Hi there! Since I started Bunpro (maybe 3 months ago) I’ve constantly been forcing myself to do very few lessons on Wanikani so that the reviews don’t pile up and I have time for Bunpro. But wow, it’s hard! I feel so much more driven to learn new Kanji instead of new grammar points!
Maybe it’s just more work to understand a new grammar point? And there’s no stupid mnemonics that make you laugh?
Anyways, probably there are people who also try to handle these two simultaneously, how do you go about it? Any advice?
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Because kanji are easy. You see a picture and remember a word, puff, done.
Grammar is more difficult, but more useful 
But once you figure out a good approach - grammar becomes easy too. Immersion helps as well (just watch anime ). I’m currently learning N2 and it’s still isn’t that much more difficult than lower levels. It just takes time.
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You can try using the grammar mnemonic thread here. Make up your own, share or ask…I think grammar is applicable but it’s harder and not something I want to rely on all the time (just emergency leech scenarios 
)
I prioritize clearing WK reviews daily, the SRS intervals seems more punishing (at least to me) and the consequence to ignoring them is high. I’ve always had BP review piles and that is ok (but still review daily), I just want to read each sentence and have the time to add vocab decks, looks up nuances, check out the readings or what not…I don’t want to blast through them. Admittedly, the ghosts are painful lately, I’m sick of looking at them but there is the eventual breakthrough so I do skim some content when I’ve already read the sentence over and over (and over)
Grammar is a grind but here are just two ways BP could make it more fun:
- Make more variety badges. Everyone seems to find them fun to collect and are a positive motivation tool.
- Unlock secret material once you burn grammar such as a short story quiz that you have clear using your newly mastered grammar…and of course get new badge for it + extra experience.
I’m sure there is more…doesn’t have to be too gamified but enough raise motivation and provide extra fun with educational value.
Lastly, I find grammar more fun on the productive output end (not the input end like kanji is for reading). So having an outlet to use your new grammar makes BP a far more addictive experience.
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I enjoy both WK and BP for the joy of learning. Grammar is harder. It takes more concentration and effort. But the reward of learning is there so this is not a problem for me. As long as I keep learning there is plenty of fun.
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Wanikani was fun for a bit but it was just to slow for me so I ended up switching to Remembering The Kanji and for first 1000 or so it was really exciting learning a ton of new kanji with each radical but that second half started to get tedious after a while. But I still finished it and it was great having that knowledge when I started doing vocabulary.
As for Bunpro, I also think it’s really fun (right up until you hit to similar grammar points! www) though it isn’t quite the instant satisfaction of kanji. However, it seems that everytime I learn a new grammar point I always end up hearing it soon after. For example,
匂いがする in Kimetsu No Yaiba
And
だからこそ in Psycho-Pass
Overall, I’d argue that the time spent on Bunpro is a lot more important because it’s more widely used but then again I still did learn 2000+ kanji and did nothing but 100s of flashcard reviews for ~3 months. So just do whatever interests you. You got to learn it all eventually anyways.
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I find that both BP lessons and reviews takes longer than WK lesson and reviews, especially the lessons on BP. In fact, since I speed up to about 10 days per level on WK, I haven’t done any BP lessons more or less, and I’m also not as diligent with reviews, but then I also don’t have very many reviews here so…
In fact, this made me realize I should probably pick a number of BP grammar points to learn each week and do at least that so I can keep work through all of BP N3.
So I think for me, it is more about time commitment. I know I can rock through 20 lessons of WK in probably the same time it takes to do between 1-3 grammar points on BP. 20 vs 3, makes it much easier to pick the 20 over the 3.
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Maybe it is because there is a perceived higher usefulness of learning kanji/vocab?
i.e. you can still roughly make out the key points of the sentence if you can read the kanji, but do not understand the grammar fully.
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I have used Wanikani for a few years. Went to level 26 and reset after not using it for a year and then went back up to level 23 again until I got bored with it.
I have been using Bunpro for a few months now and can also say it feels more rewarding than WaniKani has been. Got to level 26 and then went to Japan and could read a lot, but I never understood anything because I lacked the grammar.
Even a few months back when I was still bad at grammar I would listen to songs and be able to pick out words and maybe a little bit on the context. But grammar has been so much more powerful than just vocabulary has ever been.
Don’t get me wrong, grammar is nothing without vocabulary. But being able to understand songs more by the day/week makes it just as addictive as WK to me.
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Often true! But then there’s grammatical structures that do the opposite of what it might “feel” like at first - that’s where I find Bunpro quite rewarding!
Well, in general, I do love it when I learned the new grammar point, and I agree, usually shortly thereafter I stumble upon it in a podcast or movie and am quite surprised and happy that I know it!
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I think a lot of it as well is WKs restrictive level structure.
On Bunpro if you want to go straight to N1 grammar you can! Want to learn all of N5-N3 in a day without any prior knowledge? Go for it! (good luck).
On wanikani you know if you skip those reviews, not only are you going to have more pile up, you’re also going to miss the level up and are going to have to wait longer to level up.
WK dangles the carrot in front of your face, forever out of reach until you hit 60 while Bunpro tosses the carrot to you day 1 and says “have at it”.
I don’t have a strong preference either way. On one hand it’s nice having the structure and always making progress, on the other hand if I was forced to spend a month learning “desu” and basic particles before moving on I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place
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turns out that Bunpro teaches grammar and grammar is harder, so less fun
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tbh i really dislike Wanikani for this, i got to level 60 twice now, but then got things inbetween and i need to redo the last 20 levels, but this is just not nice if you have to resent and then also have to relearn the half that you know by heart already. just a waste of time in my opinion
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You can unburn items in WK, it is a bit time consuming but you can just relearn the vocabulary and kanji you struggle with without having to reset;-)
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I don’t know if either is more addicting or addicting by itself at all for me. At the end of the day I don’t really separate the tools I use for studying Japanese in that way. For me, the addictive part is the overall experience of gradually coming to understand a new language. Sometimes I remember where I read about some random thing I come across, but the actual reward for all this is noticing the progress I’m making with material in Japanese. I guess that means any single tool can’t be addictive for me by definition since when I’m looking at these tools in isolation, there is no reward…
If I had to pick one I’d probably pick bunpro simply because remembering vocabulary on its own just means I don’t have to use the dictionary as much. Figuring out unknown grammar is much more difficult.
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This. Well said.
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Good norning everyone!
It is always great and interesting to see how different people experienced different learning tools. Something that came to mind as I read the thread: An integrated lite RPG a la Habitica or just a way of turning Bunpro Experience into Habitica points would maybe help those of us to respond to this kind of incentives (there is an extension like this for Anki).
Have a great weekend!
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I struggle with this as well. Between Anki, WK, and BP, BP gets the short end of the stick every time. I think this is not just due to the difficulty by comparison, but because of two things in particular: BP still sometimes doesn’t give me what I feel like are the specifics I need to remember certain very similar grammar points with small distinctions. Like みたい/らしい/だって/そう and such. That, and I learned a lot of stuff out of order when I was in Japan studying at a university, and I used BP to study the grammar I was learning. So I have a lot of fairly disparate points scattered around that are often of high difficulty, and a few too many of those probably piled on at once.
I really do like BP on the whole. More than likely, what I need to do is see if I can reset some stuff and try to tackle it slowly and systematically again like I did in the beginning. I’ve been in school for the last several years and just graduated, so now I may have the free time to do that a bit while I apply for jobs.
Well, just think that one day you will be writing in Japanese as good as you do in English (or whathever you native tonge is…). Japanese is my 5th language and I still do some reading and practicing in the other 4 languages, but now I am focused in learning Japanese. There is no magic bullet for learning and mastering a new language. That is a skill that requires a lifetime of sharpening and practicing. Just relax and enjoy the ride !!!
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i definitely get what you mean and i think BP can improve that further but for the points you mention in the grammar overview they have written down the nuances and the use cases
also japanese has many grammar points that only are different in register (e.g. formality/politeness), so it depends on you realising the register of the sentence to find to accurate grammar point
I mean sure. But if I’m not getting it despite using Bunpro, and the point of using a program like this is to learn more effectively, then “just remember the nuances, and if you don’t, it’s your fault” is kind of missing the point. I mean I’m quite happy with Bunpro on the whole, don’t get me wrong, but there are definitely some things like this I still struggle with which could probably be taught a little better, or could better articulate the differences in a way that’s memorable. The differences are certainly articulated, but when learning them close together, it can still be hard to recall the info well.
But of course it’s also an issue of how I’ve studied, where I piled on a lot of those things at the same time because I was learning use cases for the ones I didn’t already know all at the same time, which certainly doesn’t help. But this is how tools improve. Likely most people on BP are not learning in Japan at a university using Japanese textbooks, cherry-picking individual points from across a spectrum of JLPT levels in BP just to reinforce their textbook learning, like I was. But that too was something of a weakness with BP until they added the paths, which was great, since JLPT level is really a totally useless and arbitrary distinction for any reason beyond taking the JLPT. BP keeps improving and growing, so I have hope some of these things will get beefed up a bit through iterative improvements along the way. It’s definitely the next big phase of my study once I can start dedicating time to it again.
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