Level 1 and 2 were really easy for me, during my reviews almost no mistakes. But as i come to level 3 it is so hard to remember when and where to use ‘‘hito’’ or ‘‘jinn’’ when talking about certain people and when and where to use ‘‘ko’’ or ‘‘si’’ when talking about child related words. And not only that, now almost every third word has a difficult ending which is hard to remember. Will it get better and im just stressing too much, did someone had the same problem?
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The best remedy for words that sound difficult is just to get more exposure. It gets much easier to recognize when you actually hear or see it in the wild.
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Remembering all the different readings for kanji is one of the hardest parts of learning Japanese for many people. This can sometimes be exacerbated by the way WK teaches readings (ie you get a reading or two without context with the kanji itself, then other readings as part of vocabulary later).
If you’re just using WK right now, I think starting on an additional learning resource like a textbook or video series can help contextualize a lot of the vocabulary you’re learning right now and make it easier to remember outside of the SRS. I haven’t used Bunpro, but my gut feeling is that you’d want to see and hear these words in a broader context than flash cards can provide.
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That’s normal, there’s a significant gap early on as you get used to the concepts and you need to find the brainspace for all that stuff. Eventually you reach a critical mass where it starts to click, but early on it can be really overwhelming.
I remember balking at the idea of having to remember like 5 different reading for 下. It’s unreasonable! But eventually it does get somewhat easier. Push forward and let the tool do its job, don’t overthink it.
That’s certainly true but, assuming that @Emuks is a complete novice, it’s going to be challenging to engage with Japanese in the wild at this point.
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I Had the Same Problem when I started Level 5. And Level 6. What do you do outside of WaniKani? Sometimes I write them several Times and say the meaning or the Reading during writing to remember them better.
It’s also easier when WaniKani teaches you vocabularies that you already know from somewhere else Like a textbook (without knowing the Kanji).
You can also use “advance” to decide yourself which radicals, Kanjis and vocabularies you want to learn first.
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Does anime count? Because i’ve been watching anime for a few years now, but since i’ve started learning japanese I became more focused on listening also rather than just reading the subtitles.
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It’ll get exponentially worse until you use the different readings in context and then it’ll be logic.
That said Wani won’t count you an error if you enter one of the other reading that the one it’s waiting for so if you know both or more it’s not a problem 
Typically learning goes up and down and up and down in difficulty.
So right now it’ll feel hard, but you should also be learning from a good grammar curriculum (that utilizes kanji. Don’t go for the “romaji” or “kana-only” textbooks.)
Then as you learn it’ll start to feel easy. You’ll get to a high beginner stage and suddenly it’ll start to feel hard again as you start to plateau and try to break through. Difficulty goes up and down but the most important thing is consistency and exposure.
Right now that’ll be hard but once you have even some basic grammar down and I would say even as low as 100 kanji, look into things like Satori Reader, NHK easy (or my personal recommendation of Disney Movie Books), you’ll find all those things reinforcing each other. WK will help with the reading, and reading will help with WK.
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Assuming you do know the meanings but are getting tripped by the readings, you can try creating strong imagery to differentiate the readings. For instance:
じん = person wearing jeans
にん = person wearing white pants
ひと = person wearing shorts.
Then create the imagery:
人口 = I imagine a population chart where the person icons are wearing jeans
白人 = of a white person wearing jeans
美人 = of a beautiful woman wearing jeans
何人 = of counting a group of people all wearing white pants
病人 = of a sick person wearing white pants
人形 = of a doll wearing white pants
村人 = of all villagers wearing shorts
While I agree with the other posters that the best way to remember a word is through reading and exposure, that is not helpful to you at your WK level since it takes time to learn through exposure. Even at my level, I haven’t gotten enough exposure to many words in WK to remember their readings. For instance, 仙人. If it’s not for the image of a hermit wearing white pants, I would be guessing if the reading is せんじん or せんにん.
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Actually, yes, though it only works half well for the meanings – speech translation always comes just before the audio.
I think you can trust WaniKani SRS here, as you already have basic immersion somewhere.
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- Don’t panic
, is perfectly fine to make some mistakes. - Reduce your number of daily lessons (new items): Unless you are speedrunning, it’s a great measure to avoid burning out. 10 or so is good for a beginner.
- Mix WK with another source for japanese study (maybe some textbook, or taking classes)
- Enjoy your japanese journey and let the SRS system do some magic. Eventually every obscure kanji will look easy
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Also, it’s generally only the really common kanji that have a ton of different readings – once you get past those, most are “one on reading, one kun reading” and it’s a little easier to manage. (“Does this compound word have a voicing change on the second kanji or not (rendaku)?” remains annoying throughout, sadly.)
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The more kanji you know the more you can rely on phonetic components to memorize the on reading of many kanji “for free” too. I think I once checked that around 30% of the high level WaniKani kanji have a partially or fully usable phonetic component.
I learned 稀 last week and it’s not too much work to remember the キ reading given the 希 phonetic component for instance. Unfortunately that won’t help for the more common まれ kun reading…
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Get used to making mistakes. There will be plenty
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Get comfortable with mistakes. Don’t rush the process. If you aim for 100% perfection, you’ll burn out. Let the process take its course. Go over your ‘recent mistakes’ and redo lessons. Practice writing the kanji. Doing so will grind them into your brain in a way digital flashcards alone will not.
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Wait until you get a grip of unyomi and kunyomi but has no clue about the rendaku
I would chill if I were you, you’re not supposed to stress over this but tag along and have fun to say the least, my pathway to learn nihongo is a lifetime one so I don’t really bother but in 10 months I reached the level 23 and can say that it made my life so much easier in Japan
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Don’t panic about making mistakes even if you are speed running (which the trick is to not remember hard nor use mnemonics, but to use overall Japanese experience).
I think anime can be helpful, but might not be enough at some point.
I think there is too much emphasis on thinking of WaniKani as a series of lesson – it’s eventually just a test actually, repeat until pass.
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Honestly, it gets much, much more difficult. Many kanji have several readings and you’ll just need to learn which one to use in each word. Plus there’s rendaku and non standard readings.
It’s rewarding to be able to read manga and whatnot, but it’s best to go into Wanikani knowing that it will consume a lot of your time every single day, and learning kanji is every bit as difficult as people say.
But hey, what’s life without a challenge?
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Take your time. I’m also at level 3, and moving super slow. I study bunpou from textbooks at the same time, and doing wanikani for kanjis. Sometimes it gets overwhelming, so I just take a small break for a week or two and let the already learned info settle in my brain. I tried to go too fast in the beginning, and hit a wall with information overload. Starting to forget already learned things as I tried to push to learn new stuff. Mixing concepts and confusing myself. Time to take a break at that point.
For me it’s probably going to take like 5 years or so to complete wanikani… I’m writing down every sentence that comes in the lessons down to a paper so I learn the writing part too, which makes this even slower.
just like any kind of study, it will become hard and you will make many mistakes, you learn by mistakes. No shame on that.
I would recommend you to just do your lessons until level 10, and then start some grammar studies to help you fix in your memory.