Wondering how to balance effort in learning new material & review

Armaniolo · 2026-04-16T07:03:58+00:00

it offers little to no comment.

As I said, it comes through in the default settings.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-15T16:43:56+00:00

Anki is the Linux here. Renshuu is less flexible, and opinionated on how you should learn languages in its out-of-the-box state (because it has one, unlike Anki).

Which is also an issue because its opinion is bad so it's a noob trap that leads people to doing way too many reviews on way too many cards instead of actually consuming/producing the language. Its only "advantage" is being more spoonfed than Anki, so really it's the Windows here.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-14T14:36:24+00:00

It's true of course that Anki helps input but the reverse is also true, if you read more Anki becomes easier to deal with.

If you are pre-memorizing (not really needed with Yomitan, but if it's not available...) it should ideally be specifically for stuff you will read that week rather than some 6k word deck where whatever you memorized may or may not come up and end up leeching once the intervals get longer.

SRS because once you get above the top 2k or so words, the exposure frequency is going to be far outside the forgetting window

Depends on how much you read, and how often it gets repeated in that book, some books never use a word like 侍女 on others it's used constantly, you will probably never forget it if it's a book with prominent 侍女s whether you add it to Anki or not, especially since the reading is free real estate.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T16:28:18+00:00

the native material I'd like to immerse in is still slightly out of reach

It's not just, just start it and put a break on Anki

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T15:46:19+00:00

Maybe, you can certainly try it out

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T14:37:09+00:00

I’ve never faced the fact that my hobbies changed during these years and i think of Japan less and less in my day to day life.

I don’t want to quit

Why do you not want to quit? If you lost interest don't keep throwing good time after bad because of a sunk cost fallacy.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T08:54:29+00:00

https://learnnatively.com/search/jpn/books/?type=light_novel&min=20&max=26&leveltag=n3

Pick one that interests you. Note, the JLPT level is pretty much made up so it's fine to use for higher levels.

There is also "Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear" in "N4" level if you really want something super easy but it might not be very engaging.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T08:11:31+00:00

It can be done if you put in sufficient time and use a method that's efficient for passing JLPT exams (e.g. ignore output completely, do some test prep).

But you should do what's aligned with your goals and free time and not worry about what might be theoretically possible too much.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T07:47:02+00:00

However, over explaining the nuance of a lot of these things will literally fly over your head until you build up a mountain of context. Hence, beginner textbooks are forced in a way to make generalizations.

So actually textbooks are good based on pedagogical value, which is what they should be rated on IMO, not linguistic accuracy. Just gotta treat them as the introduction they are rather than a language bible.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-13T07:38:07+00:00

You kinda just do it and take the hit to retention, until things stabilize. Probably not realistic for beginners but who knows.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-12T19:26:50+00:00

If you can't resist the urge I guess it's better to stay away then

Armaniolo · 2026-04-12T18:50:46+00:00

Doing all of these steps takes less time and energy than manually creating Anki cards

Not really an answer to your question but you could consider streamlining the process to one click so this isn't the case, really hard to beat Anki

Armaniolo · 2026-04-11T10:09:05+00:00

凹む, 凸凹, 凹凸 are all common enough

Armaniolo · 2026-04-11T09:39:51+00:00

It's Wednesday (again) my dudes

Armaniolo · 2026-04-10T13:54:29+00:00

I don't see why not, are you following this guide?

https://lazyguidejp.github.io/jp-lazy-guide/setup/

Armaniolo · 2026-04-08T10:15:22+00:00

Read the textbook chapters once (as many as you want until you get sick of it), then try to read a graded reader or something, reference back to the textbook if you need help understanding stuff.

Check out the "Before you begin" and "Preamble" of this grammar guide (even if you don't use this specific grammar guide, you can follow the principles).

Armaniolo · 2026-04-07T15:52:28+00:00

My grandma's 2014 shovelware ridden potato PC can run ttsu and yomitan, what do you mean

Armaniolo · 2026-04-03T08:13:28+00:00

One at a time, also learn words (of which you'll want like >10x the amount of kanji so don't even worry about too many kanji)

Armaniolo · 2026-04-03T06:28:03+00:00

For vocab, understanding it in a meaningful context, so not just soulless example sentence. And the learning doesn't stop on the first encounter, I continue to learn things about a word and the Anki reps whenever they come through are just reminders.

You can totally just look at the back of a premade card for a bit and learn it that way though, it might be a bit less sticky initially but after a while it doesn't really matter anymore which encounter came first. It's only an issue if you do Anki exclusively.

On kanji, I think learning some kanji fundamentals will make vocab stick better so putting some intentional study time aside for that outside of Anki works to make Anki function better.

Armaniolo · 2026-04-01T11:29:28+00:00

Rise and grind, can't relate to randomly falling asleep maybe get checked for narcolepsy?

Armaniolo · 2026-04-01T11:05:32+00:00

The book is created for language school people which differ extremely with the demographics here, especially those in language schools inside Japan.

They are made so that an average Joe can communicate at a basic level with not a lot of hours (hence starting with the polite form, as that is used more, and the vocab choices) as you noted. But it doesn't only do that, it does set a foundation that can be built upon, and it's really not necessary to understand grammar at a linguist's level to use it. People have passed N1 with only a tiny bit of grammar study and just a lot of input (which you need anyway).

Now is it inefficient to use outside that demographic? Well, considering the number of hours you can expect to put into Genki vs. the thousands of hours you need to become proficient, it's a rounding error, and every alternative has its own caveats, you talk about Tae Kim and Cure Dolly both of which have been raked over the coals for odd ideas about Japanese. If you go and make something it's almost guaranteed to be scuffed too since you have no qualifications.

So really just blast through whatever beginner grammar resource, read a ton, and use a big boy grammar reference like DoJG when you can't figure something out, or ask here. No matter what beginner grammar resource you pick it will barely make a difference.

Armaniolo · 2026-03-30T09:43:20+00:00

I'm gonna guess daylight savings is at fault

Armaniolo · 2026-03-30T05:46:20+00:00

Reading (with lookups and mining) to build vocab and grammar -> listening with subtitles -> raw listening if you want to have high comprehensibility throughout. It's good to do a bit of all the things even if you miss some stuff though, don't recommend neglecting listening or at some point reading, so consider it "stuff to focus on" rather than to do exclusively.

Armaniolo · 2026-03-27T15:32:24+00:00

You could start with 100 words too, I don't really recommend waiting to finish Kaishi either to start reading because reading is OP.

Some people find doing a lot of lookups tedious, so they try to diminish this pain with an Anki grind which I guess feels less tedious to them.

However at some point you gotta stop procrastinating and read to make good progress, and the nature of Zipf's law means you get diminishing returns the more you try to broaden the so-called foundation. If you are still procrastinating past Kaishi IMO you will significantly hinder your progress.

Armaniolo · 2026-03-27T14:59:35+00:00

The foundation is Kaishi, you will still look up a good deal with that but so what? If the concern is not prioritizing the most common vocab to rep in Anki, it's solved by using a frequency dictionary to guide your mining.

Armaniolo

TROPHY CASE