Trust me, at level 1 it seems slow. By level 10 you have enough reviews that it starts to cut into your free time. I’m level 37 and probably waste >hour every day on reviewing wanikani. When you work long days it’s basically impossible to do any japanese besides wanikani, which is my problem.
If you want to try to cram, go do anki or something. Honestly until you see just how much vocab and kanji you’re trying to cram into your brain, it’s pretty much impossible to tell you. I think I currently have ~4000 vocab and like 1300 kanji, and I’m barely past the halfway mark. If you can honestly do ~10,000 japanese words+kanji in 1 year, in addition to studying things like grammar and speaking/listening, you’re smarter than everyone else on this site.
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different kanji.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player turtle burn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
To clarify, you don’t actually get access to the lessons - you can’t put stuff into your review pool at will - but you can go and view individual item pages, complete with all the information the lesson would give you.
In 4 months you can easily get to level 15, which I felt covered my basic needs for daily life in Japan. Learn some grammar and other vocabulary (JLPT N4 level should suffice).
I think the purpose of the SRS system is to make the learning process more efficient (in time and energy spent). I don’t really think there’s a way you will learn 2000+ kanjis in a few months, you will just tire yourself out. The idea behind wanikani is that you don’t have to study all day and repeat kanjis a thousand times in order to remember, instead, you will get tested before you forget it and reminded in the case you already forgot it. They could “speed up” the system but that doesn’t mean they could speed up your learning proccess (that is, the time it takes for things to get into your LONG TERM MEMORY).
Just because you spend more time “studying” something, doesn’t mean you’ll learn it better or faster, it can actually be detrimental. It’s better to find strategies that work for our own learning process.
I would also like to say, that being in Japan means you will probably be learning faster, as you will be immersed in the language and get some extra motivation. You’ll be fine! It’s also very exciting to learn things on the spot; one day you find yourself looking at a kanji that you’ve seen a thousand times (on the street, in the train, in the bathroom!) but this time you actually know what it means. Finally, one thing I found very useful in Japan was google translate (the picture feature), so maybe you can use it, or find another app that you can draw the kanji in and will give you the info.
I’m sure at level 20ish you can survive in Japan with a smart phone and wifi.
I don’t mean just live and not be able to do anything but actually go about like you would in your home country.
There are a lot of words that Wanikani teaches you that you won’t be using or seeing.
Whatever your purpose for going to Japan is, you’ll learn more about it as you look it up on your phone.
You’ll also be surrounded by similar vocabularies in your daily life.
While waiting for reviews, study listening, writing, and grammar.
Why do you need to be able to read so much Kanji to go to Japan?
Only knowing how to read kanji (which is what Wanikani is aimed for) is not going to help you so much.
Japanese people take their entire school life to learn kanji. Wanikani is already “grinding” the kanji as it is… How long will you be in Japan? I imagine that doing wanikani while in Japan would be so cool, watching the magic unfold around you as you walk down the street. Using the app to do your lessons on the bullet train, looking out the window and seeing a new kanji you just learned combined with one you already know and having an epiphany. Having your mind blown reading a menu while waiting for your fire ramen.
There’s a lot of hurried talk in the comments section here, or people getting themselves down about “leeches that haunt them”. We are in the process of reprogramming how we think. Get the basics down solid. Enjoy the process. Your exponential rate will be faster later on than if you rush things now.
You’re right. In fact, Koichi even expressly states that he thinks this is the wrong order here, under the not-so-subtle header “Failure #4: You learn kanji like Japanese school children (i.e. in the wrong order)”
Incidentally, that was the article that got me started with WK…
If your kanji / hiragana / grammar skills are zero at the moment and self-learning is your only option, then I’d recommend learning katakana. Katakana words are often English words and so you can, with a bit of practice, get used to reading them.
If you’re serious about learning basic Japanese in that amount of time then try and find a Japanese tutor.
Yeah, but the only point of the order in Heisig is to show you similar looking kanji as close to each other as possible, making them easier to distinguish. Order doesn’t really matter as much because it’s an all or nothing thing; you don’t use Heisig while studying Japanese, you spend three months grinding the meaning of 3000 kanji, then begin with practical things.
An option to speed up the unlocks would be really great.
I understand how it might not be great from a marketing standpoint, someone with above average learning ability might knock out a lot of the content faster, and only ever require a one year subscription, some might even find 6 months to be plenty, the speed limit on the lessons is a good way to make sure this doesn’t happen.
But I feel like there should be no issue if you purchase a lifetime subscription.
I’ve just started learning Japanese and am now fluid with Hiragana and Katakana after two afternoons, kinks and slow spots iron themselves out over time with use.
I gathered plenty of information about Wanikani, and I really enjoy the visual design, the concept, the learning order and I would love to keep it in my toolbox for this language.
It does however, defy the purpose if I can’t use it for practice. I can already view all the radicals and kanji for the first three levels, and I’m going through them on my own, but the tool does not allow me to review them on a regular basis. Which is the problem.
If I subscribe to WaniKani, will I at least be able to view the Kanji and Vocab for all 60 levels? That way I can use the built in Slow Repetition System to keep older material fresh in my mind.