Some of you know that I had been working on learning Japanese recently in a renewed capacity. I had started on it some time ago in a very casual way as a hobby thing, and last year at Combo Breaker, I was in a situation where having knowledge of the language would have been a huge plus, so I decided to start again.

Jon Chinnery recommended WaniKani to me for learning the language from a vocabulary and reading standpoint, and the system proved to be very helpful and successful. I ripped through the first two levels fairly well and was on my way towards finishing the third, which is where the free tier runs out.

I ran into yet another instance as a bracket runner at CEO where having more functional use of the language would have helped me a lot. I knew that I knew just enough Japanese that I should not attempt to speak it in a functional capacity.

WaniKani has a sale every year around the Christmas season, where a lifetime membership to the service is 1/3 less expensive, so I decided to pare back a bit and wait for the sale. The end result has been that I haven’t touched it in over two months, and the other day, I decided to reset my progress completely to re-start the track and prepare for purchasing the full product in preparation for the next year of learning.

So I’m back on the train of learning a language for the first time since graduate school again. Japanese has proven to be quite difficult, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. I’m planning on taking a fairly long time to get there, as I’m only doing one set of reviews and lessons a day, but the nice thing about WaniKani is that it lets you assign your own pace and handles the spaced repetition for you.

Let me know if you have any tips or suggestions as I learn!