Hey everyone! It’s been 680 days according to wkstats, and I just now did my very last two lessons. It’s been quite the journey, but I made it through without any resetting or vacation mode or userscripts. Just the raw wanikani experience from start to finish. I basically started wanikani at the very very beginning of me learning Japanese, and now I’m watching videos and playing games and reading manga all in Japanese. I can’t overstate how awesome wanikani has been for me in terms of my reading ability!
I’ll probably keep up with my reviews, at least for a while, so the journey isn’t quite over yet. But I’m very excited to have more time to spend actually using all this knowledge. I remember seeing level 60 posts here when I first started and couldn’t even fathom how long it would take to make it here, but here I am! Just take things one day at a time, and try to enjoy the process! 頑張ってね！
Dude that’s awesome! Congrats on making it that far! How many kanji would you say you reliably know now? And out of curiosity, are you also able to write some/most/all of them? I know wanikani focuses on just the reading part so I’m interested in knowing if you managed to learn to write as well somehow
Thanks!! I’m pretty terrible with ballparking things like that, since I don’t really try to measure my progress with numbers. I’d say probably 95% or so of the wanikani kanji I reliably know, with a handful of them that I either burned ages ago and probably forgot again or ones that I often mix up making up that last 5%. I pretty much always recognize a kanji as being one I’ve seen in wanikani, though. Outside of wanikani, there probably aren’t all that many kanji that I’d say I have “reliably learned” - when reading, I really haven’t been making note of kanji I didn’t know. I’d look up the meanings of words I didn’t recognize as they came up, but I figured adding more self-study kanji on my plate when I already do so many wanikani reviews a day was too much. Now that I’m done, I’ll focus on those other kanji in words I encounter while reading! I guess that puts my reliably-known kanji number somewhere around 2000 or a bit higher.
I definitely can’t write all of them, though. Early on, before I had that many reviews to do every day, I was practicing writing. I can still write all the kana with proper stroke order, and most of the kanji from the earliest levels. It quickly became obvious that if I wanted to do any reading or listening practice I would have to choose between that or writing practice, so I dropped the writing. It’s not really a priority of mine, so I’m not sure if I’m going to pick that up any time soon. There’s a ton of vocab out there I want to focus on, since reading, listening, and speaking are way way more important to me than writing!
おめでとう！ It’s awesome to hear that while you were leveling up, that you were also enjoying the things that you actually want to do with your Japanese ability. I love hearing about that!!
I’m also glad you can spend less time with us and doing more of the things you love to do. They grow up so fast! Here is your cake!
Can you expand a bit on your routine for completing all of wanikani in 2 years? How often would you review? What was your daily average amount? Did you use a textbook as well? which? did you take lessons? It would make these “I reached level 60 posts” more helpful
Here is your cake!
