Hey All,
I’m glad to be back, finally! Grad school got the best of me and pulled me away from WaniKani for a couples years and I just reset my account to level 1 from level 15.
Are there any low level WaniKani-ers that want to be accountability buddies?
And for everyone else, any advice on staying on track after resetting?
Yes and, if you would be so nice to explain what the heck with this levels haha i just got my account for join the book clubs, and i just realized everyone else has higher levels that now i just feel shy to be lvl 1 hahaha
Of course! The levels pretty much just teach you different kanji and once you get them right enough times you move up a level. The first 5ish levels are very, very slow, but the pace picks up pretty quickly after that. Don’t worry too much about what a person’s level is! This is a really great community and I haven’t seen any level shaming happen before.
Which book clubs are you thinking of joining?
I’m currently at the absolute beginner book club, feeling confident there, and then i also joined the beginner book club just because they are reading Frieren, and I really like it. Struggling on that one. Also I’m kind of lost with soooo many threads and post on this community so I check in often to explore this infinite world haha. Im currently restarting my study in japanese because Im planning to take the working holiday at japan for a year. I’m confident with N5 content and should be starting somehow N4 soon. What about you? 
Accountability partners is full of people in the lower levels, and there’s also the 0/0 challenge.
Yep, everyone here is generally very nice and open minded and smart enough to know that someone’s WK level =/= Japanese level. But @Fideosconqueso if you’re not doing Wanikani, there is an option to turn off your level display in the forums. People often do this to show that they’re not currently using Wanikani.
A working holiday in Japan sounds amazing! I’ve just barely started learning Japanese again. Before 2020 I was regularly taking lessons and working my way towards N5, but I had to quit my lessons when lockdown started. It’s been years since I took studying seriously, so I would consider myself a super-beginner right now.
Thank you! That’s really helpful!
We are kind of similar then, where are you from? I studied formally like… 10 years ago… 2 years in an academy, I was 15 years old, here in Argentina now Im finishing my degree, It’s been a long time since I have studied haha but that’s okay. I feel like what I learned always accompanied me through this years. I had the chance to speak japanese with people for 4 months or so between these years, and also I really try to listen when I watch anime and catch what they are saying. I invite you to join the Absolute Beginner Club! We just started to read a manga last saturday, you could get it too and read with us! Have you started studying again? If so, what are you doing? I have to finish a textbook I have but I am almost done (minna no nihongo), Im not sure what I will be doing next.
Edit: I’ll leave here the homethread of the bookclub ABBC
I came back this year after covid killed my routine (and my mental health) too.
I restructured my routine. This time I’m giving myself anything that would make it easier to do reviews/lessons. And I’ve been aiming to hit 0 lessons/reviews in the challenge thread here for each level. This means that if I can do 10 reviews in the bathroom before I jump in the shower, or in bed when I’m enjoying the feeling of warm blankets and don’t want to leave to my computer, then a mobile app is essential (I love Smouldering Durtles!)
Make wanikani.com your homepage on your browser, or even just take note of when current level kanji/radicals are back up for review so you’re aware that you should be checking back in. Anything to keep it in the daily rhythm.
I started slow with the Accountability thread. Then I wanted to keep doing more to push, so I made a study log and got into the Reading Every Day Challenge. For me, I get motivation from wanting to stay connected to others, so I come back to the forums often and read other people’s study logs and try to be relatively active.
The most important thing is that you’re paying attention to what works for you and trying to minimize pain points. The goal is to absorb the language and learn kanji/practice reading/speaking/listening/whatever.
Editing to mention: I think it was @simias who said recently that it’s better to know 2000 kanji mostly rather than 1000 kanji perfectly. I’m adopting this mindset too. I’d rather know 2000 kanji even if it might require me to take 2 or 3 guesses on 30% of them so I can move immersion forward faster, rather than take levels slowly and make sure I’m 100% solid on every kanji before leveling up.
Do you know that WaniKani is a kanji learning app? The majority of the forum folks are using the app. The level depends on how many kanji you learned in the wk app. And it’s displayed under the forum profile pic.
You can also hide the level number in the profile settings.
The color of the level circle also has a meaning:
Welcome back! I did the same thing earlier this year. Burned out a few years ago at level 20-ish, left Japanese and Wanikani completely, and reset to level 1 in December. Been slowly climbing since.
I love accountability buddies!
My study log is here if you want to follow my journey. I burned out because I did too much too fast. This time I do 10 lessons every day, no more, no less, and that’s more manageable. Slow, yes, but I will reach level 60 in July 2026. I would rather go slow than burn out again!
So if you tend to go too fast and burn out too, my best advice is to go slow from the beginning. It gets harder fast, and if you do too much in the beginning then it gets harder to slow down later. You’ll have a mountain of reviews chasing you for ever. Go slow, use the language, read, have fun, and don’t worry about the levels. You’ll get to level 60 eventually, and it’s better to have fun along the way!
I want to also emphasise that it’s totally fine to ignore the WK kanji app if the app isn’t something you want to use, and just participate in the forums – that’s what I do. The book clubs are great and they’re a big part of the reason why I’m here. (I turned off the level display on my forum profile icon.)
… And so can you, @Fideosconqueso, if you so desire. Head to your preferences, scroll down to “Flair”, and set it to “none”.
I’m from the US. I’ll look at the ABBC! I don’t know if I’ll participate with this round, but I might for the next book. I’m planning to go through the Genki textbook and see which chapters start to get hard to understand and go from there. Do you like the the minna no nihongo textbook?
I’ll definitely follow along your journey. I used to have a Study log… I might do the same thing you did and blur out the old stuff and start fresh!
Yes! I liked minna no nihongo for my n5 study but I think for N4 in the academy I used to go they use GENKI II.
Hey,
I was almost at 10 lvl, but I’ve noticed to have issues to remember well new kanjis. I kept returning to the same kanjis again and again (even if I assumed that I’ve finally remember them) as some of them were too similar, and I kept making bad guesses. Decided to reset my account and started from the scratch, again.
But this time:
So far so good. Instead of making success rate during review session at 60-70%, I have 95+%. The remaining 5% is due to typos.
It sounds like you have a good system going for yourself.