Lvl 60 in 365 days!

[Tom94]

Hi there – so far I’ve only been lurking, but reaching lvl 60 after all this effort gives me enough motivation to post something at last.

I loved Japanese things ever since childhood. Starting with the various gaming consoles (N64 anyone?), then getting into anime and manga, and eventually even becoming a programmer for a Japan-based rhythm game (osu!, for those who know it). I traveled to Japan a handful of times, too, over the years!

Somehow, until about a year ago, I never considered actually learning the language. So… being a married 30 year old with a full time job and plenty of real-life obligations, I made the incredibly smart decision to learn Japanese full tilt. Starting from scratch with hiragana and katakana. Ouch.

But! Despite my newfound utter loss of leisure time, this turned out to be surprisingly fun! Not only were WK’s mnemonics & SRS system a revelation to me (I had never used Anki before, believe it or not), but as I learned more and more words, I was able to increasingly use other resources to learn the language.

Aside from WK, I went through the usual textbooks people recommend (the Genki and Quartet series in my case) and then, once those were done, discovered bunpro.jp, which, if you don’t already know it, is utterly amazing! The perfect companion to WK, with its sync features and all. At some point (probably around WK lvl 40 and BunPro N2), watching anime in Japanese became doable (very tough and slow, mind you, but doable). Strong recommendation for “Migaku” to turn anime into Anki cards, by the way.

Long story short: a couple days ago, I finally reached both WK lvl 60 and BunPro N1, almost exactly 365 days after I started learning Japanese. What a ride!

Watching anime or reading advanced text is still tough as nails. I’m far from fluent, and, despite intellectually knowing all the N1 grammar and some ~10000 words, I’m so incredibly slow at everything that I wouldn’t even pass the N2 if you made me take it… but! Speed will surely improve with time. I for one am looking forward to the review load decreasing, and immersion time going up.

Thanks for following along this rambly post

[trunklayer]

Congratulations!
Actually, double congratulations – one for reaching level 60 and one for managing not to post anything until then! That’s quite a feat!

[prath]

Congratulations!!! wow tackling both WK and Bunpro in one year is extremely impressive

[SakuraHanami120]

Congratulations!! It’s really amazing that you managed to do all this.
Also, I love Osu

[Akashelia]

Wow, quite impressive stats considering it’s not WK only! Well done and enjoy the world of immersion now! Maybe you will join us in a Book Club

[MichaelR]

Congrats! What N64 games are you going to play in Japanese now?

[Nafets]

Congratulations!
And thanks to Osu! I discovered My Chemical Romance as a teenager which had a lot of impact on my musical taste

[leqoe]

Wow, congrats!
Did you manage to complete Wanikani and Bunpro in a single year?

[simias]

Congrats! Honestly the bunpro feat is the most impressive for me, I went through N5 to N3 in about 9 months but then stalled after that. Too many of the grammar points became similar to existing ones with a subtle nuance. They just wouldn’t stick. Now I’m just slowly adding new points when I encounter them in the stuff I read.

[Tom94]

Thanks a bunch for the kind words, everyone! <3

@Akashelia

Maybe you will join us in a Book Club

I’d honestly love to, but I’m afraid the current pile of to-read manga, to-watch anime, to-play games, and to-read VNs is already so long that I’ll probably never get to it. But really appreciate the invite!

@MichaelR

Congrats! What N64 games are you going to play in Japanese now?

Errm, good question. Now that you say it, I don’t actually remember any particularly story-focused games I played as a kid on the N64. Not N64, but I’ve already gotten a bit into Dragon Quest 11 (really simple language and pretty fun) and will probably try FF7 remake afterwards (been saving this one).

@SakuraHanami120

Also, I love Osu

@Nafets

And thanks to Osu! I discovered My Chemical Romance as a teenager which had a lot of impact on my musical taste

So cool to see fellow osu! enjoyers around here!

[CarbuncleWishes]

Absolutely incredible, well done!
I know it’s no race, but I’ve been on Level 7 for two weeks haha. Can’t imagine what that kind of dedication and victory felt like but I’m excited to catch up.

What helped motivate you to study and work at it every day so consistently?

[scarrera]

That is insanely fast! Super envious of your results. Could you break down a bit more? How many hours did you put in a day? what was your average load when doing wanikani reviews? how many times a day did you review?

[Tom94]

In the last 2-3 months, with fast WK levels, 6 new bunpro grammar points per day, and a moderately sized anki deck… 5-6h each day? Definitely unsustainable – couple that with work, food, and the gym and there’s zero time left. I’m lucky that I’ve got a very understanding wife . And definitely would have been impossible if I had children.

In terms of items, on the WK side, the average must have been around ~300 reviews + 45 lessons a day. Bunpro added another ~100 daily review sentences, and then some ~100 anki reviews.

But! What’s much more important than crunching all those SRS systems as hard as possible is actual immersion. I don’t think I struck the balance right (I think I should have done way more immersion, but am not 100% sure), but I tried to at least squeeze in 1h of some combination of podcasts, anime, manga, or YT videos each day.

That said, the first 9 months of WK were much more chill. I started Genki around the same time as WK and simply did ~1 chapter of Genki each week on top of WK. (While pre-learning Genki vocab using Anki rather than relying on WK alone.) The average time spent per day was maybe 1-2h (if I managed to focus. Longer otherwise ) on weekdays and a slightly larger crunch on weekends? Daily WK review count was in the 100-200 range. On most days, I think it’s fine to do 2 review sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. But some days need 3 review sessions to lock in the 7-day level up cycle.

[Tom94]

Thanks! I’m honestly not sure… I like challenges, I like studying, and I like Japanese content, so I might have just gotten lucky in that I’m naturally drawn to these sorts of things.

Some days were really hard to push myself (like when I was sick, or on a fun vacation), but just the knowledge that I’m going to have to do twice the work the next day if I skip was usually enough to push me towards finishing most of everything before going to bed. During the mad dash to the finish line at the end, I would have literally been unable to catch up if I had skipped just one day due to the workload just being so immense… so that adds some extra motivation. (But there’s also always a nice feeling of accomplishment when pushing all SRS tools to 0/0. Or when having one of those rare days where you finish your reviews with 100% accuracy… very rare indeed )

[michaelgrant]

お疲れ様です！よくできました。短期間でこれほど多くのことを成し遂げたのは本当に素晴らしいですね！もちろん、学んだことを復習することをお勧めします。そして、その調子で頑張ってください！最高だ！