i completed it in a couple minutes and studied it very thoroughly, i felt i was ready for the next topic already but i had to wait a while to do the review, which is intentional, so i did. at some point i got sleepy and went to bed, then woke up and did the review. and then after, there was nothing else to do! what am i supposed to do to progress?
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Wait for your next review 
Seriously though, you have to review a thing 4 times successfully before unlocking anything new. First level is slow, but it speeds up very quickly!
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how long would that be? theres no timer or anything
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The timer is on the websiteâs homepage. To the right is your review forecast.
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On the main page thereâs a âReview forecastâ on the right side that should tell you when reviews are due:
If you succeed in your reviews eventually new lessons will unlock.
Trust the process.
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This page gives more info on the timing of reviews and how everything works.
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It starts very slowly and thatâs normal! Once youâve reviewed enough times, youâll level up!
But then youâll start to see things from both new and old levels, so eventually itâll start to pile up. Itâs just very slow at first because youâre building into that. Typically you do reviews twice a day because new items show up again after a few hours.
But basically, if you have high accuracy and log in fairly often to see if anything came up for review, the first 2 levels take like 3-4 days each.
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No kidding; Iâm only at the end of level 5 and already have a 100-review mountain to climb today!
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Level 11, it piles up! (Iâve had some 200+ days, but Iâm also going very fast):
So to the OP, enjoy the early days of having a few hours of nothing to do 
oh, so its daily. mm⊠quite unfortunate for me, i work best when im sort of given everything at the start and sort of sandbox myself up to a better understanding. not sure if i have much other options though. language is a lot like art in the sense that its simultaneously subjective in some places while objective in others, so finding a consistently good guide that works for me in particular is difficult.
Itâs hourly actually, the forecast just gives you daily granularity and you have to click on the arrows to show the hourly breakdown.
WaniKani is not flexible at all, for better or worse. If you want to curate your own learning experience then it may not be the tool for you. That said, like others have said, if you do your reviews in a timely manner youâll soon see the lesson and review load explode so this very slow period is very temporary.
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Wanikani doesnât let you do a ton of lessons straight away because each lesson you do increases your future workload. While Wanikani is relatively inflexible here, even with other systems which do let you do as many lessons as you like (Anki, Marumori, etc), itâs not really recommended. While it seems super slow now that youâre just starting off, in 10 levels youâll have 100+ reviews a day at this pace.
This of course sort of sucks when you start learning Japanese, full of excitement to do something and then after a few minutes the site tells you to come back in a few hours to the next day.
If youâre understandably full of enthusiasm to study more Japanese right now, I suggest starting on some grammar. Thereâs a couple of options here:
- Textbooks (Genki is the most popular for beginners, followed by ăżăăȘăźæ„æŹèȘ)
- Youtube Videos (Game Gengo has good presentation, Cure Dolly I found had nice explanations).
- Bunpro (itâs a site like Wanikani but for grammar)
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its hourly actually
its been several hours ;w; ive been checking in repeatedly just in case
the review load explodes
my issue doesnt really come from the fact that theres a small amount of content, my issue comes from the fact that i know i can learn more, and i want to reach my current potential and grow from that. having a huge workload (somebody even mentioned 100+ reviews!?) wouldnt really help me learn, thatâd just burn me out. its more about constantly growing at a rate relative to what i know and how i can use that information to reach new horizons
I mean that reviews (when available) will drop at the start of the hour. But if thereâs no review ready then you wonât get anything.
You need to be careful with SRS because doing more now will snowball in the future. Doing 10 lessons every day is a small amount of work, but that will generate hundreds of daily reviews down the line. Thatâs why the start feels slow, because at this point you donât have any reviews, but eventually the treadmill will start gaining momentum and youâll have yesterdayâs reviews, and the reviews from two days ago, and the reviews from last week, and the reviews from last month etcâŠ
Maybe you feel like you could do 50 lessons today (and you may well be able to do that) but if you did youâd come to regret that in a month or so when 300 reviews drop on you at once.
As @araigoshi mentioned, if you want to do more Japanese today then you absolutely should, but maybe consider studying some other aspect of the language instead of focusing solely on WaniKani.
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Trust me, just stick with it.
When I started, I was super full of excitement to start learning, only to hit the wall of nothing to do. I wanted to get going and not have to wait. I was very skeptical of this entire website and wanted to find something else. Then I started poking around the community. I started reading peopleâs stories of reaching level 60. The common theme was always to stick with it. Within 2 years, you can learn 2000+ kanji and 6000+ vocab. The stories made me decide to stick with it. So, I stuck with it. Iâm still going slower than average, but Iâve already learned quite a lot in 3.5 months.
The first couple days will be slow in general. Once you unlock Kanji, it will speed up a bit. It does take a couple days to get to that point, so just make sure to get those reviews done.
Regarding the 100 reviews: the more you study, the more reviews you have. If you want fewer reviews, do fewer lessons. It is as easy as that.
But in the meantime, just wait for reviews to come up. Study something different. I used that time to continue practicing my Katakana.
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(Personal opinion incomingâŠ) I think the best way to think about SRS (wanikani or otherwise) is as a steady daily dripfeed of new vocab and kanji. The workload depends almost entirely on how fast you add new things, so you pick an âadd new thingsâ rate that gives you the workload youâre happy with. On days when you have âI want to learn more!â energy, do not do more SRS â do more of all the other things that make up learning Japanese. Textbooks, grammar study, eventually reading or listening. The SRS should be the side dish, not the main course, and if you regularly feed too much stuff in to the top of the SRS when youâre feeling enthusiastic this will absolutely burn you out as the reviews come around again.
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I would say try WK for the full free period but itâs certainly possible this may not be the tool for you. It takes like a month (or less?) to go through the free experience. But youâre also so early in the process itâd be difficult for you to really assess right now. So justâŠtry it out for a few weeks.
At the same time, check out some other tools and maybe something else is better suited for what youâre wanting. Not every tool is for everyone.
There are lists out there, and of course there are study logs in this forum where people often do list out what tools they like to use.
Youâll need something for grammar like Bunpro, Tae Kim, or Renshuu.
Youâll need something for listening practice.
Alternatives to WK for studying kanji also include Koohi.
There are one-site-for-it-all sites like NativShark and MaruMori that cover grammar, vocab, kanji, and longer listening/reading.
And try to think of these tools as little bits of studying. Think about what real things (like manga or books for actual native speakers) you might want and use those to really test yourself and propel your learning.
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maybe consider studying some other aspect of the language instead of focusing solely on WaniKani.
im not sure what else to use though. i feel pretty alone, my method of learning practically goes entirely against the typical method of teaching in america, so lots of sources will teach me in a way that kind of just bounces off my head. its also difficult when lots of aspects of the language can mean many different things but they still try to tie a specific meaning to it so it ends up confusing me later on where i see it used in a different context. makes me feel distrustful and afraid constantly ehehehehe
im of course still looking around and considering things i hear from other people, i just feel i should mention this sort of struggle i have when it comes to learning resources, i dont see many other people bring it up so it feels akward when somebody says something along the lines of âjust do X, its easyâ and it just doesnt work for me so then i waddle away with my tail between my legs not wanting to say anything
This is selection bias, by the way â by definition everybody who posts an âI got to L60â post has stuck with WaniKani for the long haul. But there are also successful paths to Japanese mastery that use other tools, or which use WK for 20 or 30 levels to build a foundation before switching to a different approach.
Thereâs more than one way up this mountain.
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I generally dislike âtraditionalâ ways of language learning as well and I can assure you that thereâs more than enough material out there to learn in any way you like. Cure Dolly is pretty âout thereâ for instance, and Tae Kim is also fairly unconventional. Thereâs also stuff like TheMoeWay (I have no personal experience with this one, but it seems rather untraditional so maybe a good fit for you).
If you want more SRS I can recommend this Anki deck that introduces vocab and grammar very gradually: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782
At any rate at one point or an other youâll have to complement WaniKani with other material because you canât learn Japanese by just memorizing kanji. Start looking around and see what suits you and what doesnât.
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