I didn’t plan for this to happen, but I got to level 60 on my birthday!
I really don’t know how to do this kind of thread but everyone else seems to do it so I feel some kind of compulsion to!
I suppose I’ll say how I got here.
One day when my brother was in high school, he brought home some VHS tapes of a Japanese language learning program from the school library with the intention of watching them to learn Japanese. He never did. He then forgot about them and left them in our VHS tape collection and didn’t return them to the library. Oh no!
Around July of 2017, I decided I would digitize our family VHS tapes before they perished and I ended up stumbling upon those Japanese VHS tapes. I had been interested in learning Japanese in order to follow musical artists that I had found through the Beatmania fan scene, so I took immediate interest. There were only a few episodes and they started far into the series, so I looked it up online and started watching them there, taking an immediate interest in learning the Japanese language that has yet to fade.
It was Irasshai! From what I can tell, it’s a very nice - if somewhat dated - introduction into Japanese. It covers basic grammar, phrases, vocabulary, how to read and write katakana and hiragana, and even some kanji. I’d recommend watching it if you’re just starting out. It’s very enjoyable, what with Tim Sensei’s silly antics. I watched it in it’s entirety.
After stumbling around on the internet looking for more resources, I found the WaniKani website and community and decided I would learn Kanji this way. The resources found on this website are great! I’m grateful for all of the advice and suggestions for further learning that other people have posted and contributed to this website.
I’ve enjoyed WaniKani. It’s not comprehensive certainly; you don’t learn every reading for all kanji, nor do you learn some common words that do use the kanji you learn, but it seems like it covers a lot. I’m having fun reading tweets from Japanese speaking artists and musicians. I can’t understand very complicated speech yet, but that may be partly my fault. Due to the time demands of WaniKani and me having a full-time job, It’s difficult for me to find time to study other things. So, while I have a very advanced knowledge of Kanji, I’m sitting more at an N4 level of grammar and my vocabulary is rather low. I did have enough time to make it through both Genki textbooks pretty early on though. Now I’m reading up on grammar on Imabi and drilling those grammar points on Bunpro. I’m hoping to continue learning words through the 10K common vocabulary pack on Kitsun and the WaniKani Expansion Pack on Memrise.
I don’t really know what to say here! I’ll put some technical stuff down here I guess.
Start date: November 05, 2017
Level 60: April 26, 2019
Total time: 537 Days
Used and Suggested Scripts:
WaniKani Open Framework
WaniKani Ultimate Timeline
WaniKani Golden Burn
Shin WaniKani Leech Trainer
WaniKani Heatmap
WaniKani: Progress Percentages
WaniKani Additional Resource Links + Stroke Order
WaniKani Real Numbers
WaniKani Reorder Ultimate 2
WaniKani Progress Plus
WaniKani Level Breakdown
WaniKani KeiSei Phonetic-Semantic Composition
Jitai
WaniKani Show Specific SRS Level In Reviews
WaniKani Pitch Info
Pictures:
Cats:
welcome aboard!
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