Anki Guide

This is, for the most part, an aggregation of the guides on DJT and TheMoeWay with my own tips mixed in.

Anki and its purpose

Anki is the flashcard app. It is specifically for rote-memorisation of things. It was an app originally developed for the learning of Japanese, hence the name 暗記 however nowadays is used on a wide scale for all languages, medical students, law students and the like. 

For Japanese, Anki is best for learning vocabulary and kanji. Some people also use it for grammar, however note that this is purely preference.
Anki will help you bridge the gap from 0 vocab to a few thousand, this will get you up and running to consume Japanese content and start learning vocab naturally. Some people choose to continue to use Anki even once they get to this stage.

Set up and key points

1. Download Anki (for mobile use: Android is free & run open source, iOS has a $20 price tag - it's worth it)

2. Pick and install a deck, here are a few of the best ones:

   1. Vocab: Kaishi 1.5k (link to Github page here)

   2. Vocab: Core 2k/6k Deck (No images, for images follow step 4-6 of the DJT guide)

3. Go to settings, we're going to change a few things:
   (Note that settings apply uniquely to each deck, ensure you have the correct deck selected)

   1.  Daily Limits:

      1. New cards/day: This depends on your personal learning ability and how much time you wish to invest. 10~30 is recommended, 30+ is in 'extreme' territory.

      2. Maximum reviews/day: Change this from 200 to 9999

   2. New Cards:

      1. Learning steps: This is how many times you will see new cards, I personally recommend having at least three steps, "1m 10m 1h" however many people also add a fourth if they struggle with things sticking the first time (for instance: "1m 10m 30m 1h")

   3. Lapses:

      1. Relearning steps: General consensus is to keep this the same as the Learning steps above

      2. Leech action: ensure this is set to "Tag Only" so that cards you fail many times don't get removed from the learning cycle. Once you learn more about Anki you can play around with these

   4. Display order: 

      1. New/review order: Set this to "Show before reviews" - this means you do your new cards first (blue number), and once you have answered at least once on each new card, it starts showing your review cards too (red and green numbers).  

   5. Burying:

      1. Make sure everything is off

   6. Timer

      1. This is personal preference, but I highly recommend NOT using a timer (change it to '999')

   7. Advanced:

      1. Maximum interval: How many times do you want to cycle through all your cards at the very least? 365 (1 year) or 730 (2 years) are common parameters used

      2. Starting ease: 1.6

      3. Easy bonus: 1

I'll explain more about what settings I've changed here and why below. Please note that ultimately, these will all be preference and you can learn more about Anki by clicking the info buttons in the app, or referring to Anki Docs. There is a huge Anki scene in the Japanese learning community so you can always ask technical questions in forums/Discord servers and get a response from more experienced users. Eventually, the goal will be to figure out (1) if using spaced-repetition memorisation techniques works for you [if it doesn't, you shouldn't do it!] and (2) the best settings that work for your brain (we are all different).

4. Buttons: How you should be using the answer buttons.

   1. Again: Took a long time to answer? Got it wrong? Click this. Your learning is as effective as you choose to make it, practise self-discipline. 

   2. Hard: Avoid this button. If you didn't get it 100% or were unconfident, or took a long time, then you should be clicking again.

   3. Good: This should be your 'standard' button. Either you didn't get it to an acceptable standard (Again) or you did (Good)

   4. Easy: This is your 'skip' button. Did a word come up that you are completely confident on already (お兄ちゃん)? Then click this. 

5. Additional tips

   1. If you are using the app, you can set swiping or tapping motions for everything. Added convenience for the small drawback of looking like you're addicted to tinder to anyone who can't see your screen.  I like to using swipe left as Answer 1 (Again) and swipe right as Answer 3 (Good).

   2. Use the 'custom study' for additional studying when you feel like it (adds progress to the deck)

   3. Use 'create filtered deck' for cramming  (Home screen > Tools), ensure 'reschedule cards based on my answers in this deck' is off as you don't want this to affect your main deck

   4. If you are a late-night owl, you can play around with the time that the 'new day' starts in settings

6. FAQs

   1. Furigana isn't showing, why? 

Furigana is built into Anki via using the square brackets. Your card template may not be using the correct field, see more here.

6. 2. How to fix my font?

Refer to the section on TheMoeWay.

How to mine flashcards with Yomitan

I will only be covering how to do this for Yomitan - however the logic likely applies to other browser dictionary extensions. (Rest in peace Yomichan)

1. In the Anki PC app, go to Add-ons > Get Add-ons > Add the code for AnkiConnect.

2. Now re-open Anki. On Chrome, go to settings for Yomitan, and click the 'Enable Anki integration' button under 'Anki'

It's that simple.

Now, it's as simple as clicking the 'add' button once you hover over new vocab, and ensuring your new deck has the correct settings. 

I use and recommend the note-type: Crop Theft Vocab (Github), however the default note-type is also usable.
There are hundreds of different available note-types from creators around the world, so you have a lot of freedom here.

Other Add-ons

Use once you're comfortable

• Commonly recommended: Kanji Grid for tracking your learnt Kanji in vocab