Wanikani

Difficulty: ☠ ☠ ☠

Rating:  ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫ ✫

I will be the first to admit that I was skeptical when I first heard about wanikani. Memorization has forever been my weakest skill, and in the two years I had been studying Japanese I had only managed to memorize three or four kanji…. though to be fair 食べる (ta-be-ru: to eat) is probably the most important word to learn when going to Japan in the first place! ^_^ That being said….

OH

MAN

GUYS!!!!

Wanikani is mindblowing! (in more ways than one!) In the first week of using it, my mind got crammed with over 60 kanji and 65 vocabulary words! IN A WEEK!!!!!! WITH MY BRAIN!!!

Wanikani uses a Spaced Repetition System which I’m thankful to see becoming a more popular system with self study sites. Spaced Repetition works on the concept of continuously testing you, spacing the questions you get right out further and further, and the ones you get wrong closer and closer. To put it in as simple an example as I can think of:

You are given 10 vocabulary words to memorize. On the test you get 5 right and 5 wrong. In 30 minutes you get tested on the 5 you got wrong of which you get 3 right. In 15 minutes you get tested on the 2 you got wrong of which you get 2 right. after another 15 minutes you get tested on the original 10.

Pros:

-Easy to use
-Great Aesthetic (I feel like I’m playing a cookie clicker for learning…)
-Leveling System makes it more fun
-HILARIOUS sense of humor (read it all guys)
-Very effective
-Has been very well researched and thought out
-It will correct you if you use the right reading for the kanji but not the one it’s looking for

Cons:

-A large commitment (You’ll want to use it at LEAST once a day)
–Sometimes it can be a little picky about what answer you use. (It’s been a while and it’s been a long time technically are the same thing… stop marking me wrong! ಥ_ಥ )
(Recently I have Been Told That You Can Add Synonyms By Clicking “Add User Synonyms” on the Definition Page and it works!)
-Some of the radical menomics are a bit of a stretch… “ALL HAIL THE NARWAL!”

Conclusion:

Kanji is one of the largest fears of ANY Japanese learner… in fact even for some Japanese people I’ve spoken to. It is very natural to want to rebel “WHY DO I EVEN HAVE TO LEARN THIS KANJI!?!? CAN’T I JUST GET BY WITH HIRAGANA???” and to some extent you can…. but you will ALWAYS be limited until you take it on. On top of that, I’ve found a surprising number of “quirks” in the Japanese language have started making more sense as I’ve started studying Kanji. From counters, to verb forms, when you start to grasp how kanji works, these overly complicated systems begin to make a lot more sense!

Learning kanji is very important. I can’t suggest it enough. But on top of this it is also a HUGE commitment! If you’re willing to take that on, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a resource quite as indispensable as Wanikani! But it will only be as effective as you are willing to commit to it!

Give it a try! The first three out of sixty levels are free (which, before you complain will teach you more kanji and vocab than most students learn in their first year) and after that you can decide if the subscription is worth it or not! For me I do not regret it. It’s a site I hope to use for a long time to come!