My goal was to complete level 60 by the end of this year and by golly I did it. Just this hour I guru’d the last item in the level.
If my dashboard pane is to be believed, It took me just half a month shy of four years, having started on January 14, 2022. I completed my reviews for 1,350 of the 1,447 days it’s taken to get here, missing only 97 days for vacations. At the start of last year, I stepped up my effort with more concrete goals. I pushed myself to finish levels 21-40 last year and 41-60 this year, and it sure took work to make that happen. I’ve had reviews pretty much every hour for that whole span.
During the time I was learning, I was lucky enough to be able to visit Japan twice. My first trip felt good because I was able to read some of the signage on the buses and trains.
My friend and I have a goal to pass the N5 this year. I’d like to think I could pass N4, but we want to take those steps together. I think I’d like to eventually shoot for N3 or maybe even N2, just for the sake of doing it. The next steps for me are to keep work on my grammar, listening, and speaking. An acquaintance told me about a somewhat-local Japanese speaking meet, so I might try that out.
I’d like to burn the rest of the items in WaniKani as well. I suspect that’s going to take a while, and I think it will be some time before my daily reviews cool down enough to not consume so much of my free time. Right now most days still have 300+ reviews. Unlike a lot of folks I see on here, I don’t have plans to reset. I have thought about using Anki or something for the older content I haven’t seen in a while. Any thoughts on that?
To the WaniKani team: thanks so much for pouring your souls into this tool. It’s been so helpful!
If you’ve not used Kaniwani, maybe give that a shot? It quizzes you in the opposite direction, so it can be a lot more difficult, but it’s all the same vocabulary as Wanikani so you might be able to use it to go through the earlier levels as you feel the need. I found that helpful for a while, but I eventually stopped because I got a bit overwhelmed with too much SRS to do in a day
congrats. Impressive. I am probably 18 months behind you, at least. But a little confused though regarding the testing. I would think your kanji mastery would take you far past n5, more like n2. But I am no expert. Just thinking about it as I go on my journey. I won’t be testing but am seeking fluency. Curious to hear your thoughts.
It’s true that my kanji knowledge could go beyond N5, but I’m still lacking in other areas. My friend minored in Japanese years ago but he’s pretty rusty, and doesn’t know many kanji. We decided we’d study and take the N5 together this year. I think that will help with my grammar and writing skills and better prepare me for the N4 and beyond. Doesn’t hurt to take it slow, IMO!
You’ve reminded me, I meant to check out this thing called Asoi that I saw a post about once I haven’t had a chance to mess with this yet so I don’t know what the options are, but maybe something here could be helpful?
I just gave it a try! It looks like it fails to load any vocab from WaniKani if everything’s already been completed. It does offer some prebuilt vocab lists which is nice. Some of the games don’t seem to work properly with words that involve katakana, unfortunately.
It’s definitely one I’ll keep bookmarked. I like the kanji twins game.
Congrats on making it to 60! Where did you go in Japan the two times you visited? Did you notice a difference in your reading ability between the first and second visits?
Thanks! The first trip was Gotemba, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Okayama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Zao, and Tokyo. The second started with the Shimanami-Kaido bike route, then Hiroshima, Kyoto, up to the top of Mount Fuji, and then to Tokyo.
I think my reading ability definitely improved at least a bit between the two. I’m still very slow. I unfortunately didn’t have a ton of chance to use my skills on this last trip since a lot of signage is in English as well, and my friends wanted to move along when I stopped to read things that weren’t
I haven’t had a chance to mess with this yet so I don’t know what the options are, but maybe something here could be helpful?