Visual novels are a good way to improve your reading skills while simultaneously learning new vocabulary. If your goal is to enhance your reading skills, visual novels are one of the best mediums for learning.”
I’ve been using visual novels to mine Japanese vocabulary for years. Not only can you get the word within its due context, but you can also take screenshots of the scene where the word was used, making it harder to forget.
In the last few years, I’ve learned more than 40,000 words while playing visual novels. This is the setup I used to make the process smoother
I use:
Anki is a spaced repetition software. For those who aren’t familiar, it is a tool used to create flashcards, allowing you to periodically review the vocabulary that you have studied.”
Yomitan/Yomichan – This is the add-on that I use to mine words. It supports the use of multiple dictionaries. I’ll be using Yomitan, as Yomichan has been discontinued.
Textractor – You will use this program to extract text and vocabulary from the game. Every line of text that appears in the novel will be displayed in the body of the program.
The first thing you need to do is download and install Anki if you haven’t already.
Create a profile so you can sync your cards to their database. This way, you can access your cards from any device and do your reviews everywhere. This is also important because even if you lose the device where your cards are stored, you can still recover them by downloading from the cloud.
# Setting Anki:
After creating a deck, the first thing we’ll have to do is configure the syntax and layout of our cards. To do that, click on Tools > Manage Note Types.
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Select the first one (Basic) > Rename it > Give it a name, and there will be a new type with the name you just gave.”
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Select the renamed item and click on ‘Fields’.
There will be two items named Front and Back. Click on them and rename them as shown in the following image.
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After renaming, click on ‘Add’ and create other items, naming them as follows. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to add other fields for audio or images, as your card will only show one field at the front and one at the back. Since I want more fields, I need to manually create them
After that, click on the ‘Save’ button
Now, you have to ensure that the new fields will work. Go back to the previous options, select ‘Visual Novel’, and click on ‘Cards’. There will be two options: ‘Front Template’ and ‘Back Template’.
You can simply copy and paste my style, and the cards will be working.(Check bottom of the post)
Front template shows the front of the card, and Back template shows the back of the card. Your new fields should be inside ‘{{Example}}’ and have the same name that you entered in the ‘Field’ option.”
For Example:
I can’t put ‘{{Example}}’ inside the back of my card because I don’t have any field named ‘Example’. If you have basic knowledge in HTML and CSS, you can tinker and style the fields yourself. You can create other fields with whatever options you desire, or you can delete some of the fields that you won’t use.
You don’t need to make your cards exactly like mine, this is just and example.
Anki is already ready to accept new decks so you can close it for now.
You don’t need to make your cards exactly like mine; this is just an example.
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# Setting Yomitan:
Anki is already ready to accept new decks, so you can close it for now.
Yomitan:
Next, you need to download the Yomitan extension. I will be using it on Google Chrome. After installing the extension, click on the extensions options in Google Chrome, find the Yomitan icon, and click on the three vertical dots, then choose the ‘option’.
You can tinker with the configuration by yourself. I will only adjust the basic configurations in a way that it will work with Anki and Textractor.
Yomitan Permissions: When clicking on the extension, if there is an icon with the shape of a key, click on it.
“Enable the option ‘clipboardRead’: This allows the extension to read the lines of text displayed in the Textractor.”
The first thing you need to do is add some dictionaries. The extension doesn’t have any default ones
Check at the bottom of the post to get the dictionaries that I used, along with the Yomitan style
I will use a total of 8 dictionaries.
I will use the following dictionaries: 1 Japanese-English Dictionary, 3 Monolingual Dictionaries, 2 Kanji Dictionaries, and 1 Dictionary with names.
You can also use a pitch accent dictionary if you find it necessary.
After opening the Yomitan options, go to “Dictionaries” > “Configure installed and enabled dictionaries” and click on “Import.”
This is the order.
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You can skip the next part if you download my settings. After downloading it, go to the extension options and scroll down near the end where there is a ‘Backup’ option. Click on ‘Import settings’ and choose the file.
If you didn’t, then let’s proceed manually.”
In the following options, do this. Ignore this step if everything is already configured.
Popup: Enable “Allow scanning search page content” and “Allow scanning popup content.”
Anki: Click on “Enable Anki integration.” You will probably get an error named “Connection status: Anki connection failure.” We will solve this right after.
Clipboard: Enable “Background clipboard text monitoring” and “Search page clipboard text monitoring.”
Yomitan will open in a small window if you click to copy any Japanese word.
# Syncing Yomitan with Anki:
Now to get Yomitan working with your Anki.
You will need the Anki Connect add-on.
Just search “Anki Connect add-on” on Google, and it should be the first link.
Copy the add-on code from the page. In my case, it was “2055492159”.
Open Anki and in the menu above, click on “Tools” > “Add-ons” > “Get Add-ons” > paste the code into the box and click “OK”.
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Restart anki.
Go back to Yomitan settings and scroll to the Anki options.
Near the end, click on “Configure Anki card Format”. Use the settings below, and you can already make your cards!
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Deck: Select the deck where your new cards will be added.
Model: Choose the type of cards that Yomitan will create. Select the one that we created earlier.
Word – {expression} = The word that goes the front of the card
Reading – {furigana} – Kanji + reading
Image: I left the “image” field empty because I screenshot and add the image manually.
Sentence: {sentence} field will automatically add the sentence where the word was taken.
Audio: {audio} – Add the pronunciation of the word.
# Textractor:
# After downloading and installing, open the x86 folder and execute the file.
Most visual novels work using the x86 executable.
To avoid errors, I recommend only attaching Textractor after you have gone past the menu and are already inside the game.
Click on “Attach to game” and select the game file.
Click on the console option, scroll down, and test by yourself to see which option has the main text.
It should work like this:
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As you can see, the text is automatically added to the Yomitan window since I have the “Monitor Clipboard” option enabled.
Now you can create a new card like this one.
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You can check for dictionaries on GitHub, or these are the dictionaries and style that I used: [Dictionaries/style](https://app.mediafire.com/mwleyfq1t2cm2).
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by Serikka