Should I give it another try?

Japanese Language Questions
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Hi, everyone.

Before I start I am sorry as this will be long wall of text where I am just pouring out my heart.

I am kind of torn between trying and not trying all this hellish learning again…
I was learning this language in the past like for 4 years? (started like from mid 2018 to mid 2023 or something like that). Most of my time was allocated for learning kanji through Wanikani (my highest level was 31) and reading stuff in Japanese (completed Sekirei manga and read through a lot of other stuff like NHK easy etc.)

Read some of Tae Kims grammar guide as well as Japanese the manga way (read through this one specific book like 10 times).

Here comes my problem. Throughout those years of actively trying and smashing my head against anything and everything I just got overwhelmed by Wanikani in the end got stuck at level 31 for more than half a year and that was even after I did reset once and dropped from 30 to 20… Trying to get my review stuff down but in the end what I was just doing was learning what I forgot for a while and forgetting it again and this process repeated for the whole time till I gave up completely.

From Japanese I do not remember most of the stuff especially those 20-30 levels of Wanikani (I recognize some kanji and the fact that I saw some of those god forsaken kanji for more than 100 or even 200 times and yet nothing… I have no idea what they mean. Maybe if I try to look up their meaning/translation I can get some rough idea…)

Might I say that when I was learning English my process of learning was kinda non standard? Especially if I have to compare it with Japanese. From scratch in two years (was able to read stuff in a year with some little trouble). My method was reading stuff like manga and watching anime with eng subs, playing games etc. while also visiting English courses (but like 60-70% I learned through this aforementioned method).

I can’t apply the same method with Japanese at least not completely and to make everything even worse I got quite lazy with reading (yep, shame me).

Now I did reset whole Wanikani and started from level 1 (at least those first levels seems to be easy as I went through them already…) and started my Bunpro grammar lessons.

So my question is how should I try to approach this if I want to give it another try but in some more meaningful way and especially not to make it another job where I have to get my reviews in time otherwise next day I will be swimming in like hundreds of items for review…
Is there any reading stuff or site that incorporates Wanikani for reading practice?

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Pretty sure Satori Reader can incorporate WaniKani for reading practice.

Maybe consider other methods of learning Kanji, like KKLC + Yomichan (Yomitan), which you can configure to use JJ definitions in Anki. Or RTK.

Suspend leeches, if you have to, in Anki.

Otherwise, WaniKani can be installed scripts, or use mobile apps, to use Anki Mode or Double Check. There is also JJ External Definition script.

Actually, my concern with WaniKani after Level 31, is about not only missing Kanji, but also missing readings, missing meanings, and exceptional vocabularies.

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Should you give Japanese another try? It sounds like you should. You’ve already made it fairly far once and you’re here despite your setbacks, which tells me you probably would like to learn Japanese.
Should you give WaniKani another try? Ehh.

I’d rather avoid going into how inefficient WaniKani is in terms of “get to immersion quickly”, which it seems is what you want to do with reading. WaniKani forums are a bit of a bubble, I’ll get lynched if I start that argument. (Maybe I’ll link to a way too long video from Vanilla instead, pretty sure he made that point in there somewhere.)
Let me make a more neutral argument instead: WaniKani doesn’t work for everyone. It seems like you might be one of those people. Welcome to the club :partying_face: :tada:

Personally I went through the cycle of “Start learning Japanese while using WaniKani → Quit learning Japanese” two or three times until I finally decided to listen to all those immersion learning people and gave something else a try. Three years after starting over from basically zero I passed the N1 and actually enjoyed myself along the way c:

With the foundations you already have in kanji, I don’t think you need the structure of WaniKani. If I were in your situation I would learn the 1000 most frequent kanji via Anki, which should be a breeze for you, then drop isolated kanji study all together. The less frequent kanji usually don’t even appear in multiple words that are relevant to an intermediate student, so you might as learn just learn the word itself. Less time SRS’ing, more time reading c:

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For somebody who’s got to WK 31 at least once, I wouldn’t even do that much isolated kanji study, personally. If you’re going to SRS anything then make it vocab that matches what you’re trying to read or what you have read. But maybe don’t SRS anything for a bit since that seems to be a lot of the burnout issues here. Definitely don’t SRS grammar, though Bunpro’s explanations are good.

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Ye, what he said in the video I did when I was learning English. I just read stuff and it naturally came to me. Grammar and most stuff I was looking up on the internet. I was not trying to waste my time on more harder sentences and just get the idea and move on. I was not cramming words or anything I just look them up wrote them on paper with translation for easier access if they pop up again and move on.

Basically it seems I need to reconsider the whole strategy and do it the way it suits me the best and most likely just do some anki word stuff + grammar at the beginning and then just read crap out of everything.

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It’s difficult to give advice about what someone else should do, but, given that you got to level 30 in WK, and you’ve some knowledge about grammar, I would suggest doing what I did when I got to that stage. Rather than jump back into WK/BunPro/whatever:

  1. Read material aimed at learners, set at your level.

This might be Satori, graded readers, other learning websites. Learn Kanji, words, grammar as you go.

  1. Listen to material aimed at learners, set at your level.

Podcasts which are entirely or very nearly in Japanese (Nihongo Con Teppei, Miku Real Japanese, Learn Japanese with Haruka, Nihongo no Tane, etc, etc), YouTube videos of the same sort of stuff. Listening and hearing Japanese spoken is important, even if you mostly just want to read, because it’s an effective way of embedding language in your head.

  1. Shadow

YouTube has a load of shadowing videos, there are other sources. Shadowing teaches you listening and recall of words, grammar, sentence structure, & pronunciation. It’s like listening, but harder and more effective.

  1. Read & re-read, watch & re-watch, listen & listen again to stuff you’re interested in, but in Japanese

Rick & Morty in Japanese is great, but Netflix has loads of Japanese dubs. Maybe manga with furigana. Install a custom dictionary on a Kindle and read books even when you don’t know all the kanji. The important point is to go over the material multiple times. Authors tend to stick to set of words, so reading a series of manga / light novels by the same author gets easier, re-reading the same chapter / edition is good because you’re looking at a word, and remembering what it should be, even if you wouldn’t remember it otherwise.

  1. When you’re too done to learn in Japanese, watch some of the educational Japanese videos on
    YouTube.

Stuff mostly in your native language / English, but about particular topics. Kaname Naito, NihongoDekita with Sayaka, Miku Real Japanese. This is low-ish quality learning, equivalent to reading a textbook but not doing the exercises.

Back to WK & SRS in general: SRS is a great tool but it should be an addition to your learning, not the majority of it. If you find yourself repeatedly thinking “it would be much easier to look up this word if I recognised the kanji”, then maybe have an Anki deck or flashcards for kanji you don’t know, but I would recommend taking a whole sentence that uses the Kanji, rather than just an individual out for context symbol.

Erm… hope that helps…

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It’s a tough question, I love wk and think its a great platform, and credit it as instrumental for my immersion to reading. I had gotten to level 6 in 2017, got overwhelmed, quit, then intermittently tried to restart again for years, never committing…until last March. This time around it worked for me, probably in large part because I was having fun, working at a stable pace, setting reasonable goals each month- and got to see the reading journey go from “barely recognize hiragana and katakana” to pretty easy reading in Ribon or Nakayoshi.

I noticed in your writing that there is a real disdain towards kanji “god forsaken/hellish learning”- if you aren’t having fun and actively enjoying a lot of the learning process, it will be hard to keep the motivation needed for this multi-years long journey. Maybe it would be helpful to clarify your goals for kanji, and what has worked for you in the past (most people who get overwhelmed by wk don’t make it to the early 30s, they crash out much earlier in pleasant/painful), when wk was going well for you, what was that like? What did you like about wk? Why do you want to learn Japanese- music, games, manga, culture? How can you incorporate the fun parts of Japanese now, even at the later-beginner stage?

wk might be good for you, or might not. I would recommend it to anyone learning at least to try- I found that even when I hadnt used wk for years, i still remembered the kanji I learned from wk on japanese food labels or in manga, so it suits my learning style. I like typing in the answers, as whenever i did anki I would just mark things as correct when i was only tenuously correct, or got close but not perfect. I don’t like customizing like you can on anki (or even bunpro) because i cheat. The wk interface makes me want to use it, unlike anki which doesn’t. If you don’t like those features, then it might not be the best program for you

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