Wanikani works even if you don't notice it

Hello,

This is my first post, I am glad to meet you all. I am doing this to give hope and courage to people having a hard time with wanikani. I believe everyone has this depressed phase with wanikani where you feel like you don’t learn anything and do all your reviews wrong.
I am currently level 21. I am doing an internship in Japan in a math laboratory. I have been here for 3 months now, and every single day I spoke with a woman in the secretary. During those exchanges, I noticed how much wanikani is useful.

  1. Every time there is a word I don’t know, she will write it in kanji, and most of the time I will tell my self “No way I know those kanji, I understand the decomposition. This is amazing”
  2. Wanikani helped me deduce a lot of things in Japan, I don’t have a particular example since it is a very specific situation. But your knowledge is not just about knowing kanji.
  3. Did you ever think “I will never use this kanji why should I learn it ?”. Let’s assume that the kanji you are talking about is used 0.1% of the time. You are right; you will never see it. However, if there are 100 such kanji, together they represent 10% of the kanji you will see. My point is that if you take a specific kanji you will probably never see it but it is still worth learning . Wanikani doesn’t let you choose which kanji you are going to learn and that is a very good thing.
  4. I can remember and understand name of places and cities way better. I started to read manga, I am around N5 in grammar but I can still understand a few things and it is thanks to all the words I know from wanikani.

So yes, wanikani works, and it works very well. Obviously, it is not perfect, but I do believe this is the best way to learn kanji. I do this post because, before going to Japan I was a bit depressed . I felt like I was only able to fill in the answers in my review, and that I was not able to recognize kanji and use that knowledge outside wanikani. This is false, I was only seeing the x% of kanji that I don’t manage to remember. But in fact, I could recall and use most of the kanji I learned.

So yea, don’t give up, I know it is hard sometimes. You will doubt, and you will want to give up but don’t . Because no matter how the situation seems , you are still learning even if you don’t notice it.

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I can feel you. For my entirely time seriously studying Japanese using SRS, I have never really had this sense of growth of learning from it directly. I always feel like I’m not moving forward or growing at all.

But then every now and again I have to be reminded that I’ve only been at it for a year or so, I can have conversations with natives without relying on English. I can play games in Japanese just fine. I can read novels. All stuff I couldn’t do a year ago.

Day by day, it might not feel like much, but over time? It all adds up. A lot.

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Glab to hear that ! btw how do you train your speaking ability ? Wanikani does not help with that since it focuses on reading only. I believe you study grammar with something else ? If so do you have any tips on how to use that knowledge in practice ? I mean, I do learn grammar aside from wanikani but when ever I want to do a sentence that I never thought about, my brain freeze, and it can take up to 1/2min. This can seem okay, but believe me if in a conversation you make the person wait 1min it is really long. So yeah, if you have tips to overcome that, It would be really helpful !

Also, what types of games are you playing in Japanese ?

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To get started with speaking, and this is going to sound dumb. But early on I read everything on Wanikani out loud. I’d play the audio and repeat after it. Read the context sentences out loud too. When I started reading manga, I read all of it out loud too. My entire journey through Dragon Ball in Japanese? I read all out of it loud. It helped me get used to saying a lot of things, even if it doesn’t seem practical at first.

After that, I spent a lot of time with voice chat groups where I’d be the only non-Japanese person. Everyone knew I was learning and willing to improve, so people would correct obvious mistakes or not get too bent out of shape if I said something weird. Conversation is a two-way street, and Japanese is already heavy on having beats for affirmations to show the other side is engaged. In my experience people are a bit more accommodating than a lot of English circles will get to non-natives.

With videogames, I started with Dragon Quest 1 and 2 in Japanese. I don’t know if I can recommend them because of how dry and simple the gameplay is for those. Especially 2, which is kind of just torture at times with how mean-spirited it’s designed. Then after that I played Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2), Actraiser, Soulblazer, FF1, FF6, Sakuna Hime, and Octopath Traveler. So far any time I’ve finished a game I feel like I’ve massively grown compared to when I started, even if it’s just that it feels like it takes less effort than before. Though maybe that’s not too odd considering the reading difficulty steadily increased between titles.

SNES era titles have limited kanji due to cartridge space limitations while still trying to push above their weight with the kind of dialog in them. Especially later into the system. It’s really ideal when you reach a certain level of learning. I was around that point with level 20 or so.

I’ve also started reading the Slayers light novel series in Japanese. They’re fairly simple, but it still takes a bit to process because literary Japanese is formatted so entirely different from how we do storytelling in the west.

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I see, Thank you for you answer. I will try to implement the “reading loud” part in my daily routine, as It doesn’t require that much extra time.

You got that far in a year?!? i’m impressed. I’ve been at this for a while and I would say only within the last year+ did I get to the ‘read things fluently’ stage (after a major shakeup to my study methods), while my output has atrophied really heavily.

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As someone currently living and working in Japan I can confirm what you are saying.

Several times a week I have a little situation where I surprise myself by being able to understand stuff that I didn’t know before. Today for example I encountered 調整可能 and even though I never learned that vocabulary specifically I was able to get the meaning because I recognized all the Kanji.

Its always such a motivation boost to realize your own progress in real life.

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In regards to speaking practice:
You are in Japan so there is no better way to practice than in just talking to people. If you don’t know specific words then just describe what you are meaning. When nothing helps try to say the word in English with katakana pronunciation :sweat_smile:
Don’t know if you like drinking alcohol but I can recommend going to bars. As a foreigner you will most likely be talked to and a bit of alcohol always helps getting over the initial fear of saying something wrong.

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This is probably obvious, but wani kani works for you and it works well because you live in japan and get exposed to japanese language on a daily basis.

I think a lot of people (including myself) sometimes forget that wanikani is a language learning tool and not a memorization game. If you are not trying to practically apply what you learn from wanikani, it is going to be so much harder to retain the knowledge you gain from it.

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I am just doing an internship for 3 months. Meaning 80% of my wanikani knowledge was learnt before coming. I understand what you’re saying, and you are right, using it makes it so much easier. However, in my post I wanted to say that even if you think that you’re not using it and forgetting it, then it is wrong. Or at least not as much as you think.

Every day I speak with a native. I progressed so fast at the beginning, but now I feel like I am just repeating pattern and things I already said and that I don’t progress any more. I believe this is because I am really missing grammar and that when I learn something new It takes me so long to use it in a sentence because I have to think so much.

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I totally get that, im in the same spot.
I have a few grammar patterns I always use and just change the words to express different things. Grammar study is also my weakest point so we probably have our answer what could fix this problem :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for sharing, it was nice to read this supportive thread.

I studied Japanese in college (long ago), and kept up with speaking but stopped seriously studying. I had always felt a barrier with my limited vocabulary since I never attempted to learn Kanji, but then a friend introduced me to WK… and I was hooked.

100 days in at ~L15 I just took a trip to Japan and saw kanji I could read! (引く on the door), heard vocabulary (出身) that just clicked “I know that!” – it was a really cool feeling and nice to not have to ask folks to repeat ‘in more simple Japanese’. So yes, keep up WK… it just works. I agree it can’t be sole method to learn, but for vocab it’s been very surprising for me.

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Just out of curiosity, where did you hear 出社?

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I started learning Japanese about a month ago and I’ve been doing wk reviews and lessons every single day. I‘m about to get the Genki 1 textbook, but I’m just so insecure about how to study japanese. What would you do and how did you study Japanese. I‘m very interested in reading manga and playing videogames (octopath traveller and scarlet nexus) in japanese but I’ve got about 0 grammar knowledge

I might not be the best person to ask since I kinda laser focused on things that worked for me specifically, being lucky enough to find exactly the tools that got me there. So I haven’t tried most things people usually talk about, and can’t really give my opinions on how effective those are.

If you’re starting Genki, then that’s probably a good step in the right direction to get your grammar basics in.

Besides that, I’d maybe recommend Bunpro. SRS for grammar doesn’t work for everyone, it certainly didn’t for me, but at least the lesson pages with all the examples are really good. Even just as a source for lookup later down the line. If you’re not doing the SRS, you can access all the lesson pages for free, so it’s worth at least looking into.

I rushed my way into basic immersion and learned the lion’s share through picking up through context and then reaffirming it later, so I don’t know if I can give practical studying advice. Since all I really did for study was this and Bunpro. The main important thing was being consistent with it, pushing through feelings of not wanting to study today and just do it. Even if it was a little less than usual.

If you want to start reading, start simple. There’s a wealth of simple manga aimed at younger ages that can still be engaging like Yotsuba, Dr Slump or Doraemon, and familiarity with those can actually be a boon if you speak with Japanese people. There’s graded readers too, I suppose. People recommend those a lot, but I never bothered.

The biggest advice I can give is that there’s no reason to feel insecure about your level if you’re a learner. You’re going to make mistakes and misunderstand things along the way, and that’s all just part of the process. You build confidence by doing, and doing will always be uncomfortable at first no matter how much you study.

It’s good that you have goals! Those can go a long way with staying motivated in the long run. Especially if you can set smaller goals along the way, and try to have clear goals in a reasonable timeframe. My goal was that I’d met a manga artist at an anime convention, and they were going to come back one year later. So I decided I’d get as far as I could in one year to fully speak Japanese only the next time we’d meet. And I did.

Also, Octopath is definitely worth playing in Japanese! I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Finished my playthrough of it a little while ago.

I hope this at least helps a little, good luck!

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Thank you for answering! I also want to immerse myself in japanese as early as possible. I also set myself a small goal, i want to join the absolute beginners book club on wanikani once i’ve learnt all the basic grammar. And btw how did you study grammar? Just by immersing?

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