Last week, I went through my last batch of lessons and guru-ed all lv. 60 kanji – in short: I finished!!! 
I took me about 3.5 years to finish, so I thought I’d be nice to share with you all some milestone, set-backs and my personal review of Wanikani.
First things first
CONGRATS ME!!! 
Stats
Comments on Level-up stats
- Lv. 1-15: Didn’t pay too much attention to my review times. I just did reviews whenever.
- Lv. 16-22: I knew that I would move to Japan pretty soon and wanted to sprint, but burnt out. Turns out moving across the globe and leaving everything you knew behind is pretty stressful and takes a lot of time and planning.
- Lv. 23-30: Motivated myself to get back into the kanji game by applying for JLPT N3 (dec2022)
and wanting to reach lv. 30 before that. Which I technically managed to do…. I reached lv. 30 on the day of the exam 
. (I also passed the exam ). - Lv. 31-43: Lost my rhythm a bit after the JLPT, but slowly found a good balance again…. Until I moved back home.
- Lv. 44: Moved back home. Was somehow even more stressful than moving to Japan.
- Lv. 45-60: When everything settled down a bit, I got back into the game and actually had a good rhythm. Was on a 2 week vacation at lv. 55.
Why is my accuracy so low?
- Because I did not use any scripts.
- Because a lot of kanji look the same to me.
- Because I had to plan reviews around my work & life and not the other way around.
How good am I at Japanese now?
I always was curious what lv. 60 users are able to do, so here is where I’m at:
- Reading: My strongest skill (thanks to wanikani). I can read newspaper articles and manga just fine. I can play games in Japanese. I’m actually very happy with where I’m at with my reading, but keep in mind that I focused most of my efforts on this skill. (Self-estimated JLPT level: N2)
- Listening: My listening is okay-ish. Depending on the topic I can follow longer monologues just fine or not at all. I stand no chance at news being read to me, but if it’s a story, I can usually at least get what it’s about. If I’m familiar with the topic and the speaker I can usually follow quite well. (Self-estimated JLPT level: N3)
- Speaking: Having a hard time with this. I freeze up when put on the spot, but when I get to think about it, I probably could form a response. I just never needed to talk much outside of standardized interaction. The only 2 achievement for speaking I had was 1) converting my driver’s licence to a Japanese one all by myself and 2) getting my My-number-card issued at city hall all by myself. But, both times, I researched the vocab I thought I would need beforehand and therefore was pretty prepared for the any questions they threw at me. (Self-estimated JLPT level: N4)
- Writing: Non-existent. I never had to write anything in Japanese, so I have no idea how good I even could theoretically be. I also would only be able to write digitally, because I cannot hand-write kanji.
The beginning – Who am I? Why Japanese? Why Wanikani?
Learning a language takes a lot of time and effort and I know it can seems like once you’re out of school, there is no way you’ll ever have enough time. But you can!! I did it – you can too! 
Who am I?
I’m in my 30ies and work in research. On the one hand, my work can be very flexible, but it also can be very demanding – time-wise and mentally. This means that there were months were I had to work long hours basically every day and when I came home I was very tired and drained and doing reviews was just depressing – especially, because I did not have the mental capacity to actually concentrate, so I made a lot of mistakes. On the other hand, there were also months where I could leave work early and even do wanikani at work.
In 2022 I had the opportunity to work in Japan (Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture) for about 1.5 years. Now, you might think that this was amazing for my Japanese learning journey and while it certainly helped to live in a Japanese environment, communication at work and in my social circle was exclusively in English.
Why Japanese?
When I was in middle school, I had 2 friends who were into anime & manga and eventually I also was (and still am) into anime & manga. So naturally, I, at some point, wanted to learn Japanese.
I did some Japanese language classes in my mid-twenties through my university, which – looking back – focused more on food & culture than on the language itself (which is fine, but when I think about the hours I spent in the classroom vs. what I actually learned language-wise, it’s kinda wild). I didn’t take studying Japanese very seriously back then, I was just happy to do something Japanese-related.
This all changed, once I set my mind on living in Japan for at least a year and realized that I really, REALLY need to learn kanji.
Story about why I wanted to live in Japan and how I actually managed to do it (no helpful advice)
Ever since high-school (the height of my love for anime & manga) I would, from time to time, think to myself “Wouldn’t it be cool to live in Japan for like …1 year?”. But to be honest, it was always just a dream – conceptually nice, but not an actual possibility in my life. This, however, changed in my mid- to late 20ies, when I realized that I really wanted to live abroad for at least 1 year. And so, my dream came back into my head: “Wouldn’t it be cool to live in Japan for like …1 year?”.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity
Since research is quite international and even encourages you to work outside of your country of origin for at least a year (in Europe that’s the case anyways), there are quite a few routes you can take:
- Just apply to job in another country
- Apply for grant money in the country, where you want to work
- Apply for grant money in your home country that supports and/or encourages working outside your country of origin
Working in research, you’ll also connect with many different researcher from all over the world through guest lectures, conferences or visits.
And here is where I just got lucky:
My research group had a 1-month visit from a pretty distinguished – but retired – university professor from Japan. My country offers a grant specifically for people, who did their PhD less than 5 years ago and wanted to work in another country for 1-2 years. I was lucky, because the head of my group supported me when I asked the Japanese professor to help me get a foot in the door of a Japanese Research facility. I was lucky, because that Japanese professor was so excited that I wanted to go to Japan that he talked to 3 different people and they were all willing to take me. He gave me the contacts of all three of them and encouraged me to choose whomever I think would fit my needs best. I was lucky, because I applied for a pretty competitive grant to go abroad and actually got it.
Why Wanikani?
The short answer
Their marketing
2,000 kanji.
6,000 vocabulary word.
In just over a year.
Would’ve never started, if they would’ve told me it’s gonna take me 3.5 years……
Slightly longer answer
I realized that if I ever were to move to Japan, I really needed to learn kanji. While I did learn some kanji in the Japanese language class I took, they never stuck. I tried hand-writing kanji on physical flash-cards, they still did not stick. I searched the internet and wanikani came up. I immediately liked that they promised me that I would only need to spend 1 year to learn most kanji, because honestly: I hated learning kanji. They all looked the same to me, there were just too many and I constantly forgot the ones I had already learned. The prospect of spending 1 year on studying kanji and then to just be done was very tempting. So in 2021 I made my very first New Year resolution: Learn kanji.
Wanikani review & my wanikani recommendations
Review
I love wanikani. It’s my favourite app. I think it’s an amazing product that actually taught me kanji. I have a lifetime subscription and it was very much worth it. I did not use any scripts and I don’t think that you need to use scripts. I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without wanikani 
.
The only 2 thing I do miss are an 1) undo button & 2) the summary page.
Recommendations
- Pick a sustainable pace: Pick a pace which will always be doable for you. Ask yourself: Will you be able to do your reviews when you’re aunt & uncle are coming to town for the weekend and you’ll have to entertain them? Will you be able to do your reviews when you have a cold and you feel very tired? Will you be able to do your reviews when you have to work late? For me a good pace was 10 lessons per day and imho, you can only do 20 (which you’ll probably need to do to go full speed), if you either have a lot of time or you’re very good at retaining information.
- Set up a lesson time & review schedule: I used to do lessons & reviews whenever I felt like it – which is a terrible idea. I do recommend to do lessons at a time where you can catch the 4 hour review and – ideally – also the 8 hour review. My retention got way better once a switched up my routine and did my lessons in the morning before work. I was then able to catch the 4 hour review at lunchtime and the 8 hour review in the evening. I used to lessons in the evening and I usually missed the 4 hour review and never remembered anything the next day. I now also do my reviews about 4 times a day: in the morning before work, at lunch, right when I get home and one more time before I go to bed. Sticking to a schedule allowed me to incorporate reviews into my daily routine, which in turn meant that I actually did them.
- Do your reviews: Exactly this. Do your reviews. Pause lessons if you have to, but do your reviews. You can use vacation mode, but in my experience whenever you come back from vacation mode your accuracy decreases significantly, which is so, so, sooooo frustrating.
- Join the forums: The forum is a great resource. It offers advice, encouragement, laughter and help. Take advantage of it. There is a section for everyone. Personally, I’m part of Let’s Durtle the Scenic Route, which always provided a place for me to vent my frustrations and celebrate my victories
. I’m also part of various bookclubs: Absolute Beginners Book Club, Beginner Japanese Book Club, IBC Primer Book Club. The bookclubs are very welcoming and celebrate learning. You can ask any questions and as many questions as you like: there will always be someone to help you or point you in the right direction .
My response to common complaints about wanikani
- Need to use user-scripts: Never used them. I did wanikani on my phone, on my work laptop, on my tablet and on my private laptop. I could not get userscripts to work on any device (my private laptop is super old, because I rarely use it and my work laptop obviously does not allow me to install random scripts). I think it’s fine. I imagine for some people scripts do enhance their user experience, but it certainly is not true that you’ll have to install scripts to use wanikani.
- Wanikani teaches odd words: While there are some odd words, I actually don’t think the app focuses on obscure vocabulary. Most vocab words are used pretty regularly and I have encountered them in manga or games. This is also true for kanji and vocab on higher levels. You’ll see them less, but they’ll still come up often enough that you’ll be glad you won’t have to look them up. Example: 坑道. 坑 and 坑道 both come up at lv. 60, so I learned them less than a month ago. I encountered 坑道 (tunnel) in a game about 2 weeks ago.
- Wanikani is expensive: I have bought so many textbook, especially in the beginning of my self-study journey and I – with the exception of Genki I – never worked through more than the first chapter of any of them. I’m absolutely sure that the total amount I spent on these books is more than what I spent on wanikani. Wanikani lifetime can be an expensive up-front cost, but it was the first thing in my self-study journey that actually helped me to make progress. I think it’s worth what you pay for, if you actually enjoy using it.
- Removal of features & changes: I also dislike change. I really miss the summary page. I did not like the kana-only additions. I have no strong feelings on the daily lessons feature. I dislike the recent mistake feature (I make too many, so because of the 24 h threshold there are just always too many for me to bother to actually use it). I have no opinion on the recent lessons feature (never used it, don’t understand why anybody would). But overall: I genuinely don’t understand the tantrum some people throw every time something changes. Some people pretend that wanikani changes so much that it will become unrecognizable at some point. But even though it took me over 3x the advertised time to finish, it is essentially the same product.
Other resources I used
- Genki I: I worked through the first half and then stopped using it. I think it’s a good resource, but I learned that it’s hard for me to recognize where I actually need to put in more work and where I can just skim the content. Wanikani items come up in your reviews. If you fail, their SRS stage goes down. In a textbook, I work through things, think I know them and then never review them again. Textbooks are not for me, I guess (at least not without a teacher. Always loved textbooks in school).
- Japanesepod101.com: I think it’s a great resource, if you’re N4-N3. (Can’t speak on N5, did not use it back then.) But:
Never ever pay full price for it!! (35% discount or more and the price will reflect the quality of their product). Their content at lower N-levels is very good, the dialogues are engaging, the banter between the hosts seems natural and you’ll learn a few cultural things as well. However, some N3 content and most N2 content is just bad in my opinion. Example: They have a whole series on Japanese fairytales which is labelled N3. The vocab and the stories are not adapted for N3, though. That means that they’ll go through ca. 30 words which are specific to fairytales (meaning you never heard them before and will not need them after) and then just read the fairytale without any explanation or banter. It is so frustrating . The vocab and word order is typical for a fairytale too, so you’re not going to understand anything if you’re not used to it. Some of the N2 content is also insanely hard to understand because they cram as many terms related to the lesson’s topic in as they can (the lessons about suicide statistics of different countries comes to mind), but other lessons are just slice-of-life and super easy to understand. In addition, while they claim at the end of each lesson to have a ~mOrE dEtAilEd wRiTe-uP~ about grammar or vocab in the lesson’s pdfs, this is simply not true. Grammar is not explained, just shown how it is formed – which is probably fine for lower N-levels, but at solid N3 or N2 you kinda need to know more than just how to form a specific grammar point. Vocabs are not presented in other contexts, just how they are used in the dialogue. And the things that enrages me the most: All the mistakes!! 
There are typos (English and Japanese), things are missing in the pdf, whole pdfs are missing, wrong kanjis in the pdfs, etc. Clearly, nobody proof-reads the pdfs, which essentially makes them useless . - Bunpro: I use/used bunpro on and off. I like that it reinforces grammar points through SRS, but I also don’t really feel that I know those grammar points. It’s enough for now though, as I do usually recognize grammar when I encounter it in the wild. I used their vocab decks for a bit and I will start using them again, although I kinda dread it, because I do not like their reviewing system for vocab. It feels too strict.
- Anki: Tried getting into Anki 4 times. Downloaded decks, built my own deck, but honestly, I just don’t use the app. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t understand why people love it so much. It is not for me.
- Native material: The first book I ever read cover to cover in Japanese was Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea (大海原と大海原). At the time, I felt that while I was making progress at learning kanji, I would not recognize kanji in the wild – just in the app. So I decided to join the Absolute Beginner Bookclub. I did the math… I was lv. 9 when this particular bookclub started
. That is horribly low 
. But: I compensated my lack of kanji and language knowledge with a lot of time and motivation. I remember that, at the beginning, it took me about 2 hours to go through 1 page. Not a double page. One. Single. Page. 
But I was ecstatic: I was finally reading Japanese 
. This is also why 大海原と大海原 will always have a special place in my heart . Nowadays reading - thankfully - is much easier 
. I recently joined the Beginner Book club for The promised Neverland (約束のネバーランド) and I can read & understand about 97 % without looking anything up. So my recommendation is: even if it’s hard at first, even if it’s frustrating: try to find native material you enjoy. I will greatly help your progress. 
Level-up GIFs celebration
I love the level-up GIFs. They were what I looked forward to the most when levelling up. The only disappointing GIF was Lv. 60 because THERE IS NO GIF!! 
WHY!!! 
I was so disappointed!!! 
I was so sad!!! 
To celebrate finishing wanikani, I went through all the GIFs and picked my top 3:
goes to….
Lv. 5!
goes to….
Lv. 6!!
goes to….
Lv. 35!!!
What’s next?
- I will continue using wanikani as long as it brings me joy.
- I want to start over with the bunpro vocab decks and use them to learn all vocab they offer including N1.
- I want to finish コンビニ人間 by the end of the year. I was part of the bookclub which did a re-read in 2023, but the move back home just killed all my free time and motivation…
- I want to continue to play games in Japanese
- I want to retake N2 next summer (failed the July exam by 2 points…
)
Thank you
- Thank you for reading my post
- Thank you to all the people answering my endless questions in the bookclub threads
- Thank you WK team for your support & efforts
- Thanks to all the people in my personal life who supported me and listened to me when I needed to vent
- Thank you
for allowing me be your humble student 
I tried chatting with chatgpt twice, but honestly, I just don’t know what to write about 
