Alright, so my family has planned a trip to Japan next summer! I’m super excited, but I have one fear, and that’s of not being able to communicate well. So I had one question: What level can I really start to communicate at? Like just basic conversations, and I have a vast majority of most of the kanji and vocab that come up conversation and js basic reading learned? I know this is really generalized, cus I’m also doing stuff like Bunpro for grammar practice, but I js wanna know a level at which it all starts to come together, AND if it’s achievable for me to get by next summer!
Thanks in advance, love yall god bless <3
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Well, to be honest WK on its own really is no guarantee of even being able to read Japanese, despite being entirely reading focused. It’s just one aspect and guarantees no reading level really. And even if you did put in the work in other areas like grammar and practical application and became literate, thats no guarantee that you would even be able to communicate.
It’s all parts of the same language, but if you want to be able to do XYZ you really have no choice but to eventually engage in XYZ for practice. Doing bunpro and wanikani aren’t actually training your communication ability since you’re not actually communicating.
As for just having the pieces there, it’s hard to say because of so many basic words missing from wanikani in the first place (I’m not sure about bunpro).
Essentially, for better or worse, your ability to engage in basic communication really isn’t strongly tied to your wk level in the first place. Bunpro I would say is slightly more important, but that’s also not going to be completely straightforward. I could guarantee I could find a way to express anything you’d need using simple grammar and simple words, but just being familiar with the grammar and words doesn’t guarantee you can actually produce them when needed.
If your goal is basic communication ability quickly, I would really encourage actually practicing it like now. You can express a fuck ton with very little vocab and grammar if you are good at using what you know. Just using bunpro and wk won’t make you good at using what you know, it just increases the range of what you know if that makes sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could already reach your goal just by mastering use of what you’ve already learned.
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There have been numerous topics as well of users being corrected by natives, because WK’s vocab is aimed at teaching you kanji, with the assumption that you want to read. It’s main focus isn’t daily conversational language. So if you use only WK, you probably won’t be communicating in a way that sounds natural to a native in casual conversation. Not that it will prohibit you from communicating, it will just be different than actual 日常会話.
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Can’t speak about speaking and listening as I have not worked too much on these but for reading and inferring written stuff there has been a very noticeable milestone for me at around 850~ish kanjis and 2.5k words, with about half of those coming from WK, suddenly a lot of things have meaning and aren’t a jumble of words.
The best way to improve quickly, was for me, to try to read stuff and mine the vocab from it.
If you want to focus on basic conversational skills any normal academic course will cover the base pretty quickly. (I went to Japan with only a hundred or so hours of class as a student and was able to communicate survive basic exchanges but those will stay really shallow.)
You have a year remaining… plenty of time to practice any area 
!
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If this is about verbal communication, which I assume it is, then the answer is… there is no such level. WaniKani teaches kanji readings in an organized way, which is great for improving your reading skills whether it be for books, subtitles, lyrics, or texts.
But it doesn’t teach grammar. And it doesn’t force you to practice speaking, forming sentences, or listening.
But as to the question of whether you can learn to communicate as a basic level by next year’s summer, the answer is yes. But you’ll want:
- to learn some grammar
- the resource should have both polite and casual grammar.
- practice listening at a native speed
- practice forming sentences (spoken or written)
- practice speaking, your mouth needs a chance to build muscles
For this I would recommend NativShark (casual grammar and native-level speed listening) and getting a tutor on italki (or seeing if you have a local Japanese meetup group or anything else where you can practice speaking with someone)
The only way to get good at speaking and listening is to speak and listen. Reading-focused tools like WK will make you good at reading.
Now if you’re talking about general reading in Japan (maybe you want to buy some physical books there, or read some signs), I would say that you might be surprised at how little is necessary to get a general idea, even if you can’t read everything. 600-800 kanji can get you decently far with enough patience and in a common non-specialized setting. So WK 16-25 can be a “good enough” baseline, and given your current level that should absolutely be reachable in a year. Of course if you can get even higher, that’s even better.
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I’m not sure about a precise level; however, level 15 is already plenty for basic stuff.
Like @Omun said, a lot of the vocab that is taught here isn’t the native way of saying things. Also, WK teaches you a lot of ways of saying the same thing, so sometimes you struggle to choose which one.
A month ago, I asked a colleague about a discussion we had and said “対談”, he kindly corrected and said I sounded like the prime minister ^^
Personal experience: I have been in Japan for 3 months and started Genki while I was there. I’m currently going through Genki II, and it’s already enough to have basic discussions and understand replies when it’s not too complicated.
Advice: if you don’t understand something, say わからないんですけど instead of わかりません, try it out and you will see the difference for sure. The first one makes it clearer that you’d like to understand.
Anyway, I’m getting lost in thought. Don’t expect to make perfect sentences at first, it’s tough.. but Japanese people have mostly been very nice and patient towards me trying to blabber some thoughts, so I’ll guess it will go well for you (you’ll get a lot of “上手” for saying quite nothing).
At first, everything was “something something だいじょうぶですかぁぁぁぁぁぁぁ” but in the end, you always have an answer of some kind.
I’d advise you to practice listening a lot because, while I’m sure you will be able to make some robot mipmop bzzt sentences, I’m not sure you’ll understand the fast, native Japanese answers 
Best of luck for your trip 
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I’d argue that わからないんですけど by itself has the potential to sound a bit standoffish in certain situations depending on how it’s said. A sort of “Why would you expect me to know that?” People will probably understand that you don’t mean to say it that way, but I’d argue that saying the full on すいません、ちょっと分からないんですけど… will get you more mileage to soften up the delivery of 分からない. Just my 2 cents tho
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Yeah definitely don’t say that
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If your main goal is to be able to get around as a tourist, you’re better off focusing on learning common travel phrases and vocab. Grinding it out on wanikani and bunpro only makes sense if you’re committed to mastering the language or enjoy Japanese literature.
I would also recommend a textbook like Iradori or Genki for basic communication skills.
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Well this, the facial expression and the tone have now become natural but you’re right that to specify it.
Edit: just thought back of me saying this and you’re right I add it unconsciously all the time 
(I cannot say muzukashii without closing my eyes a bit, inclining my head and breathing through my teeth now 
)
@Vanilla maybe you’re the ultimate Japanese pro, but since all of the Japanese people I met specifically told me to say that, I think they know their stuff 
well at least I should hope so. But it’s the same as anywhere, the tone matter.
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I would put some snarky comment about how if people keep using rude sounding Japanese I don’t have to worry about defending my title but I’m also the foreigner who talks to everyone in タメ口 so I can’t talk
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For reading, well, best practice some reading to reinforce what you learn on wk and bunpro.
Make sure you can write hiragana as I’ve heard that comes in handy, and reading katakana fluidly is very useful.
For verbal communication, I’d recommend Pimsleur or hiring a tutor, or at the very least shadowing a bunch of tourist related youtube
You can learn a lot in a year!! Yes that’s plenty for basics. You’ll have a lot of fun, enjoy and see you around!
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That’s really key. A language is more than the sum of its parts. You can read all the Wikipedia pages about aeronautics, it doesn’t mean that you’ll end up knowing how to fly a plane. You can memorize thousands of kanji and loose grammatical structures, it doesn’t mean that you’ll end up knowing how to speak Japanese.
All of this is just the raw material that will make practice easier. It’s warmup. Very important, but not sufficient.
This is true but I also want to say that it shouldn’t be a cause for concern. You’re always going to sound like trash at first, regardless of how you learn. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to correct those issues as you progress. Just listen to people who are beginner in your native language to get a notion of what basic language proficiency sounds like. It’s not good, and it’s normal.
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Everyone already gave great qualifiers and nuanced comments, so I’ll just give a simple generalization. Right around the high 20s ~ low 30s (level) I started to really feel like “hey, I can read Japanese” and it was more than enough for basic text conversations with friends.
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Very true! I, for one, am a master at combining toddler level grammar flubs, mixed with accidentally rude foreigner errors, interspersed with complex, WK deep cut vocab. But we get by.
I suppose what I didn’t express very well is that there is no problem sounding like a dictionary, since they will probably understand what you’re saying, even if it’s odd. But you have to be familiar with regular, conversational speech, otherwise you won’t understand what they’re saying, even if you can be understood.
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Yeah absolutely, I just wanted to make sure that beginners reading your message wouldn’t start stressing out because Wanikani is teaching them “wrong” Japanese or something like that.
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My take:
- Enjoy the learning process and don’t stress out on certain target especislly for your trip.
- Keep it steady on WK, don’t rush. Very useful to help me reading all kinds of things.
- Once you are there: try to find kanji or words that you have learned in WK and also look for common words or kanji that you saw out there, and check which level in WK (if any) they would be. Good for more motivation to learn more.
- Keep your eyes open for more and keep your ears on alert for more free listening lessons in real life.
- Learn travel phrases or daily phrases, sufficient enough to order food, buy some stuff, and some casual talks with some elderlies who somehow started conversations with you more often, especially in the rural area, or with some people who also do triathlon (in my case, very frequent encounters once they saw my triathlon tshirt), e.g. where you are from, family, weather back home, hobbies, how tough the ride or swim in other countries, and so on.
- Ability to write kana, at least of your name, when queueing for food order or for seats or leaving a message for bike rental owner. (Strangely i encountered these a lot).
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There was a thread the other day on Reddit about exactly that: they had a level 7 before going to Japan and found that it helped already in day to day: being able to operate the AC for example lol I can’t find the thread again unfortunately.
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I’m so late to this convo! But at around level 17 I moved to Japan and was very excited that I was recognizing signs and certain kanji. A month ago I visited japan at level 31 and was slowly reading through most everything I looked at! Ads, notices, etc. There were of course many kanji and vocab I didn’t know, but I felt like I was really reading! I credit that largely to Wanikani as the foundation, and built up by outside reading practice.
And like many others echoed here, verbal communication requires different and targeted practice. I am wayyy more confident in speaking and listening than reading, and that’s because I dedicated most of my Japanese practice to weekly conversation lessons, and now listen and speak for work!
Using Wanikani is helping a lot with my speaking and listening for several reasons, including building out my vocabulary, and learning to recognize how Japanese words are formed. Alternately, I’ve learned so many words through speaking and listening, it’s making my lessons smooth and fun as I learn how to write things I’ve been speaking aloud a while. It’s great to have a combination of study practices, they complement each other.
Have a wonderful time on your trip! Learn a few handy traveling phrases, use google translate when you need, look things up, enjoy delicious foods, visit shrines, breathe in fresh air
Look into signing up for one-on-one conversation lessons when you get back if you’re interested in developing that skill! It’s seriously tough at first, but so worth it.
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