2021 Week 28
Day 5 I forgot to make a post but I did do reviews
Day 6 I did reviews!
I have finished all backlogged reviews!
@zerohbeat ヾ(•ω•`)o
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What’s your ghosts gonna look like now that you did 80+ in a few days? Congrats though! Now to never let that number get that high again 
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Congrats on conquering the review stack! 
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2021 Week 28
Day 7
No reviews required today, but just for the streak counter on Bunpro, which isn’t customizable, I did one review
And thank you to everyone for your congratulations~
@EdBunpro , during the “kill all backlogged reviews” phase, I changed my ghost reviews setting from “on” to “minimal.” So that definitely helped, currently, I only have one.
It’s difficult for me to remember うちに for some reason… I get a ton of Japanese knowledge from media, and I don’t remember any significant moment in either a TV show or anime with this in it…
I think Wanikani calls these leeches?
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Congrats!!!
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My Next Steps
Caution: long post ahead.
This experiment in habit formation and maintenance has hit a major milestone now that I’ve finished all backlogged Bunpro reviews from like a year ago.
I’m super grateful for all the support I’ve received on this post.
With 45+ posts and 100+ likes, this study log post has gotten more attention than I thought it would, and your engagement and participation in my Bunpro journey has been absolutely crucial to helping me to keep on going.
I didn’t really think this far ahead, so I’m weighing a couple potential paths for my Japanese language journey.
some context
- Next Checkpoint: For the next phase, I’m marking the checkpoint at the end of summer, aka the start of the fall semester. It’ll be the first time I’ll be stepping onto campus since the pandemic, so how much of my time will be spent on readjusting to life on campus…
- Ideal Time Commitment: I’m looking at about an hour of language study a day. Half for new content, half for reviews.
- Frequency: For Bunpro and or Wanikani, I’d be logging in two or three times a day, to take advantage of the SRS intervals. Worst case scenario, I’d be checking in just once a day. Either way, I intend to stick with the six days of work, one day of rest, and renewable by week setup.
my situation on Wanikani
I started Wanikani in 2015, (2210 days ago) I only made it to Level 12 and then didn’t touch it for a couple of years.
Besides the undesirable pause between me and Level 60 goodness, I recognize that I’m missing out on a good amount of kanji and vocab.
I was also kind of using my Lifetime subscription as an excuse to postpone progress and reduce urgency 
Here are some quantifiable charts on where my kanji knowledge is at right now. (Source: Wkstats.com)
There’s a lot behind why the review situation got so bad, but the short story is that more important things in life got in the way (school, relationships, self, etc.).
I continue to struggle to place the “you could’ve done something in the last two year” behind me and focus on what I can do now.
my situation on Bunpro
I started Bunpro in 2018 after hearing about it on Wanikani.
Pretty much got a lifetime subscription immediately.
Sped through a ton of N5 at the beginning and then didn’t really touch it for several months.
In the summer of 2020, I sped through N4.
Reviews were more or less spontaneous, but the times that the review habit was the strongest was February to November 2020 (I was taking Japanese classes during those two semesters).
And now I’ve successfully done four weeks of Bunpro reviews!
Very happy I’ve resurrected my Bunpro intervals from their sorry state.
Ideas
continue on Bunpro and add like three grammar points a day
- This means that by mid-August 2021, I would be projected to complete the majority of JLPT N3, which is still pretty good.
- This sounds pretty sustainable, and likely I would limit this to the six day, renewable every week thing so I won’t feel so much pressure. Perhaps at the very minimum like one grammar point a day?
- Ideally I’d like to complete JLPT N3 by the start of the fall semester, but it’s more likely to happen by the end of fall semester if anything.
- My ultimate goal is to complete all of JLPT N2. I don’t know if I want to complete N1 (that question is for another discussion).
- This option, however, sacrifices any sustainable and consistent progress possibly made on Wanikani (and Kaniwani etc.). At this point, I am Wanikani Level 12.
continue reviews on Bunpro while tackling reviews on Wanikani
- the difficulty of coming back on Wanikani, the importance of kanji and vocab in general Japanese proficiency, the sustainability of hitting oneself against a brick wall because coming back is brutal
Earlier in the main post, I mentioned I had 1140 reviews waiting for me in Wanikani. They’ve been sitting there since maybe 2017? On Wanikani, I would maybe eliminate 300 reviews from the counter by August 20, 2021.
math I did to get there
This is based off of the approximation that the amount of days taken to drive the review counter to zero is about 10 times less than the actual review counter at the beginning of the initiative.
So I’ve been able to grind through 240-ish reviews in about a month without adding any lessons.
Ex. 240 reviews completed in about 24 days. Therefore, I estimate that 1440 reviews would be completed in about 144 days, or about 4 months.
Of course, these are only approximations and do not match up perfectly as one is grammar point and another is kanji and vocab.
This being the case, I likely would not have enough time to do any more than spontaneous grammar points now and then, and then completing reviews… Hopefully I won’t be bored by Bunpro then…
Writing this out has already helped clear a ton of my thoughts concerning these next steps; I had been thinking about this on and off for about a year now.
I do apologize for the long post, but I appreciate any constructive thoughts and feedback and comments that come my way.
Do you prefer one idea over the other? And why?
Miscellaneous questions I have
- I wonder if there’s a Bunpro or WK plugin (I’ll have to ask the WK people lol) that prioritizes apprentice level items first).
- how much of JLPT N3 Grammar is actually useful in conversation
personally I would conquer the WK review stack next. But that may also mean more work. The stack is larger, though any stack can be beaten, i’ve beaten 2000+ review stacks before. It just takes longer, at a given pace, steadily reducing the count. You can also reset a few levels if you want to cut the pile, though it isn’t necessary, unless you would basically have to study all the items again anyways.
Kanji are important, i’d say more important than going from N4 grammar to N3 or further. I reached level 60 on WK while only having N4 completed on Bunpro, and I played through a whole text-heavy video game (Grandia 2) in Japanese, and was mostly fine, i didn’t find myself stuck on unknown grammar constantly, rather vocabulary was the main issue, and Kanji helped a lot to read it.
Also, a lot of the grammar can be looked up in dictionaries like vocabulary. This is an N3 item:
Now that i’m 60 on WK, i feel free to increase the pace on Bunpro (and Anki) again, and i’ve definitely already learned a lot of useful N3 grammar like this from Bunpro.
I’m not an expert, but i’d bet with 20:1 odds that N3 grammar is used in conversation all the time. It also has informal grammar like だって or common constructions like あまり.
There are scripts to do e.g. Apprentice Items first on Wanikani, i think Ultimate Reorder maybe? I use Flaming Durtles on Android because of Anki mode, and it also has this reordering.
By the way, while a lot of the times i don’t encounter grammar i don’t know, or at least i can still figure out the meaning without it, N1 grammar is also used regularly, even in video games (and e.g. from the Attack on Titan narrator). So, it’s always worth learning more.
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Consistency is the key! Your overall goals sound very doable whichever routes you would take. My only suggestion would be (in terms of Bunpro) to limit yourself to 2 grammar points a day Monday through Friday. Have the weekend be your mental break period where you just enjoy life away from studying and learning new content. A lil tip would be on Sunday to do a 5 or so minute cram of the weeks grammar points you just learned. This will help get you on the right path before adding new points the next day.
Just gotta try new things and figure out in the end what is the most fun for you and also the one that’s yielding the most results!
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Congrats on getting this far. My main tip would be:
“Be flexible and enjoy the process. If something is not working out and you gave it your best try, try something else.”
This is because there may be periods where it is unreasonable to spend a lot of time and to add new learning material eg during exam periods. Try to figure what is your bare minimum review time. Get that done as early as possible each day.
Probably a good approach is something like:
Reviews - a short burst of reviews in the morning. (eg nearly every day around 8am to 8 15 after breakfast)
Extra reviews - short sessions when having free time. eg lunch break , while waiting for a bus etc.
New material - 30 min+ in the evening.
N3 is actually very useful for conversation. Also you could say that N3 is the final foundation stage for N2/N1. N2 is mainly for light novels / writing / reading. N1 is a mix of everything with a lot of rare grammar points.
Like @Saimin is saying, I would spend a bit more time tacking WaniKani next. Improve your Kanji knowledge. That way hopefully your Grammar / Vocab / Kanji knowledge would be at a similar level.
Regarding N3, a lot of the grammar is quite simple in some cases… Some days it may be possible to add 4/5 grammar points. Let your review time guide when to add new material. Eg if you daily reviews are bellow 20, add new grammar.
Its really cool seeing your progress 
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Hello~
The start of another week!
Thank you @Saimin @EdBunpro and @zerohbeat for your insightful comments!
Sustainable consistency is indeed the key, and taking small steps is a sure way towards success, however defined.
Going forward, I think I’ll continue to do at least one review or lesson on Bunpro for six days and with the option of renewing weekly.
I’ll continue posting review pages, though they may not be as interesting hahaha.
If you have a Wanikani account and want to follow my progress on the forums there, you can click this link here.
The first phase of my experiment is complete! And a tentative second phase is beginning~
Again, very happy to have vanquished the 240+ backlogged reviews.
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All the best of luck! It’s fun to see other people’s pages because sometimes I’ll see a point you got right/wrong and remember how that point would give me trouble (or still does!)
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2021 Week 30
Yahahaha XD I’m still keeping the streak~
I’ve been focusing on Wanikani so I’ve been doing the bare minimum on Bunpro… Which is fine, for what my current goal is.
If this becomes anything like the premise of the Slime 300 anime, the bare minimum over a long period of time will do my Japanese grammar proficiency good.
Small note, I’ve studied up on それぞれ because for some reason that was tripping me up
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How’s your understanding of それぞれ now? It tripped me up at first but once I spent like 5 minutes reading a really helpful point about it I don’t think I’ve messed it up since.
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Thank you for asking!
I think I only get it kind of because of a mnemonic I tied the sound to the meaning. Like each kana being like アソレ、アソレ
What’s the helpful point you found?
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2021 Week 31
どもども！
I did two reviews today.
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