Doesn’t really matter if the word is common or not, it’s not the point. The point is teaching different readings.
AFAIK 80% of words learned here are really common.
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I get that but there is no need to learn いちもんじ to learn いち, もん, and じ.
These are all common readings of these kanji and contained in many other words.
Ofcourse there is, when it comes to 一文字 the reading is counterintuitive, which is then taught.
Early on you’re learning the reading ぶん , then there is 絵文字 . So it’s essentially to distinguish all the readings. Learning them in isolation wouldn’t do much really, would just be confusing and you’d learn the wrong readings of items since you’d just guess the readings and get them wrong.
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In the same level though they’re teaching 文字 already. I assume a very common word that has もん like 注文 will come up at some point soon. いちもんじ doesn’t add much value. That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. 
You rather prove the point since 文字 is more commonly read as もじ.
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I get a degree of wanting to prioritize the more common words sooner, but I’ll never relate to how people seem to swing all the way to thinking words are just not worth knowing ever. I think people really underestimate the average native passive vocabulary and the breadth of obscure weird vocab you’ll see in every piece of written Japanese.
I’m reading a basically slice of life Japanese visual novel, one that is (for the medium) written relatively straightforward and simply, and I still regularly come across words like 死屍累々 (ししるいるい), a yojijukugo meaning “heaps of corpses all around.” I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting that to be one of the first words you learn, but you never know when it’ll show up…
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What is the hurry to learn もん pronunciation? It’s such a rare pronunciation it can wait until there’s a useful word to learn.
Idk because you are dealing with the 文 kanji?
You’re reading too much into what I’m saying. I find it interesting to know but my problem with this particular word in WK is that it’s trying to burn this いちもんじ into me when I already know the word as ひともじ and it’s actually a word that’s useful and I use it regularly. At least WK doesn’t mark it wrong when I type that in.
The other problem with it, is that it’s teaching people that it means “straight line.” So some poor shmuck is going to try to use it that way and just get a bemused “huh?” in response.
That reminds me. Why do you suppose they teach 犬 as いぬ even though for almost all other kanji they start with the 音読み? けん is not unusual at all. Yes most people say しばいぬ but for other breeds it’s usually けん like あきたけん. Does WK eventually tell people about the other reading?
Yes, I just learned it for hunting dog. Ryouken
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Wanikani does this plenty of times, the one they start with is whatever they arbitrarily deem more useful at the time. Certainly not consistent but it is what it is.
In this specific example they’d almost certainly have to delay teaching that kanji too if they wanted to use けん, because there is likely no vocab with the currently taught kanji that it can attached to with that reading.
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That depends on who you ask actually. Some people seem to be a bit upset because of the choice and don’t study the vocabulary at all. I am in the opposing group so if you ask me the ratio of useful vocabulary is 100% 
Because I want to pass the Kanken 2kyuu at least that means I am also studying a lot of vocabulary for that purpose. Some of them are already covered in Wanikani but many not. For me it is not a question of useful or not. So far I could encounter almost every word somewhere in reality, some are rare of course. Really the question of useful or not (at least for the selection of Wanikani) is not really somethink to think about a lot. You need to learn the readings anyway.
For example I thought the selection got a bit strange around the middle levels, like エッフェル塔 eg. I was really surprised to find a lot of these in Godzilla 2014 Audio guide. Maybe this is a coincidence because I was not watching movies seriously (writing down the script) up to this point so I got the impression that the selection of words was based on that exact movie actually It might be, that once you start immersing seriously, a lot of rare vocabularies suddenly catch your attention that would have been ignored previously.
But, I have to admit that after a year on Waniani AND learning for the Kanken in parallel I was getting a bit tired of learning with SRS and I cheated in the last ten levels in order to get it done in a short time and be able to do some immersion as well. As a German native the mistake rate is too high otherwise and I would have ended up with too many reviews. I recommend to speed up the vocabulary part (like other people seems to do with scripts) and reinforce them later with immersion because otherwise they don’t stick well anyway. For example now after reaching level 60 I stopped cheating again and go through the words I haven’t remembered well until they are burned.
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They had no problem teaching 山 using ふじ山. They could also do that with something like あきた犬 or ばん犬.
Wishing you much luck, Nihon Scope. Like Amimononohitsuji, I wonder how I will lightly review WK after I finish… but teaching 60 is still much further off for me. (mostly for words I don’t come across “in the wild” in the future)
Anyway, I’m only posting because I like Tenugui’s comment about ばなな… because once I started “always thinking the wrong thing”, it actually started to sink into my brain as the “right thing”, and then started to entrench itself. And I even started to get confused like "wait, is this the one that I always think it’s ろうじん but it’s actual ろしん; it doI always wrongly think it’s ろしん, but it’s actually ろうじん etc… So I think it’s safer to be certain, or miss it on purpose and check, so that I don’t get the wrong one etched into my mind. I don’t know if you have trouble along those lines, but…
GOOD LUCK!!
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When I started cheating, I realized, that for these type of leeches it is really better to look it up a few times rather than putting in more energy into a loop like you explained.
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why reset lol. Why not just start consuming japanese content.
Think “A as in Apple”
The point is not for a whole bunch of people to complain that there are more common words than “apple” that could have been chosen. Sure. It’s just an example word, man, relax.
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I constantly am consuming Japanese content and working with my Japanese business partner.
It’s a daily thing having a business in Japan.
Thanks buddy,
No regrets so far going back through the basics.
And I know what you mean, I’m actually taking this time around to make sure things are solid on certain vocab and kanji that I honestly wasn’t as strong as I thought with.
I’ve discovered that my meme/story making abilities that I gained half way through WaniKani (last time around) have become so ridiculous good and fast now, I’m making new stories for these lower level kanjis and vocabs that I feel are much more solid than anything I got the first time around.
I feel in the end, I just know these Kanji at a deeper level now than I did when I hit level 60. I’ve not gotten anything wrong to date restarting, but there is a new understanding forming when I see them now. I also do reviews and studies elsewhere too so it’s not like I’ve abandoned reading at higher levels, but I’m noticing it really is making me feel much more at ease going through content.
I’m looking forward to later levels now to see how this continues.
But… with that said… I do recommend making your own (stories and memes) and don’t always rely on WKs versions. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good ones that Koichi did so I’m not saying discount all of them, just I found making your own really drills it deeper than trusting his sometimes… long windedness for the kanji/vocab… It becomes 2nd nature and you get really fast at it so it doesn’t slow things down that much at a certain point.
Best of luck with your journey moving forward!
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