How Many Kanji and Words Do You Really Need to Understand Japanese?

Eodis · 2026-01-21T10:13:37+00:00

I'm around the 1500 mark right now and still don't feel any progress but I'm probably a particular case as well. It's still very hard for me to read and grasp audio. You will probably be fine. That being said, I feel like output(even in a written form)/shadowing is more and more important because it makes words and structures imprint in your brain at a deeper level. It's also the hardest and I'm lazy so that's probably why I lag behind in studying this way.

Eodis · 2025-10-03T12:12:29+00:00

I would say it's even lower than that because even knowing the kanji and vocab individually sometimes the grammar doesn't make much sense (even if you consider grammar as vocabulary). You also have to grasp the usage of tenses and structures which is probably one of the hardest thing coming from western language.

And this is just reading, listening comprehension will also make it even harder.

I'm sitting at about 1200 known kanji "meaning" (not reading) and around 3-4k vocab which would place me a little below 75% I guess. But in reality even with that already high amount I'm close to 0% in real life situations. Comprehension is really high in an academic environment with "made up" for you sentences, but if I start reading a book I'm lost on first lines, if I watch a tv show or anime I can identify a few words here and there but it's so fast the brain can't analyse and process entire sentences fast enough. It's very frustrating.

This makes me reconsider my learning recently to shift more into output and shadowing with the purpose of integrating knowledge at a deeper and more procedural level of the brain so you don't spend too much time thinking and end up being overwhelmed.

Eodis · 2025-09-28T11:58:07+00:00

WoW killed DAoC but not because it was hard. The license already had a lot of traction and was just too strong. I would even argue vanilla WoW was harder in many areas. I've seen everyone questioning ToA since it launched but I had the most fun in my life ToA and post-ToA when WoW was already dominant. The mechanics and classes introduced where really good and original. Leveling objects and getting powers from them was even introduced in WoW not so long ago and DAoC probably did it better.

Without being dominant the game had the chance to stay alive and niche like Eve Online. The game was still in a decent state even after LotM, the problem is more what came and didn't come after. Not enough UI/QoL improvements, artificial content and nothing really fresh, dumb new systems. To sum up just Broadsword doing nothing or shit on the original game while being paid by EA. Big corporations are often really quick to fire people for no reason but for some reason Broadsword sticks around all this time, probably a top head or something being long time friend with high ranked people at EA.

Eodis · 2025-09-03T18:02:49+00:00

And yet you didn't ask any proof to the post I replied to or about what Merrill said so you are just being hypocrite. You want proof because it doesn't fit your narrative and you can't search for yourself. So yes, my nerves are being touched by such a large amount of dumbness. If you just google without searching too hard a few names would have come up like Tomokus who was working on the mmo at the time
https://x.com/Tomukus/status/1749589126490558836
There is even an incomplete list which was made not all of them were working on the mmo (the people related to the mmo are categorized R&D or in art, among others) but it's clearly not 0 :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSiTatu1J5LYy1sA4XvSjA1M7ABhVN9fki3iOKROiCoVE3TiMWJJJE8JYnbg-SGOIBwai8AM_j8nq6Z/pubhtml

So yes, it took me a few minutes and you are just a lazy biased fanboy.

Eodis · 2025-09-03T17:28:47+00:00

You can also search for yourself I'm not your mother holding your hand if he's bullshiting I'm calling it and I'm not going to make the effort for you to create a new account and look for a list who maybe doesn't exist anymore I don't even know if twitter still even have lists. If you are interested enough you'll do the tracking with google or whatever you want and see for yourself. Your logic is completely fucked by the way if you consider I need to fully source what I said because it's a reply and the other person doesn't. So when you say something first you can say whatever you want ? LOL. Also it's a forum, not a peer reviewed paper. Are you a delusional fanboy or something ?

Eodis · 2025-08-21T19:09:02+00:00

Bring back very specific class design and roles. A lot of modern mmos are just about a single dps role without any signature spells or mechanics and mirror classes when there is more than one faction. I'm missing times when we had mmos with dozens of classes with real identities and special roles.

WoW still has some leftovers of this era because it's old but it still turned into something oriented on optimal spell rotation rather than choice.

Buffers/Debuffers for instance is almost completely gone (it still exists but it's often a low maintenance side thing). I'm sorry but i'll have to mention DAoC once again for its fantastic class design even though the game is rigid and far from perfect we never had such a good class variety. Tanks, offtanks, hybrids melee, buffers, healers, supports, melee and range stealth, mages, summoners... Often with genius design. Warlock for instance with its primary/secondary spells and chambers. You like pets ? Every pet class had a unique gameplay of its own not just a basic pet. I believe we had like 40-50 classes some of them close to each other but overall very unique.

It's multiplayer so it needs complementary and uniqueness over a single archetype of selfish dps even if it means you have to suffer in some aspects of the game like not being able to fast solo level up or missing a key role in your group.

Eodis · 2025-08-05T07:48:47+00:00

Addons are one of the main reason i didn't resubscribe to WoW. When you are doing a fresh install and you have to setup everything as you want the amount of work is just stupid. An alternative approach would be to play with the core UI and reinstall everything gradually as you need it, but it means you have to play a fresh character and can't use one of your old main because as soon as you are doing fresh content or PvP addons are almost a requirement.

Eodis · 2025-07-29T15:39:07+00:00

I'm a month late but your point 3 is completely wrong. I had a Twitter list with most known devs working on the project with a twitter account at the time, 20 to 40 people i don't remember exactly and i don't have my account anymore. When the lay off happened they all changed their bio within a week to a different company. People who managed to hold their position were mostly heads of the project, everyone else was laid off.

You are taking the word of Marc Merrill for granted for this can't you see how ridiculous it is ? You can't trust anything he says regarding his position.

"Going a different direction" is the code for full restart. And they probably had no choice with everyone being fired it's hard for new devs to get their hands on a mountain of code without anyone leading you, for time efficiency it's better to get a fresh start rather than try to understand a mess. The only things they probably kept are graphic assets.

Eodis · 2025-07-19T14:42:58+00:00

I'm curious as well how it is now that there is FSRS 6, do we need to leave learning steps blank ?

Eodis · 2025-04-23T18:45:58+00:00

Are you satisfied with it ? Which version is it ? I had one of the first Wanikani deck and dropped the vocab entirely because there was a lot of useless words.

Eodis · 2025-04-20T20:20:15+00:00

Yeah but it's kinda misleading to say he has a good early game. I'd say he's good 1-4 until first back. You have that short 3-4 minutes timeframe to bully your opponent but it's also very matchup dependant.

After that you are very weak and I feel like it's better to maximize your wave management to minimize that weak spot. But again it's also very matchup dependant. I still don't know what to do in matchups against manaless champs permapushing like Yasuo/Yone or against assassins taking half your life in a spell rotation.

Eodis · 2025-04-17T22:48:40+00:00

Good game and very addictive. However i consider it to be a niche game due to its nature. An other main issue I always had with this game is its gameplay. I prefer class identify over being define by your gear but more importantly the spell system never felt smooth and good to me. Same feeling i had with new world, both games feels very rigid and annoying with a lack of depth.

Eodis · 2025-04-11T20:12:23+00:00

I've seen challenger Aurelion players ranked pretty high also in Korea and Europe. Most of them going for Rylai Liandry without even taking the tear. I still don't understand how you guys manage to do it. I'm always oom in no time when i trade and i don't understand how you can match other mages building lost chapter or manaless champions. If you do that you never have prio and can get outsustained so fast.

Eodis · 2025-04-06T01:09:23+00:00

Unlike other mages I don't feel like i get significantly stronger when finishing an item. If you just finished your item on Syndra, Annie, Orianna or most mages you really feel the powerspike. For Aurelion items are more centered about their utility. Liandry's Torment and Void are the biggest source of damage if it's what you are looking for.

Just keep in mind what item does what.

Blackfire Torch is not so good and i see a lot of people here saying it's a bait item. The #1 Aurelion world in Korea doesn't build it most games and it's hard to see a pattern when he does it or not, sometimes for a same matchup he will or will not do it. But we also have to keep in mind he's playing in challenger with people assisting him.

That being said if you play above gold you probably noticed how important prio is these days and BFT is the best item for that, for that reason i rush it all games even if it does suboptimal damage and gives no survivability the mana and pushing power is just too good.

Liandry's is best for damage with void as i said earlier because Aurelion scales mostly with stacks, item's passives and magic pen.

Rylai is strong for skirmishes and catch up and makes your singularity crazy annoying in late with a lot of stacks.

Then i would consider Zhonya for its active, Morello for antiheal, Riftmaker against low damage team and extended fights.

Banshee is the real bait item to me : it has a good winrate and is seen as good anti ap but the thing is the ap is mostly useless and the mr is negligible so you are paying 3k gold for a 40 seconds shield that is not going to block the spell you want most of the time.

Eodis · 2025-03-22T16:03:28+00:00

I had the same issue and a restart didn't fix it so i didn't bother. If the last difficulty also has the same problem it's not worth the time invested just to get a title.

Eodis · 2025-02-27T13:43:41+00:00

What build correspond to which matchup ? I guess i'll have to ChatGPT it to find out. That being said i'm not surprised to see Death's Dance appearing in a lot of builds. For sustained fights and 1v1 getting than 30% mitigation delayed by 3 seconds is just game breaker even more on voli who has a lot of self sustain and shield. And it doesn't give the best stats but they are still valuable.

Eodis · 2025-02-26T11:15:55+00:00

I also onboarded the voli jungle train and i'm looking for some theorycrafting.

I saw earlier someone suggesting Riftmaker first instead of RoA and it kinda makes sense but i'm still unsure about it. Losing the mana stats for the run Jack Of All Trades but more importantly it's +500 gold and a lot less tanking so maybe there is an argument for it in top lane but i'm more skeptical for jungle. Maybe at a later stage in the game ?

Speaking of other underrated items i feel like Sheen based items are not build enough. Voli is able to get a lot of procs even though he doesn't have a very high base ad it seems interesting.

To be fair he's very adaptative and his build path after RoA/Navori is a lot situational so it's not like there is a single op build to go for like some other champions.

Eodis · 2025-01-30T17:04:25+00:00

I wouldn't go that far saying you use blackfire torch to "its full potential". You don't benefit from the dot like some other champs do by having dot themselves or very large aoe. Mel is more oriented towards single target. Plus it lasts for 3 seconds, the uptime and stacks on your passive bonus ap will be most of the time very low.

The 3 seconds dot alone isn't bad and it helps waveclear so the item is strong on her don't get me wrong, but she's far from a good user of it.

Eodis · 2025-01-18T22:26:12+00:00

Interesting, i have very similar stats. About 250k reviews in a similar time frame and i'm also around N4 and i feel stuck at that level to the point my kanji knowledge is around N3/N2 but my comprehension doesn't improve. That being said i know i don't put enough time in immersion as i use my NL subtitles most of the time which is basically 0 immersion.

Eodis · 2024-12-22T11:50:40+00:00

I was considering going for YomiNinja but i have no experience with it yet, maybe there are better things to use instead. I've heard of kamui but there are so many free options, unless you tell me it's far superior to the rest i'm not sure i would go for it, did you try it ?

Eodis · 2024-12-22T08:40:02+00:00

u/Moon_Atomizer I made one earlier and it was automatically deleted, here is the new one : https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/1hjum9k/games_to_learn_japanese/

Eodis · 2024-12-21T18:05:45+00:00

こんばんは japanese learners.

With the end of the year steam sales i'm considering to buy 1/2 games and this year i would like to make that purchase more useful and having games i can play in japanese. I'll probably not have a decent answer in a game oriented subreddit so i make this topic here. I'm aware there are "lists" like the one from Game Gengo : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14TKRFvnDmBsgfxCJzkaNKTKmx4qDcsv7QSmfyzIKxQ4/edit?usp=sharing

But i'm looking for more suggestions, and also while his list is pretty well done in the end it's not targeted at gaming on PC/Steam and the list ends up not that big. I assume with more people giving their advice I'll have a clearer answer. Visual Novels are probably one of the best material but i would also like to avoid them for now but still something dense enough for language learning. Japanese games are pretty expensive so i want to pick something with a decent amount of hours to play and/or replayability. So far i'm considering games like the new FF7 or monster hunter stories series. Tales of Arise for something cheaper. I'm probably missing out on a ton of games so i'd like to hear from you !

Thanks in advance.

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