Noob here: why doesn’t my Level 1 progress bar get filled? I have done many renews on the 26 radicals that I have mastered over and over with 100%, but the bar is still empty. It is very confusing.
The progress bar fills as you move items from Apprentice to Guru. Apprentice has 4 levels, so if you’re perfect, you should move something to Guru after 4 reviews. If you get a review wrong, you drop a level in Apprentice (2 if it’s in Guru and above), so that needs to be taken into account too.
Thanks! Then I understand.
Hi everyone,
I am new to wanikani, jst wanted to say hello.
I will see you around
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Hi! I’m halfway through level six, so still pretty new. I’ve been lurking and am still a bit shy about posting but I have a few questions:
Day counters: is there some trick to remembering them? I continue to mess up a few consistently and can’t seem to keep them straight in my mind.
Is there any trick to avoiding having like 100+ reviews pop up at the same time? I’m averaging about 9 days per level and thought I could go faster, but honestly when the guru’d kanji started to come back and attack me I realized I needed to slow down. Do people at later levels stagger the lessons more?
Thanks!
Maybe you are confusing the general purpose counters with the day counters? Like 八日(ようか) vs. 八つ (やっつ) while you also have 四つ (よっつ) and 四日 (よっか). It’s best to look at them at the same time, they come from the classical Japanese counting but do some irregular stuff. Otherwise you just have to repeat it enough times.
The basic trick is probably to keep your item count low, for all items in WK you have to do eight reviews each, so you have to do at least 64,000+ reviews eventually (without mistakes ever). That is 175/d in a year or 88/d for two years, even with perfect spreading. [You will occasionally see 200–300 reviews per day in actual use, but it gets also easier with practice.]
As far as counters go, I had to memorize them with more frequent reviews outside of WaniKani because the readings are often exceptions. I don’t do this often with WK vocab, but counters sort of merit it, especially in earlier levels. If you’re a beginner you’re not nearly as used to the sounds of Japanese, so counters can be especially difficult early on. You’ll get there eventually.
As far as getting a bunch of reviews clustered together, that’s going to be inevitable if you do large batches of lessons. People do tend to stagger their lessons once they get past the early levels. The ideal number of daily lessons varies from person to person and depends on how quickly you wish to level. Some people do five per day, some do ten or twenty. It all depends on you and your study routine.
My progress has freezed on “review < 1 minute”. The review never shows up. I’m on level 1 radicals (26 of them). Is this a known bug?
You can try reloading the tab or just click on the reviews, the dashboard updates the time but I don’t think it reflects when the time is actually over.
Welcome ivelez! Hope you are enjoying WK so far!
Hello everyone,
I just began using Wanikani yesterday. I am a french canadian and I’m also pretty good in English. I also have basic knowledge of Esperanto which I studied by myself for more than 300 hours. I wanted to learn a “real” language and I chose Japanese because of all the games, animes and vocaloids in this language.
Have a nice day everyone!
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Welcome aboard, @Astroraptor!
I hope you enjoy it. I have a few friends from Montréal, and reside in Toronto myself.
Bienvenue!
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Just looked up what a vocaloid is. Thanks!
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I am new to WaniKani but not Japanese. While I understand the reason for not being able to skip lessons I don’t get why I have to wait to begin a new one. For me, I know about 500 Kanji characters and was hoping that the mnemonics approach would help me remember more complex Kanji. As a lower intermediate student I am a bit frustrated that I can’t advance faster through the lessons so that I can actually get to characters that I don’t know. Anyone have any tips on how to use this method as a non-beginner?
hi! yeah, even total beginners complain about the slow speed of the first levels, so i can only imagine how boring it must be in your case but i’m afraid there’s no way around just having patience.
have wanikani on the backburner the next few weeks, lessons+reviews should be easy enough anyways and focus meanwhile on something else (grammar, speaking, listening, textbooks, what-have-you). you can use a userscript to reorder lesson items and level up a bit faster / more efficiently by learning radicals first (see here) and maybe look at other useful scripts as well (userscript masterpost with explanation).
good luck and i hope you can still profit form wanikani 
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I started in a similar position, but I just stuck it out. Even though I knew about 500 kanji, I learned many new vocabulary, and it solidified what I knew.
It took about 4 months to start learning entirely new stuff.
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Well, I would like to say WaniKani has officially grabbed hold of me and convinced me that the system works for me. I made it to level 4 and subscribed. As part of my learning experience, I went to a luau with my family and in-laws who were visiting from out of town, and when I went to the restroom I noticed on sign “入り口” and I was so excited that I could read it… I even dragged my wife over to the sign so I could read it to her and she looked at me like I was crazy. Anyways, I look forward to continuing this learning experience with everyone!
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Hello everyone!
I am new to WaniKani! In addition to marking off the new user checklist by posting here, I also want to allay some of my concerns as I start using WaniKani. Currently, I live in Japan, so learning kanji is both a necessity and a personal goal for myself. To keep a long story short, I minored in Japanese, but I feel disappointed in myself and my education for failing to commit kanji to memory. Studying by myself has also been hard and frustrating, so I’d like to know how WaniKani has worked for you. Currently, I am a bit impatient because I am familiar with some of the material, so I feel a need to speed right through. However, I do not want to discourage myself too early, so please tell me about your experiences if you ever see this message! Thanks in advance!
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@cigrande, this question has been asked before. Perhaps browse this recently posted topic to get an idea of the likely responses:
hello! konnichiwa, hola, bonjour, nihao