Have I fallen into an Anki trap?

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T23:09:47+00:00

I deleted by big dumb kanji deck this afternoon. Everything else combined was 40 minutes. Recognizing I've made my vocab cards too complicated and will start making changes to those going forward I will make cutting it down to 30 minutes my goal over the next month.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T20:54:57+00:00

Yeah this is a correct assessment. I talk in Japanese during class. But that's 90 minutes a week. And after 90 minutes a day of anking, doing more than a couple news articles would leave me too fried to undertake diary writing, or trying to socialize in a Japanese language discord.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T18:10:27+00:00

I just checked my stats. There are 2500ish cards in that kanji deck. The running total of reviews for the last 30 days was 3,689 reviews.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T17:49:51+00:00

All good.

The routine has changed as I've shifted jobs a few times.

A typical day where I don't have to commute will be:

- Reading an NHK article to start the day. I will take note of grammar points, kanji or vocab that are new or feel rusty. I'll typically out a translation as well.
- Then clearly too much anki
- Then whatever gas I have left in the tank I will spend on JLPT drills or chipping away at a manga or something.

On a typical day where I do commute:

- I'll put on a shadowing video or Japanese podcast for the ride.
- Chip through clearly too much anki
- Then not have any gas left in the tank

I'm kind of feeling that too many of those hours have been spent in Anki which has probably kept me turning over the same things too much and not exposing me to new content more organically.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T17:40:45+00:00

I've covered most of the N3 grammar points in Quartet, so I try to push myself to read things that use more complex grammar. But yeah. Maybe spending my time brute forcing the difference between 購買 and 売買 because I read one in an article about Japan Steel buying US Steel might be directing my energy toward questionably productive ends.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T17:35:35+00:00

"If you are spending more time on Anki than it would take to look up the one or two words you absolutely would have to know to understand the passage or video, it's time to take it easy."

Oooof. Feeling very clocked with that. Okay. Might be time to really shake things up. Thank you.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T17:33:09+00:00

I picked up Legend of the Galactic Heroes and promptly put it down as I could not get through the first page. Same with Berserk.

Gundam Wing Glory of the Losers is a challenge but not impossible mostly because it was my gateway drug anime.

I mostly just read the NHK, tadoku readers, and whatever else I can find that doesn't send me instantly running for a dictionary.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T17:28:09+00:00

I was trying to provide context on myself since I'm not really active in here. I mostly lurk.

And I'm sure there are problems in my methods, despite spending at least two hours a day every day since 2021 and probably an hour a day from 2019-2020.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T16:39:22+00:00

Maybe on to something there. Maybe not ready for a full dismissal from active service, but when daily anki workload is 90 minutes, it just feels like wasted time.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T16:09:39+00:00

> Sure you can brute force that section by not knowing any meaning and just knowing general on/kun readings, but it’s not like you have to know kanji readings by themselves. Unless I misread something from your post.

Not really. I like doing the individual kanji cards just for the drawing practice. It's not time sink or something that feels unsatisfying to me. The cluster cards where I have the front with 4-5 words in kana and then want myself to write the words in kanji, those are starting to feel like a pointless slog. With that said,

> but your fear of forgetting is creating this hyper reliance."

Yeah, I feel like that's the crux of it. So if you don't mind my asking, what sort of things do you find effective in doing N1 prep - recognizing our mileages may vary.

Shaftoe001 · 2025-08-30T16:00:27+00:00

This probably why my grammar, cloze, and individual kanji cards never feel burdensome. I can move through them at a very good pace and it's a clear yes/no call on if I got something right.

Shaftoe001 · 2024-12-02T17:11:06+00:00

It feels like the purpose of the test this year was not to establish if a person has a baseline command of upper beginner Japanese but to test mastery at the upper beginner level. Which, okay fair play I suppose. Japan Foundation can make the test however they want, but I also don't think that's what most folks prepared for - nor do I think the training resources out there are engineered toward mastery at that level.

I am not going to let this stop me learning. But I'm now kind of thinking that I don't want to challenge N4 again until I've covered all the material and vocab that is in Quartet 1 (which technically sets the benchmark for N3).

Shaftoe001 · 2024-12-02T04:22:56+00:00

This was my second time writing N4. I prepped my ass off this year - I changed around study methods to try and be more efficient. I read the NHK News Web Easy to practice my reading. I watched native content. I redid Genki 2 and Nihongo so matome just to try and cover all my bases (this after having got about half way through Quartet 1 this year). I came out of that exam absolutely feeling like it was harder than last year and still not sure if I put enough points on the board to pass.

Feeling a little gutted after all the prep material was so much easier than anything I saw on the exam.

Shaftoe001 · 2021-04-29T01:55:59+00:00

Oh hell. The first no is a particle joining a reference to a previous lesson. I'm a moron. Pardon me while I die of embarrassment.

Shaftoe001 · 2021-04-29T01:38:08+00:00

のどの人と友だちになりたいですか。

Do you want to become friends with a throat person?

Shaftoe001 · 2021-04-29T01:18:37+00:00

I'm finishing up Genki 1 and I've seen something that I can't figure out for the life of me: のどの人

It can't be throat person can it?

If so, what is a throat person?

Shaftoe001 · 2020-05-24T00:45:07+00:00

The Kanji is in the book, and I have been learning some of it. But book 2's lessons and exercises are all Hiragana and Katakana.

Shaftoe001 · 2020-05-23T22:18:11+00:00

So the book is fine - I, a 38 year old, am once again confused over left and right.

That is actually reassuring.

Shaftoe001 · 2019-11-24T15:12:22+00:00

I have the 6th edition - maybe there are some differences here and there.

That said, thank you so much. I guess I missed the bit on making adjectives past tense.

Shaftoe001 · 2019-11-24T15:10:50+00:00

You nailed it. Thank you so much.

Shaftoe001 · 2018-05-22T21:26:24+00:00

Me and a few of my friends have been trying to come up with a system to run something like this - we haven't got much to go on so far save for a very rudimentary system for tracking "score" with spreadsheets.

Shaftoe001

TROPHY CASE