雨ニモマケズ風ニモマケズ (Just turned Level 60!)

Hahaha nah man, I’m your friendly neighborhood it’s fine no problem! I just wasn’t aware if you were addressing me or someone else.
And nice to have this little chat, it was kinda cool someone knows me from other places. Peace! :grin:

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Congrats, pal! I’m feeling highly motivated by your testimony, thanks!

How do I get a chart/graph like that one, with my time pace?

Are you perchance related to Ibrahim Jouni? Tall pale guy with an afro?

No I don’t know the guy sorry.

You have yokuly ganbatted, and for that you deserve all the omedetous that gozaimasu!

I really agree here, the difference in efficiency of any given method is very likely to pale in comparison to the difference between something you can actually make yourself do and something you can’t!

kongo mo, keep on ganbatting please!

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that’s what i’m thinking, too, and why i always recommend to learners to pick up whatever grammar book, any one is fine, and first read it back to back once to see what sticks and how it plays out in the end.
all systems are by definition systematic, building blocks that build on each other. sometimes the way something is explained doesn’t work well for one point, but over the course of the course (ha!), things start to make sense little by little.

people put so much time and effort into learning about learning, and finding “the best” way to study, they never get anywhere. the best path to walk for me is a simple one. simple steps to execute and just move forward. there’s always time to clean up later, to get other sources after you’re done. doing it all simultaneously only drags it out unnecessarily and confuses, because much of the data needed to really understand is only available later, when you have a better idea of the language as such.

edit: this is one of the best quotes on the wanikani forums

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@Vanilla I see you with that 100th like. ありがとう。Hahahaha.

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Yeah I came back to this thread and saw it was one off

gotta help a lv60 brotha out

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兄貴。。。 :sob:

gives you an extra one out of inspired spite

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101 dalmatians?

why not 102?

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Good job, you deserve a good rest and lots of sugarish stuff! After this the grammar will certainly be easier. Otherwise, you can always Bunpro :smiley:

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Wow it’s been about a year and a half since I reached level 60.

At the time that I reached 60 I couldn’t even: pass the N4, read a book, play a video game, watch anime without English subtitles, speak that well.

Since then I’ve: taken and passed N3 and N2, signed up for N1, read 25 books in Japanese, beat more than 5 games in Japanese; went from struggling to watch anime with Japanese subtitles to comfortably understanding slice-of-life episodes with no subtitles at all; learned to speak well enough that I was able to do a short-term internship at a ryokan! (Though it’s still not as good as it should be.)

Most of this is because I focused only on Kanji for the entire year I was using WK so I was lacking in so many of the other areas. I still don’t regret it because Kanji was what motivated me the most at the time. After getting to 60 I really focused on grammar/vocab which came easily since I already had a great foundation of kanji. To this day I still keep taking my kanji knowledge as a given and I forget that people actually struggle with it. I’m forever grateful to WK for giving me such a boost!

I know my Japanese study is pretty unconventional and no one in their right mind would recommend doing it. But as N1 looms up in the near-future I look back and realize that, despite my lopsided method of study, I’m here just like anyone else. I could have done it more efficiently; I could have balanced out learning grammar, kanji, and vocab. I definitely could have started reading earlier than I did. (I got to 60 in April and didn’t start my first book until December. I didn’t even try watching anime with Japanese subtitles until October.) But I didn’t, and that’s still okay. We all get there in different ways.

This is all to say that 60 is not the end-all-be-all. Especially for me, it was just the start. :slight_smile:

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How long were you studying Japanese before starting WaniKani? Being able to read 25 books in a year and a half, plus everything else you’ve done is super impressive. By books you mean real books, right? Not manga?

My lack of vocabulary and grammar makes it really hard to read efficiently. I’m currently reading a book at the fastest pace I ever have, and it will still take me two months to finish it. I can’t even imagine reading 25 books in a yea and a half r right now.

Do you have any recommendations for watching anime with Japanese subtitles? I’m in the U.S., so it’s pretty hard to find anime with Japanese subtitles at all. I’m debating trying a VPN service to use Netflix Japan which I assume/hope would have Japanese subtitles for most shows. Do you recommend any specific approach or shows to start with?

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Very niiice. I have been taking more time between reviews around lv30 now and playing more games in Japanese only (no Engrish). One thing I just started doing was I now look up terms from WK in http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp and try to understand context for certain words that at the surface seem similar and even add their respective Japanese synonyms (if they are all kanji, you can type them instead of English… but no kana allowed). I find that since I can navigate my way around Japanese websites pretty efficiently at lv30, this was a good approach for me. Not fortunate enough to be living in Japan. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I recently started using Netflix, and, as far as I can tell, they do have Japanese subtitles for everything available here. That might, obviously, not be the case for things not available here, but as long as you look anime/drama, that should be fine.
Netflix is implementing a very performant anti-VPN detection, so even paid-for VPN will not guarantee continuous access.

Yeah, that’s the frustrating thing. I just want the ability to watch what I want. Why is that so difficult…

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Because copy- and diffusion rights.