Finally grinded through it and it feels great!
I am finally reading manga and books (even deep Japanese financial and medical topics that interested me) without wondering hmmm would this be faster if I had wanikani’d these kanjis rather than individual lookups?
As I’m sure other lvl 60s would have experienced, I still look up the occasional kanji but it’s so much less frequent now that reading feels less of a grind and more of an immersive experience with some learning on top. New vocab lookups are a breeze now as I intuitively get the reading right most of the time for new compounds of known kanji, and even when not I can lookup the word much faster with the wrong readings but correct kanji rather than hand drawing or looking up by radicals which is slow and breaks immersion. The vocab sticks easier too now that I know the kanji.
This marks a major milestone in my Japanese language journey - I’ve been living in Tokyo for 3 years now and learning Japanese on and off for around 5 years, though it really only got serious after moving here. Tools used and finished:
- (Listening) Pimsleur Japanese - All 90 audio lessons, finished 4.5 ish years ago.
- (Grammar) Bunpo - Not Bunpro but the lighter / cheaper Bunpo Android app. Finished all lessons last year, working on the newly added test levels.
- (Reading) Wanikani finished - Continue until most / all burned.
- (Recall) Kaniwani - Added up to level 56, ~4500 burned, continue until most burned.
- (Writing) Skritter - Similar to Anki but focused on kanji writing and strokes. I used to use this for Chinese but the Japanese version is great too. More than halfway through all the available decks, then discovered Wanikani and paused to focus on reading with Wanikani and Kaniwani, intend to pick up again after. This was my primary SRS tool before moving to Japan but it’s a little weaker than Wanikani as you have to work on your own mnemonics.
- (Test) Got 132/180 on JLPT N3, failed N2 by 7 points, focus on passing N2 next.
- (Speaking) Got 50 hours of classes from my company with Berlitz when I first moved here, but mostly just speaking daily and using all Japanese services instead of living in the expat bubble made the vocab from WK/KW stick and get integrated into speech.
At this point I feel am fluent enough to do pretty much anything I want in Japanese or work in a pure Japanese environment (my current workplace is more English focused though I do use Japanese occasionally). The journey ahead is still long but I feel it’s more immersive and enjoyable than grinding. 頑張って fellow WKers!
. Also was kind of heads down focused on getting the kanji barrier out of the way but feel like I’ll have more time to contribute and look at other things through the community now.
thanks for sharing