Background and Links
- WaniKani is a web-based platform to enable the student to learn all – or nearly all – Japanese Kanji in an expeditious period of time.
- It uses storyboard mnemonic techniques and automated feedback on progress, with new items to learn being drip fed as and when progress has been demonstrated.
- For the storyboarding to work, you first have to learn WaniKani’s proprietary – and supposedly more memorable – names for the Kanji radicals.
- Unfortunately, there is no App – either for iOS or Android. This is a pain, as my language-learning is supposed to take place while walking henry the dog. However, there was no App for "ToFuGu - Learn Hiragana: The Ultimate Guide" or "ToFuGu - Learn Katakana: The Ultimate Guide", and they worked OK in that context.
- Only the initial stages are free. WaniKani Premium Membership is moderately expensive: as of June 2021 it’s $299 for life, or $9 / month or $89 / year.
- The WaniKani Onboarding Series of pages guides you through getting started on the WaniKani platform:-
- What is WaniKani?.
- WaniKani: Doing Your First Lessons.
- WaniKani: Why Do I Need to Wait for Reviews?.
- WaniKani: Review Forecast.
- WaniKani: Doing Your First Reviews.
- WaniKani: Unlocking Kanji Lessons.
- WaniKani: Unlocking Vocabulary Lessons.
- Is WaniKani Free?.
- WaniKani Premium Membership.
- Other useful progress-related links:-
- Does WaniKani have any prerequisites?
- WaniKani: How Do I Level Up?
- WaniKani: What are radicals, kanji, and vocabulary?
- WaniKani: How Do I Get More Lessons?
- How long does it take to finish WaniKani?
- WaniKani: SRS - Spaced Repetition System
- WaniKani's SRS Stages
- Once you get going, you need to learn how to type in Japanese – this is unlikely to be possible on an iPhone while walking a dog with or without an App! There are some useful pages on this:-
- WaniKani: Typing in Japanese.
- WaniKani: Small vs Big Characters.
- WaniKani: How do I type...?.
- WaniKani: Why do I have to type 'n' twice?.
- Kanji
- WaniKani: Radical Names.
- WaniKani: How to Find the Kanji Radical.
- WaniKani: How to Look Up and Read Kanji You Don’t Know.
- WaniKani: Kanji Stroke Order.
- As WaniKani is trying to teach Kanji, and doesn’t want you to cheat by looking at Kana – it doesn’t use Furigana.
- WaniKani: Furigana
- Kanji Readings
- WaniKani: Readings vs Meanings
- WaniKani: On'yomi and Kun'yomi Readings
- WaniKani: On'yomi and Kun'yomi Guide
- WaniKani: Multiple Readings.
- WaniKani: Japanese names
- The WaniKani Community:-
- WaniKani Community
- WaniKani: My Journey of 368 days
- The Ultimate Guide for WaniKani: Just scroll down from the above link.
Further Notes
- I actually started the (free) lessons on Thursday 08 July 2021. We’ll see how it goes.
- The second ‘Community’ link gives guidance for how to rush through the system as quickly as possible: basically, to pick up items in your learning and revision queues efficiently. I’m not too fussed about this, as I don’t have enough time to devote to it all.
- I completed Level 1 – at least to the extent of “levelling up” to Level 2 – on Sunday 18th July 2021, ie. 10 days after starting. However, I didn’t feel that I was fully conversant with what I’d learnt, and didn’t want to be overwhelmed by a load of new material straight away until I’d had time to think about what I’d been doing hitherto.
- Learning the first bunch of radicals has been no use at all, as the Kanji presented in the early lessons aren’t complex enough to need the storyboarding techniques to remember their structure in terms of constituent radicals.
- I originally despised the storyboarding technique for learning the On’yomi and Kun’yomi readings and vocabulary meanings of the Kanji. But this was a mistake, in that I’m finding that the data doesn’t ‘stay put’ after days or weeks without use, except where there’s an associative story. However, some of the suggested stories are so absurd or arbitrary that they don’t stick either. Also, some of them rely on unusual or ambiguous sound-readings. For instance, “to enter” is “Hairu”, and you’re to imagine saying “Hi”; but that keeps tempting me to write “Hiaru”.
- Maybe things improve as you go through the course, but there doesn’t seem any point learning all this stuff – even assuming you can – without frequent usage in a linguistic (as distinct from flash-card) context.
Comment:
See WaniKani: Knowledge Guide.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025