Hi!
I just booked a trip to Japan for November 2025. By that point I want to be of sufficient proficiency that I can get around everywhere including outside major cities without needing to switch to English or use a translation app. (I don’t expect to be able to talk politics or anything.) Any suggestions for what Wanikani level I should shoot to be and how far I need to get through a major textbook by then?
I’m dedicated to learning but I have a job that sometimes keeps me slammed for weeks at a time–during which I have time only for reviews and no new lessons–so need to set reasonable goals.
A lot of what I’ve seen here is people recommending level 20 in order to interact with native content and get the general gist of what’s being said (understand 65% minimum). So that would be my estimation.
I will let the Level 60 peeps or high vocab folks confirm this or advise differently.
Yeah, I started reading simple Japanese sources somewhere around level 20.
As long as you keep studying grammar in parallel, that’s when you’d be able to start reading as well.
In the short term Wanikani mainly helps with reading, you’ll have to practice conversational skills more specifically if you want to function in full Japanese.
I reached level 60 this spring and while my reading ability is decent at this point it’s basically all I practice, and as a result I would struggle extremely hard if you just plopped a Japanese native in front of me right now and asked me to have a conversation with them.
Maybe something like Nihongo con Teppei can be a good introduction to listening practice and should help you orient your studies. How much do you understand? What’s the biggest hurdle for you? Is it vocab? Is it grammar?
In general be careful not to set unrealistic goals, going from WK level 6 now to functioning in Japan fully in Japanese in one year is probably doable, but it won’t be easy.
I’m still very early in my studies and at the moment focused entirely on developing a foundation of vocabulary before turning to grammar. (What I’ve heard is to turn to a textbook and grammar around level 10? I have two on my shelf I am staring at enviously…). But based on prior experience studying a language in college, I know my biggest hurdle will be quickly processing listening and speaking in general. I am good at memorizing vocab and expect to be able to able to infer things in writing pretty easily once I have sufficient vocab.
While “start grammar at L10” is something the WK docs suggest somewhere, there is AFAICT a fairly common view here that there’s no need to wait that long. In particular if your aim is to have some basic conversational ability then you should probably not gate starting in on grammar and working on understanding the actual language behind getting to any particular WK level. As others have noted, WK is mainly giving you written language skills and more specifically kanji (the vocab is rather aimed at reinforcing kanji meanings, not at being useful beginner vocab).
If you have the textbooks and are eager to start in on them, then go ahead and start! Textbook authors do not design under the assumption that their users have learnt hundreds of kanji before opening page one
