~1 hour of wanikani
~1 hour working on the core 6000 at iknow
~30 minutes japanese101 podcast
~1 hour Shin Kanzen Master N2 Grammar
per day.
I’m currently doing an full-time internship + university. Hope to get more reading into my schedule again as soon as I finish my internship next week.
That’s a LOT of time put into one subject! It starts to sound like what I used to put in my piano practice back in high school (when I had the time and less other disturbances to keep me away from playing), with typical daily practice sessions lasting 3-4hours each. How do you do it? o___o
My ‘regime’ is more wishful thinking atm than it is reality, due to being heavily invested in other studies, work etc. Hence what I actually do is mainly just WK. Roughly 200 reviews per day.
What I would do, if I had the time is:
KANJI:
WRITING:
TEXTBOOKS:
I don’t rely on anime, as I don’t want to accidentally pick up アニメっぽい language. If anything, I’d like to dapple into podcasts, variety shows and things with real live people using the real language. (I say this, because my ex-housemate in Japan, who was really into anime and manga, used language that according to my Japanese friends sounded very otaku-ish. They advised me against using such terms. Not saying anything is wrong with that, if that’s your thing, but just as a personal preference…/me clears throat)
I’d also like to add other reading material. Probably light novels and such.
When I have time… ahh…
Wow, that’s a ton of time! 25 hours per week! What have you found to be the most effective parts, and what the least? Any recommendations based on your experience?
I’m using WK for kanji and the majority of my vocab. It’s pretty slow at level 4 but I expect to spend 1-2 hours/day after a while. If I can get to level 50 in a little over a year I’ll be happy.
~2 hours/day of Pimsleur audio tapes at work, though with my attention span while multitasking only about half of that is useful. That gives me some practice with listening/pronunciation and makes the grammar feel natural (I skimmed all of Genki 1 recently and was thrilled to find I already knew almost all the grammar which I expected to be the hard part). Just finished their Japanese 2 series and will start the third after some review. Each series is only ~15 hours of content though, so I’ll run out very soon.
Genki for extra vocab, grammar rules, and just generally filling gaps left by other resources. In particular though it’s the thing I can turn to if I feel like a study binge since WK is so strict with its SRS. Still, I usually only pick it up once or twice per week since I’m lazy most days and using other sources.
Overall I’m probably spending about 10 hours of active study on a lazy week to about 25 when I’m very motivated.
For the future I’ll probably get Tobira after Genki 2 and start reading children’s books when I’m capable of it, and eventually manga/anime/games with Japanese audio. 
I’ll probably also force myself to use something like Lang8 and/or hellotalk. I need to know enough to exempt college foreign language requirements maybe as early as this fall (should be easy since they use Genki 1 for two semesters), and would like to be able to communicate most simple ideas by next year when I visit Japan. And if all goes well, I’m hoping to be able to teach English there, in which case I want to speak their language as well as possible.
Idk if there are multiple series/types, but are you talking about Kanzen Master Grammar Series? Just wondering because my mom got me the N3 for my birthday and I was thinking of getting the N4 on my own…
For N4 there’s grammar only N3 and on do have Grammar, Listening, Reading, Vocab, and I believe Kanji. I plan on getting the N3 Grammar and Reading once I’m done with N4.
Oh man I wish I had as much time as some of you… are you students, part time, or just incredibly dedicated to get 25 hours a week in??
I’m so under it at work right now that by the time I’m home I basically need to choose between the gym and doing some Japanese! But like a lot of you I try to squeeze it in here and there. Not going to make excuses for myself but sometimes I do wish I could afford to just take a month off and go for it lol 
My standard day:
All my reviews on WK (average 3-4 sessions a day) and 10-15 new lessons
Read a bit of Genki in my half hour on the train
A couple of times a week, I have a study session whether I either do Genki exercises or Graded Readers for a couple hours.
(Basically, I’ll get there but I’ll be about 50 by that time lol)
Part time. 
But when that changes my studying may slow. I hope it doesn’t.
JapanesePod is definitely the least effective. It’s basically just there to get some kind of listening practice, but I don’t feel like the time / effect ratio evens out.
WaniKani and iknow are pretty self explanatory I think. SRS has the benefit that over time anything will be burned into your brain.
The Shin Kanzen Master books are the best when it comes to textbooks IMO. Super clean layout (no anime charactes and other bullshit that doesn’t belong into a grammar book) and well structured.
I’ll finish WaniKani and the Core 6000 deck next month, which means I’ll have to do a lot less reviews (currently ca. 200-300 on WK + 200-250 on iknow daily). I plan to use the saved time for at least one hour of reading per day and maybe one Lang8 entry per day.
Mine’s loose and flexible. I don’t do organized, goals, or pressure well.
~ Do WK reviews as they come, sorta.
~ Continuing working through Human Japanese Intermediate plus note taking
~ When I feel like it, Lang 8, sometimes once a week, sometimes five
~ Utilize/ participate in WaniKani Japanes only topics, LINE chat, and Discourse
~ Pretty much at random use Anki and KaniWani
~ 2 - 12 episodes of anime per day. Anime is serious biz.
~ When I’m in the mood for it, read Japanese doujins and the like.
~ (Not at the moment but this is something I have utilized and will again eventually) Spend 5 to 30+ minutes each on 2 to 8 Memrise courses daily.
~ Write in my diary sometimes in Japanese, letters I’ll never send, and horrible haikus.
I intend for this to change as I have a few Japanese books I really hope to get my hands on with the quickness.
That’s a pretty similar schedule to what I have been doing for the past 1-2 months or so as well with the main difference being I haven’t done any italki lessons yet.
My weekly study looks like:
Quantifying all of this surprised me on how much I actually spend studying but it doesn’t feel I do that much, maybe it’s because I’m only a uni student and only working part time so I have a lot more free time during the week.
I’d say being a student and having a part time job is at least equivalent to working full-time! What is your major?
I’m majoring in computer engineering but I work part time in IT which gives me a lot of downtown where I do most of my reviews.
I’m thinking about reducing my commitment to WaniKani, like it’s just too much time to be spending on any one approach. It’s difficult to give up that one-week cycle, though, seeing as it allows me to have reliable Saturday leveling bursts and I have it all lined up to avoid scheduling conflicts…
I’m afraid if I go from a scheduled approach to an ad-hoc one, it’ll just devolve into me never doing any WaniKani. But I really want to get to using Anki more, specifically for studying grammars and set phrases.
Any suggestions for reducing the WK load without making it so loose as to effectively quite?
I’m trying to get back into working on Japanese again. I have some more text books for that haven’t really been finished since I already passed N2 a while back, but with the lack of actual application at work (or anywhere) the language is going to slip.
I decided to start with committing 1 hour to study - devoting that first hour right after waking up. This one hour will go either grammar, kanji, vocabulary. Eventually, it will become at least 2 hours to devote the rest to application like reading Japanese articles, news, etc., writing practice (wherever I can find them - thankfully, Wanikani has Japanese-only threads for practice).
What if you stayed on a one week cycle, but you only did your lessons on Saturday. Radicals and 1st wave Kanji the first week and Vocab and 2nd wave kanji the second week.
Calculating the amount of time I spend is a pain, but basically it’s just:
SRS (WK,KW,Anki)
Reading (mostly visual novels so far)
1-2 chapters of Genki a week
I’ve been lazy on doing the Genki lately though. Anki too actually. Gotta get back on that.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking of that as the “two week cycle” and have been concerned about such a drastic deceleration. That said, especially seeing as it wouldn’t actually represent a halving of the work (because of the some 2.5k items already past guru for me) it might actually make sense. A two week cycle would probably still be a commitment of something like 6-8 hours per week, which could open me up to do other things.
Speaking of other things, this is what I would like to introduce in the place of the one-week cycle:
I’d love to do KW, but in the past it has felt like such a drag…
If I could achieve all of that by halving my WK speed, it’s probably worth it, huh? I was thinking about implementing this when I hit level 30, in last April. That would put me on track to reach the level acceleration on November 18th, where I’d return to a one-week schedule, and reach 60 on March 3rd of next year. Plenty of time to complete coverage for the N2, even if I decided to take it in July.
Sorta just thinking out loud, but this is the results of hearing about all y’all’s study schedules. Thanks for your perspectives!
At the moment, my study regimen looks like:
I got N2 a couple of years ago, then stopped studying for a while, and now I’m back at it trying to study as much as possible in my free time. Having a 35 minute train (one-way) ride to work everyday has pretty much been designated as my Wanikani time. I guess the purpose to study again isn’t to take N1 or anything like that, but instead have a better command of Japanese at work. All in all, it’s nice to study at full-speed again!