You’ve finished your first lessons. Now what?

Actually, you have to wait.

As you know, WaniKani’s review timings use a spaced repetition system. That is, the better you do, the longer it will be until you see an item again. Our goal is to give you a review right before you forget something. By doing this, your brain places greater importance on memorizing it, so essentially you are able to review the item fewer overall times with the same or better results.

When you have more items in your Review pile, you’ll never be bored and rarely have to wait (or, you’ll learn to enjoy the quiet times). But, since each kanji relies on past, proven knowledge of radicals to unlock, you can’t just jump into kanji right away. Learning this much kanji is going to be a longish-term effort no matter what, so what’s a couple of weeks of “slowness” in exchange for a much faster overall speed?

To minimize the amount of waiting you do in the early levels, we recommend you do all your Lessons and Reviews as soon as they’re available. If you get things right, your first set of radicals will begin unlocking kanji in a few days.

Check your dashboard to see how long until your next set of reviews are available. In the meantime, you can read about doing your first reviews while you wait.