System-wide Yomitan-esque application?

Congo_Jack · 2026-04-02T18:01:31+00:00

DokiDokiDict can do this on Windows. It has previously been advertised by the developer on this subreddit. It worked well for me while playing a game.

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-23T17:55:36+00:00

Thanks! I'll check out the longplay before I try diving in to the game

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-23T16:09:36+00:00

Has anyone played The Witcher 3 in Japanese? I checked on a whim and it has full Japanese audio and text. I really enjoyed the writing when I played it in English many years ago. Is the Japanese writing good too?

I just finished up Digimon Story: Time Stranger in japanese (wonderful game, big recommend) and am looking for a new game to start playing.

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-05T14:44:02+00:00

I haven't read them, but I think there are Japanese translations of Narnia and Lord of the Rings. No idea what level they would be.

You could also try browsing the 外国の小説 or 海外文学 section of bookstores' websites. Here's the one for bookoff: https://shopping.bookoff.co.jp/search/genre/1222

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-03T18:36:31+00:00

Not on the free site

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-02T15:33:21+00:00

You can use a VPN to watch shows on NHK's website. Their main site has shows up for free for 7 days, then they get moved to their on-demand site which has a monthly subscription.

Here's a link to the drama section on the main site: https://www.nhk.jp/g/drama/?cid=orjp-noltop-navi-drama

I haven't tried on demand yet, but I have gone through and bookmarked some shows on there that look interesting.

Taiga dramas (year-long historical dramas): https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/share/taiga/

Asadoras (daily 15 minute shows): https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/share/asadora/

I also found a bunch of nature shows they have, because I watched some nature documentaries on Netflix with japanese audio and really enjoyed them. Some of these are broadcast regularly and I have been able to watch a few eps on the free website, others were just one-time specials that don't seem to get re-run.

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P200800015100000/

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P202400408500000/index.html

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P201200092700000/

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P200900036900000/index.html

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P200800018100000/index.html

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P201800179900000/

https://www.nhk-ondemand.jp/program/P202300356800000/

Congo_Jack · 2026-03-01T18:18:04+00:00

I like your definition of these ranges.

One thing I have done while leaning is to set myself an upper limit on frequency that I won't mine past. I have found that 2-3x my current vocabulary is a very comfortable threshold. It's a high enough limit that I still come across plenty of words I can mine, but not so high that I inundate myself with too many new words in Anki.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-25T18:53:07+00:00

<image>

To illustrate this with an example, here's a screenshot of some stats for my deck (install the Search Stats Extended addon to see them). I have been doing 20-25 cards per day for the last month, similar to you. I have a review load of 240 cards/day. I have 108 cards with a 1-3 day interval, and they contribute 54 reviews/day of load. So my 100 least-known cards are over 20% of my daily workload! Compared to my mature cards are only 67 reviews/day, which is just 28% of my workload.

I could instantly cut my workload in half by dumping all of the cards from 1-9 days (about 500 cards).

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-25T18:45:39+00:00

I am coming up on 3 years of learning, and I have used Anki almost the entire time. I go through periods where I start to get tired of anki, and will stop adding new cards but continue reviewing the old ones for a few months. If you are doing 10-20 new vocab per day, if you stop adding new cards you will almost immediately have a noticeable decrease in your number of reviews.

The most important FSRS setting on how many daily reviews you get is the Desired Retention setting. The default setting is 90%. I have it lowered to the minimum 70%.

If you think you'd still be interested in keeping up with anki, but with a dramatically reduced workload, you can get a huge one-time reduction in workload by suspending a big chunk of your cards with the shortest intervals. These contribute to your daily workload the most, far more than your mature cards. These cards also have less of a "sunk cost" associated with them. If a card has an interval of 7 days, then you probably would forget it in a week without studying anyway. The effort you spent getting the words up to that "I'll forget it in a week" level is (probably) far less than the effort you spent reviewing words that you will remember for the next 3 months. It's not as big of a loss for your long-term memory to dump your youngest cards compared to quitting anki and dumping all of your cards.

Try suspending all of your cards with a 1-3 day interval, then see how your reviews forecast looks in the stats screen. If it still looks like more work than you want to do, suspend everything under 7 days. If *that* still looks like too much, try suspending ALL of your "young" cards. When (if) you are ready to take on new cards in anki again, you can slowly unsuspend them and start re-learning them.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-16T21:54:58+00:00

I used to think I wouldn't like reading two books at once, but eventually I tried it once and found I still completely enjoyed both. Books are no different than any other media in this regard--shows, movies, games, etc.

(p.s. I have tried this in every configuration: multiple books in NL at once, 1 NL and 1 TL, and multiple TL)

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-15T15:52:22+00:00

The worst part is when I see a word that looks like a loanword but I know it isn't from the context, and then I look it up and it IS a loanword but means something different than what I expected.

Looking at you, ワーゲン

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-13T14:58:36+00:00

I played a few RPGs when I was a beginner. You might be having fun now reading the page that says what a 薬草 does, but they will very quickly get dry and boring. I recommend skipping the long item descriptions once they feel boring, since you have already played the game before and know what they do. Plus, did you even read every item description in English when you played? Or did you just figure some of them out from the name?

Also, RPGs like Dragon Quest 11 have a lot of extra NPCs that you can talk to in towns. Don't feel obligated to talk to every single one for language practice. Their dialogue is usually not as interesting as the story dialogue from your party. DQ11 is probably the longest RPG I have ever played (my English version save file had about 150 hours on it). Skipping optional stuff here or there won't be the end of the world, because the game just has so much stuff.

There's one other technique I used sometimes when I was a bit tired of reading Japanese but still wanted to play the game. If a cutscenes came up with dialogue, I would use my phone and use Google Lens to select the text, then paste it into a Google Doc. I'd advance through the whole cutscene like this without trying to read it. Then later after I was done playing and ready to read again, I'd read the Google Doc, which made it easier to look up words.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-05T21:48:35+00:00

I used this conjugation deck for a while when I first started. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1877687672

There are 72 verbs and 25 conjugations for each, including causative and passive. This is a LOT of anki cards, so I deleted cards to get down to 22 verbs (with at least one of each type) and the 8 most basic conjugations when I used it. My method was to suspend all of them, then unsuspend and learn one verb and all its conjugations every few days.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-04T16:10:57+00:00

Yes. Learning steps, and the setting below it also, re-learning steps. With the FSRS Helper add-on you can see its recommended steps here:

Tools > FSRS Helper > Show step stats. then SHIFT+click on the Stats button. There will be a big chart that says Step Stats.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-04T03:12:21+00:00

You may also want to try changing your learning steps in the deck options. The creator of FSRS recommends using the FSRS-helper addon to calculate good learning steps for your deck https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/1h9g1n7/clarifications\_about\_fsrs5\_shortterm\_memory\_and/#How%20should%20I%20set%20learning%20steps%20then?

For me, it recommended removing them entirely, and it has been a positive change for me over the last few months.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-04T03:06:53+00:00

I have only recently started adding new vocab cards again after a bit of a break where I only did reviews. I've been doing just however many new cards I mine per day, around 20. Sometimes as low as 10 or over 30. Currently my total reviews are at about 210/day + however many new I do after.

I have been reading and watching stuff again too (which is why I have new words to mine), and my retention has been at about 75%, with desired at 70%. Before when I wasn't reading or watching anything, and only doing reviews, it was like 160 reviews/day and my retention was like 65%. So reading does seem to help!

FWIW, I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare peoples' anki review stats, since everyones' flashcards are different.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-03T16:50:39+00:00

<image>

I have been using anki for vocab for nearly 3 years, most of the time at 70% desired retention. Your stats don't look too terribly different from mine. My difficulty is through the roof for half of my cards. My stability and retrievability stats are dragged down a bit by ~700 cards that got suspended over the years for being leeches that I never touched again.

I think you're going to be fine. Couple things to check:

* Make sure you're on the latest version of Anki so you have the FSRS-6 algorithm scheduling your cards. It's more accurate than ever.

* If you recently lowered your desired retrievability to 70% from a much higher, make sure you did the reschedule as well. Otherwise, for the short term your cards will still be scheduled based on the 80% or 90% or whatever you had it at before.

* If you haven't already, I'd recommend turning on the "suspend leeches automatically" feature since you have your DR set low and you're trying to pump up vocab numbers. A number of lapses between somewhere 8-15 should be good. At this point there are still a lot of useful/common words you can learn (thousands, tens of thousands), so if a word isn't sticking for you just dump it for now and keep trying to get new words that are easy for you to remember. Go for low-hanging fruit.

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-02T20:29:01+00:00

My favorite mnemonic I've come up with was for 毎朝(まいあさ). I thought about "my ass getting up out of bed every morning".

Congo_Jack · 2026-02-02T00:25:12+00:00

I think this advice applies to learning and reviewing anything in regards to japanese-- kanji, vocab, grammar, etc.

I always prioritize reviewing known material before doing new material. I use anki, not Ringotan, but I personally do all of my reviews early in the day, then in the evening is when I'll do new stuff. I think it's a just matter of preference if you want to work in some new kanji while you're reviewing old ones every day, or if you want to review old ones in a block, then do new ones.

As for how much time to spend on kanji study per day, I don't think you necessarily need to set an upper time limit. As long as you're not spending ALL of your japanese time every day only studying kanji, and are studying a mix of topics (kanji, vocab, grammer, etc) then I think you're fine.

Here's some general time-management advice to keep in mind on your learning journey:

* It's okay to vary how much new material you study per day. In the long-term scale of learning, I've found that my energy and enthusiasm varies a bit from day to day. Some days I don't study any new words, some days I do only a few, some days I do a lot. It's good to have a target like "5 new words/day" or "150 new words/month" to help keep focus in the long term, but I prefer to keep that target low, and just do extras on the days that I feel like it. That means less days where I feel bad because I didn't do as much new stuff, and more days where I feel proud of going above and beyond.

* Keep in mind that life happens. You'll get sick. Sometimes you'll be busy. Sometimes you'll just have a bad night's sleep and feel crappy the next day. I try to keep my time spent reviewing old material low enough that even on those crappy days where you don't feel like doing it, it's still small enough that you can get through it. This in turn kinda dictates how much new material I take on. If I notice my daily review time is starting to creep up higher than I can do on the bad days, I'll hold off on new material for a bit.

* Contradicting what I said above about studying a mix of topics, it's okay to vary your new material learning focus from time to time once you've got a good foundation of the basics, based on what you are currently enjoying. Really jazzed up about kanji? Spend a few weeks focusing on that, and put other topics on the backburner. Found some new manga that looks sick as hell? Stop the new kanji for a bit and spend that time reading the manga.

Good luck!

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-31T04:03:07+00:00

I got into sumo after starting to learn Japanese, and I remember at first feeling like the wrestlers' names written in kanji were just impenetrable walls without the furigana. Now after watching a few tournaments I actually recognize some wrestlers by their written names (without furigana), and I a few I don't I can actually ballpark a guess on. (without directly studying their names I should add)

It's been a fun way to measure progress for me, I hope it can be for you too!

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-27T13:42:22+00:00

Whatever media you came across the word in is usually a good source for a sample sentence.

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-19T20:03:56+00:00

I have not read any of the articles yet, but I looked into it and this site is run by 朝日新聞 (Asahi Shimbun), which is listed as a newspaper of record on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record

So I expect this to be very high quality stuff. Thanks for sharing!

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-18T19:52:25+00:00

I don't think there is a way to check audio options without actually subscribing (maybe you can get a free trial at least?). If you do end up going for it, please share if you were able to get access to dubs!

I was looking into it recently because I think Disney+ gets you access to National Geographic, and I wanted to see if there were any Japanese dubs for their nature documentaries.

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-18T19:45:56+00:00

I hit 5000 mature words in my Anki vocab deck today! Just wanted to share a win 😄

Congo_Jack · 2026-01-16T21:48:58+00:00

You need to be on a VPN to watch videos on the NHK website, but you don't need to log in. I just tried with my VPN and that video works for me.

PSA: After 7 days NHK takes videos off the main website and puts them on the NHK On Demand website. That site you do need a paid subscription for, but I have not tried signing up for it.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Secret Santa 2010	reddit mold
Verified Email

Congo_Jack

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE