:durtle_hello: Let's Durtle the Scenic Route 🐢

[BoppingB]

Finally reached level 15 after 1 month and 6 days! Little victories, and welcoming 158 lessons (haven’t been doing new lessons for the past week, so they have pilled up…whoops!).

[zyavaranah]

Hello there I guess i am quite durtling around (the long break on level 7 was due to mental health issues But after psych ward im back on track, though i plan on enjoying the ride slowly with ~50 apprentice items)

[alygator]

@BoppingB

Finally reached level 15 after 1 month and 6 days! Little victories, and welcoming 158 lessons (haven’t been doing new lessons for the past week, so they have pilled up…whoops!).

@BoppingB I just reached level 15 a couple days ago as well, so congratulations to us! I enjoyed the GIF that WK sent through email so I’m sharing it here too!

@fallynleaf

My biggest update is that I finished writing a short guide for learning Japanese with a pro wrestling focus! The guide has taken off a lot more than I expected. I shared it on twitter and then on reddit (pro wrestling reddit and not a language learning subreddit), and quite a few people have thanked me for writing it!

I had a look through it and great job! @fallynleaf That’s a lot of material and references you collected! I’m not too big a fan of pro-wrestling but always amazed how they don’t actually injure themselves while doing the stunts.

@zyavaranah

Hello there I guess i am quite durtling around

@zyavaranah Why hello there! And welcome to the scenic route!

[quilltips]

@zyavaranah

i plan on enjoying the ride slowly with ~50 apprentice items

Welcome welcome! That’s a good trick, I’ve used that before. It definitely helps cut down on the “oh no, what have I done?” review spikes.

@alygator and @BoppingB, congrats on the level ups!

[wct]

Welcome back! Yay, you did it! Congratulations on venturing forth once again on your fun, enriching, and pleasant learning journey!

Our mental health is very important – equal to our physical health, IMHO – and I empathize with you. I have my own conditions, too, and I know how they affect my own ability to stay focused on studying Japanese and sticking with WK reviews.

For me, this ‘Durtling the Scenic Route’ thread was just the right place for me, after I had decided I really needed to take things slow (to avoid burn out) but still wanted to make steady progress. I hope you find some benefit and support here also!

Cheers!

[wct]

@alygator

I had a look through it and great job! @fallynleaf That’s a lot of material and references you collected!

I read it too, after this comment, and it is a really good ‘head start’ guide to learning Japanese – for anyone, not just pro wrestling fans, but the fact that it does have a ‘specialization’ in mind means that it also provides tips for anyone who wants to learn Japanese in the context of their own specialization!

I hadn’t thought of that possibility until I read it, but after reading it, I think it makes it an exceptional guide for anyone who wants to learn Japanese in the context of having a specific interest, hobby, or field of study.

You may not use the specific pro-wres related links/resources, but the guide describes the reasoning and process behind finding and using these resources, so you can easily adapt that advice to finding and using your own specialized resources.

Great job, @fallynleaf !

[fallynleaf]

Thank you (and @alygator, too!) for such nice comments!!

My target audience, so to speak, is a demographic of people that are pretty heavy users of machine translation, so I wanted to do what I could to make learning Japanese feel actually achievable to that group of people by laying out concrete steps that they could take so that navigating Japanese doesn’t have to be just a dichotomy between “copying and pasting into DeepL” and “reading Japanese fluently”.

My theory is that people who start learning these tricks and see massive increases in comprehension from them (compared to just sticking it in DeepL and calling it a day) will be more likely to keep working on the language in pursuit of deeper understanding. I think there are a lot of people who say “I want to learn Japanese”, but who feel just so utterly overwhelmed by the size of that task, they never actually get off the ground.

And, well, since I am by most fans’ accounts, a success story (even though I’m still far from where I want to be, personally ), I thought people might be encouraged by how far I’ve been able to get, and realize that reaching even just my level is actually more achievable than they think!

I’m really glad that it’s applicable beyond wrestling, though! I think more people learning Japanese for a specific hobby or interest should write about their experiences, because I bet you’re not the only one wanting to learn the language for that reason! One thing that the WK forum has taught me is the value of community support in language learning, and just the importance of the thought that you’re not doing this alone.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in worrying about trying to find the one perfect method or strategy for learning, when really all we need is “good enough”, and, well, I certainly can’t write a perfect guide, but I can write about a strategy that has been good enough!

Funnily enough, I feel like the path to learning Japanese is similar in length to the path to becoming a skilled wrestler, haha. In Japanese wrestling, rookies typically lose most or all of their matches for the first year or two of their career, then start picking up bigger and bigger wins, then eventually get far enough along that they can stand toe-to-toe with the veterans who’ve been doing this for years. I had some thoughts about including this metaphor in the guide, but couldn’t quite figure out how to work it in without shoehorning it in, haha. It is a reassuring thought to me, though. It’s a good reminder that this is a skill that takes time and practice, and you’ll grow with gradual, continual improvement. As much as you might want to, you can’t just skip the rookie phase and beat main eventers right out of the gate!

[anon8761785]

well said!

going to check out your guide myself- one of my new year’s resolutions is to have more resources/structure for studying Japanese

[hlbrown]

Finally off level 34 after 55 days. It will be very nice going into the new year without that one hanging over me. I don’t think the level in itself was actually too bad, it was more I was ill during it which caused a bit of a pile-up and I think a lot of my piled up kanji from breaks earlier in the year also ended up hitting around this time as well. Even using vacation mode when I’m away seems to totally throw me out.

[sudgy]

While I was going a little fast for this thread at first, I think I can safely say I’m doing the scenic route now:

[zyavaranah]

got to level 9, kinda overwhelemed by new lessons amount >120. Guess im gonna take it super slow

[wct]

Yay! Level 9! You did it!

( I often feel that it is perhaps ‘silly’ to cheer for every little success, but doing just that has actually helped me so much in the past few years to overcome dread and burnout, and bring joy back into my life – I hope you don’t mind me cheering you on, sincerely.)

Regarding large number of lessons: I no longer look at a large number of lessons as any sort of ‘challenge’ or ‘burden’ or anything like that, because now for me they simply mean that I have a ‘supply’ of ‘more new daily-reviews I can add’ if/when my number of daily reviews gets too low!

It’s like groceries or cooking ingredients or something. When I have lots, that’s good. That means I can keep on with my daily meals no problem. If I get ‘hungry’, I can just use up a few ‘ingredients’ from my pantry, ‘cook them up’, and then store the cooked food in my ‘refrigerator’.

It’s really my # of daily reviews that I am paying the most attention to: Is it too much (feeling overwhelm)? Is it too little (not enough to fill up my daily review time)?

And then, looking ahead at the Review Forecast on the dashboard page: Are there some ‘slow days’ coming up (maybe want to add some new Apprentice1 items to ‘fill in’ those upcoming gaps)? Are there some ‘heavy days’ coming up (maybe I’ll just hold off on the new lessons to ‘smooth out’ those bumps)?

Or, maybe another metaphor might be having a big pile of logs for a big campfire/bonfire. If the fire’s too hot, just stop putting new logs on it. If it’s starting to die down, add a couple logs to it. Don’t add too many logs all at once, or the fire might start burning them all and going out of control. Then again, it’s nice to have a cozy warm fire, so keep adding a few on a regular basis to keep the temperature just right!

The nice thing is that you don’t really ever have to worry about running out of logs/groceries. Just keep doing the reviews, and eventually (however long it takes, at whatever pace you can manage nicely) you will get all your current reviews to Guru level and then advance to the next level, and WaniKani will ‘deliver’ your next run of groceries, or next load of firewood, automatically.

[Karakayn]

Hi ! I think I will try to join here !

I have totally lost my routine because of - the life + insert a good enough excuse here-
And it’s VERY hard to try to get it back for me now…

As you can see I was always slow, but somehow consistent. My only objective now is to get back all my items in a decent way, and, one day reach level 22 !

I could rush here and finish the level, but first I want to get rid of all the vocab and old kanji that haunt me forever. (I did 0/0 each level, but for my defense WK add some vocabulary since one or two year…)

[zyavaranah]

I just cannot seem to go 0/0 each level. i wonder if i should push lessons more or just stay ~50 apprentice. Seems to be nice pace with 9-10 days per level.

[whinette]

Don’t push lessons, it will be more and more reviews later on.
Don’t under estimate the future pressure of it.

[hlbrown]

If you’ve got a good pace that works for you stick with it. As @whinette says more lessons will be more reviews later on. 0/0 is nice if/when it happens, but maintaining a steady pace with high accuracy will probably make it a lot easier further down the line.

[sudgy]

I manage to get 0/0 with just 5-10 lessons a day by reordering to do the level’s vocab first.

[wct]

@zyavaranah

I just cannot seem to go 0/0 each level. i wonder if i should push lessons more or just stay ~50 apprentice. Seems to be nice pace with 9-10 days per level.

Personally, I don’t follow the 0/0 challenge anymore. Especially not in the lessons department. (Well, neither in the reviews department, actually – although I do try to keep reviews from building up – I only keep a small ‘deck’ of reviews from day to day to help ‘shuffle’ the review items a bit better. But out of the two, lessons or reviews, if I had to pick one to keep at 0 every day, it would definitely be keeping reviews down to 0.)

Keeping both at 0/0 at least once per level is I think a good heuristic for people who are trying to be ‘efficient’ with their time spent on WK and are at least a little bit concerned with ‘going fast’, but don’t want to get overloaded in the process. But since I’m more focused on sustainability than efficiency, the 0/0 heuristic is just extra self-imposed pressure that I don’t really want or need, so I don’t bother with it anymore.

Perhaps/probably, there are other big reasons, such as that some people – again, tends to be those who feel an impulse to ‘go fast’ – have a habit of skipping vocab lessons from their ‘current’ level and going straight into the Radicals and Kanji for their ‘next’ level. Perhaps with the perception that “vocab is boring or a chore; want new stuff!”. What tends to happen then is that the amount of vocab lessons builds up more and more and pretty soon it becomes a huge pile that seems even more boring and like a dreaded chore.

If something like this is causing your pile of lessons to grow bigger and bigger, I might suggest trying out the built-in WaniKani feature of adjusting your Lesson Ordering to something different, such as “Ascending level then shuffled”, which is what I use. You can accomplish the same thing (or more advanced) with scripts/plugins, but personally I just like to keep things simple so I just use the built-in lesson-ordering feature. [@sudgy: You might also want to try this setting, or adjust your reorder script to the equivalent. Just an idea! ]

I wrote earlier in this thread how I use that feature: How to use: Settings > App > Lesson ordering > Ascending level then shuffled

@wct

If you go into the User menu on the main site (your icon in the upper right corner), and then select Settings > App, among the various settings there is one called Lesson ordering. If you change it to Ascending level then shuffled, I personally think that’s the ‘best’ basic setting (without requiring any plugins/addons) for Durtling the Scenic Route. Here’s why I think that:

• With the default ordering, “Ascending level then subject”, you’ll get all your radicals first, then all your kanji, and finally all your vocabulary. This puts you ‘on the clock’ too quickly, IMHO, so that all of your radicals and kanjis will get guru’d too quickly, causing you to advance ‘too quickly’ or at a ‘forced pace’ so to speak. Plus it leaves you with a huge pile of vocab at the end. Blech!
• With the raw “Shuffled” setting, you’ll not only get your current level items mixed in, but also new items if you’ve just leveled up. This can potentially make completely finishing off earlier levels take longer, risking taking on too many new items before you’ve finished old ones, which I think is kind of antithetical to durtling the ‘scenic route’. What’s the rush?
• With “Ascending level then shuffled”, it’s kind of like the best of both worlds.
  • Whenever you advance to a new level, it will automatically keep all your current-level lessons at the front of the queue, so that you don’t have to think about “Oh, I should finish my current level before moving on to the next level”, or having some plugin/addon to handle that for you. It’s built right into the site as is.
  • But also, since it shuffles the lessons for the current level, you’re just as likely to get your already-unlocked vocab lessons before new radicals and kanjis, so that you are steadily working away at the existing pile of vocabs during your progression (unlocking new items) on each level. That way, when you advance to a new level, you don’t have such a big pile of vocab waiting for you to finish off: You’ve already done most of them! Yay! The ‘pressure’ of a) having all your radicals and kanjis guru’ing too quickly and b) having a big pile of vocab waiting for you at the end of each level , is gone! Instead you can celebrate your successful level and move on smoothly to the next one at a gentle pace.

The key point here is that you will always only get the lessons in order of increasing levels – so take your time with those and work through them; don’t try to skip ahead to the next level’s radicals/kanji – but at the same time, your vocab items will be mixed in with all your other items, so they won’t feel like a big chore at the end of each level.

Hope that idea is on the right track for you. Let me know if I’m misunderstanding.

[wct]

@Karakayn

I could rush here and finish the level, but first I want to get rid of all the vocab and old kanji that haunt me forever.

One possibility to consider is resetting to a previous level to wipe out the massive pile of haunting/leeching vocab/kanji and restart at a level where you still feel confident. I had a similar situation not too long ago and wrote a post describing how I decided to reset (or not, but in my case, I chose to): After a long absence, I reset (to level 7), and I’m glad I did

Something to consider: It might actually end up taking you less time to reset to a certain level and follow the WK levels in order again, than to try to wrestle with dozens or hundreds of items from different levels all kind of randomly floating around in your review backlog. Even better: It might make doing WK a lot more fun/enjoyable again!

But not everyone will agree, so this is just a suggestion to consider the possibility. In the end, do what’s best for yourself, of course.

[fallynleaf]

@zyavaranah

I just cannot seem to go 0/0 each level. i wonder if i should push lessons more or just stay ~50 apprentice. Seems to be nice pace with 9-10 days per level.

I left 0/0 behind somewhere back around level 4 . I just focus on zeroing my reviews every day; that’s what’s most important. The only reason to make sure you zero out your lessons each level would be if you’re using a reorder script to go extremely fast. There’s a risk there of letting vocab lessons pile up too much, because kanji are all you need to level up. But if you’re using a reorder script responsibly, or aren’t using one at all, there’s no need to reach zero lessons. If you do a consistent number of daily lessons with WK’s vanilla order, you might never naturally reach zero lessons until the very end.

I agree with @wct in that I actually like having a lesson backlog, haha. I cultivate it very carefully so that I always have work to do every day .