"Japan this week recorded its first kokushobi, a term that means “cruel heat day,” as temperatures reached 104 degrees. It is not the only country that has scrambled for a new summer vocabulary."

I recently made a post about my new Anki deck which attempts to follow i+1 more rigorously than the popular Kaishi deck and I got some puzzling reactions to which I want to respond (and similar discussions came up in the other recent threads about Anki). People claimed that either example sentences aren’t really necessary, or it’s better to have harder example sentences, either because if they are too easy they would give too much of a hint, or because it’s a good thing that the sentences should imitate native input where you almost always going to get a lot of unknown words you need to figure out.

So first thing, it’s true that it’s better to be able to recall the meaning and reading of the target word without relying on the example sentence, because in the real world you’re not going to have the sentence as a hint when you encounter the word. That being said, the easy solution is to either remove the sentence entirely from the front of the card (which can be easily done by editing the card template), or you can just not read the sentence before attempting to recall the word (and also don’t pass the card unless you are able to recall without reading the sentence). In both Kaishi and my deck the sentence is in small font, and I also added a line break so it shouldn’t be hard to not look at the sentence while reading the word (and the reason why you would still leave the sentence on the front is so that you don’t hear the sentence audio and see the English translation from the back of the card, but try to read and understand it first on your own). But even if you remove the sentence from the front of the card, it’s still very beneficial to have a well-chosen sentence on the back which follows i+1 (for those who are unfamiliar, i+1 means that the only new word introduced in the sentence is the target word while all other words should already be known from previous cards.)

The benefits of example sentences should be quite obvious to anyone: they clarify the meaning of the target word and provide context for understanding how the word is used and its grammatical role. For example, the sentence should make it clear whether the word is a noun, verb, adjective etc. and which particles it typically goes with, and so on. Imagine someone memorizes a list of nouns and verbs, but have no idea which one is which, they don’t know whether the word conjugates or whether it can become a na-adjective or suru-verb (in other words, they don’t understand the morphology of the words), that would obviously be almost a completely pointless exercise.

For this reason, it’s important to have easy example sentences that allow focusing your whole attention on the target word without being distracted by additional unknown information you aren’t trying to recall at that moment, otherwise the sentence simply fails its purpose (namely as an aid for learning the target word and its use in the language). Of course it’s important to practice reading of materials above your level and develop the skill of guessing unknown words from context (or getting used to looking them up), but this is a different kind of exercise from SRS, and if you try to mix the two you are not going to get the benefits of either. Anki is designed to serve a different purpose from immersion, namely, practice retrieval of one single piece of information at a time; and if the card contains unknown pieces of information (like new grammar, vocabulary or kanji) which are unrelated to the item you are trying to recall, it undermines the whole point of doing SRS.

This is why having i+1 is so beneficial, if you already understand everything about the sentence (and can easily recall the meaning of all the other words and the grammar structures) you will be able to focus your whole attention on the target word, making it more likely that you will remember the word. It’s already difficult enough to recognize the kanji, recall the reading and the meaning, all at the same time, and so adding on top of that a difficult example sentence that doesn’t follow i+1 just going to make the task even harder by adding too much cognitive load with negligible learning benefits (but even in the case of immersion, it’s known that you will benefit from it the most only if the input is slightly above your current level, but not too much).

Another benefit of easy example sentences, and this is something which comes more from my personal experience of using Anki, is that a well-chosen example sentence can serve as an effective mnemonic. By that I don’t mean that you recall the word by reading the sentence, but that the sentence comes to mind when you see the word (this can help even outside of Anki). To give one simple example, you can have something like “どこに行くの？” for 行く, which is a common and useful phrase to remember anyway, and the kind of thing that can easily come to mind when trying to remember 行く, helping to remember that the word means ‘to go’. This is how memory work after all: it’s harder to remember new information in isolation, you are more likely to remember something if you can connect it with things you already know well. For this reason, if you have simple, short and easy to remember example sentences they can really help recalling the words to a significant degree.

Set to 80%, Kaishi 1.5k, 5 words a day, started in November.

edit: I am fluent in 3 languages by the way.

So I'll just cut to the chase, I don't know what to do with my Japanese at this point. I'm at a point now where my reading is good. I don't think I need advice there. I'm about to finish 空の軌跡 the 1st and I've had a blast reading it and I plan to read more JRPGs as I've enjoyed them a lot more than VNs and can stay consistent with them.

However, when it comes to listening and speaking, I just feel a bit lost as to how to progress forward. Now the obvious answer is "listen more" and "speak more" and my listening and speaking are nowhere near bad if I do say so myself but for almost the past year now I've been in a slump where like 90% of listening material is boring and any time I speak to people, the conversation dies within 5 minutes. Now conversations dying may just be cuz I'm horrible at small talk but idk what to do. I feel like I'm in this limbo where I want to improve these things but I also just get extremely bored trying to improve them. All my focus is on reading and while that's skyrocketed, my listening and speaking feels stagnant.

I have always heard about people who are able to learn a langauge like that, i just figured that my brain wasn't capable of it, but now that i've been looking around I'm not sure if it is a real thing, a persistent myth, or something that people say and neglect that they also have another means of learning the language e.g. a class a textbook, app, etc.

I'm learning towards it being a myth, but has anyone ever actually done it with just media? And if so...how?

Hi All!

I have been learning Chinese for 10+ years now and have reached a level where I can: (1) read novels and newspapers without a dictionary, (2) watch TV shows and movies (with Chinese subtitles to help with dialects) and (3) hold a conversation on pretty much any topic I'd like to.

Now that I have achieved this level I would like to move on to Japanese.

I was thinking that I could just read Chinese articles and novels, listen to Chinese podcasts and watch Chinese TV maybe 20% of the time in order to passively maintain/further develop my Chinese, then spend the other 80% actively learning Japanese.

My main concern is that learning kanji is going to interfere with my hanzi knowledge, especially given that Japanese has multiple readings of the same kanji. It seems like having 3+ readings (one Chinese and two Japanese) associated with one character/meaning is going to get confusing.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this?

Also, should the strategies I use to learn Japanese be different if I already know Chinese? I assume I should start with (1) hiragana/katakana, (2) learn some basic vocab with Anki (though what combination of kanji vs hiragana/katakana words I don't know), then (3) learn grammar via Genki or some other textbook, and finally (4) move onto simpler native materials like manga or something like that.

Does this strategy make sense? Or should I consider something else?

Thanks!

I've gotten to a point where I can read a simple slice of life book with only looking up about 1 word per sentence. Currently, when i reach a kanji I don't know, I'll look up the reading and definition and then move on. However, I feel like for the most part, I can understand the sentence after I translate, but then forget the reading and definition about 1 paragraph later.

My question is: if can you actually get better at reading books like this, or do you necessarily have to do sentence mining and/or flashcards?

Hi there! Apologies if this isn't the right place to be asking, but I wanted to get a read on whether this is feasible. I'm looking for a tutor I can communicate with primarily through text, since most of the mainstream platforms are focused on voice and video. My goals are primarily reading and listening comprehension, so output/conversation aren't priorities for me at this time.

I've been learning through immersion for about a year, comfortably N4, approaching N3. I'm in the process of reading through my second novel, but I find that I'm struggling without some form of external accountability to help stay consistent with genuine social consequences for dropping the ball. (Friends are nice, but there's no real obligation there, you know?) I'm looking for someone to check in with on a regular basis so we can discuss goals, progress, and areas to work on in between sessions. Being able to pay a flat rate once a month and chat with the same person would be ideal. I'm not looking for active teaching so much as a kind of mentor whose job is monitoring progress over time.

Does anyone know if there are services dedicated toward this sort of self-directed, hands-off style of tutoring? Hell, it doesn't have to be anything formal; if someone's willing to drop in on Discord and hound me once a week with some tough love and encouragement to keep going, that's more than enough and I'm happy to pay for the trouble. I just want some structured support that doesn't rely solely on my own willpower to put the hours in.

Thanks for any input!

I have a three year old I want to try to introduce reading comprehension now and see if I can jump start her language acquisition early.

I’d want to try doing Anki decks with her everyday until she masters hiragana so would be looking for a really simple deck with

Hiragana on one side
The sound audio on the other side

Preferably with all dakuten and circles and the small ya yu yo combinations. Does such a deck exist?

Some people say you need to study everyday for japanese, and by study they mean listening to the language everyday for hours. a couple of tiktokers now have said this. that listening to the language for hours a day is crucial. but i feel like this is kind of asking for too much? i’m not saying this isn’t useful, i know it helps very much aswell as immersion in general. but me, i do some immersion but i prefer to also study kanji, anki, grammar. to do that plus hours of immersion a day will honestly just leave me to a burn out. and tbh, i feel like it’s worse as a beginner. obviously you can watch n5 and beginner videos for immersion but when you go for something to watch that’s more difficult it can be very hard to stay engaged and interested because your not understanding what’s going on. i feel like as a beginner, 1-2 hours is ideal. but of course, once i advance, perhaps around n3 level, yes ofc i will do a lot more advanced immersion. but as for now, i love studying japanese, but sometimes i just can’t do it everyday. same for anybody else, everyone has busy days. i just really don’t like the you have to study EVERYDAY PEOPLE!! FOR HOURS!! like i’m sorry but people have lives 😭 and i thought consistency was key?? i thought consistency mogs quantity??

i think remaining consistent with immersion even if it’s not 192838 hours a day, especially as a beginner, is ideal. what do you guys think?

Ive been learning through immersion mainly, i watch and read quite a bit of japanese stuff lately, mainly mangas. i write sometimes. I ocasionally translate stuff for friends last month. Anything that is a good idea to try?

Im at the level where i struggle with a book too much to actually be able to read it properly (may just be my bad litersture choices, i think i only have seinen books that i tried). Im fine reading mangas without furigana etc.

And everyone always says flashcards, but I will not do flashcards. They dont work well for me, they only teach direct translation and not understanding (i try to connect a word to some kind of image or a concept not a translation as i dont want to have to translate everything to be able to understand), plus i keep loosing them or forgetting they exist eventually so it is just pointless in every way. Ideally smth i can do during my break at work lol

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I’m 4 months in my Japanese learning journey, know some kanji, have spoken with native speakers, and have read Tadoku readers around Level 2. I struggled with Anki at the start but I found a premade deck that finally works for me so I want to optimize properly.

Front card is kanji vocabulary in kanji and example sentence only.

Back card is meaning, kanji + furigana, translations, audio, no romaji.

My long term goal is reading and eventually play video games in full Japanese. But right now I'm having fun switching between listening and speaking. No writing though.

If I remember the meaning but forget the reading, do I press Again or Good? Or is this a gray area where it's up to me how to approach and change midway?

EDIT: I meant vocabulary in kanji, not single kanji character.

Hey You All

I wanted to share something a little bit fun today, but my big Japanese book collection here today.

I am not finishing one book at a time, I am reading all of these in chunks. But with some books I have definitely read a huge chunk.

Contents:

Top Left: Kanji Kentei 2 certificate. My most valuable and prized achievement.
Top Right: JLPT N2.

There are 2 lanyards, one of them was from Japan Bowl and one of them was from when I went on an exchange trip.

Top Left: JLPT and Kanken stuff. The books in the front are more things I am working on. And the back is more like archived ones.

Top Right: Subject books. I was lended a lot of textbooks and I frequently read these. I have a decent amount of kokugo, Japanese pedagogy and keigo books. There are science books and other books i read a lot less because STEM is not my speciality. The kokugo books and subject books are authentic and real:

Middle Left: Dictionaries. There are 2 layers. The front layer has kanji jitens, while the layer in the back contains stuff like koujien, and the kokumin hyakka. I read these for fun. They also allow me to rest my head while reading.

Middle Right: Nonfiction. This is the primary genre I like reading. I normally have history books on one layer, with news and genre on the other. Since nonfiction is my favorite. I favor those books a lot.

Bottom Left: Storage and learner books. I often have a folder for ronbuns I read and certificates. My N2 and Kanken 2 cert though is displayed.

Bottom Right: Fiction. Because fiction is hard for me, I prefer doing it digitally.

Regarding the second slide.

You all may wonder why there are a red and black cord. I earned these when graduating school

Red Cord: For Japanese National Honor Society. I served as president just recently too.

Black Cord: Leadership. I actually put it together because the ways I earned the cord were all via activities with Japanese program.

Hello, thats my first post here, sorry if my english is not that good. So i've been seeing a lot of posts here that try to help begginers at what they have to do to learn the language BUT a consensus is never achieved, i saw someone saying that immersion is overrated and we should just do grammar books, saw someon saying that immersion is life and helped a lot, saw someone saying that anki is needed, saw someone saying that anki is overrated, saw someone saying that to learn japanese you need to be in japan....ok sorry for being repetitive but my point is, what am i supposed to do? I know that not everyone is the same and thats super fine, but i really need some guidance at what i have to do to improve and eventually learn.

I can't believe there's no simple app to learn Japanese words with interval repetition where you can:

1 - create your own word lists

2 - study words by typing them (no given answers)

But most importantly, in this app, you can take the test to learn new words like this:

1. You're presented with a word from your vocab list written in kanji.

2. You type the reading.

3. You're presented with the next word.

4. You type the reading.

5. You're presented with the first word again.

6. You type the translation.

And so on...

Like, why I can't find any app like this?? The closest thing to what I'm looking for is Wanikani... It's ideal for me except for the fact that I can't add my own vocabulary lists (as far as I know).

If you know the app I'm looking for, please let me know 🙏

Please, DON'T recommend me Anki. I just can't use it. I hate everything about the damn thing. I'd rather learn to code and create my own simple app than fry my brain trying to understand how to use Anki.

Edit: people don't understand that what I want is to make my life easier with an app like I described. Anki WILL NOT make my life easier. I tried it, I didn't like it, you won't be able to change my opinion about it. Please stop. I'm glad you find Anki simple and useful. Continue using it and just ignore my post.

Happy Wednesday!

Every Wednesday, share your favorite resources or ones you made yourself! Tell us what your resource can do for us learners!

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I applied for a 2 years course in a japanese school for foreigners and i was wondering how long it will take for them to tell if i got in or not??

i applied at the start of june, paid the fee, did the grammar test and then the 1on1 interview with a teacher beginning of July and there has been no further news or email from them. should i get worried? the teacher said that i had i good Japanese and that we were going to see each other in Japan but i don't know if that was just him being polite? it's been 3 weeks since then, the school year will start in January.

I didn't apply through gogonihon but directly to them.

I have never tried to learn a language before Japanese, despite knowing 3 (or 2.5, depends on how you count it).

I was born in Ukraine, so I just "knew" the language. I don't really count in school because it was a place to learn everything.

At some point I moved to Canada with absolute zero English knowledge. So I decided that it would totally make sense to start playing online video games all day long and naturally start speaking Russian since that is the language my friends spoke and there was a lot of cool content and audio books on it. (It's 60% similar to Ukranian, similar to English => Dutch route)

I did go to Canadian High School grade 12. They had to change my ESL levels a few times a year, but I never tried learning it, I just lived in a country, where this language is a requirement. I consumed English content as well as Russian and just naturally figured it out. I have a thing that I never actually study, but I practice and get shit done and this is how I learn.

But now I wanted to consume anime understanding the source instead of reading the subtitles, so I started to learn Japanese... It's the hardest thing ever. I don't live in the country, I don't have friends speaking the language naturally, I can't type it on a keyboard, I can't even read the damn children book because I don't know kanji. I am using Anki, but I have colander of a memory just in general, so Kaishi 1.5k, 900 words in, I have 68% retention. I tried "Human Japanese," but that mostly didn't help. I can't really find interesting Japanese YouTube channels, I guess I am too old to be facinated by everything, and the only thing helped me with some word retention is rewatching Naruto with no subtitles while at the gym.

So all I wanted to say - learning is hard when you try to do it, but you don't even have to think about it when it's part of your life.

P.s. I have absolutely no accent speaking Ukrainian or Rusaian, but I have unidentifiable English accent and my active English vocab is mostly work related, as I don't really hang out with anyone outside work.

I'm a little nervous, I normally listen about 4 hours a week and listen to AI reddit story slop on YouTube, but i need to cut that out anyways since I am serious about learning Japanese.

Any suggestions?

My level is intermediate trending upward, but still intermediate. Maybe somewhere between intermediate and upper intermediate.

Any tips or advice on going "full immersion" would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice.

Hey! Randomly decided to commit some time and effort to Japanese in May. There is a ton of advice on how to start, but the good advice boils down to "learn kana, do kanji in words asap and start immersing".

After some research, I discovered that the Kaishi 1.5k deck is a pretty popular choice, given that it has pics, audio, and pitch-accent notes. After 2 or 3 weeks of 20 cards/day, things (as per usual) became difficult. My vocab memory is horrendous, not to mention there are readings as well. I knew that if things continued like this, I wouldn't last the whole deck. And we all know - especially those of us who tried and failed multiple times in the past - that studying without consistency is a wholly futile endeavour.

Kaishi cards have a word on the front and reading/audio/picture on the back.

- My first attempt at lowering the difficulty was to move the pictures to the front. It worked as a useful hint and made reviewing cards a quicker, more rewarding experience, since I could actually recall words :)

Still, after another week, having to remember both reading & translation was becoming a bottleneck.

- The second thing I did was postpone learning translations & focus on readings with little to no regard for English. It alleviated yet another hurdle and helped me to stay consistent. For that, I just duplicated my deck and changed its layout a bit. ^{It's not necessary! You can just reset the study progress on the deck you've already done and start over! (It doesn't affect the heat map if you care for such things.})

To have separate decks [if you're like me for some reason]:

• Tools >>> Manage Note Types >>> Choose Kaishi 1.5k and click Add >>> Choose Clone: Kaishi 1.5k and name it something like Kaishi 1.5k+.
• Export Kaishi 1.5k in Notes in Plain Text (.txt) format (✅Include HTML and media references) >>> Create Deck >>> Import the .txt file into the newly created deck (In import options, set Note Type to Kaishi 1.5k+) >>> In Options, set Daily Limits for New cards/day for This deck to 0, until you finish the first one.

- Jlab's beginner course is an OK auxiliary deck to study with Kaishi. There are 2 subdecks (Listening & Reading). I opt to ignore Reading and only skim through Listening. In places, it nicely overlaps with Kaishi and helps you to make out Japanese speech better.

I listen to the audio on the front, mime it, see if I understand, and then check the back of the card for the answer and explanation. I don't aim for 100% understanding on this one, and focus on moving forward. Understanding a general idea and recognizing a grammatical bit is good enough, for now.

- Once you get past your 3rd or 4th week, there is very little 'will' or 'motivation' involved. The key for me was to break down and ease the process until it became bearable enough to persist. If you know you can do it, there's no need to rely on emotions or drive to push you forward.

So far, I have managed to keep review time at about or a bit below the 60-minute mark [edit: it's more like 35-45 for the most part]. I feel like it's a healthy range if you are serious about studying.

What's next? Getting on with actually learning translations for what I can read now, while continuing JLab's Listening. In a month, when Jlab is done, the plan is to add attempts at reading & watching stuff and slowly increase daily study + immersion time to 3 hours. We'll see how it goes.

P.S. Special thanks to 鋭い, 疑う, 扱う & other long-kunyomi words for making my reviews absolutely miserable at times.

I am looking for advice on returning to Japan to continue learning in the country.

For context, I am around N2-N1 and have already studied for a year at Waseda University’s Center for Japanese Language. This boosted my skills enormously, and I am fairly competent in the language, but I struggle with speaking fluently and using active recall of information.

Waseda primarily focused on passive learning, like understanding things being told to you through lectures. They had a heavy emphasis on presentations, which didn’t work well for me due to the pressure and formality of it. I really only improved because of a single class I took where I got the opportunity to speak one-on-one with Waseda students who volunteered to participate in the class.

After I returned to the US in August of 2026, I graduated from my home university and have been looking to return to Japan to continue my studies, because I am not yet fluent enough to really begin professional work in the field.

I looked at various language schools in Tokyo, and I landed on ISI (International Study Institute) because other schools (like Akamonkai) seem to be focused again on passive intake and cramming for the JLPT. I just wanted to ask around to those who could help me about my options and whether what I’m thinking is a good idea. If I chose ISI, I’d be looking for starting at the April 2027 spring semester.

Any advice? I’d love to get feedback!

This game is so hard tbh

The normal modes (like the regular normal to hell mode) are so easy, but when you play the + modes, you're basically playing on extreme mode, no shortcut or bs.

Has anyone else played this kanji de go game before, how did you all feel about the game? It's pretty hard.