The time has finally come. I have reached level 60, and in just 344 days.
Specifically, I did it in 8274 hours, where the best possible for me could have been 8270 hours, so this is 4 hours off of perfect. Though since I started, levels 1 and 2 have been changed so that they can be finished in 3 days 2 hours instead of 3 days 4 hours, giving an extra 8 hours possible to save. I assume that this change was from the 1 day times being changed to 23 hours to match the the rest of the levels.
Also, from the stats screen, it may look like it took me 6 hours from perfect, but two of them are āfakeā (where the previous level finished near the beginning of the hour, and the next level near the end of the hour).
Details about the lost hours
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Level 1 I lost an hour due to starting at like 12:50 pm PST
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Level 5 I completely spaced out on an hour and only remembered 20 minutes before I would lose a second hour. I had a research meeting over Skype, and I stealthily may have just pretended to follow along while silently using the reorder script in the background to learn the radicals just in the nick of time.
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Level 7 was a āfakeā loss
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Level 10 was from me being drunk and not keeping track of time well
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Level 36 was from setting my alarm wrong and waking up an hour late.
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Level 46 was a āfakeā loss
Accuracy
radical: Overall: 99.9% (3707/3712) Apprentice 1: 99.4% (483/486) Apprentice 2: 99.8% (483/484) Apprentice 3: 99.8% (482/483) Apprentice 4: 100.0% (481/481) Guru 1: 100.0% (479/479) Guru 2: 100.0% (477/477) Master: 100.0% (462/462) Enlightened: 100.0% (360/360)kanji:
Overall: 95.5% (14976/15680)
Apprentice 1: 98.8% (2026/2051)
Apprentice 2: 99.8% (2029/2033)
Apprentice 3: 99.7% (2133/2140)
Apprentice 4: 99.5% (2289/2300)
Guru 1: 95.9% (2295/2394)
Guru 2: 90.6% (1997/2203)
Master: 87.3% (1499/1717)
Enlightened: 84.1% (708/842)
vocabulary:
Overall: 89.6% (48543/54200)
Apprentice 1: 74.2% (6487/8741)
Apprentice 2: 96.1% (6400/6663)
Apprentice 3: 97.6% (7208/7383)
Apprentice 4: 97.3% (7728/7940)
Guru 1: 90.4% (7317/8092)
Guru 2: 88.2% (6313/7154)
Master: 87.9% (4840/5505)
Enlightened: 82.7% (2250/2722)
Overall accuracy: 91.350% (67226/73592)
How did you do this?
Through adjusting my sleeping schedule for reviews. I would stay up as late as 1am to do reviews, and as late as 5am if I had a level up at 1am. For 2am onwards, I would try to wake up then to make it (if its a level up, slightly earlier to clear out reviews before hand).Would you recommend others do this?
Exactly 6 day 20 hour level ups? No. Messing with my sleeping schedule sucked, and the further I went along, the more I regretted doing it. But I kept going because I already started and wanted to finish WK in record time. Hopefully now people won't have that incentive anymore.Then, at ānear maximum speed?ā (7 days a level for normal levels, 3 days 12 hours for fast levels) Maybe. I would probably do the 7 days a level for the normal speed levels, but I think I would take the fast levels slower maybe.
What is your future on WaniKani?
Well, I still need to finish do my level 60 lessons (as I leveled up just as I posted this), along with a bunch of level 59 vocabulary lessons I just unlocked. And of course, it will still be a couple of weeks before my workload starts decreasing a decent amount, and a 2-3 before it will be really nice and low. And then, probably a year for me to clear out my reviews entirely.As for the forum, Iāll probably hang around and post occasionally (maybe 1 or 2 big effort posts a year, to compete with INSERT NAME). But I probably wonāt be as active as I was in the 20s and 30s, which has already dropped off a good deal.
Can you summarize the previously bullet point?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Doo47z0zA&t=2m28sSo, now that you are level 60, do you always recognize the kanji?
No. Conversely to what I feel like a lot of level 60ers say, it does feel like I encounter kanji not on WK very regularly. To take a random example of the first chapter of the first volume of Saki:-
The front cover comic (the one under the manga sleeve) has ęŗ¢ in the word ęŗ¢ćć
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The table of contents has ēæ»å¼, and å¼ isnāt covered by WK
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The term éŗ»é itself has é, which isnāt covered by WK
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ē is used a bunch in various Mahjong terms
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ę appears in ęćć
Of these, the only word with any of these that got furigana was éŗ»é.
People that have seen me post a bunch will know this example as its my go to thing, but it basically extends to everything. Just yesterday I saw ē¹ for the first time in a song title, for example.
This isnāt to say that I donāt recognize most kanji that appear, or that looking the few I donāt is unbearable or whatever. But I think people oversell how much it gets you. I very much want to continue learning kanji as is. From what it feels like, somewhere between 2500-3500 will be the point where I feel like I donāt need to continue learning kanji anymore.
What now?
For learning more kanji, in the immediate future I will be using the WaniKani Level 61 - 70 deck on kitsun.io that covers an additional 367 kanji, which will bring me to over 2400. From there, I'll assess where I feel I am and if I want to continue from there.For vocabulary, kitsun also seems like a nice resource to add words as I encounter them, along with going through the words in the 10k that I donāt know.
For grammar, at this point I think most of it comes from learning more things in native material, and looking things up to figure things out. I still regularly encounter new grammatical things, but it is shrinking at least.
I need to practice listening to a variety of material, but that is in the future goal though, Iām currently focusing on reading.
I also at some point need to get some real speaking practice to get better at it. Thatās also a future goal though.
Shout outs
I only have 10 tags to give out, and I don't feel like listing people I can't tag, so I will list exactly 10:-
@RoseMuncher was fun to compete with in Tokyo Skytree. Also likes progressive rock, which is really the primary sign of how you tell a good person from a bad person.
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@Marifly For making the Tokyo Sky Tree thread, which was very encouraging to go through!
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@mmm333 made some fun Tokyo Sky Tree Leaderboard stats, which was fun!
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@jprspereira was very helpful and nice on kitsun, and also discovered that level 1 and level 2 are now only 3 days 2 hours to complete. I guess he also wrote a stupid smelly guide that no one cares about.
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@FlamySerpent was the first level 60 post I saw, and definitely left an impression on me!
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@ejplugge for making Flaming Durtles, which is what I used exclusively for lessons starting somewhere in the 20s I think, and is what I used exclusively for reviews starting like level 11 or 12 I think.
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@Jonapedia for being the biggest effort poster on the entire forum! When they start typing, people shiver in preparation to be absolutely destroyed
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The three ancient sages of the forum, @Kumirei, @seanblue, and @Leebo are pretty much required to be shouted out by law, so I hope this is sufficient to appease them. Together they form the head and two pincers of the Crabigator. Without their support, the entire forum couldnāt exist, so I hope the WaniKani team takes the effort to appease them! Speaking of whichā¦
Iām out of tags, so Iām kind of cheating here, but thank you to the entire WaniKani team! From Jennyās positive demeaner in her weekly updates, Kanaeās helpful Japanese Only posts, Vietās general chill demeanor (and who Iām convinced is lurking and following every post outside of POLL). And of course also of course every mod who has to wield a 
when threads catch fire.
Notably I didnāt thank Kouichi.
- He is already emperor, so he doesnāt need it
- After having to brew 1000s of drinks for his big party, I donāt like him anymore.
- Iām still not convinced that he isnāt just a sock puppet of the 3 fragments of the Crabigator.
Congrats! 
Didnāt think anyone would be able to pull it off 
