I think I may be an exception, because I enjoy Anki. I’ve been doing it for about an hour a day for quite a while now. The hour a day workload seems not too bad. I usually do it first thing in the morning with my coffee, and if I miss a day, I only have two hours the following day to get caught up. Of course, if things get really busy, I will pause my decks on ocassion.
I am using the following premade decks:
\- Colocations (no new cards left)
\- Complete 10k (almost finished!)
\- Japanese Geography (no new cards left)
\- Katakana reading practice deck (no new card left)
\- Japanese proper nouns (just started this one)
\- 3000語以上四字熟語 (paused, because it’s pretty difficult)
and the following home-made decks:
\- the names of famous Japanese people I encounter in my studies
\- new vocabulary not covered by any of my premade decks
What is your Anki setup like? Do you have any decks to recommend? I’d love to find a deck of common expressions or sayings in Japanese.
by ThePepperAssassin
25 comments
I’m currently just using my own deck, when watching TV or browsing inet if I encounter sentences/words I dont know I just add them if I think they are reasonably common
I’m using kaishi 1.5k and kanken kanji levels. Very simple to start
I enjoy anki too :3 atm I’m just using my own deck that I add new words/expressions from what I read.
I used to use the core 2.3k deck but not having mined the words myself made retention not great, I ended up quitting at around 700/800 cards to switch to my own deck. (now I’m at around 1100 cards with mine).
I might eventually try the tango n5 and n4 decks just to see if I’ve missed something simple but that’s probably not happening anytime soon.
besides my anki deck, the only other srs I use atm is in the app bunpro and I learn and add grammar to the srs as I encounter it.
Wanikani based deck, I changed it to be EN -> JP only, I don’t bother with the readings in the kanji cards since I will just learn from the vocab cards. I filtered into 3 decks to split the components, kanji and vocabulary, and then I handwrite it on a piece of paper before looking the back of the card. I try to keep a pace of new cards such that I will run out of new cards after 1 year. Average of 24 seconds / card.
How in the world do you use the android app? I can’t figure out how to either answer the flashcards or show the answer
I use my own deck for now, I have like, uh, 11k+cards.
but I only do it for 30min a day (often more like 25min)
anki also has some good plugin to help me track my kanji progress called Kanji Table, I recommend checking that out
I just do the proper nouns deck, 2 new cards a day, and suspend any cards that I already know
Otherwise I made a deck for 声優 names, same idea. Only added 71 before I got tired of it. If I finish it, maybe I’ll add more.
Takes about 5 min per day. Earlier on I made/added decks for songs or shows.
I’ve tried various SRS over the years including Anki and have quit more times than I can count on my hands now.
What really works for me is the Takoboto dictionary app. I live in Japan so I am always looking things up as I walk around outside or just reading vocab I find in the house/internet/work.
It’s a more natural SRS for me.. I just can’t stay motivated enough to grind away with flash cards unfortunately.. I really wish I could. There are so many cheap/free resources.. but alas.
I used to do 2.5-3h of Anki every day for maybe half a year, but have since reduced it to 60 to 90 mins.
The decks I’m currently actively studying:
Self-made JP -> EN single word on the front side deck, on the back the English meaning(s), example sentence when the word isn’t very self-explanatory and pronunciation from forvo.com. I add words that I encounter while reading based on frequency rankings from jpdb.io
Core6k EN -> JP single word front, Japanese sentence and sentence audio back
Core6k which I cloned and modified to play the Japanese example sentence audio for the front (with no text at all on the front side), and have the Japanese sentence on the back (with English available as well as hidden spoiler)
The audio deck is lagging behind the original Core6k, so it’s additional review and listening practice. Overall I consider the self-made deck the most important, and it helps me with kanji recognition and reading. But I like the core deck for its fully human voiced sentences.
I use anki as well.
I think that the radicals from Wani Kani is great but there is no grammar. The local classes by me taught genki. So I wrote a c# program to allow me to create radicals (using kanji damage) and create the audio (using a reallllly helpful free link that i can’t find right now sound audio something).
So now I can study genki 1 chapter 1 radicals, then the full word with Kanji, then the rest of Vocab. Then, I also manually added 1 or 2 sentences for each grammar item. So then I learn grammar using the same exact vocab because Genki is set up that way. Was going great before kids lol. Now I am trying to get back into it… I’m on chapter 5 lol.
I also used “subtosrs” to break down demon slayer anime into each line that is said. Then I had to research a lot for each slide and add a lot of information/ explanation. It was fun even though I didn’t get too far before kids.
That said…my personal goal (and something that gets asked a lot here) is to read japanese manga. I would like to add demon slayer or jjk to an anki deck… going over each manga with a Japanese teacher (italki?) And map each line to its root vocab / grammar reference (genki 1 chapter 7) so that if it is wrong I can quickly reference it. Group sourced recorded sessions! Lol
Additionally I wrote down all the sections into dynalist (dynalistio) and each card has its book and chapter on it so one button dynamically pulls up that chapter info through dynalist. I can also add troublesome vocab that way. Currently getting confused on past tense 去年 and earlier 先週 先月.
Spent more time building tools than studying japanese lol. Only finished genki 1 and genki 2 over 2 years of classes.
Would you mind linking the Collocation deck? It sounds like exactly what I’m looking for
Jlabs is the only premade deck I used and I will forever shill it out especially for beginners. I was dreading doing grammar from a book so it really came at a crucial time.
How do you have time to do all those decks every day? I have one deck which is the core 2k and I have about 100 words a day for recap on top of 10 new words. It takes me a hour just to do all that. How can u do 8 deck? Am I doing something wrong?
I think it’s best to use premade decks as supplementary and create your own deck instead. The cure dolly approach so to speak. My current deck has almost 600 cards. Almost all from visual novels, but a few from anime. Every card has audio for the sentence and a picture. Some cards have the same sentence, and they reinforce each other. I often delete cards and replace them when I find a better alternative for that word.
Almost anything I do with anki has this one goal: Eliminate English. If I can remember a card from context and sound, then I don’t need to translate it in my head. I can think about concepts instead of shallow translations. Many of my cards have no definition in them.
I only use TTS for the word itself, but the audio from the anime or visual novel. If a word doesn’t have audio, I just don’t add it. I may write it down to study a bit, but that’s it.
One of my most recent cards: [https://imgur.com/a/I7q52ae](https://imgur.com/a/I7q52ae)
One is the card zoomed out, the other is how I see it when I click to go to the back. The front is the kanji with no furigana.
Creating cards from scratch is surprisingly easy.
Edit: Forgot to mention. The bottom has two buttons. One is the kanji, the other is a number. The number points to how many words on the deck have those kanji. Clicking it will direct to all of them. Words in red are part of the “sound sisters” deck by curedolly.
Clicking on the kanji itself will redirect to the kanji study app (It opens the app on my windows android subsystem). I use Kanji study for the outlier kanji dictionary, a brilliant addon.
Any good pre made Anki decks for JLPT N5,N4 and N3?
I usually spend about 30 minutes/day between review and new cards. Once I stopped enjoying Wanikani I also swapped to using anki for kanji, so that’s probably another 30 minutes daily.
I’ve thrown a few pre-made decks together, and I’ll add words to that merged deck when I feel like it, from my reading material.
I just use my own deck atp. I started out with the Tango N5 and N4 decks, then created my own deck after completing them.
I’m using Core 2k/6k deck, don’t know if it’s the right choice tho, I don’t find something bad in it, but as I’ve heard there is a better decks, if so, u can let me know in replies, but anyway I’m around 800 words rn, so i don’t know if it is good idea to switch to other deck. Anki for me seems very enjoyable and easy because u don’t need to actually sit and learn something and words just going into your head. In fact anki is the only thing I’m using for now, to lazy to start learning grammar
No Wanikani 3 ultimate: Tokyo drift?
2k/6k deck where I stopped at around 2k cause for the type of media I consumed it started having diminishing returns.
Rest is my own mining deck using asb player
I have an RTK deck with only like 10 reviews a day because I completed it almost 2 years ago.
A Final Fantasy 10 deck with like 600 cards I have made so far.
A ひぐらしのなく頃に deck with audio Ive been creating.
The core 6k deck that I modified for listening to the sentences.
A wanikani deck with like 6.5k cards I completed a year ago with maybe 200 a reviews a day.
All in all, I spend about 1 hr to 2 hrs on anki a day with sometimes over 1000 reviews, but typically closer to 600ish. I’ve done this for over 2 years now, so it has become a natural part of my day.
I used to do anki for 2-3 hours a day for 6 months when I was grinding for my N2 😀 I passed but jeez, it gave me some aversion to premade decks. Now I just have my own little deck where I put words as I encounter them.
I honestly just put all the words I encounter when I read manga or light novels
What anki interview settings do you use?
How many words form the 10k deck can you actually remember? As in, if you came across of of the words from the deck in the wild, would you recognise them?
Do you do both vocab and sentences cards? If so, what type of would you make a vocab hard for?
Do you have a grammar deck?
I am using my own deck.