The 30-Minute Hacking Guide To The Kanji App WaniKani
Stay in the game even when you’re busy 🃏
Perhaps you no longer see the point in learning Japanese because you now live outside of Japan, lost interest in the literature (Manga if nobody is around) or you are just very very busy.
Here is how you can still beat WaniKani in a year with just 30 minutes a day, technically. Why? Because it is a fun game, trains your memory and perhaps you still want to catch up on Japanese later. With this compact approach — why not?
Note: This can be an interesting way to stay in the game when life has other plans, but if you have more time to spare and your primary goal is to learn Japanese, take this guide with a grain of salt.
Let’s look at the core problem — the number of reviews on average.
If literally nothing is done, within just a week almost a thousand reviews stack up — but after doing some even more stack up since you won’t get 100% of them right and they will re-enter the queue.
If we want all the glory, the bare minimum of work, and still see results we will have to pull some serious stunts.
At fastest you can level up in 7 days
Always progress
Obviously we have to skip almost all of the vocabulary since we have too little time for it. In my experience, we still gain 80% of the benefits.
Here are the rules:
- Always make sure the radicals/kanji necessary to progress are tackled asap.
- Radicals first, Kanji next.
- We need scripts, the list is below
- Use the full 30 minutes each day.
Once progress items are done — radicals when starting a new level, Kanjis after finishing the radicals — do some lessons to unlock Kanjis. If you are short on time, you can skip vocabulary lessons with a trick showed below.
- Don’t write articles about this. It will cost you too much time ;)
Unless it’s time to sleep, an alarm clock paired with the preview we get when hovering over the symbols in the menu will ensure we are always on time
Radicals come first. With our cheat techniques, we can handle the tight schedule.
The Scripts
- ConfusionGuesser
No more confusion with similar items. Thanks to the script “WK Fast Abridged Wrong/ Multiple Answer” we can purposively type in a wrong answer to check when we aren’t sure or want to look up the similar one we also had in mind.
Even if you knew this Kanji meant ‘warn’, you might want to check the top left part. You can type in the word you had in mind, check thanks to Confusion Guesser, and then press Escape to type in the actual answer to progress.
- Hide Review Accuracy
Removes distracting accuracy display
- WaniKani Double-Check
Same as abridged. Sometimes one of the two would bug so I installed both so it now works. You can perhaps make do with just one of them. The purpose of either script is to enable correcting an answer.
- WaniKani Lightning Mode
Removes delay when the answer typed is correct.
- WaniKani Open Framework
Necessary for some scripts to run. Doesn’t do anything else by itself.
- WaniKani Reorder Ultimate 2
This essential script puts Radicals/Kanji before the vocabulary allowing us to choose what we review/learn.
With this handy little menu added we get to choose. In this example, we started lessons and didn’t get a single Radical/Kanji. We can press Force Reorder, however, we still only get a mixed selection since it shuffles.
Easy fix: there is a somewhat hard to spot scale on the side. Tip it to arrange your lessons!
Vocabulary is skipped & once all Radicals are done, we do reviews to unlock more Kanji until our 30 minutes are up. If we have some time, we do a proper 5 item lesson.
Warning
You absolutely always must get the radicals and Kanjis right.
Use the Escape button to use the DoubleCheck/ Abridged script’s correction feature and open WaniKani twice, once in a second tab, to check if this is a progress item.
Using a second tab, I check on this item the arrow points towards. Almost messed the progress up!
You can have 3 items not perfectly on time and still progress (90% of items)
Sadly there is currently no script that shows you if the current item is crucial for progress or maybe answered wrong initially. I asked.
- WaniKani Speed
Same as lightening mode.
- WaniKani Mistake Delay
I usually keep this one turned off. It delays WK by a second if you had an item wrong so you don’t accidentally skip checking the solution out by clicking too fast. We will use this more after level 60.
Conclusion: Level Up!
Congratulations. You can now level through WaniKani on a strict time budget.
However, be warned. This is not meant as a quick way to learn Japanese. It *can* be more efficient for some, but WK is far from over after level 60 and was not intended to be used this way. In the end, it’s all about how much you actually learn!
Of course, you will get to keep the glorious levels and understand quite a bit. Maybe not 80/20.
Why? You train your time management skills, your memory, and you can always put in extra time to catch up on your Japanese later on.
WK is an over-time approach that doesn’t really let you go on vacation. What will you be able to do once you are level 60? Some might say “If you only used WaniKani you’ll be able to do basically nothing”. I say that’s not true. The world isn’t binary. You can read simple texts, you train other aspects of your mind and you stay on track even in difficult times. As John Lennon once famously said:
Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.
Happy hacking!
