My Kanji Journey of 376 days

First I want to thank for this great thread: [https://community.wanikani.com/t/my-journey-of-368-days-the-ultimate-guide-for-wk/]. I learned a lot from it!
That said and finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel for whom it may concern I will talk a bit about my way of concentrating on Kanji with less empasis on vocabulary.
After some levels (About 10) I found that I couldn’t keep up with doing kanji and vocabulary with a rate giving me an acceptable date for level 60 to be able to imagine that I could persevere. So I decided to go all out with turbo leveling with some helpers: Reorder Ultimate, Progress Plus and a retry script.
And believe me. Even then it costs me I estimate about two hours a day (YMMV) with some additional nagging by my wife why Wanikani is so important to me. So it’s important for me that it doesn’t become a neverending story.
After I’m through with kanji I plan to go on with vocabs more leisurely. Or learning them by reading online with one of these Japanese plugins. Ideal would be one which also is giving me a link to Wanikani for online text. Anybody knows whether such beast already exists? Otherwise I probably must try to extend one of them.
So now my current status. As I expect only fast levels now going for 60 I hope to finish yet in October.


And progress until now.
image

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Satori Reader can be set to your Wanikani level (so you see all the kanji you’ve learned, everything else hiragana or with furigana, I think). There is a review by the Tofugu team here.

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https://kitsun.io/store/detail/5b5e34973274df3b9935235e

:woman_shrugging:

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At 53 I got a “Your lesson session has timed out” problem. I suppose I have too many pending vocab lessons and reorder for level up didn’t work any more. Nevertheless vocab lessons still sort of worked.
On Android “Flaming Durtles” reordering came to the rescue. Nevertheless I lost a week.

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Seeing the end!

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Done!


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Now I plan to enter a new phase

  • Doing 10 vocabs a day from my backlog.
  • Reading with a WK friendly online reader.
  • Looking for a WK friendly browser extension.
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Lessons: 4444
Still doing 10 vocabs a day. BTW, isn’t this a nice number of lessons?

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Lessons: 4300
So far I’m on track with 10 vocab lessons a day except for a little review backlog. But last week was hard. Normal working days, multiple evenings with meetings, caring for ill family members, …
In addition to the backlog I didn’t manage to do more than some negligible reading of other sources how I had planned originally.

Hitting a wall. But the hope to climb it isn’t lost yet :slight_smile:


RL was hard the last couple of weeks. But now Chrismas time is coming with less evening meetings. So I guess to be able to catch up.
I’m still doing 10 vocab lessons a day to whittle them down constantly.
In April I plan to go to Japan again. Until then I hope to be able to read more of what I will encounter there :slight_smile:

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Still 10 lessons a day.
image
Today was my last full working day before Xmas. Which hopefully helps grinding down the reviews.

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I’d prioritise getting the reviews done before doing 10 lessons, but good job on sticking with it!

For me sticking with it is important. It gives me a deadline when I will be finished (Measly 410 days ATM :slight_smile: ) And the reviews didn’t grow out of bounds the last weeks. So all is fine.

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Finally all reviews done. The blessing of being on holidays.


Now I will have a :wine_glass:. Celebrating with my wife :slight_smile:

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congrats! that was over 500 reviews a week ago!

holidays are also the time for me to finally be able to study hard :smiley:
(for me, that’s Bunpro + Torii maybe, + reading, besides WK)

Didn’t I give myself a nice Christmas present by breaking the 4000 lessons barrier?


And merry Christmas to all! Even if the Japanese don’t celebrate Christmas like that.

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@Kurei_0

Wait, is that really yours? Are you one of the vocabulary skippers? :rofl:
Seriously though I’m kind of interested in the result, have you started doing some reading? How is it without the WK vocab? Were you just doing vocab another way? Also do you plan on doing vocab now? Sorry for all the questions… I had only heard about the notorious “vocab skippers”, never met one…

  • Temporary skipper! Currently at 22. Ten lessons/day. Still 800 enlightened kanji.

  • Want to start reading with the help of a popup tool. Still not decided on what (News, LN, web novel or all of them). Ask me again in four weeks how it’s working out.

  • Also reading a little booklet “Illustrated Japanese Characters” for reviewing kanji.

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I will! Although it would probably take 2-3 months to see the results.

While my lv is lower I think I’ll still advice you to check out bunpro.jp
for grammar (and an additional review / exposure of vocabulary in context) + one of the easy Anki core decks (2k or 4k).
That is my plan for starting to read (lv N4 at Bunpro, + Lv 25 on WK + one of the core decks on Anki should be enough to join one of the book clubs). And reading is my first goal.

Keep doing the WK vocab and wait for me at the finishing line after you finish all vocab. I promise it won’t be a long wait :wink: I’ll edit this out if I slow down :crossed_fingers:

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Have you considered Torii instead of Anki? It’s mostly free i think, has a WK mode that excludes vocab taught on WK, and a kana only vocab mode, which is great because WK doesn’t teach kana only vocabulary.
But of course Anki is solid.

Sounds good. I started learning kanji October 2018. Before I knew some kana and some simple words. In April I will visit Japan for three weeks. This will be an interesting checkpoint. About 18 months of intensive learning of Japanese. Being I guess at WK30 for vocabs.
I don’t plan at the moment to pay for a grammar online tool. Do your really think you need a SRS tool for grammar? Let’s see what I can get from “A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar” I got for my birthday from good old paper.
Otherwise I think of trying to read online Japanese texts with e.g. rikaikun or yomichan. I will try to add WK links to such a tool so I can also access all the stuff I added to the WK reading and meaning notes.
So at least that’s the plan. As long as RL doesn’t interfer by limiting my day to 24 hours :slight_smile:
And if I want to work on talking I can ask a Japanese friend. Either e.g. by Skype or perhaps under four eyes. About two and a half hours away by car.