My 1000th day on WaniKani

[username21]

Oh wow now we have the whole Cake category on the forum?
Not particularly a 60 lvl post though, but still a milestone I’d like to celebrate with the Community.

So, according to the Wanikani Heatmap script (hey thank you @Kumirei !), today is my 1000th day on WaniKani!

Looking back there on the entire timeline brings so much nostalgia for me.

Like, back then 1000 days ago at day 0 I was totally out of clue how to learn these kanjis and vocab. I didn’t know about Anki, nor Bunpro, neither Italki and just decided to give a try to WK.
Let alone, I could imagine in 1000 days I would be living here in Osaka after successful relocation, passing ridiculous border regulations, enrolling and graduating from language school in Tokyo and joining the biggest international company in my whole work experience that I could only dream to work in back there at home.
On my day 100 on 23 Apr 2020 I was still on lvl 6 and barely could figure out proper way to progress further. I didn’t join Community back there properly enough so all the timings were out of my knowledge and I didn’t have any learning schedule.
On my day 500 on 28 May 2021 I was full steam ahead to lvl 60! You can tell it by deep blue color of all days around it of the timeline above. I properly joined Community and hop into the amazing Let's climb Tokyo Skytree - level 60 in spring 2022 thread that was dragging me towards the top all the time. I still had to job, but now I had amazing partners to strive for the common goal.
I liked the idea of the thread and when I just joined it, I stated quite bold goal for myself back then. Let's climb Tokyo Skytree - level 60 in spring 2022 - #293 by username21

(hey, me 2 years ago! Guess where you would read your post in 2 years? I bet you won’t, but you did a great job, you lucky man!)

No, like really, I was lvl 11 back then and my progress was looking like this

So from my point of view it would be a miracle to somehow manage to make any tangible plan for reaching lvl 60 at the best. Let alone any expectations for a bigger life span.

Still, with some miraculous luck (guess I should not mention insane efforts alongside. Here we’re all fighting our best every day, right?), my destiny brought me to the 22 May 2022, an anniversary of the Skytree. Maybe I took the thread topic too serious, but it was pretty good aligning with my overall lifeplan, so I figured it won’t hurt to celebrate it a bit and make some nice memories? This is where my previous report’s going Let's climb Tokyo Skytree - level 60 in spring 2022 - #4047 by username21

I came to Japan this April. Ironically, this month is strongly associated here with the beginning of new life. New school term, new fiscal period, etc. So was it for me. Past 6 months could be short period if you look at the calendar, but for me it was totally like an isekai experience and living a new life from zero. Landing to the country I never been in before and that I know only by pictures, with just a single bag of stuff I could take along from my “previous” life - and then finding your place in this new life. Language school gave me perhaps the best college experience of all my previous learning history in school and uni. So it is now, when I living here in my current sharehouse in Osaka. Frankly, perhaps I haven’t met so many great people in… last decade? Two? My entire life?
All of this largely thanks to the language boost from WK.
And Community.
Really thank you all and good luck with your own climbing!

[username21]

Now I wonder what would be my 2,000th day? 5,000th one? 10,000th one? Hopefully, I manage to burn these pesky durtles by then… right?

[username21]

To bring some mood, lets add some photos. Everybody like pictures, right? And I really love my current location. Local Shinto shrine and the venue in front of it is amazing, I really like it’s night view.

I live at almost mountain’s base and this is how they look in the rainy day.

Perhaps, photo doesn’t reflect the atmosphere properly, but in person it looking turbo mysterious and giving 120% of Mononoke Hime vibes.

Ah, and did you know 100th Anniversary Comiket was this summer as well? It was.
It was just 200k attendees though due to Corona restrictions, so on the second photo you still can clearly see the floor, but for me attending it first time still was impressing and making super-duper happy.
If anybody of reading this knows me from the Skytree thread, perhaps you might remember me by the pfp. I love this artist (if anything, 佐倉おりこ tw / pxv) and managed to meet her in person there as well! Oh God, wish there was a way to share my overwhelming feelings to her. It was such a special day for me, yet such a regular day for her and me being such a regular visitor in her booth.

[TofuguNico]

Congrats on your 1000th day! It’s great to see all the progress you’ve made

Good luck on the rest of the your language learning journey

[username21]

Thank you! For kind words and great service. Perhaps, best $200 investment I ever made - covered it with the first payday.

[Musouka]

Congrats!

I am on my day 648 and I am in no way close to the big 60, haha!

I did an experiment where I did all the reviews and new lessons as soon as I could. I averaged 7.5 days/level but burnt out after 7 levels so I decided to only study in the morning. I managed to go the next level in 9.4 days but that is still tough since i had to do every single available item available at the time. Others areas of my life got compromised. I think I would just go to my previous easygoing lifestyle sooner than later

[Akashelia]

Loving to read a success story!! Big congrats!
Very interesting to see the stats too, looks like the reviews got pretty intense while you were leveling up, but still pretty consistent now. Are you going to use WK until everything is burned? If yes how many burns do you already have now?
Also how was it when you arrived to Japan, could you start speaking japanese with natives right away? And what about now, six months later?

[DIO-Berry]

That’s really awesome and amazing! Congratulations!

[Borutosdad]

So
Inspiring
So amazing to have moved to Osaka and be working in Japan!!

[username21]

@DIO-Berry @Borutosdad Thank you for your kind words!
@Musouka I didn’t say it was easy, right? Yes, it was turbo tough and I had to sacrifice other aspects of my life in order to keep the pace. Luckily it was Corona hype around the world, so technically overall opportunities around was pretty limited, but still. Literally, I just sacrificed around 14 months of my life (1 year +) just to WK. Before and after that I still dedicate a lot of time here too, but core 14 months were just WK, period. I literally just ate, slept and WKed. Sometimes WKed during sleeping and eating, because of review timings.

@Akashelia
Hey, thank you for your feedback! Great to know you liked it!

@Akashelia

Very interesting to see the stats too, looks like the reviews got pretty intense while you were leveling up, but still pretty consistent now. Are you going to use WK until everything is burned? If yes how many burns do you already have now?

Indeed, like I said to @Musouka , sore 14 months from Aug 2020 to Aug 2021 were pretty insane. There were days like this

(in text: 900+ reviews per day, maybe I hit 1000 some other day as well)

or like this

(in text: 100+ lessons per day)

And what is important for the language learning, is a regular practice. You can’t just hit the lvl60 and tell “yay, now I know JP!”. I mean, you can fool some strangers in the internet, but you can’t fool your brain that would just flush everything you invested in so much time.
So not only I’m keeping doing my reviews daily, but I keep moving burned items into my Anki. For certain reasons, WK doesn’t support unlimited time intervals. So it guarantee you 8 months of memorizing it’s items at best. I see the reason why it’s done this way, but it’s not enough for me, so I put a bit extra here as well.

Also yeah, keeping the streak is fun. Every morning it just reminds me to keeping my studies and not postponing it for tomorrow (because this tomorrowing never ends).

@Akashelia

Also how was it when you arrived to Japan, could you start speaking japanese with natives right away? And what about now, six months later?

Great question! It was challenging from the beginning, and it’s still challenging now. This is my way to learn new language - come to the country it’s using alone and start my journey. This way I kick-started my English skill, and so I did with Japanese.
After all, when you get into the language environment, you just have no choice but to speak it, right? If you can’t say a single word, you won’t even left an airport, nor be able to find your way anywhere, no housing, food, etc. So the amount you express yourself directly transforms into the quality of your life. No speak = no food, no housing, no experience.

(Aight, lets admit Japanese people speak English pretty enough to guide you out of airport, that was metaphor. But I have certain goals in my life that require native level of Japanese asap, so I’m not going to invest my own time and money into wasting my own language skills in exchange for some virtual sense of ease in the moment)

Now it’s still challenging. I have no difficulties to express myself, and Japanese people mostly kind enough to not pressing me with difficult terms - you literally feel they choosing the words! But the most challenging is hanging out with them when they’re talking with each other and I need to keep the pace of the talk. This is still the moment when I feel my skills still being a total garbage. Not to mention when you hang out with a merry kansai people speaking fast on the local dialect. Every time I’m just “Eh? What language is this?”
But I actually appreciate such moments, because I know this is the point I can improve and I see direction I can learn a lot. So every day I finish with just a long list of new words that I want to learn in my notes that I sort every morning and put them in my Anki.

(sorry for a late reply, unfortunately working life in Japan is not limited to sharing fun experience and talking with a fellow lvl60 climbers)

[Akashelia]

Thanks for the reply:D and “bonne continuation” as we say in French!

[Musouka]

Wow, I never had to do 900+ reviews on any day so far. I think the maximum study I have ever done was 350 (81 New and 269 reviews) in the middle of level 32. The maximum reviews I have ever done were 309. That day was hell.

I guess that is one of the reasons I want to take it slowly and spend a lot of time on the study section and the mnemonics. I am concerned about my retention ability going downhill if I power through it too fast. I try to keep my accuracy above 95% so not to redo reviews again, but I wonder if that’s counterintuitive.