A lot of the criticism I see laid at WaniKani’s feet (six + two claws, if claws count as feet) seem to fall into the same couple categories; it doesn’t let you go back and fix something you got wrong as a typo, lets your review stack pile up until it’s formidably tall, has a gargantuan difficulty spike around 15-30…the list goes on and all things I thought and 100% agreed with until I realized that maybe I was using it wrong. (Not that you are using it wrong, but hear me out.)
I’m level twentysomething (I don’t remember off the dome, I think it’ll say next to my icon, but not remembering is part of my point) and used to feel super intimidated by my review and lesson piles. I’d write in my Hobonichi “get to x level by y day” goals for myself - just like in college - and would beat myself up if I missed them. If I got too many words wrong I’d close the tab and reopen it to restart those lessons before the crabigator tallied the score, as though an arbitrary percentage would get me a Personal Pan Pizza like the old days and failure would bring mother’s wrath.
But the personal pizza never came…
I originally started studying Japanese a couple of years back to better communicate with my wife’s Okinawan besties. Earlier this year, we went back to visit them and realized that:
a) My knowledge of Kanji was way better than I thought! I could read hand written Izakaya menus, navigate trains, was seeing my recently studied Kanji everywhere,
b) My spoken Japanese was still total 糞 and that my kanji reading skills (i.e., WaniKani) came at a cost, and finally that,
c) I forgot to turn on vacation mode.
I was trying not to guzzle a Kodawari Lemon Sour and waiting for my laundry to finish in a business hotel in Toyohashi, when the Flaming Durtles notification rudely alerted me that I had about 120 lessons and 1200 reviews to do. Some mixture of these things broke my brain in such a way that, in the following months, actually really improved my relationship with WaniKani. If I get a typo, who cares? The word’ll just go somewhere back into my already massive pile. It’s just one more word! If I miss a few days and my pile goes up another couple hundred words, then I’ll catch them on the flip-side. And if I have a review session where I get 40% right, it doesn’t matter, because 鰐蟹先生 doesn’t care, and I’m not getting college credits either way. All that matters is that, one way or another, I internalize this mixture of lines and begin to associate them with ideas and sounds. I was first attracted to WaniKani because I’m a total console gamer who didn’t want to mess with Anki decks and just wanted to hand over money in exchange for some structure, and WaniKani’s been great for that.
If you went to school in the US - though it’s probably just as true anywhere - standardized testing probably wormed into your brain too. When we see red text and 70% we feel like failures. There was some Koichi quote in an email or something where he said “studying Japanese is a race to see who makes the most mistakes first” or something along those lines. I think that often when we struggle with WaniKani, it’s because it was made with that mindset. When I wasn’t going in with that mindset, I often felt overwhelmed and that didn’t actually help me learn. I actually wish that perhaps WaniKani would hide the size of the review and lessons pile, or made it a bar you fill instead of (number/bigger number.)
So I guess the tip is that If you don’t like WaniKani, go to Japan and forget to turn off vacation mode and just live with the consequences and discomfort of a big review deck. It’s not a grade. Take the L. There is no timer. Nobody is judging you for how fast you go and, most importantly, Kodawari Lemon Sours are really good. Do not sleep on Kodawari Lemon Sours. The Orion Shiquasa one is good too if you can find it and you like Shiquasa, which you should. It’s like a more complex lime, really tasty.
