It’s hard to believe, but after a year and a seven months of near daily hours of work and toiling, i have made it to level 60. Obligatory level up chart below:
I feel kinda shocked even though i know i shouldnt, but its still hard to believe that wk can even be finished. It felt like such a long road over the months where i was so focused on the journey (10 days to level 34…fast levels coming soon…) and I cant believe i actually reached the destination!
How I Got Here
My Japanese learning ability starts my freshman year of college, in 2016. Having been an unrepentant weeb since 6th grade (a gold star member of the anime club) and having always wanted to learn Japanese- in a fit of boredom in my college dorm i downloaded wanikani and started to learn. Although i couldn’t wrap my head around Japanese grammar or really anything, and despite falling prey to the SRS demon and finding myself in review hell under 800 reviews- I found I actually could acquire some kanji. I knew moon and big and mountain, and I could remember them even years after I gave up on my initial japanese learning, discerning some kanji on japanese restaurant signs or at Kinokuniya on signs and books. Wanikani worked. Going to kinokuniya was always a little regretful for me in those days, because there were so many books that I wanted to read but couldn’t, because I didn’t understand the language.
I threw myself into college work and went full force in no fun, all work, all reading, all the time. I basically had no hobbies other than “succeed”. This continued all the way through undergrad to halfway through grad school, wherein my future husband and my therapist had encouraged me to rediscover things i liked to do that weren’t success oriented/”work”, which led me to reading shojo manga like Yona of the Dawn, Fukumenkei Noise, Gakuen Alice (which i had started as a teen but never finished until that period 2021-2022)- staying up all night reading, being so engrossed in a story, full on sobbing at times during Gakuen Alice… it was wonderful. I had forgotten how to have fun.
So much of this rediscovery was wonderful, but what was not wonderful was that a lot of the manga was untranslated, especially shojo i wanted to read- many titles were dropped or just never even fan-translated- it was and in many ways still is a sorry state in the shoujo world. In March 2023, just about 2 months shy of finishing grad school and kinda coasting through the remaining formalities, I was packing my stuff to move out and had scrounged up a copy of Japanese from Zero 1 that i bought off of ebay some years ago. I shrugged, opened it up, and decided to give it a try- i restarted WK from zero as well. Time for a fresh start. I worked through that book and his videos (really the best part of the whole JfZ package), then decided to speed ahead and start Genki. At the 3 month mark, I started my blog. The rest is history (and blood, and sweat, and tears).
Maps, Tools, and Other Equipment
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Moe way guide: while i didn’t always follow the guide exactly, it was definitely a primary guidelight on my learning early on about the importance of early immersion and doing things you like and trying to speed through the grammar side of things to familiarize yourself early so you can get to immersion asap.The Moe Way isn’t pro-WK, but I stuck with WK because it worked for me and i sucked at the tango anki cards because i didn’t know the kanji it was using in the sentences! The mnemonic method really worked for me early on, as opposed to ‘memorize this conglomeration of lines’. But i definitely agree with “grind early, get into intermediate fast” mindset because i would be going nuts if i was still N5 at this point and basically suffering through everything i wanted to be doing
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Krashen lectures: luckily when you hear this guy give one lecture, youve heard it all- ive always been a reader, so along with the moe way i also focused on krashens theories of second language acquisition where its basically just read a lot all of the time, read for pleasure, and dont worry toooooo much about perfect understanding of every bit of a sentence and wasting a bunch of time in the weeds.
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Nihongo ios app: can parse sentences and words reasonably well, and recognize kanji in pictures as opposed to having to type out kanji (especially early on when you have to basically look up everything besides desu/masu) *I pay for a monthly sub, have found it very useful and worth the money
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Tadoku/genki graded readers- in addition to the manga i read early on, and the vns i started in 2024, i concurrently worked through level appropriate tadoku- levels 0-2 of the tadoku readers and all of the genki 1 and 2 boxsets. The key was that it was level appropriate for me (unlike the native content i was immersing in, which was waaaaaay not level appropriate). Even though it was more boring, i was able to feel that I was good at japanese and had a sense of accomplishment.
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Emulation/visual novels: I’m not a techy girl, but I was able to create a jp nintendo eshop account and buy cards from playasia where I could buy games that seemed really fun (and were jp lang exclusive) like Tokimeki Memorial Girls Side, Angelique, Uta no Prince-Sama… which are not only fun for immersions sake, but also super motivating to see them pop up on your switch! Later on I was also able to learn how to emulate games, and was able to find old exclusive Japanese games like from Ruby Party, where I had watched the anime as a middle schooler and thought “i wish i could play that!” Well, now i can (and have: see Kiniro no Corda)
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Bookwalker: Having cheap access to lots of manga is huge- especially when physical editions of books can be incredibly expensive! While setting up an account is a bit difficult, it has been the only method of e-reading that i’ve been able to get working successfully. I now get to subscribe to Hana to Yume, Nakayoshi, Ribon, and Sho-Comi (although just for Mahou Shoujo Dandelion), and its much less cost-prohibitive than importing
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Kinokuniya: as much as I try to avoid buying too many physical copies of books since I don’t want to think how much money I have spent on jp books, everytime my motivation drains because of life, work, etc, a trip to Kinokuniya will inevitably revive my love and passion for Japanese and I’ll leave about 200 dollars less wealthy, but i never regret a cent.
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A good attitude: This is probably the most important tool for me, especially during the first 6-12 months. I focused on what I could do, and always hyped myself up for being able to recognize a kanji in a sentence, looking for pages in my manga where i could understand what was going on, even with minimal kanji recognition. I really used context clues to help figure out the situation and kept up a focus on what I could do instead of what I couldn’t do. I think had I been really hard on myself and negative over my lack of ability, I couldn’t have progressed so far.
Some Notes on How I Got Here
While my study blog goes into stuff much more explicit than below, here is a light gloss of what I did, a tl;dr:
- Grammar
My Japanese learning journey began with Japanese from Zero 1- I had been in the process of moving, and in doing so, found a pre-owned (but not used) copy of JfZ1 hidden among my many, many books. During my first attempt at learning Japanese i had used Genki, wherein i was holding on until famous chapter 3, with abandonment of romaji and the first touches on verb conjugation, which I just completely could not wrap my head around. It was too much, too fast for me- the self-studier.
Japanese from Zero, however, started off so, so, so slow. I watched the accompanying video first, then read the chapter, and then watched the video again to try to understand. It was amazing, George taught in such a way that i believed that, for the first time, i could really learn japanese. I was able to answer the questions he posed about sentence structure and counting hundreds and millions in Japanese. I felt for the first month of studying that my brain was truly being warped, i felt that i had to literally twist my brain 180 degrees to understand this sentence structure, how words were put together… It took me a month to go through jfz1 but once i did i felt that i had finally overcome a major hurdle in my learning- perhaps the most important- i could understand a japanese sentence. And more than that, i felt on the precipice of understanding the japanese verb conjugation system, which is truly awesome and beautiful. (Which I know sounds crazy! But by the end of the JfZ 1 book where I started to understand the godan system, it was like entering the matrix lol)
I also really learned to appreciate how regular japanese learning is- just kuru and suru (and some odd ones here and there) as irregulars, a verb conjugation system built on the hiragana chart- vocab that is not just “rote memorize this word” but pictorial hints of flower/fire, noisy/rowdy, resistant/heat- i love kanji compounds. (coincidentally, my main struggle is with kana only words rn)
Despite how much i loved jfz1 as a base (and i did buy the rest of the books of his series, will use when my husband is ready to learn), i felt ready for a challenge. The slow start had been just enough for me to acclimate to the water, and now i wanted to swim. I started Genki 1 (and accompanying tokini andy videos), which i did like a lot, and provided just enough challenge for me without being totally penalizing. I remember doing some of the practice exercises, typing in Japanese and then getting a headache because it was just so foreign- staring at a bunch of sentences like こっちはなんですか？教科書ですよ！もちろん、絵本ではありません. (こんな感じ). That i couldnt believe came from me. Later on i stopped doing the exercises in textbooks because i didn’t have a tutor to help correct me- something thats changed now as i’ve gone through SKM N3 with my tutor.
After finishing Genki 2 (about 4-5 months in), i decided to take a break and really solidify what i had learned- I tried bunpro which was okay…but after about 3 months i dropped it. Too many synonyms, too easy to cheat, and it was another srs program on top of wk, and when it came down to keeping one- i picked wk. (coincidentally, I picked it up again recently after finding out there were anki-style grammar cards, which I did really really like. However, it was making my wk progression much slower so it’s been put on pause so I could just get over the last lap of wk). I read Tobira Beginner 1 and 2, and watched the absolute best supplemental videos by their associated UoM professor, all the while immersing. After finishing those, I went onto Quartet 1, now working slowly through Tobira to solidify those N3 points before moving onto Quartet 2. I love textbooks so this is fun for me (nerd).
- Kanji
Kanji is awesome- it makes so much more intuitive sense for me than “just memorize this word” - flower+fire, golden+ball, i love it. Wanikani was my primary resource for kanji learning. I had picked up the Kanji in Context book about 4 months into my studying program, and promptly dropped it (now it does make for a great kanji reference for when im feeling in the mood to write kanji). I have learned over and over again that i just simply cant handle more than one SRS program. Thats fine, because all i really needed was wk. All in all, the program took me 1 year and 7 months, which was faster than my goal of a 2 year completion. WK rocks for so many reasons, one of which is the curated level system and vocabulary it presents you right off the gate.
Early on i watched so many lectures on comprehensible input and Krashen, and one of the things i remember clearly hearing was that, pre-6k words, you were operating at “reading pain”. After going through the past year and change, i believe it! Although i would make some amendments to that statement. After level 30, the difficulty rate of vocab in my manga did substantially drop. Moreover the vocab/kanji i was encountering in the 40s was prominently featured in the VNs i was playing at the time. By level 60, I can pretty much play through a VN or read a shoujo manga with probably a 10% lookup rate. Level progression matters. Vocab on wk matters. Or shall I say, vocab in general. Vocab is probably the least looked forward to part of wk but in so many ways it is the most important. The kanji is meaningless without the vocab- the vocab makes it so you can read, not the kanji. Whether or not you just pick to focus on the kanji so you can level up here, and then have 1000 lessons of pure vocab, you will have to pay that pied piper later down the line. I say just get it over with as soon as you can- let it reinforce the kanji you learn, and bump you up asap to 6k words. That said…the 50s are pretty mid.
So after 1 year and 7 months, 2k kanji and 6k words, where does that get me?
Right now my grammars been assessed by a few tutors at the N3 level, although i will say immersing is less and less of an issue for me, at least for the content i am interested in (with the exception of struggling to read books with no pictures because its not as fun/content rich as manga/VNs). I have good reading comprehension and kanji level for the amount of time ive been studying (over a year and a half). Kanji is not an issue for me when it comes to reading about 97% of the time, and its just vocab, understanding words in context, slang/slurring/and grammar that gets me, but for the most part i have good intuition skills at guessing what is being said and after checking either with a tutor or deepL i’m usually right. That said, I still mix up similar looking kanji from time to time, or forget kanji I burned on wk that I can recognize with my eyes closed when I’m reading it in a game or a manga. It happens. That’s a lot of kanji in under 2 years! The solidifying will occur over time.
Mini Lessons and Thoughts
- The Importance of Timing
I was not ready to learn Japanese in 2016. The resources that were so helpful to me now in 2023-2024, in many places, did not exist or were obscure (if not in general, than just to me). I didnt understand how i studied best, what was important, and how i could get there. I didnt have a goal besides being “fluent in Japanese”. Understanding that about yourself is key. I was just beginning my college career, not ending it- and tbh i just didnt have the ability/time/mental chutzpah at that time to work this hard. In 2023, i did. So much of the ability to succeed is in doing the work and being able to do the work (having the mental time, focus, ability to understand, ability to accept vagueness) that i did not have when i started at the beginning of college versus the end of my college career 7-ish so years down the line. I learned about how i study, what i want to do, what works for me, what doesnt work for me, and how to set a plan and follow through over those years. It’s part of why I keep a monthly blog, it keeps me accountable, gives me a reason to push myself “for the blog” and its monthly, so if theres a week or 2 where i just do wk and thats it, its balanced out by other times where i binge a game or series or feel motivation to do a tobira chapter. If i did a weekly blog I would be more discouraged.
- What I Would do Differently
Nothing.
Greater thoughts on WaniKani
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What i liked
- Overall i really love and appreciate wk for what it is. Its a one stop shop to getting your kanji/vocab up to a reasonable, appropriate level for immersion. Once you get to level 60 (assuming youve been doing some maintenance work in the form of grammar study/reading), you will be in prime shape for immersion. And not just that- but the diligence you get from doing wk for at the very minimum 1 year, more likely approaching 2, means that if you can stick with it, you have the prime capacity for going forward in studying the language and actually getting to some fluency.
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What i didn’t like (areas for improvement)
- Not explaining all the differences in words that have the same definition (ex. all the “to shake”)
- Not starting out with the simplest unit of a kanji (I feel you should start out with a kanji composed of 1 radical then add on later. Like for instance the kanji 舎 (cottage) is introduced in lvl 35, but the radical 舎 and the kanji 捨 is introduced in lvl 32. It sounds silly but there were numerous incidences wherein I would internalize the full kanji like 捨 cottage then be confused when a simpler form of the radical came in reviews 5 months after the fact, and i would fail them. iykyk)
- Kana and other hypothesized wk additions (lvl 60+)
- I was one of the people who didnt dislike the kana update last year, but i do disapprove of how it was handled- i feel like kana should be in wk, but at the very least at a separate track or something. I’m not sure if i would come back for a kana only track at this point, despite my difficulty with kana only words.
- Would i come back to finish the jouyou kanji and/or N1? Probably, although i really shouldnt. After this, i should really only be learning new kanji/words that are directly applicable to the content im immersing in. I’m sure they will add this in at some point in the next decade, although by then i will probably refrain from partaking as i plan to have srs be a small part of my routine. Even the 50s were a major slog for me- I can feel how level 51+ were later additions. Level 1-49 all felt extremely useful, less so for 50+. But i still think they should add in an additional track system, like for nanori, the rest of the jouyo, other N1…and i would probably be back, just for a little bit.
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Hot takes on popular controversy
- Wanikani is too slow
You’ll have to take the word of all those who came before you in saying that wanikani does in fact pick up intense speed later, culminating by roughly level 20. Use all your free time and young sprightly energy to study your next dark horse of language- grammar. If you dont know grammar, then you could get all the way to level 60 and still not be able to immerse. Save yourself the heartache now- learn grammar while youre still struggling through early on, and reap the rewards later on when you hit level 30 and you can actually start making heads and tails of the content.
- Wanikani is too fast! Im drowning in reviews
Easy does it- if you dont have the mental capacity to do reviews, or expect that you wont in the near future- go on vacation mode ahead of time. Be realistic with yourself- your future self will thank you. Do not burn out!
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Burns are not all theyre cracked up to be
- I forget burns all the time in immersion, or mess up on kanji that I 100% on wk when I see it in a real life context. Or you mistake one kanji with an x radical with one that has a y radical. It happens. Some people take burns as that they are truly burned in your memory, but realistically that’s just not the case- you were just able to make it through all of the srs stages consistently. Don’t get hung up on burning this or burning that. Just focus on moving forward. For that reason, I won’t stay longer on wk for the purpose of 100% burns, its diminishing returns.
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Know when to walk away
- One of the most important parts of wanikani is to know when you need to stop- that is, put yourself on vacation mode. It is a great form of insurance for yourself, the worst thing is to skip vacation mode and then you have 400 reviews. It happens, but you should do everything possible to avoid
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Scripts and meta-leveling
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I didnt use scripts because in my first attempt, i used them, abused them (cheated, gave myself credit for partial correctness over accuracy), and then burned out. That said, the one method i did use for wk, which i hear over and over again from people who are also high level (and complained about from people who are low level) is that per level, you make sure that you always get the new level kanji from apprentice to guru (all correct stages) as opposed to naturally passing or failing the kanji. Key point is that once the kanji is first “guru-ed” aka used to pass the level, then you let the kanji pass/fail itself in the srs system naturally.
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Why do you do this? Because missing one kanji over and over again (let alone a small handful) can delay you leveling up for days, which limits the amount of new kanji you are exposed to and reduces motivation and sense of progression. As ive said before, the most important thing to do in wk is to balance getting a solid, strong foundation of kanji and vocab- and doing it as fast as possible without short cuts of quality. Immersion becomes greatly pleasurable at about N3- having that basis of kanji/vocab combined with adequate grammar means that you can enjoy the content you have been dreaming of doing all your weeb life, imminently. Progression over Perfection.
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Build Fun- Do What You Love Right Now
- I think this relates to finding your why- jp as a self-study, second language, is a very long difficult road and you should (and can!) find ways to have fun and practice from the jump. If you learn hiragana and katakana, and thats all you have, then find some raw content and practice by checking your memory. りんご (ri-n-go) Got it? Great! Before I could read, I would scan each page of Hana to Yume and just look for what I could understand, and if I couldnt understand anything, at least theres surely some hiragana or katakana on the page that I can.
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Measure Measure Measure
- About every 3 months or so on the learn Japanese subreddit (my guilty pleasure lurk), a post comes out that says something along the lines of “I’ve been immersing for the past 4 years, have read 25 light novels, and 1k hours of raw anime, and have not improved”. Now, the answer is usually just “lack of comprehensible input mixed with lack of lookups/lack of some kind of formal grammar study” but after the 3rd time I saw a post like this it makes me wonder- why did they not stop themselves after a year or even 2 years and question, is this working for me? Have I grown? What can I improve on and what is going right? That’s not to say that time isn’t a major factor of the equation- it is. But, the point stands, measuring is important- i think it’s a major reason why the JLPT is so focused on in our community- it sets a barometer for your ability and a yellow brick road as to where to go next. A study blog is great because it encourages self reflection on the meta learning process and also for holding yourself accountable and pushing for goals.
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Would i do level 61-70?
- Yeah probably, im a glutton for punishment, although i doubt theyll do it when most users dont even get to level 40, let alone 60. I will say that the 50s felt very gratuitous, and not nearly as useful as the first 49, although i definitely am someone who gets senioritis and is looking forward to some peace.
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Where do we go now?
- There are still lessons in the queue, so until my subscription runs out in march i will probably continue (at a much more leisurely pace) to continue lessons and some reviews per day, but at a much, much more relaxed pace. As an addendum basically to a greater immersion filled routine.
- As for beyond wk, well, I’ve been spending a lot of time on bunpro using taiyouseas method, so the next step would be continuing to hammer down grammar points for n3 and lower, finish quartet 2, and just kinda…keep doing most of what I’m doing. Just with more books. More books and more immersion. Find wonky sentence, look up words/grammar. Rinse, repeat. Wk is like steroids, it’ll bulk you up a little on your own but to be truly built you have to put other work in. Wk allowed a major hurdle of Japanese literacy to be taken off the table for me- now it’s just a matter of grammar and vocab, and when you inevitably reach the end of the major frequent grammar points, then you’re just left with vocab as the final boss. But that’s okay, I’m working through it.
Thank you WaniKani for helping me immerse, giving me the ability to read Japanese, showing me that I can pull through and do a major accomplishment, that I can push myself beyond what I thought i could do or achieve. For being able to play games that will never be released in English, reading manga chapters when they come out instead of having to wait months for an english release (if it ever comes). For giving me the tools to help fan translate and help others enjoy content that I love. This program has been with me since finishing grad school, getting my first adult jobs, moving, getting married…and i am forever grateful.
I’ve always wondered about those posts as well. It’s so important to be able to measure your progress. That’s why I love the study log community on here; when I was a beginner, reading through the logs was so motivating because everything was laid out so clearly (it can be done!) and now, I can easily compare my skills now to my skills any time since I started the log, and feel the progress.
