Level 60 in just under two years

I just put the last set of kanji into Guru! It took me 716 days, generally taking about ten days for each level. I’m going to take my time burning as many items as I can but am definitely looking forward other kinds of language practice to take up more of my time, as I put what I learned here to good use. My ultimate interest, probably not a career ambition but a source of intellectual curiosity, is literary translation, so that’s what I’ll be focusing on.

As you can see, I really struggled with the teens, this was a reflection of my living circumstances at that time, which made focusing on actually learning the new items properly quite difficult. Otherwise, I kept a broadly consistent pace, which I’m quite happy with. I tried to give myself plenty of time to do vocab and radicals even when those weren’t required to get a clearing number of kanji for that level, so that was an active choice to slow down that I could have foregone, but I decided not to.

It feels very strange, and actually quite melancholy. For two years Wanikani has been the main thing giving structure to my studies of Japanese - I read through Genki and have Quartet sitting on my bookshelf, but the gameplay loop of Wanikani was compelling enough to win out over textbook exercises. Now I’m beginning to move beyond that structure. Theoretically this was always the point, but there’s also something sad about it. I’m at the top of all the WKStats charts, where I know much (~75% of the kanji in the novels and VNs I’m looking at, according to JPDB.io) of what I’ll find in books, on Twitter, in the news, and while the world of adult literacy in Japanese is opening up to me, the little world I’ve been ensconced in for two years is something I’m going to be leaving behind soon. Wherever my language journey takes me next will be without familiar guidance, and might well be a much lonelier path.

35 Likes

Do you have any advice for us? I’m currently leveling about every 8-10 days.

1 Like

I mean, with regard to pace you’re about the same as me, although it will get harder as you accumulate more reviews.

If I could make some recommendations about habit building, I’d say to try and do reviews or add new things a couple of times a day, distributed throughout the day. My best times were when I was doing fifty reviews or ten new items in the morning, at lunch, just after work and just before bed. My worst times were at my least disciplined, when I’d not do much until just before bed, and so I’d get hundreds of new reviews through at about ten at night. Having that big number sitting there made practice seem much more intimidating.

4 Likes

Congratulations! I am going at about the same pace as you. I must say that there have been a few moments recently where I’ve gotten pretty sick of Wanikani :laughing: I’m looking forward to getting it finished and moving on with life.

My advice is to finish all reviews every day no matter what.

3 Likes

I’d take it even further than this and say that, ideally, there should be at least two points in your day where you have your reviews finished. If you plan well you can get an even enough flow of reviews coming through that finishing them out is never too big of an undertaking. There were definitely times where I had three or four hundred reviews waiting for me and the few times it happened were horrible - don’t be like me!

4 Likes

Where can I find these stats about my account?
Would be of great help :slight_smile:

1 Like

There’s an external site called WKStats. You’ll need to feed it an API key that will allow it to read data about how your account is handling things, but it contains all sorts of data about your progress, as well as data that puts your progress into perspective.

1 Like

Funny you mentioned the melancholy - I felt exactly the same. Doing the remaining reviews now but it’s not the same now that the whole ‘next level rush’ is gone :slight_smile: I’m still trying to find some new structure in my daily Japanese studies.

Congrats with the 60!

5 Likes

That’s great!

^ This is what keeps me moving forward… I know it will be a long slog, but it will pay off.

1 Like

Those first 3 are the last short levels you’ll see for the next 40 levels.

1 Like

I can’t wait to be at this level. I’m moving to Japan in 6 months, so hopefully I’ll know at least enough to get by by then. My plan is to speed level for now, 7 days per level, since I have the time to do so.

5 Likes

When the reviews dropped from 100s per day to 100 a week, I never knew such bliss

6 Likes

Big congrats! :tada:

2 Likes

How often do you practice on wanikani? Can you give more details on your process?