Level 60 - A Year of Speed

WaniKani Level 60 Celebration
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I made it to level 60 in 358 days! I don’t usually talk so much, but since it’s a special occasion…

Why am I learning Japanese?

I’ve always had a bit of an interest in Japan and I knew the language was very difficult to learn, and so a few years ago I got curious enough to look into it all.
I figured I’d learn about it until I got bored, but that never really happened.

I kinda just picked it up on a whim and stuck around because I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would.

Why so fast?

I didn’t start WK with the idea of going fast all the way. I found the early levels way too slow and easy given I’d already learned most of the earliest WK kanji before I started, so naturally I thought I’d go fast for a while.

There were times I felt it was a bit much but I figured it’d be a shame to slow down after going full speed for so long, so I just stuck with it. I regret nothing.

It also helps that I’ve had a lot of free time this year due to being sick. It’s nothing terribly serious, and I have mostly recovered now. I suppose another good reason I went so fast was to free up next year. I plan to be very busy to make up for some lost time.

Plans for the future

Gonna figure it out as I go, but I’d like to start practicing output, since I haven’t really done that at all so far. Probably also start doing the occasional Bunpro lesson again, which I had to stop because WK was becoming too much.

Hopefully also find some more Japanese content to enjoy, maybe read through another VN/LN, though I am struggling to find anything that really interests me right now, unfortunately.

Any tips?

Read the ultimate guide. It’ll cover everything you need, really.

Beyond that, I’d like to say the self-study script has been very useful for kanji drills. It’s helped me a lot with keeping kanji in my head, especially in the fast levels where there’s so much kanji to learn.

The vocab lessons have also been very helpful in memorizing kanji, don’t skip those!

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Thanks for reading, and thanks for being you. I’ve enjoyed reading through the forums a lot the past year, though I haven’t spoken much.

I’ll still be doing my reviews and reading the forums. If anyone has questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

And yes, I could have gotten the yearly subscription… But I never did plan to finish this in a year. I’d say the crabigator has earned the money anyway. Thanks WaniKani team.

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Woo hoo!! Congratulations :partying_face:

That consistency in the level-up charts is really pleasing to see.

I hope you’re able to find some interesting light novels or the like soon! I’m sure there’s plenty of suggestions in here if you search.

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I know there’s something I’ll like out there. Just have to look more. Hadn’t even thought to look around the forums for it, actually. Thanks!

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Congratulations! Any plans to get a cake?

Also, I’m really surprised how you managed to keep your accuracy rate so high

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Thanks! Me and sugar never got along I’m afraid.

I always do extra drills for each item a couple hours after I first learn an item, especially kanji. Hence the accuracy. It’s helped a lot with memorizing long-term, I feel.

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Bloody hell, that is some serious speed and accuracy. Super impressive, and I love the alignment for the level ups on the heatmap :stuck_out_tongue:

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huge congrats! I was always trying to keep pace with you on the race thread since I saw we started WK on the same day in january haha. I think I noticed you starting to pull ahead around the thirties. seriously impressed that you kept your pace the whole year!!

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Ah yeah, I remember you, we got into the hell levels around the same time. Glad to see you’re still around. And I appreciate that, thank you!

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速い！:flushed: You looked at ‘learn 2000 kanji and 6000 vocabulary words in just over a year’ and you laughed in its face! Great work, you get my favorite cake GIF for this one!!

cakechop

-Nick at WK

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How the hell did you manage this? Do you do reviews as soon as they become available every hour or something? Surely you must have been doing at least like 4 or 5 review sessions a day…

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IIRC, this is just one day more than the max theoretical speed. Absolutely insane.

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congrats! that is insane breakneck pace. i started just a handful of weeks after you for comparison, to see what taking it slow looks like.
couple questions,
1)How much Japanese experience did you have going into Wanikani?
2) How is your reading comprehension now on things like manga/novels/news articles?

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Wow, dude! Congrats. Did you have a life outside WaniKani? :wink:

P.S. I don’t like the way the WaniKani ads on the more recent Tofugu podcasts say you can reach Level 60 in a little over a year. Yeah, if you sacrifice other things in your life. The older ads with Koichi and Michael at the helm were far more realistic saying that people who finished in a year were outliers and that a more typical usage was something like 3 years.

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Rather than doing it as soon as I can, I did my reviews at the same time everyday. Sometimes an hour early or late. I did reviews up to 4 times if I did lessons that day, or 2 times if I didn’t.

The fastest time level 60 has been reached was actually 344 days, believe it or not. Pretty crazy.

  1. A little bit. Before this I had been using Duolingo for a couple years. Wouldn’t recommend it, but it did give me my start. A grammar article here and there. I’ve learned a lot more in 2022 than I had before.
  2. I’d say my reading comprehension is pretty good. Comfortable for me, anyway. I do have to consult a dictionary often, but knowing kanji has certainly made looking up words much easier. I’ve also been using BunPro the last year, which has been very useful.

Japanese starts making a lot more sense once you start engaging with native content. It is very difficult to start, but it gets easier for sure, if you keep at it. I wouldn’t worry about going fast on WK, reading will probably be more helpful, especially once you complete the first 20-30 levels.

I didn’t have to sacrifice anything for this, most days I spend 30-60 minutes on WK. The fast levels were a bit tougher, maybe 1-2.5 hours a day. Still plenty of time for other things. I do agree saying you can learn 2k kanji in a year is a bit dishonest, given how rare it is. It is doable though.

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That accuracy is incredibly impressive! Were there any scripts you used on your way up to 60?

Amazing achievement, well done :smiley:

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Congratulations! Thanks for the links. I hope to follow in your footsteps. :slight_smile:

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Thank you! I did use several scripts. There are 4 that helped my accuracy specifically.

  1. Self-Study Quiz
  2. Keisei Semantic-Phonetic Composition
  3. Confusion Guesser
  4. Rendaku Information

There are plenty more useful scripts listed in the ultimate guide if you’re interested.

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Thank you for sharing those script recommendations. I’ve just installed all four.

[Edit] Wow, I’m liking the Self Study Quiz script!

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Giving a few of these a go, the confusion guesser seems super helpful :slight_smile:

Thank you!

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Hope you both find them useful, good luck in your studies!

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