The forums only update your number when you log back in (or maybe if you wait long enough? But thereās been lots of cases of people posting in the wrong level category because they didnāt log out recently so it must be a long time)
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Aye, it updates on its own generally, but logging out and back in again is a way of forcing it to update immediately.
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So yep, after five months of serious Japanese learning, and some years of slacking around, I finally got myself to learn katakana. I didnāt learn them until now out of pure laziness to be honest, but now that Iām slowly ramping up my reading habit, it was starting to become a problem. I have learned them using this video, which I recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6DKRgtVLGA&ab_channel=LearnJapanesewithJapanesePod101.com
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Heck yeah, congrats! Are you doing any other SRS for vocab?
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Nope! Right now Iām mostly doing Wanikani for vocab and Satori for reading. In Satori you can also add words you donāt know to a list and then do quizzes, but I havenāt used that feature a lot yet.
I also havenāt touched bunpro in a few weeks. Bunpro is great for learning new grammar patterns, but Iām starting to realise that it requires some active reading on the side to start seeing and recognising those patterns. Otherwise, for me personally, the grammar SRS donāt stick.
On listening, I was using Nihongo con Teppei for beginners, although I got the feeling that the difficulty ramps up very quickly.
But going back to your question, I think Wanikani + reading is more than enough for vocab. The important thing is to use the stuff that you learn, either through input (recognising) or output (producing).
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Music has been my main hobby since I was 12. Iāve had several bands of different genres, but all around rock/metal. I have done some folksy/trip-hoppy stuff on my own too. But I have a problem with Japanese pop/rockā¦ It oftentimes sounds too much like an anime intro to me. But I do want to listen to Japanese music, both to enjoy and to do immersion. So I have decided to leave around here some of the stuff I come across that I find good and interesting.
The first one must be Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Iām pretty sure many around here will know this guy and his collective - he was responsible for creating the Akira OST, which in my opinion takes the movie to a whole different level. His record Ecophony Rinne is probably my favourite. I wouldnāt know exactly how to describe the music; he uses many polyrythmical structures, along with gamelans and electronic soundsā¦ Also classical Japanese stuff. Sounds weird, but everything fits together perfectly.
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Reached level 12 today. I have a huge pile of pending vocabulary from level 11 that I need to empty before I continue with the new kanji, and that will take me at least one week!
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Good job on leveling up!! 
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Thank you!
My last post was a bit thin on details, Iāll elaborate some more. Iām keeping up with WK, but lately I have abandoned a little bit the rest of the stuff I was doing. I have to get back to Satori and do bunpro again. Also, sometimes I donāt do lessons at allā¦!
On the other hand, the other day at work, someone from Japan posted a customer case targeted to my team and I was able to understand quite a few things. It helps that I recently learned katakana, but apart from that, just by being at level 12 you can already understand a looot of stuff. Maybe not perfectly, but you can infer meaning from the kanjis. Being able to slowly understand things helps with the motivation.
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Feel like I have been in level 12 forever. I still have a huge pile of vocabulary to do, since I havenāt been doing a lot of new lessons lately. I have started reading the first volume of Sakura though; itās not my cup of tea but I find it entertaining (and challenging also).
Soon I should be on level 13.
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Lately I have been thinking about how to approach Japanese learning, and doing parallels with how I learned English when I was a kid. I am starting to reach some conclusions:
- Even though I was taught English in school since I was little, I sense that I mostly learned English on my own. Yes, the basic grammar structures where there, but it wasnāt until later that I really grasped the language.
- Something that I started doing at a certain point was to have imaginary conversations with myself; this is, to force myself to come up with something I knew how to say in Spanish but not in English. I tried to think in English. This was a huge step forward. I have the feeling that producing the language in this way really helps a lot with cementing the knowledge.
- Another thing I constantly did, without really knowing, was immersion. When I was a kid (back in the 90ās) we had cable TV at home with Cartoon Network, but it was in English. I would watch cartoons a lot, but I mostly didnāt understand a single word. Also, most videogames were in English, for instance the first Zelda game to be translated to Spanish came out around 1999 or so. I also played a lot.
- Most of all, I enjoyed doing these things. For me it was almost a necessity to learn English in order to be able to do them.
With this in mind, I have realised some things:
- It is super important to start reading as soon as you can, as much as you can, even if you donāt understand everything. This is what I did with English when I was a kid and I can tell it worked.
- It is better to read stuff in your level. Start with Todoku level 0 and Satori. I think repetition of words and structures is also important at the beginning, and these books usually have that. More complicated stuff can be too painful and demotivating, at least thatās what I feel when trying to read ABBC books. It also helps, but in my opinion, trying to read stuff that is too complicated for your level wonāt yield the same results as reading something you feel more comfortable with.
- It is also good to try and think in Japanese from time to time. Even if you goal is not to talk, this helps building the structures needed in the brain for understanding. Have imaginary conversations with someone.
- There is no need, especially nowadays, to do Japanese courses and take exams and so on. I think itās enough with learning grammar as you go, absorbing the concepts along the way. ChatGPT can help a lot explaining sentence structure and grammar.
Anyway, these were some ideas that have been in my mind lately, in case someone finds them useful!
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I quite agree with those! 
Anyway, as always, best of luck with your studies! 
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Iām progressing a bit faster on this level than the last one, trying to do my 15 lessons every day to remove vocabulary from my queue.
In Satori, I have āscaled backā from reading The Jam Maker to reading the Four Seasons stories. The jam maker has longer sentences that I still donāt quite understand, so Iād rather practice a bit more with this entry level stories, which are easier in general. I also started reading some tadoku level 2 stories.
I also discovered a store which sells Japanese books to all of Europe and happens to be in my country (Spain): https://verasia.eu/ - I went a bit nuts and ordered Genki II, two artbooks and the first Sakura volume 
This week I re-discovered the cure dolly videos, and I say āreā because the first time I saw them I thought it was too creepy. I got myself together, and once you go past that they are pretty good. Installed yomitan, which is better than rikaikun, and connected it to Anki. I barely use Anki, but might start doing it for new vocab.
Edit (PS): itās very rewarding to see how I make progress, even if I donāt quite notice it. I am quite lazy when it comes to language learning, but I surprise myself starting to slowly understand more and more of the language. Revisiting a book you didnāt understand some months ago and realising now you understand more is good for your motivation.
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One level short of getting to 1/4 of Wanikani done 
!
After watching those Cure Dolly videos, I was curious to try her method of learning through anime. It basically consists on watching anime with Japanese subtitles only, and go sentence by sentence deciphering and sending words to anki. Then, download the mp3 of the episode and listen to it over and over. Also, do anki every day.
I dedicated the whole afternoon yesterday to it. I have to admit that it was tiring after a while, but I can see where sheās coming from: learning the words and listening to the sentences over and over again is probably the fastest way of getting your ear used to the spoken language. It increases your ability to distinguish the words.
Surprisingly enough, many of the words that I came across are not part of the Wanikani vocabulary, which got me thinkingā¦ I know that Iām not going to learn all the words of the language in Wanikani, but many times I feel like Iām learning words that Iām hardly going to come across in the futureā¦ Well, who knows. It is what it is.
What do you think about the Cure Dolly method? Have you tried it?
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Had my first ever Japanese lesson with a teacher, ććć³å ē. I was very nervous at the beginning, since it was my first time trying to have a conversation in Japanese, but later I felt a bit more at ease. Will definitely repeat!
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Stuff that has happened lately:
- Got married last weekend. Honeymoon will of course be in Japan, so I might get a chance to practice all Iāve learnt since March!
- Recently levelled up to 15. I have a lot of vocab left from 14, so next level will take a while, and probably will have to activate vacation mode during my honeymoon.
- I have updated the main post, since some things were not true anymore:
- Iām not doing much bunpro lately
- Stopped listening to Nihongo con Teppei, although I reckon I will go back to it. I admit I was finding it increasingly hard to understand.
- Instead Iām focusing on reading as much as I can, whenever I can.
- I started watching Naruto with the CureDolly method. This consists of using Animeleon with Japense subtitles, and then sending every word you donāt know to Anki using Yomitan. The process is slow and painful, but there is value on it. I do this from time to time, and I still have to start using Anki. Itās a shame the interface is so complex!
- I also started having lessons with a teacher. These consist of mostly talking. Sheās amazing I must say. I believe that speaking does cement the knowledge of the language; it adds this kind of āmechanicalā layer on top of the more āthought-levelā layer.
- I am also finding myself constantly trying to say things in Japanese. Most of the times I realize I donāt have the words, but I recognize this pattern from when I started getting good at English. Iām not saying that Iām getting good at Japanese, but ātalking aloneā is very helpful for learning I think.
I might have said this previously in the community, but more and more I realize how important it is to have fun with the process. This is obviously not something that one can just conjure up - either you have fun or you donāt. But at least trying to do things that you enjoy is important, like trying to read that manga you love, even if you donāt understand much of it, or playing that Japan-exclusive game you always wondered about. At first itās painfully slow (and I am still in that phase), but Iām sure it will get easier and easier with time.
Thatās all folks!
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Congratulations!
May your marriage be happy and successful! 
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Just came back from my trip to Japan. It was amazing to be in the promised land again, but I had a revelation there: I couldnāt recall many of the kanji I knew, or vocabulary for that matter. I think that this might be caused by the scripts Iām using, specifically my maybe too liberal use of the undo script. By wanting to speed up my learning, I end up undoing wrong answers that should have stayed wrong.
So I have decided to only use the undo button when either I make a typo or when a word is really not very important.
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Tell us about your trip, though? 
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The trip was amazing! I had already been to Japan 8 years ago on my own. We bought the Rail Pass and used it a lot, went to Kanazawa, Kyoto, Tokyo, Nagoya, Nara, and Nikko (apart from Tokyo). We spent quite a few days in Tokyo because I wanted to be with friends that I made during the last trip too. My wife also went to Fuji on an organised trip, but I stayed at home since I was completely destroyed. Bought lots of stuff (too much, but well we were in our honeymoon), in fact we bought two new suitcases there. It was good in any case, since my own suitcases were not in good shape.
We are planning to go back on February alreadyā¦ 
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