My Journey of 368 days (+ The Ultimate Guide for WK šŸ“– )

I was summoned.

Iā€™m not the only one who came here with that level, by the way. I know @SyncroPC also joined at a level >N1 (I donā€™t know if they have the actual piece of paper).
And also yes, Iā€™ve been enjoying the ride. It really helped to hunt down some weakness I still had, hiding in my kanji/vocab knowledge. For me, it was worth it, especially with the discount on lifetime (which should come around soonish, by the way)

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Thank you for taking the time to reply to me in such detail! :blush:

Thanks for the link! Iā€™ve read some about that before, but it was a pretty fun read. :slight_smile: all that turtle talk and burning of the kanji/vocab makes more sense now!

Perfect! :smile: what more can one ask of in their studies. How are you continuing them, if you donā€™t mind my curiosity?

Yeah, I know about 500 kanji by sight and meaning, but only know the roughly 300 N4 kanji with reading. Thank you for the estimation. Iā€™m guessing lvl 16 should be comfortably doable in 3 months or so~

Right?? :turtle::grin:

Thanks for dropping nameā€™s and info! That sure sounds like the kind of experience Iā€™d like to have, too! Very encouraging!

Thank you for your time and effort, and most of all your kind words! I shall look through the forum some more these next days!

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Thatā€™s quite the effective summon! :wink:

Thank you for sharing your experiences with me! I truly appreciate it.

Well, I do like discounts! :dollar: so it will come around sometime around the new year, Iā€™m guessing? That is very good to know!

Thanks again, I appreciate the extra information! Itā€™s gonna help with the decision making! :smile:

Since my first post, Iā€™ve also happened upon the reform thatā€™s in the works here. Looks like itā€™s not a bad time to start WK.

Anyway, Iā€™m looking forward to getting to know you all a bit better over the next weeks (and who knows, maybe years :grinning:) ć‚ˆć‚ć—ććŠć­ćŒć„ć—ć¾ć™ļ¼

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If I remember correctly from last year, the discount should be officially announced (and should start) in 10 days or so. Itā€™s usually $100 off of the lifetime. So $200 instead of $300.

So, I :100: suggest you to give WK a try! :slight_smile: By level 9, youā€™ll have already learned 309 kanji and 908 words :grin: For level 16, itā€™s 556 kanji and 1735 words :v: Level 9 is around 2 months, if you go for a 10 day/level speed.

Where I got these cool stats: [STATS] Statistics site

For the level that you seem to be at, Iā€™d definitely recommend a combo between Wanikani, Kitsun and Bunpro. Once you get a little more comfortable kanji/vocab/grammar wise, you should give FloFlo a try (sorry, Iā€™m running out of time, canā€™t really do a more detailed explanation xD - just check the links I just shared with you).

Personally, Iā€™m doing extremely well. Learning around new 35 words/day and now slowly trying to get into the daily habit of reading books/watching media in Japanese (the later with JP subs). Iā€™ve been chatting with natives pretty much everyday on Hellotalk (app to find language partners - check it out), but I feel like I need to broaden my exposure a little bit more. Once I get that sorted out, Iā€™ll go back to study grammar (N2) and Iā€™ll restart with iTalki lessons (mainly for speaking practice - check that website out as well).

Andā€¦ I thinkā€¦ thatā€™s it :grin:

:heart:

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That fits very nicely in my schedule, what with wanting to finish some levels before deciding anyway! :smiley:

Thank you for all the links, especially since youā€™re short on time! I will definitely check them out tomorrow probably. (okay, already looked at bunpro and kitsun :sweat:) Also, I love me some stats.

Your Japanese schedule, if you will - or maybe just habits - sounds very nice. Iā€™m working at getting there. What are you watching/reading?

Iā€™m fine talking to Japanese people usually, since theyā€™re very good at adjusting the difficulty level. Also, texting is great. Additional option of actually looking up words you donā€™t know, instead of missing it. :smiley: (oh, eh, some context: currently in Japan on a working holiday visa)

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Someone called me.

Yes, Iā€™ve also joined Wanikani (a lot) after passing N1. I do have my piece of paper, but I took it five years ago by the end of my first year in Japan, so I have serious doubts I would pass it again if I tried it now, even though my spoken Japanese is by far better than it was by then.

I joined Wanikani because after years in Japan I felt like I was forever stuck with the 1300 or so kanji you need to get away with everyday average reading and never got past that. I had tried RTK and Anki decks before, but I felt like Wanikani has a good short-term goals approach, a nice design and a good community, what would help me to stick to end of the Joyo Kanji. That being said, I also study kanji in parallel the traditional way, using the Kanken books and DS game, also because I want to pass the kanken exams to hand it to my company.

Iā€™m sure one can find what WaniKani mainly offers by using a good kanji book and an Anki deck, but the thing is WaniKani gamifies it for you, puts it into a nice design, helps with the management and gives you a nice community that does book clubs (not that I take part in any). I think it is a nice deal.

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For now, Iā€™ve been just watching anime with JP subs and some manga I had here. My first non-fiction book might arrive tomorrow though :grin: Other than that, I might subscribe to Netflix JP to get some exposure to actual real people. I could do youtube videos, but everything seems very meh (and they donā€™t have subs, which I still need).

Yuup! This is also why I still appreciate using subs. I see the word right away instead of guessing xD

Ohhh, nicee!! :clap: Howā€™s that experience going?

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Same :sob: Iā€™d say a bit more than 1300 but the actual number doesnā€™t really matter.

And yes, while there are many options to learn kanji out there, I never found one that I could stick to. At least, not anymore; I used to be fine with barebones Anki back in the days I was preparing for JLPT. Gamification plus community has proven very effective.

One additional bonus: while preparing for the kanken (well, just level 5), I found that the WK ā€œradicalsā€ really helped get a simpler idea of the structure of kanjis. I suddenly didnā€™t have to remember a bunch of strokes, just two or three words. E.g. ꮵ: 9 strokes versus comb+ikea
For me, at least, the WK radicals are more useful for recall than recognition.
(Kinda hyped about the overhaul tomorrow, btw)

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You definitely need to get to Japan. Iā€™m here because I went and knew very little. I fell in love with everything and now I need to know how to speak and read it for when I go back. I truly hope you get and have the adventure of a lifetime. Itā€™s more than you can imagine and will make a huge impact on you.

Also thanks for the tips in your review, implementing those ASAP.

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Really appreciate the kind words :slight_smile: Iā€™m on it :muscle::heart:

And Iā€™m glad that you got to appreciate your trip! :grin: What was your favourite thing that you got to experience in Japan? :slight_smile:

Let me know if I can help you in any other way \o/

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All of it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Iā€™ve considered getting a Netflix subscription myself, since I heard thereā€™s lots of Japanese content on thereā€¦ But I didnā€™t know you could or had to get a Japanese one. Good to know! :smiley:

Iā€™ve found a lot of YouTubers follow the theme Japanese TV shows have going, especially the game shows. So theyā€™re ridiculous, often fast paced, with that special, Japanese humor that is actually often quite meanā€¦ Yeah, I donā€™t really like those either :smiley: as for Japanese speaking YouTube channels, Iā€™ve found foreigners making videos for a Japanese audience more my thing. Theyā€™re also a bit easier to understand, which might not be a good thingā€¦ Seeing as it reinforces non Japanese accents. :sweat:

Very nicely! The first weeks were a bit overwhelming in the language department, that is to say I used exclusively English in the 2 weeks I was in Tokyo, because it was easy. So if youā€™re anything like me, who shies away from difficulties and actually using new languages Iā€™m not confident in - Tokyo is a great experience, but maybe take to the suburbs/rural areas/other, smaller cities where the locals arenā€™t that used to accommodating tourists with English. :sweat:

But maybe thatā€™s just me. Iā€™m sure you can use Japanese in Tokyo as well. Maybe.

Iā€™ve visited Japanese language school for a couple weeks (homestay included), WWOOFed on a dairy farm in Okinawa and will be starting my first actual, paid job next week in a hotel in Nagano. (nothing fancy, just cleaning staff for the ski season :smiley:)

Iā€™m kind of worried about that. Hereā€™s hoping we can both get used to the new routine quickly!

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Using radicals was not introduced to me by Wanikani because my original Japanese language school gave some emphasis on radicals (I mean the official ones, éƒØ首) with their Japanese names and all, so I always thought it was natural using them, but it seems it doesnā€™t get much attention on some other methods.

But they surely help a lot on remembering the kanji, and I also find knowing the Japanese names pretty useful for talking with Japanese people (since they all know them).

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Same, the language classes I attended in Japan had some focus on actual radicals, but thatā€™s why I mentioned ā€œradicalsā€ instead.
Knowing that a kanji has a ę‰‹å or č‰å†  is nice, but it doesnā€™t help with the rest of the kanji. The usual way is to use another kanji with the same part ā€œoh, the right part is like in ꊕā€ But then, you have to remember ꊕ first, which is a bit of a circular problem for me. Giving a specific name to those parts as well is helpful, in my opinion.

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Funny enough, the Japanese school who taught me radicals was the one back at home. My Japanese teachers in Japan couldnā€™t care less about it, haha.

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Wow. Just found this post and Iā€™m thrilled to have found it and the knowledge within but also it makes me feel pretty dumb. I first joined WK in 2013 (this is my second account) and in 2014 I quit around level 18. I decided Japanese wasnā€™t very useful and I had other pursuits so why was I learning it when I could focus on them instead? (spoiler alert I didnā€™t really benefit from dropping it, in the end)

At some point in 2015 I started over so I created a new account (you used to not be able to reset your account). I didnā€™t start using that account until January 2017, but I got really sick in the middle of the year for a while and was still only level 7 and it knocked it off my schedule.

Now, I am determined to actually finally get through WK, become conversational, literate, etc. But wow. I have been messing with this crap for 5 years and here comes a babby who did it in 1 year. Feels bad man.

Anyway, thank you, good babby, for the tips on how to get through WK before dying of old age. I really wish when I signed up for WK, when it was in beta, when I was still in my twenties, it explained this.

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japanese teachers in japan teach mostly chinese people it seems, and those progress very quickly. no use wasting time on that lone westerner in the classroom.

Iā€™ve never been to one, but people do say private Japanese courses are filled with Chinese, so I imagine it is true.

I attended ę±äŗ¬å¤–国čŖžå¤§å­¦ classes (not that I was a student there, tho), my class had no Chinese person. We were 2 from Latin America, 3 westerns, 2 Mongolians and 1 from Israel. But I guess the main reason was that we all arrived Japan on intermediate level, so itā€™s very complex to make a curriculum that makes sense to everyone in the class. Most of the time we were learning grammar, writing endless compositions (very, very useful) and training speech.

My Japanese teacher probably assumed that if we got to that level we probably already knew how to study Kanji by ourselves and just gave us the weekly list of new Kanji to remember and used her class time on other things.

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You donā€™t! Well, Netflix has the rights for some shows, depending on the countryā€¦ Basically, Iā€™ll subscribe to Netflix and use a VPN to fool them into believing Iā€™m in Japan (so that I get more JP content) :eyes:

Sooo much this. I donā€™t have much interest in most popular youtubersā€¦ when I look at Youtube JPā€¦ I just canā€™t xD

Yeaaaahā€¦ comfort zone is hell :neutral_face: But outside of Tokyo/opportunities where u got to use Japanese, how was it? I guess that they were tough, but followed by a great feeling of accomplisment :laughing:

Ohh, quite adventurous! Good luck for this new challenge of yours :slight_smile: Iā€™m gonna give my best! :muscle::sunglasses: 悄悋恗恋ćŖ恄ļ¼

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Hey, no worries. Donā€™t punish yourself for your past. They were lessons. But do push yourself today for the sake of a better tomorrow :v::slight_smile: I reached level 60 in 1 year, but there were a bunch of things I did not do for ā€œreasonsā€ (read, excuses). I have this goal of launching my own business since I was 20 (3 years ago) and never went for it (trying now).

Youā€™re always in time to succeed. The dude that founded KFC only did it at 62 years of age. Sold it for 2 million at the age of 75.

Appreciate the kind words. Iā€™m sure that this time youā€™re getting the golden badge :wink: Let me know if I can help you in any way possible.

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