I took a couple of months off WaniKani (using vacation mode) during my university exam season, having got to level 12. I want to restart again now that my exams are over, but I don’t know how to get back into it. I’m scared to unfreeze vacation mode because I have forgotten so many of the readings and kanji. Any advice would be much appreciated! Should I just start from scratch?
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Well, I hate to butt in with unsolicited advice, but seeing as you’re asking, I suggest you just get stuck in and do your reviews. I’ve tried restarting and have regretted it. Ymmv. If you have a large review queue, pop yourself some popcorn, boot up YouTube and take breaks every ten minutes you watch to do ten reviews, for half a Saturday, and you should have cleared a hugw chunk. That’s how I’ve done my backlogs. If you forgot something that’s fine, that’s what the srs is for. Let it cook.
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Don’t be afraid of making mistakes and be kind to yourself is probably the first step.
It’s only natural that you can’t remember things months later, so try not to stress yourself out over it too much. Don’t be afraid of having open a second window and looking up the lesson pages for items you can’t remember as they pop up to refresh yourself. Treat those as if it’s the first time you’re encountering them again, because they might as well be. That’s perfectly normal.
At this point any way of getting back in motion is good enough to start building up momentum again. So whatever is the path of least (mental) resistence for you is best.
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I also had been stuck in vacation mode on level 12 for a long, long time - a few months back I took it out of vacation mode, with a review backlog of more than 800 pending reviews.
Yes, it was pretty daunting at first, as I ran into far too many items that I didn’t even remember ever having studied. I battled down the number of reviews over time, to get it to maybe 400 or so, but then it would build up again daily, so I went back into vacation mode for a few more months.
But after that second major delay I finally mustered the courage to take it out of vacation mode for real, with a plan for dealing with lots and lots of those items that I didn’t remember from before.
I changed my review mode somewhat (in a way that some people might regard as ‘cheating’ - but I don’t - rather I look at it as ‘learning’ the second time around some items that I did not sufficiently ‘learn’ the first time).
Any meaning that I got wrong, I’d look at both the meaning and the reading. Any reading that I got wrong, I’d also look at both the meaning and the reading. And, with either, I would review the context sentences. Eventually by doing that I shrunk it down to a manageable size - by doing 100 or 200 or even 300 reviews at a time.
Finally I got the number of pending reviews all the way down to zero - which gave me the confidence to restart new lessons. Just within the past few days I finally leveled up to level 13, after having spent something like 11 months and 8 days between first starting level 12 and finishing it.
I’m glad that I did it - and I’m feeling much more confident now about my ability to remember the kanji. Yes, occasionally I will run across something that is a total blank to me - but those are becoming fewer and farther between.
I am trying to zero my reviews every day now - and at least so far it has been working for me.
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If you have iOS you can use the third party app tsurukame and look through the list of words in each section. Apprentice, Guru, etc. While doing that find study resources for immersion such as watching Game Gengo on youtube.
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It depends how much you’ve forgotten. I would just power through it if you can do, like 300 a day. That will get you down from almost any impossible stack little by little faster than you think. But at some poor accuracy level, that gets ineffective because you don’t see the failures again for a long time.
If your accuracy is really poor, then you need to get drastic. The only thing I would change in this…
…in hindsight is that after I crammed in vacation mode, I would limit my reviews to 300 a day or thereabouts. If you do it all in one go, then all the next reviews are stacked up on the same days too, which sucks when that day comes.
It seems that I DO NOT understand how vacation mode works!
I take that statement by @jprspereira to mean that ALL reviews are frozen in time. So, for example, if I had a 5 reviews scheduled in SRS 4 months from now, then 4 months after deactivating vacation mode, I would STILL ONLY HAVE those 5 reviews come up in 4 months!
But then we get the following statement:
I take this statement to mean that at the time @servette activated VM, @servette DID NOT HAVE 800 pending reviews; otherwise why complain about it now after deactiving VM?
So It seems like WK during VM will still accumulate ALL the reviews that would have come up while not in VM which IS NOT the freeze I was expecting per @jprspereira! [OOOPs, upon rereading this sentence what I said can’t be true!] Never the less, NOTE that @servette IS NOT the only one who have made this comment about a ton of reviews showing up after deactiving VM!!!
So can someone explain just how VM works in simple terms that someone like me can understand? Here is an example of what would work for me, assume:
| # of Reviews Due | When Due | Total # Due |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | next day | 5 |
| 25 | 1 month | 30 |
| 170 | 6 months | 200 |
Obviously there would be a LOT MORE reviews between ‘next day’ and ‘6 months’ but this is just an example to explain my point. Also, I am assuming that the SRS schedule would not go beyond 6 months (but so what even if it did, my point of how VM works is still valid).
Given this example, when I deactivate VM, I would expect ONLY 200 reviews to be scheduled in SRS, not hundreds (some people even stated thousands!). Granted, as soon as I do the first 5 reviews the next day, then those 5 reviews will be rescheduled according to the SRS algorithm BUT the total number of review will remain at 200 (unless some of the 5 reviews were Burned). Furthermore, that 200 would remain the same (minus Burns) until I start doing more lessons!
So can someone explain what’s wrong with my expectation of how VM works and if this is indeed how it should work, then why are some users getting hundreds and thousands of reviews upon deactivating VM?
It would seem that I am missing something REALLY simple in my understanding of how VM works! Is there a VM for Dummies post out there? 
All the ones I read pretty much say the same thing as @jprspereira.
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Give your self some time to get back into the swing of things and don’t do any lessons until you feel like your passing 80%+ of review sessions. (You can do less than 80%, I’m not the cops)
Then do batches of 5 lessons, try not to do more than 10, since you’re probably gonna be dealing with leeches or words you are relearning for a bit.
I may have been a bit unclear - the reason why I went into vacation mode in the first place was that I had too many other things going on in my life, and due to ignoring pending reviews they were getting stacked up higher and higher - so having those 800-some-odd reviews piled up and knowing that I wasn’t going to be working on them due to being busy with other stuff, that was the impetus that led me to go into vacation mode.
So, when I later on decided to maybe attack that pile of reviews, I took myself out of vacation mode, having the same 800-ish number of reviews waiting for me that I had had at the time when I had first entered vacation mode.
But I didn’t successfully whittle those down to zero when I first came out of vacation mode, and, fearing that if I didn’t do something quickly that pending review count would build back up - so I put it into vacation mode a second time and walked away from it.
Hope that clarifies things…
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THANK YOU SO MUCH for clearing that up!!!
Then perhaps those other posts that I read about had the same situation, i.e., they ALREADY had the hundreds and thousands of reviews pending before activating VM! Hopefully, this was the case and my understanding of VM is correct after all. 
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I whittled down a review backlog of over 5300, though it took me years. So anything is possible. But it’s not necessarily advisable.
I think it all depends on how much you actually remember. Personally, I’d remember resetting to a lower level where you can remember things more easily, since powering through a large review pile is likely to cause you to be demoralized and quit.
The thing to remember is that even in the extreme case where you reset all the way to level 1, that’s still only a minor setback. Wanikani doesn’t take that long, and you still have your knowledge so it won’t be as hard as the first time. Plus you should be getting exposure in other Japanese study activities which will make things easier over time as well.
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Thanks for your replies! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed about it, because I tried to restart and it turns out I’ve forgotten so much already. It’s a bit disheartening!
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It is the nature of the beast. If you don’t use it, you lose it. On the bright side, it’ll be much easier to learn anew, because somewhere deep in the gray matter, there are already hooks for this stuff.
I’m sure you can make it if you apply yourself to it!
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you have lifetime and only lvl 12, a restart wouldn’t hurt.
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That’s what I was thinking too. It feels less overwhelming to start from scratch and work my way back up. Hopefully it will be quicker this time at least!
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I think this is what I’m going to do. I’m worried about a similar thing happening again when I start my PhD later this year though, as I will have a lot less time for reviews etc.
@servette are congratulations in order?! it looks like you leveled up! I saw you were adjusting your routine in other threads. I hope it’s all going swimmingly
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Thanks - yes, at least so far it is going well for me, as I am continuing to do my reviews on a daily basis.
I am also going through new lessons, mostly on a daily basis, and typically doing 10 (or sometimes 15) new lessons at a time.
I also will be hope to be expanding my studies with more listening practice and grammar and reading practice.
While I have ‘set the stage’ for doing those things, I have not yet actually followed through.
Yes, ‘good intentions’ are often foiled when they run into the brick wall represented by ‘reality’. However I’m feeling energized about my Japanese studying right now, which is at least a good sign.
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That’s fantastic! 
I’m glad it’s going well. It sounds like you’re being really thoughtful about what you’re adding to your routine, I’m sure you’ve got this.
I have recently been foiled by reality (illness) so I know what you mean there. I am finding it’s possible to benefit a lot from earlier periods of being energised though, as in, it’s made it easier to now manage a “minimum” routine that feels ok and not like giving up everything. In a way it’s made me less worried about the effect of illness on things like this!
Stay well!
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Oh no - sorry to hear that - hope that you can get back on your feet quickly.
While I’ve been (mostly, but not entirely) lucky enough to have avoided having to deal with serious medical issues, I absolutely know how utterly debilitating it can be when faced with even a minor illness (and, while you’re experiencing it, no illness is ever ‘minor’).
All too often we can take good health for granted, only to have everything unexpectedly and unpredictably disrupted.
I am due to have some upcoming diagnostics performed that I’m hoping will have favorable outcomes, but you never really know for sure until the results come in.
Wishing you the best…
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