Exactly a year ago I accidentally came across a mention of Wanikani and decided to give it a try. I immediately fell in love with its humour, its crazy mnemonics, its absurd example sentences, its game-like feel. For the year that followed, Wanikani has been my trusty, constant companion, accompanying me nearly every minute of my waking day. There are even kanji I remember in connection with the place or circumstances where I reviewed them. Wherever I went, whatever I did, Wanikani was there. 363 days later, I reached level 60 and the time to say goodbye to daily lessons and reviews is drawing near. It’s a bittersweet feeling for sure.
My background in Japanese and how Wanikani made a difference
I had been a perpetual beginner in Japanese for nearly 20 years. I first started learning the language on a whim (I love learning new things), and while the love never faded, my commitment to learning came and went. I would start with enthusiasm, hit a roadblock in learning or life, then pause for long enough that the next time I had to more or less restart from scratch. I must have relearned the kana four or five times. When I started Wanikani I knew about 150 kanji and basic grammar, but could not see how to progress from there. All learning material seemed either too basic or too advanced, and I wasn’t sure where even to focus in order to proceed.
Wanikani took care of that. Kanji always fascinated me, but also scared me because there were so many, and the more I learnt, the easier they got to confuse. The greatest boost Wanikani gave to my learning wasn’t even that it taught me all those kanji - it was that it showed me that there’s no point worrying about getting perfect in all aspects at once. Yes I can do new lessons even if I’m not yet completely confident in my knowledge of all the kanji previously learnt. Yes, it’s okay that I can’t perfectly recall them or write them down - recognizing them is a skill in and of itself. And repeated exposure will do wonders - the more I learn, the more I keep running into stuff I’ve learnt, reinforcing them in my memory.
The amazing power of book clubs
My main goal with Japanese has always been to read. I was hoping I would be able to do that by the end of Wanikani. It turned out, I was almost ready to do that already and never realized. On a whim again, and feeling very much not confident at all, I joined my first ABBC at level 5. Sure enough, in the first couple of weeks I felt like an impostor, only pretending to be able to read. It was only a few weeks later that I surprised myself by being able to answer other people’s questions. I can’t thank the members of the Takagi-san book club enough 
. With your questions, answers, even just the fact that you were there to keep me accountable, you helped me see the fastest, and greatest progress I’ve ever had in my Japanese learning. After that first manga, armed with my new-found confidence and the tools to tackle unknown grammar, I immediately jumped into my first novel. I would never have believed it possible a few short months before.
On my speed and how I used Wanikani
I speed ran because I couldn’t stop myself. My initial enthusiasm for Wanikani never waned. The first levels felt too slow, yes, but even later, when my daily reviews were routinely in the two and three hundreds, I still couldn’t get enough. Sure, some days it was harder to keep up than others. On those days I still pushed through as well as I could though, because given my past history with Japanese, I knew that relaxing my pace could very well lead to me pausing indefinitely again.
I did use “cheats”, if you want to call them that. I reordered to get to new level radicals and kanji first. I used the double-check script for typos, for correct meanings worded differently, for mindless mistakes I realized as I was pressing enter, and for meanings I couldn’t tell apart in any language, like baseball terms and military ranks (that said, I absolutely love the breadth of vocabulary Wanikani covers). After the mid-50s, when my reviews started feeling a little too many to handle comfortably, I tried out Anki mode and back to back reading and meaning. I can say I loved it, and should probably have used it sooner. Type in the reading (no flexibility there), think of the meaning, tap to see if I was correct. It cut my review time in half, and also solidified reading/meaning connection by making me recall them both at once.
What the future holds
I will continue with Wanikani until my subscription runs out at the end of the month. I am close to guruing the level 60 kanji, and I will make sure to do all the lessons as they become available. After that, I’m looking forward to dedicating the time freed up by Wanikani to even more reading (so many books waiting for me!). 
I’m looking up unknown grammar as I go, but I might also try and study some a little more formally. I also want to keep solidifying my kanji knowledge - practice recall and handwriting, reorganize similar kanji in my mind and map their relationships even better. I’ve been loading vocabulary I look up while reading onto Anki, so at some point I may restart with srs in my life, but not at Wanikani intensity. Reading a lot is its own natural srs anyway.
After that, or in parallel, I’ll work on my listening, which is severely lacking in all languages, including my own. I do notice it getting better just by reading though, so I’m hopeful. I don’t care about output at this point. I’m one of those people who are too shy to speak when they don’t feel confident they can express themselves fluently - I know, silly. This too will come if I keep working at the rest, I’m sure, but that’s for much later.
And of course, I’ll keep frequenting the forums and reading with book clubs. 
I’d like to sincerely thank Koichi and the whole Wanikani team for such an amazing tool. Also thanks to the whole of the Wanikani community, and in particular the script writers, the book club runners, and all those asking and answering questions, and making the community the positive, helpful place that it is.
Now to find (or make?) some mochi to celebrate…
