I’ve been on level 42 for 4+ months now
Wasn’t really planned, but i’m trying to branch out my study in other areas…reading, listening, ect.
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I plan on putting wk on very low priority once I hit the 40s. From that, I plan on focusing mostly on learning new kanji by just learning new words and names, maybe doing anki or writing about it. I have lifetime so I don’t feel the need to quit it cold turkey, It’ll just be a small bonus instead of a primary supplement.
I’ll probably do something similar to bunpro. It’s a great supplementary exercise by quizzing me on grammar I’ve learned when my reading pool is limited, but I’ve heard it gets messy when you hit N2 grammar points, and at that point I’d rather just start reading and writing stuff by myself!
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Adding to this, in some cases, time spent on wanikani is time spent NOT reading. Brain power spent learning words that appears once every ten books that you won’t see for a year is brain power spent NOT learning that one kana word that will appear 10 times in the first book you read. Even if you managed to have 50 words on a given level 42+ show up in your book, thats still 50/100 compared to the alternative of having 100/100 words you learn show up and be more common.
If you want to finish wanikani just to be done with it, I don’t think anyone will blame you. I partially did that myself. But if your goal is to read and you want to know what will most benefit your learning, the question is not “can I get anything from wanikani” but “is the time im spendint on wanikani (not spending doing other things) worth it to me?”
There’s no right answer, but I want people to be aware of the trade off so they can make an informed decision
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I did this.
I leveled up to 43 and then reset to 42 for a pause. I got my Apprentice count down to below fifty… Since then I’ve restarted lessons and have kept it hovering around the mid-50s when possible.
At the moment, I’ve reworked my way up to learning level 43 vocabulary. And my goal is to basically give myself about two months per level on average, with no pressure either way. I only do new lessons if my Apprentice count is low and I feel comfortable clearing my reviews.
My ultimate goal is to learn as much Japanese as possible, so I’ll probably eventually get to 60. I don’t have a timeline for that.
However, my next goal on WK is to reach/finish Level 51 which would get me to all of the N2 Vocabulary, and at least 98% of K6 (Joyo) and well into 90% of each of the reading categories - according to WKstats.
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Not a lvl 60 - quit WaniKani ways before that - and Vanilla basically said what I think already, but I like sharing my opinion 
Continuing WaniKani is an opportunity cost thing. The time you spend there is time you won’t spend on other things that might be more immediately useful to your learning. If you can make it work without getting all the way to 60, which plenty of people have, I’d argue you’ll be more efficient.
But all the pros and cons aside, why don’t you just try it?
Get to the level you want and pause lessons for a month or two. Try something else. Works? Great. Doesn’t? Come back.
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All the later levels have taken me MONTHS, yes, MONTHS.
I keep coming back to tons of old reviews, a clear sign that I need to work on other aspects of the language more, read more, memorize the older lessons better by encountering them in the wild.
On the other hand at level 40 I already recognize the vast majority of Kanji used in media, so yeah, later levels give you diminishing returns.
At the moment I just do reviews and try to get the Apprentice count down again and I’ll probably keep doing WK, but I’m kind of moving away from it.
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While I did not know it meant tunnel, it was easy to guess the reading, so I could have easily looked that one up 
I agree, this is the reason why I was thinking of, if not stopping, seriously slowing down wanikani past 42-45.
In my case, I already spend a lot of time daily watching shows without subtitles and reading light novels/manga. With the occasional video game thrown in there for good measure 
On top of that I also take weekly private lessons for the conversational and grammar side.
So while I still get a lot from wanikani, I’m having a strange case of “I already know more and more kanji/vocabulary” as levels go on. (Not saying I know all of them though, far from it)
I will probably take a break around that level, see how it goes with just reading books and the rest.
Not getting the cake at level 60 is a big downside though…
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It does look like this is the best solution, try it out and see how it turns out!
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For me the fun actually started after Level 42. I’ve passed the N2 a few years ago and am meddling in N1 and native territory so I’ve found it SO satisfying to learn all the kanji that I came across reading books.
So I would never quit at that level if you’re already familiar with the language in general. Before that? Meh, maybe but why not just slow down instead and let your mastery of Japanese catch up to your reading capabilities?
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Hmm that’s a good point
But wouldn’t you be able to achieve the same satisfaction by barely looking at the kanjis left on wanikani once, and reinforcing them whenever you find occurences in your books? Sure you probably won’t be able to read it, but it should be a lot better than starting from scratch
There are no breaks on this train! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
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One thing I forgot to mention is a new goal for me,
I try to read news articles in yomiuri.co.jp and I can barely understand even the topic of the main article, so for me it is a big goal now to increase way more my vocabulary for the next months.
people here say you get most of vocab by the late 40’s, I dont agree. There is still a long long road ahead.
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I feel like I’m missing something here; what’s so special about level 42?
As far as the number goes – nothing in particular, as far as I can tell. I suspect it’s just a reference to pop culture, namely Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (I might be called out remarking on the reference, since part of the reference is not to reference it. But, eh…)
Heh. I feel the same way, but I suspect for different reasons.
I think @Vanilla means that once you reach higher levels, building your vocabulary as quickly and efficiently as possible is best. That’s hard to argue.
It’s never been about learning kanji for me, it’s all about learning to read vocabulary!
I’ve learned plenty of useful vocabulary in the higher levels. Almost all the 塾語 terms use characters from earlier levels, giving me further practice and cementing what I already know.
Creating anki decks for the vocabulary you expect to read is likely somewhat more efficient than slogging through the last several levels. Especially if your reading interests are with electronic media (manga, anime, etc.).
My reading interests are pretty varied and often only available in dead-tree formats, so building domain-specific anki decks (mining) is more of a slog than simply finishing with Wanikani (not that that in any way means I won’t continue with anki, etc.).
There is nothing magic about level 60 over level 42, but, for what it’s worth, none of the stuff I’ve learned since level 42 has seemed that arcane. Most of it still seemed quite worthwhile. Even learning 鬱 was fun.
I’m curious if you do decide to stop doing lessons, will you continue doing reviews for items you’ve yet to burn?
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I opened up Land of the Lustrous. I need to get to 60 if I am going to read that.
Going through lvl 43 with some frequency lists it seems almost easier to find >20k frequency vocabulary than below 
If we are talking about learning vocabulary that make immersion more comprehensible, words like 高炉 aren’t exactly high up the list for me. Of course there will always be infrequent vocabulary that is frequent within the content you are consuming, but it’s just more efficient to learn them when you come across them 
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Heh. This specific choice made me grin.
My passions include metalworking, woodworking, etc. I’ve a particular interest in making tools, edged tools in particular. I’ll admit that forging and blast furnaces might be more useful to me than most!
Maybe?
I just spent a few minutes looking at the vocabulary in the 50s. One can cherry-pick either extreme in terms of frequency, but I stand by my comment that further cementing how to read characters from prior levels is quite helpful, and there are lots of quite common vocabulary it’s helpful to learn.
To cherry pick a vocabulary term that’s much more common, I’m quite happy to now be able to read and understand お勘定をお願いします, for example (a level 50 example).
More reading is definitely beneficial. But I’m unconvinced that it’s actually more efficient. My reading (and conversation!) has improved dramatically in the past several months (since passing level 42). I was tickled when my wife happened to use a word I’d just learned the other day (now I can’t remember what it was, though).
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At 41 right now but still working on a backlock of 40 vocab and leeches (especialy the 納める収めるetc 
) i don’t know why i’m kind of stuck… But still going. slowly but going 
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