I reached level 3 some time ago (currently have kanji on 4th level) and with huge sadness I have to say it is the worst level so far. I read FAQ so I knew level 1 will be slow and boring, but then came level 2 and it was fun and there was something to do, it was great. But then comes time for level 3 and I’m bored. Yesterday I got maybe 40 reviews today I have 30. It’s a bit slow for me. I know that Apprentice on level 1 and 2 have shorter waiting periods, but I think that was good. I learned kanji and vocab quicker when I had to recall them sooner. I have hope that further levels offers more of everything.
And I get between 100 and 200 (and that’s going slowly at 20-30 days a level). If you go at max speed from the beginning you’ll be getting 350+ in six months time. Be patient, use the time to start learning grammar if you can.
It will ramp up. It’s a marathon and not a sprint.
Enjoy the quieter times, and use it to go study some Grammar - or research wanikani plugins to make your future studying easier
The speed is in part dependent on you, so you might be able to change some things. If you are, for example, reviewing once a day, then your Apprentice items will move up much more slowly than they can potentially be moving up. That will also delay when the second wave of kanji are unlocked or when you level up.
Many people end up burned out on reviews when they aim for high speeds. When starting out, it’s hard to really think about how gruelling it can be to do 100+ reviews a day, every single day, for about 2 years. There’s nothing wrong with a slow start, since it will be tough enough to get to 60 as it is.
I don’t know what your overall Japanese proficiency level is, but if you’re still a beginner, there is no need to wait around on WK to make you busy in terms of studying Japanese. You can’t use what you learn on WK if you don’t know grammar, so you can get started on that. There are a lot of kana-only words that WK doesn’t cover, so you can supplement by studying those.
There are very, very many learning resources to be found on this site and the internet as a whole, so the great things is that you only have to be as bored as you allow yourself to be. ^^
It’s only hell, if you make yourself wait for reviews to become available. When has watching the clock ever been fun?
Things to do in the meantime (assuming you’re solely in it for the kanji):
Pick up a book like Remembering the Kanji and browse through it to see what awaits you further down the road
Read some easy news articles on the NHK website and see how many kanji you recognize. If you find an article that interests you and want to learn all the kanji in it, then
look up unknown kanji on jisho and create yourself some flash cards, a notebook, a list,…
look up natively and search through graded reading material for reading practice of the kanji you already learned
As you see there’s tons of things you could already do to pass the time. Get creative!
In case you don’t understand how WK works, you’ll get thrown new Kanji when your radicals reach certain thresholds. If you are messing up, new material will come slower until you get the required amount of radicals and kanji correct enough times. This is a vastly simplified explanation of WK. There are some scripts that will speed up WK a bit but they’re a power meant to be used with great responsibility. Eventually it’ll just feel like an ocean of vocabulary and you’ll be wondering where the kanji are hiding and be excited to see them.
Depending on where you’re at in Japanese, you’ll have some things to do. Open up realkana or website of choice and practice speed at recognizing characters, do KaniWani and self study scripts, learn grammar, writing, and more. There is way more to this than just durtles and should keep you more than busy enough every day. Do your WK on a schedule, there is a pattern to this, it is not random. It’s just another part of study during your day.
It should really be pointed out that level 3 is a bit of an awkward anomaly that’s early enough that a typical user won’t have many reviews from prior levels.
Level
Radicals
Kanji
Vocab
Total
2
34
36
78
148
3
20
31
69
120
4
33
39
110
182
10
15
38
127
180
20
6
33
118
157
And while there have been discussions about this graph being a bit misleading, I think it more or less covers how WK feels in the long run
my personal workload history
My pace is 7-11 days per level for reference.
Read the guide if you haven’t already.
If you’re just that bored I’d like to suggest checking out something like the core 2k, JLPT N5/N4, or a katakana words deck in the meantime. It’s annoying without knowing the kanji beforehand, but the higher frequency words are definitely worth putting in the effort for.
