to, it’s all starting to feel a bit less daunting.
I have mixed feelings about the whole new UI coming up in October since it’ll likely break all the scripts. I do rely a lot on the SSQ. The upside is that it’s a good encouragement to be caught up by then.
Did another batch of reviews until level 12 stuff started showing up, now down to 1051 reviews.
Once I get under 1000 it’ll feel a lot more manageable I think (hope).
Hopefully I’ll have enough energy to do some more studying on level 12 this evening and push the queue past the 1000 mark.
Slow and steady wins the race! I’m amazed at your dedication and how you keep relentlessly chipping away at that huge pile, so many people would just give up but not you. You can totally do this Once it gets down to 500 or 400, maybe it’ll be possible to just sprint down the home straight right to the finish line
Did some more reviews before hitting the sack. Now down to 810 reviews.
I’ll have plenty of time this weekend, so no excuses there! Tomorrow level 14-15 in the reviews and down to sub 500 in the review queue. Sunday level 16-17 and down to 0?
Best thing? I think I’m getting back in the ‘daily WK’ rhythm again.
Level 14 reviewed and a bunch more reviews done. 645 reviews left in the queue.
It’s also encouraging to see that even if I don’t ‘move up’ as many items as I used to, there’s still more items advancing to a higher level rather than back down towards apprentice.
Level 15 reviewed and 476 reviews left in the queue.
Technically there’s still some time before bed to do level 16 and do some reviews. deep breath will have to see if I can muster the energy for that.
– edit – level 16 radicals + kanji reviewed. Just the words now.
Wow I completely forgot nearly all of the lvl 16 kanji, they did come back fairly quickly though. (4 rounds of reviews)
– edit – level 16 vocabulary reviewed too.
Funny: I didn’t realize that the SSQ only selected the first visible page for review. Turns out I only did the first 100 words per level and not all of them. No wonder I kept coming across ones that I didn’t recall from my SSQ reviews and kept thinking they had to be from a higher level.
Down to 79 reviews in the queue. Chickened out before the level 17 items could drop. Will try to study those in the next hours and clear the review queue.
Did all my reviews, but the dreams of a 0/0 were dashed. I completely forgot that doing reviews eventually unlocks new stuff. Doing the level 17 items which all happened to be in Apprentice 4 now have me at 82/0
Now I’m back on the regular WK train, it’s time to check in again.
I’ll keep these short since I don’t like the pressure and upkeep that goes with writing up a detailed blog. I really admire the people who can, but it’s not for me.
UI change
I feared it would be a struggle, especially if many of the scripts would break. It has proven to be a mostly positive experience. The most important scripts didn’t break (self-study quiz and item inspector) Others will be updated, or are less needed with the new widgets.
Of course there’s some stuff that needs to be improved, but:
WK is very much usuable as it is
A lof of the complaints are noted and being worked on by the dev team judging by their reactions in the threads
Isn’t it awesome that WK receives active maintenance & development?
Previous Short Term Goals
WaniKani lvl 18 over halfway: Of course I didn’t manage the expected WK progress, but that’s OK. I’m back on track
Have fun with Japanese: I didn’t really stop having fun, so much as I took a break from it altogether. Now I’ve started it back up I feel like I’m having a lot more fun with it than I did before the break. IIRC I felt pretty overloaded with it all back then.
Start building my Gunpla: Wise of me to add an easy goal . I did start the gunpla project. I got close to finishing him too before the holiday. Only the final stap of the outer armour and acessories is left. I just haven’t picked it up after the holiday otherwise it’d be done by now.
Scan more Ghost in the Shell pages to extract frequency list. Nope. I’ll eventually get to it when I feel like it.
New Short Term Goals
WK level 19 started.
Spend any time in at least one thing beside WK:
MaruMori
Wagotabi
Tadoku graded readers
Manga
NHK Easy news
WK level 19 might seem ambitious, but I should level up to level 18 tonight. And I used to do these levels in a little over 8 days. So level 19 started should be achievable!
Seems like we are on the same pace! Let’s do our best!
Although I am taking some small delay (1/2days on purpose) because the reviews / lessons rythm was starting to get ROUGH
Just a little happy post to celebrate I’ve been doing well lately!
Level 19 very soon (like, less than 10 minutes soon)
Played a little more Wagotabi and ‘defeated’ one more boss. Take that Josh! not so 下手 now am I?！
Set up a Kitsun deck with my leeches. Still mostly fighting with the UI, but I kinda did it!
Listened to some Enka songs. I like them, and the lyrics are simple & easy to follow. So pretty much perfect for this level of Japanese learning
Watched one more episode of ‘Old Enough!’ on Netflix. Simple show that sends little kids on their first errand. I definitely am picking up on more and more Japanese words.
It’s been 2-3 weeks of making nice Excel sheets to track practice progress. But naturally, no actual practice. Yesterday I finally started the Self-Study Quiz practice and got through levels 1 & 2. I can already tell it’ll be rough because I remember maybe 70-80% from these easy levels.
Then again. Even after this long of a time I still remember 70-80%. That’s quite a lot actually. That has to be a good sign that the WK-system works and all my earlier effort was not for naught.
Once it gets down to 500 or 400, maybe it’ll be possible to just sprint down the home straight right to the finish line 
WaniKani lvl 18 over halfway: Of course I didn’t manage the expected WK progress, but that’s OK. I’m back on track 
Have fun with Japanese: I didn’t really stop having fun, so much as I took a break from it altogether. Now I’ve started it back up I feel like I’m having a lot more fun with it than I did before the break. IIRC I felt pretty overloaded with it all back then.
Start building my Gunpla: Wise of me to add an easy goal 
. I did start the gunpla project. I got close to finishing him too before the holiday. Only the final stap of the outer armour and acessories is left. I just haven’t picked it up after the holiday otherwise it’d be done by now.
