For some reason I felt like starting WaniKani again, after not having used it since 2013-2014 before I went to Japan. I didn't really want to pay for it but it turned out that since I had been a beta user back in the days I got quite a nice discount so I decided to take the chance after all.
(I am not going indepth into explaining WaniKani here, just so you know!)
WaniKani is used to help you remember Kanji and learn Japanese words through the use of mnemonics. I really liked it back when I used it but it does take a lot of time and if you don't use it every day the reviews and lessons you have will pile up into insane amounts.
So after not having used it for like 5 years I expected a shit ton of never ending reviews but that didn't happen. I guess when you stop your subscription the SRS (spaced repetitoin system) clock also stops, so it's been quite chill for the few days I've been using it now.
In my experience WaniKani is the best way to learn Kanji but it's not perfect so this time around I tried to make it as good as I could by installing some of the available scripts and trying out KaniWani on the side.
Scripts can help you order your reviews and lessons, and undo mistakes in typing and so on (that last one is easy to abuse, I've noticed) which is really helpful. That way I can finish studying the radicals of the kanji, then the kanji themselves and then the complete words.
KaniWani is like WaniKani but they show you words in English instead and you have to find the Japanese translation, picking the right kanji and such. It's good and serves a purpose but it's hard to keep up with using WaniKani and KaniWani at the same time since they are both very time consuming.
When I was using WaniKani before I had never been to Japan and I couldn't really speak Japanese very well and that's how it is for most people using WaniKani and they still get a lot out of it and learn a lot. But this time is different for me as I now can speak Japanese and a lot of the kanji on the website I already know to varying degrees. It's a lot easier. I feel like already having this knowledge might make WaniKani an even better resource, because it's a way to keep up what you know so that you don't forget it over time and it's easy to use because you know the language. Learning kanji isn't a daunting task now, it's something familiar and brings back good memories (at least for me, lol).
Maybe it's also more fun because I don't feel the pressure to learn in the fastest time possible now, I can use WaniKani for 30-60 minutes a day and not feel bad about leaving reviews for the next day.
I do recommend WaniKani for people that already know a lot of kanji (unless you know everything on there already, which I sure don't!) because kanji knowledge and vocab doesn't stick forever the way we would all want it to. We all need some kind of repetition system available, and WaniKani is a fun one!
Anyway, with this random post out of the way I guess I should go back to studying some more kanji, just to set a good example for myself!
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