Hey folks,
I know this is a very played out topic. However, I feel like my situation is unique enough to justify a new thread!
Basically, I’ve been learning Japanese for a while, but I never really had any desire to formally study it. I watch Japanese grammar videos for fun, and I did Japanese flash cards for fun on the bus during my commute. But these were just ways to keep my brain stimulated, as opposed to having any particular desire for fluency. I finished the Anki 2K deck a month before COVID; after the pandemic, I lost my commute and my natural time to do flashcards. Recently I got a new phone and didn’t upload my progress so I’ve totally lost my history.
I went to Japan for an extended period recently and thought I can see myself moving to Tokyo for a few years, so it’s time I do the legwork to attain (at least) conversational fluency. I’d say I’m probably somewhere around N3 for grammar and N3-N4 for vocab.
So I’m thinking about improving vocab. However, I have to start from scratch on any Anki deck. There are some things I didn’t like about Anki 2K, namely:
\- too much business Japanese (I would work for an American company if I moved so eh)
\- going from English -> Japanese is bad (is “tasty” おいしい or うまい?) and a waste of a card IMO
I guess that’s it. I really liked the fact there were voice lines for the additional listening exposure.
I know the general advice is to make your own anki deck, but I feel like there is still a lot of foundational vocab I need to learn. Plus the process of scraping audio for my own flashcards just seems more involved than I’d like. So I’d definitely rather use a pre-built deck, if anyone has suggestions. Much appreciated!
2 comments
>- too much business Japanese
The [Core2.3K](https://anacreondjt.gitlab.io/docs/coredeck/) is based on frequency in media instead of just newspapers.
​
>- going from English -> Japanese is bad (is “tasty” おいしい or うまい?) and a waste of a card IMO
You can configure this within Anki for any deck. Most version of the Core decks go JP->EN by default. The Core2.3K does, too.
​
>the process of scraping audio for my own flashcards just seems more involved than I’d like
It’s completely automated with [Yomichan](https://learnjapanese.moe/yomichan/).
You have already studied a good bit so stuff you already know you can just suspend in anki. I am a big fan of the Tango decks starting with Tango N5. They are set up in an i +1/1t format which means they teach you with sentences but every sentence only has 1 new word. That way you see the words and grammar you have learned over and over in a natural way. If you understand a whole sentence then just suspend the card. I used them myself and then moved in to sentence mining later on to get to a decent level of japanese.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/866090213
I pretty much agree with everything in this video except I prefer the free Migaku Kanji God addon Anki addon over RTK. The addon creates RTK style cards which are based on the kanji coming up in your Anki decks.
https://youtu.be/L1NQoQivkIY