People between levels 21-30, how well can you read kanji right now?
I’m just wondering because when I go to Japan I’m going to be at least lvl 20-25 and I’m curious how much that would help me in Tokyo. For example reading menus, product information etc.
Of course higher leveled people can answer as well if you remember what it was like 
Thank you!
I was in JP at lvl 30. Could read a lot of signs but menus were the most difficult part. You need to study food specific vocab to read menus. WK barely has any.
I went there at level 24 and did well with general signage. People automatically gave me English menus as I don’t look like I am likely to know the language.
I did attend a business meeting and understood a lot of the powerpoint presentation…none of the spoken words though. 
enough that i don’t feel totally useless anymore, and i definitely felt useless before death. right now most of my japanese exposure is games, and i’m able to generally follow stories now, or even 100% understand sometimes. i feel very intermediate overall.
@d-hermit @tip @akikkyu @Tazurin
Thanks for the replies. I’ll definitely study the food specific vocab so I can impress my friends if some place doesn’t happen to have an English menu 
I’m gonna keep at it and study hard. My fastest pace would be lvl 25 on the day of departure so I’ll tryhard for that
Food specific menus is a good tip! I am aiming for level 30 by the time I go to Japan next (end of October). Interested to see how it pans out!
Haven’t been to Japan, but ever since entering Death I’ve noticed that it’s easier to figure out what I’m looking for when encountering an unknown word. Knowing even a single reading and/or a vocab item that uses that kanji makes looking things up a lot faster.
you can start reading harry potter at lv 20. by 30, lots of important kanji are out of the way. the 20s are brutal, with more abstract concepts and lots of kanji that share the same definition, but they also contain lots of very common stuff.
According to wkstat, at l30 you still encounter one unknown kanji every 5 kanjis in average for literature (Aozora Bunko corpus), so it’s still really really tough, though. 
yeah, harry potter isn’t so bad, has furigana the first time you encounter a new word.
Wow, indeed, not so bad at all !
Man, that looks surprisingly readable 
The Death levels are probably where I started seeing the most benefit to my reading as far as kanji goes (your mileage may vary for general vocabulary and grammar). I was able to finish my first three manga by that range and found I could play video games aimed towards kids a lot easier than before. You’ll still have a long way to go but you’ll be in a pretty good spot by this point, I think. But agreed with others that it won’t do much for you for restaurant menus; I did find signage went a lot better for me in Japan but still far from 100%.
I really do feel like that a lot. How do we get better at that? It’s not going to be on WK.
I am really surprised at the amount of people saying restaurant menus are a problem. Maybe we’re just eating in different places, but I have found menus to be like 70% katakana, and a lot of them have pictures too. 
I think I was level 18 or so when I went last year- it was the first time I’d been since I started learning Japanese and I was amazed how useful the kanji I’d learnt from WK was. Little things like being in a historic house and being able to read the sign that said ‘mind your head’ or being in a train station and figuring out that there were different queues for the next and subsequent trains, or knowing that there was a choice between warm and cold noodles at the udon restaurant. The stuff I’d learnt from my textbook was more useful for actual human interactions, but for understanding my surroundings, WK was invaluable.
But as others have said, menus are another matter!
I have not tried this site yet but it looks promising. Japanese Listening Comprehension Practice
My current strategy is to transcribe Japanese TV shows (JP-JP) using the EN subs as a guide.
So in conclusion WaniMenu needs to be created.
Hello! I went to Japan when I was level 22 just over a year ago. I am sure everyone has a different experience but I was able to read signs, menus, and text with relative ease in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Hiroshima. The biggest roadblocks were running into kanji you won’t learn on here until around level 40. I would have to give up when that happened every now and then. I could speak your VERY very basic Japanese (一 水ください, 僕はアメリカ人です, 日本語は悪い) and I would be SOL if I tried to follow along with the hotel programming with my eyes diverted. Overall though, you won’t find yourself in a very stressful situation. Lots of English signage to aid you should you need it, and local speakers were happy to practice English or give me the ol’ 日本語上手, lol. Hope you have fun! I can try and answer other questions if you have any
