So, in general, Anki works amazingly for me, I’d say mostly of the kanjis and words I learned using anki I started to recognize on the wild.
But I also noticed that some kanji, specially those more complex, less common or that look slightly different than some kanjis I know better, I have a more difficulty time recognizing on the wild, to the point I’ve seen phrases with some kanji I needed to look on the web just to see that I already had a card of them on my deck and I actually was good at remembering it in the context of Anki.
I know I should also try immersion and checking phrases examples, I try doing this from time to time too and definitely it helped me consolidating what I lernt on Anki, but sometimes it feels difficult to actually put in practice what I learnt.
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If you don’t know them already, learn all the kanji radicals and components so you break down kanji and identify them by that. It helps a lot in instant recognition of words too. Other than that just read, if you read a lot you’ll start to recognize things without any effort over enough time spent doing it. Start with easy things to grasp, like Twitter & YouTube comments. Then you can read manga, short stories, or games like Stardew Valley in Japanese. From there jumping into 小説, visual novels, novels, etc.
It happens 😀 You just have to read more. I literally can’t recognize a kanji alone in my deck but im pretty sure i’ll recognize it if I read it in the wild together with a sentence.
On top of other factors, don’t forget that when you’re looking at an anki deck, you know that what you’re looking at is one of a limited selection of things – your brain just has to figure out which one, and it’s primed for it.
Out in the wild, what you’re looking at could be anything, and that means you need a lot more thinking to distinguish what you know from what you might not. As ever, the answer is simply lots of exposure in different contexts. Having the knowledge from anki will help with making connections when you see it in the real world, but there’s no substitute for actually seeing it in the real world.
Just read. You said you know you should try immersion, but immersion is not something you should try. It’s something you must do. Exposure to the written language is what you need in order to get better at kanji. Play text heavy games, read visual novels, read manga, read light novels, read novels, read news articles or Japanese centric subreddits or x etc…just read and you will get used to things
Yeah it’s auch a frustrating Feeling. Looking Up a Kanji Just to realize that you already know it 🙁
I’ve been watching japanese TV channels online and it helps a ton on not only seeing kanji “on the wild”, especially when the text fonts vary so much, but also different situations with different kanji meaning more or less the same (like official formal text vs everyday text, the ways younger and older people use japanese, etc), besides of course following some japanese youtube channels that not only focus on teaching japanese, but also ones made from and to the japanese.
When I have kanji I want to memorize, I tend to put 2 or 3 phrases its included in into my Anki deck so I can get used to seeing it and its meanings
This is something that I think applies to Kanji as well as vocab, which is to compose the language as opposed to just interpreting the language.
In simple terms; not just reading, but writing. Not just listening, but speaking.
Try writing Kanji. The more you write them out, the more your brain associates the characters with the ideas, instead of just tying your memory to the shape. This will also critically improve your ability to read as well, because you’re fully completing the circle between not only knowing what that shape means, but knowing which shape creates the idea.
Reading.
Read and learn vocabulary. Then you’ll be able to guess the reading of kanji without knowing the translation
Instead of grinding out kanji in anki, do full vocabulary decks. This will improve your recognition of real world patterns of kanji, as well as teach you the actual words you need to speak the language. A lot of words are a unique pattern of 2 kanji, and you’re more likely to recognize them in the wild if you can’t quite read one, but the other does click.
Apart from that, more immersion. You can’t build pattern recognition without feeding it input.
Sounds like you already know the answer 🙂
The key is immersion. The more you encounter it, the more ingrained it will be. If by “the wild” you mean you’re actually in Japan, this will happen over time.
For example, you could do an Anki card for 禁煙 a dozen times, only to encounter a sign and your mind strains with familiarity. Only to later realize it’s きんえん / No smoking. BUT those flash card base foundation will have reinforced the learning process.
So I’m not an Anki user, but I’ve used Wanikani for a long time for recognizing kanji. The thing that helped me out a ton was setting up a font randomizer, especially one that included “handwriting” fonts for Japanese. Some fonts can look pretty unique and it really made me start recognizing kanji by the radicals and less by the overall shape.
I found this post from a couple years ago on how to set it up for Anki. https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/m6dn4p/i_made_an_anki_addon_to_automatically_randomize/
I never see it recommended here but I found the most success of my kanji memorizing life with the kanjidamage site