What a ride !
622 days ago, I signed up to Wanikani. It took me a few months to really get on board, especially after I stopped to take a trip to Japan in late 2022, but after that it became part of my daily life for a year and a half. It was the first method I tried, and it really worked quite well for me. Here’s a little timeline, with some context for the longer levels !
(I’m French)
What’s next ? I picked up grammar a bit late (January of 2024) with a personal teacher. I’ll continue seeing her each week until I feel confident enough. I’ll also keep burning my remaining Wanikani items, and as it takes less and less of my time, I’ll dedicate it to more reading and moviegoing. In late October, I’ve got another Japan trip scheduled, which should also help me practice ! Then, we’ll see ! Once I’m happy with my Japanese level, I’m interested in picking up Chinese, and reinforcing my Spanish and Portuguese.
**Reasons for learning Japanese**
I’ve had several specific interests throughout my life, and all of them led me to japanese culture. In high school, I practiced theatre a lot, and the various forms of japanese theatre were the ones I admired the most. Then, I spent one year training as a potter, and the main inspirations of most studio potters here in Europe are usually japanese. After pottery, I studied literature for 5 years, and was always very frustrated knowing that the subtleties of japanese poetry and prose cannot be translated without significant alterations. Finally, I’m now working as a game/narrative designer, and you probably won’t be surprised if I tell you that most of my favorite games are japanese. I’m especially interested in all the experimental gems that were developed for the PS1 and PS2 and never translated.
So here are the things that prompted me to learn Japanese: I wanted to be able to understand games, poetry, theatre, and talk to japanese potters !
**Routine and stats**
I’m still not done with Wanikani. I have many many items to burn and a bit less than 200 vocab items left to learn !
But I expect to spend a lot less time on Wanikani each day. For most of the last months, my daily routine usually looked like this:
- 30-45 minutes during lunch break
- 30-60 minutes after work (this is the one I’ll start skipping)
- 30 minutes at night time
I know I would have gone faster with a morning slot but it was usually taken by physical exercise. Also, I’m too dumb to install scripts so I practiced Wanikani the chaotic way: in vanilla mode (I just used smartphone apps to do my reviews when I was away: Jakeipuu and then Flaming Durtles). I admit that being able to correct typos would have made me happy, especially when I had to use the smartphone and struggled to write correctly. Don’t do this at home ! Install scripts early on !
As I said earlier, I started taking Japanese courses six months ago, as I was already approaching level 40. I had very few notions of Japanese grammar (but I knew hiragana and katakana). I chose to start with the kanji as a way to force myself to finish: I knew the repetitive aspect of kanji learning would be easier to fit into a daily routine because it required more discipline than intellectual effort, and I knew that after learning all those kanjis, I would have invested too much time to turn back. It kinda worked ! I never lost hope or focus, and I’m now determined to keep on learning.
Finally, here are a few accuracy stats ! It’s crazy how much my accuracy level reflected my current mental state. In times of intense stress, I would have very frustrating review sessions (these last few weeks have been horrible). One advice I’d give is to go at your own pace: don’t add too much new items if you think you’ll lack the time or availability, don’t look at the pile, don’t put too much emphasis on accuracy or speed, and try to make reviews a reassuring and encouraging routine. You’re making progress every time you log in, even if it doesn’t look like it !
**Frustrating times**
Overall, the main struggle I had with Wanikani was also its greatest strength: it keeps you busy. This means it’s quite easy to stay involved, but it also means you’ll get overwhelmed if you must take a few days off for whatever reason. It was frequent for me to have 0 free time for several days in a row, and it always meant I’d find a pile of 500-1000 reviews waiting for me. Since I rarely have more than 2 hours available per day, it would usually take at least a week to go back to normal (150-300 reviews/day).
The second most frustrating experience would be that as a non-native English speaker, I often struggled to understand the difference between two english words. I would mix up words not because of Japanese, but because I considered their English meanings to be strictly identical. I had to use quite a lot of user synonyms, since everytime I reviewed a word I ended up phrasing my answer differently. It’s a good thing we can add user synonyms !
Overall, I’ve been very happy with Wanikani and I recommended it to several persons (everyone in France seems to be passionate about Japan). Thank you for making it, and thank you to the persons who made the smartphone apps ! Also, I seldom participated in the community, but it was nice knowing you were all here. 
Good luck to everyone who’s still working on their kanjis ! 
! Je compatis, ces derniers jours ont été durs durs, bon courage !
(I learned lots of new words thanks to WaniKani though).
, god knows the whole world is on the edge of falling into it…