I’ve settled into my new job in Tokyo and I’m starting to appreciate how much Wanikani has helped me. I had not been to Japan before, so I was not sure what to expect. Outside of the very studious WK community, many people I’d met seemed to downplay the importance of Kanji knowledge. I was concerned that somehow all the time I had spent studying and SRSing was not necessarily the most productive.
Being one of the few non-Japanese employees in an office environment, I can say that studying Kanji and SRSing non core 10K vocabulary was not a waste of time. Everything is in Japanese, and if I had never started studying with Wanikani and later Anki, I would be functionally illiterate and in over my head. For instance, all of my employee benefits documents are in Japanese. Today I ran into several Kentei level 1 Kanji during corporate compliance training (they have since been turned into Anki cards).
I felt like sharing my testimony because being not completely illiterate (I am still slow and make many mistakes) has made my transition much easier. Wanikani has definitely opened doors for me. Thank you Crabigator 
.
