Years ago, back in 2021, I wanted to learn Japanese. I’m German but I grew up with a lot of English content so I’m pretty close to native I’d dare to say, but learning Japanese was the first time I really set out to actively learn a language. I downloaded Duolingo and learned hiragana and katakana. Then I did the classic “redo the same lesson over and over to keep my streak up”. I ended up with a streak of slightly over 100 days, but i barely knew anything, and with lack of a proper plan I ended up stopping. Later in late 2023, I got a chance to do an in-person Japanese class my uni was offering. I did it, and enjoyed it!! But it was… slow. And learning things by heart the old-fashioned way was horrible. I started Wanikani during this class and loved it. By the end of the semester, I passed the A1 exam, even though we only got through half of A1. I could have done the A2 class, but that would have just been finishing A1. Sure, the certificate would be cool. But I knew I could study much more efficiently on my own.
So, I got into a habit of using Bunpro and Wanikani. I did this for a good year, with a couple breaks in between because my motivation dwindled every now and then… I got to a point where I’d say I was somewhat close to N4, I was pretty proud of how far I came and was looking forward to continuing my journey.
Then Life™ happened.
This year has been absolutely crazy and my entire life got turned upside down. It was so much that I just stopped my daily reviews to focus on everything that was happening. The 2000+ combined reviews on WK and BP that built up over time didn’t help. I kept telling myself I’d eventually get back into it, because I really do have a passion for Japanese. And I feel like, just now, finally, after ~7 months, Life™ has finished Life-ing. My adventures and escapades have come to a bit of an end and I am left with the aftermath of it all. And when I got here, I realized how sad I was that I stopped. I thought about all that I achieved and all the effort I put in, and I just cried. But it filled me with this deep determination. So I set my sights on my giant pile of reviews and locked in.
I followed this strategy where I went through all WK levels one after the other until I got all items on each level right, to avoid resetting everything. Before I stopped I was level 25. At around level 17, which was also the first level on which I didn’t have any burned items, I felt it all crumbling (wow the srs stages are real???), so I reset to level 17. I had ~400 reviews left and I did them all that same day. And there I was, back. Ready to keep going.
BP was another issue. But I went a different direction here: I’m going through all grammar again, just to make sure its all still properly in there. And I reset all vocab, marking anything I still easily remember as mastered along the way. I am slightly worried that this approach will make my reviews hell as I am adding a lot more new items than usual, but I will slow down with the new lessons once I notice this happening. Maybe I will mark the really easy grammar points as mastered just so I don’t clutter up my reviews too much.
So, here I am. At the beginning of my 3rd attempt at making this work. Hoping that, no matter what life has in store for me from here on out, this can stay a constant. Something I can keep being proud of. Something that maybe gives me a bit of purpose, a bit of direction, regardless of the people around me. I visited Japan by myself in March for 3 weeks and I would love to live there for some time in the future. I have no clue where life will take me from here on out, and I’m honestly a little scared. But I know I’ll keep doing this. And I pray to god that one day, I’ll get 日本語上手’ed again. Yes, that happened. I don’t know how.
My current goals are:
- 10 new WK items per day
- 5+ new Grammar points a day, slowing down to 3 once I get to N4
- 20+ new Bunpro vocab per day
The vast majority of these items are pretty easy for me as I’ve learned them all before. I’m excited to find out what it’ll be like once I catch up with where I used to be. I want this thread to remind me of the effort I’ve put in and the milestones I’ve achieved. And I’m glad to do it here on these forums, that I felt so comfortable in last year before I stopped. I rarely ever participate in communities of any kind, so I’m really looking forward to this!! So keep going, all of you. We’ll all get where we want to be eventually. I’m sure of it.
While review count wasn’t too big, I still skipped a few days every now and then, which lead to random huge stacks of same level items (200+ same level items a day on top of regular reviews). Not that this bothers me much, but since you were talking about review hell it might bother you 
