How bad/good is my plan?

[Gabrielkarrer]

idk how much time you have, but in terms of wanting to improve reading, i would recommend to priotise wanikani until lvl 20, take a slowdown until lvl 30, and then halt, there and reinforce along with grammar and vocabulary. Ofcourse you want also to get the very basic grammar along with the start and very common words. i personally would recommend in terms of timespent like 50 % wanikani(until lvl 20), 30 % grammar, and 20 % very basic vocabulary which isnt included in wanikani. After you reached 20 on wanikani i would cut the time spend in half. My personal strongpoints are actually reading aswell, and the problem is that after wanikani lvl 30, the nuances of more rare and difficult kanji words getting more complicated, which i really recommend at this point to polish and practice vocabular.Plus more complicated sentence which use those kanji also often have advanced grammar, so you would want to have a good balance at this point.

merry christmas.

[Gabrielkarrer]

It depends, he wants to read mainly. For speaking and listening you dont need kanji at all. I personally would say in his case that learning 500 kanji in the first year wouldnt be a mistake, since those kanji are really basic and often occure. There are books with furigana so you could argue that even basic kanji are not necessary in the early level, which would be true if thats what hes going to use for the beginning.Grammar until n3 is really a musthave so until then, its hard to judge how important kanjis are if you don t have those grammar points. But i surely wouldnt recommend too many kanjis tough, vocabulary becomes just much more important after a certain threshhold.

[Erz]

@SteenJ

I know that I won’t be able to read books in the next 3 years but that’s OK for me. I take it slowly.

this isnt a very good idea. you should start reading as soon as possible even though its slow but the value you get out of a coherent text and the word clusters within are A LOT bigger than flashcards.

especially since you said reading in japanese is your ultimate goal so the motivation is high.

you should spend the most of your time with the activity you want to achieve while bunpro, wanikani and anki are just support. all three are silver platters and gamified with levels and badges and streaks. its easy to get your dopamine hits there while neglecting your true goal that requires alot more frustration tolerance - reading.

if i would start all over again i would split my japanese time in 50% reading/listening 50% tools (bunpro, wanikani, anki)

[Gabrielkarrer]

even if one just understands 30 % of the story, thats still a huge a profit, even if you feel dumber in this moment. I would know a very good fairy tale book which is made for japanese learners (not japanese children) which has over 20 japanese short fairy tales(3-4 pages per story) where on the left side the english version is written down and on the right side the japanese version, so you could doublecheck if you get the meaning roughly. After the story there is a small word translation section for concerning tale. They have on alot of kanji furiganas, but stop after 2-3 uses on the same words, so youre forced to read it more naturally after the start for the more common words. There are some cultural explanation after the each story. That book is by far the best non frustrating, easy to doublecheck book ive encountered sofar. The best thing is that they are quite short so it feels more rewarding and not so sluggish to continue, still, i would recommend atleast completion of N5.

[imsamuka]

@stoag

be open to course correction as you learn more about the language and your own learning style

I think this is also very important. If something isn’t right, find the problem and do your best to solve it. My daily schedule changed multiple times already, whenever I notice a gap in my knowledge. I might use other tools or books to solve other problems as well.

If you want a more passive learning style, changes like this will probably be more sparse, but don’t be afraid to change your course.

@Gabrielkarrer

It depends, he wants to read mainly. For speaking and listening you dont need kanji at all. I personally would say in his case that learning 500 kanji in the first year wouldnt be a mistake, since those kanji are really basic and often occure.

I also think it’s not really a mistake, but it’s not really necessary as well. My basic goal is only to read as well, and so far I have been doing great without RTK/WK types of studies. The 500 more common kanji are seen a lot so remembering them isn’t that much of a issue anyway.

Regardless, OP can learn with or without, so doing or not is basically preference. Whatever works for him it’s the best at the end of the day.

[Superpnut]

Rest in piece to the one who actually made this language starting making sense.
Cure Dolly is the only solution

Her books are…not good though.

[Noxsora]

You are definatly doing enough.

I think Bunpro, WankiKani and Anki are too many SRS. I was doing all of my reivews in Anki, and reciently tried spreading them out 150 anki, 10 JPDB and 30 bunpro.

I would prefer 200 cards a day in just one than juggling all these different platforms.
I recommend picking a fav of those three, and using that one for your flash card needs.
I recommend doing vocabulary first(1000 words), and then starting grammar (bunpro).

I wish I did more immersion. Meanwhile- come join me in “Let’s immerse 5 minutes a day!” watch those silly japanese commercials, or a video of cats knocking things over in Japanese. 50/50 is recommended, but 5 minutes I can do.

JPDB, anki and bunpro all let you put in custom sentences and add vocab which I would recomend over wanikani which you have to learn their vocab list in their order. (wanna learn 失礼します so you can knock on your boss’s door, not until level 7 you don’t).

@SteenJ

How do people learn vocab with anki usually? Its impossible to know all the kanji before the vocab. What I do right now I just try to remember the reading and meaning of a new vocab in my anki deck. If I know the kanji already from WaniKani thats much easier of course.

I did the kanji damage deck. Kanji damage is an RTK style anki deck where you only do the kanji and radical cards, not the vocabulary. Instead you get your vocab from the core deck. This is the “easiest 20%” according to wanikani- which I say is a plus. you learn just enough kanji that words written in kanji are just as easy to learn as words written in hiragana.

For my vocab cards I do basicly what you do. I use sentence cards and listen to the sentince audio which I find helpful. if kanji is preventing you from learning vocabulary you can try this method

In Bunpro of JPDB turn on furigana on hover

1. Guess the furigana
2. Read the furigana
3. Guess the english meaning
4. Reveal the english meaning
5. answer the actual question bunpro is asking
6. add any words/grammar that you didn’t know the english meaning of in part 4 to vocab reviews.
7. listen to the sentence audio
8. read the sentence out loud
   You won’t do all 8 steps every time.
   If your bunpro is set to flash card, or you are using a flashcard app (JPDB or anki) you will skip step 5.
   There is an add-on for anki called “learn now” which allows you to add cards to review like bunpro (instead of doing them in order, like wanikani) for step 6.
   because you attempt to read all of the kanji, and then read the answer you are doing a kanji SRS with your sentence SRS.
   In anki add {{#Reading}}{{hint:Reading}}{{/Reading}} to the front side. (if furigana in the Reading feild)
   
   and on click:
   
   My card template
   
   (card is from Jalup)
   This means that not knowing kanji won’t hold you back.

Hope this helps anyone else doesn’t want to study kanji separatly/ first.

[Noxsora]

@Noxsora

I would prefer 200 cards a day in just one than juggling all these different platforms.

and now to pare down the number of apps- I moved all my jpdb vocab back to anki.
and now to switch anki to bunpro:

If I get a card right I pass as usual. If I get it wrong I press hard. (which in the settings I have set so the level doesnt change if I use hard. If it was a beginer, it stays beginer, if it was seasoned it says seasoned- no affect up or down.) I then add the vocab word to bunpro.
I hope this means I keep a similar number of reviews and mastery across platforms.

Not always, I came across this in reviews: ～だもん（～ですもん）：不平・不満・恨む気持ちを込めながら、相手の自分に対する非難に対し、根拠や理由を示す- which in Bunpro is N1 grammer- so I’m not adding it bunpro just yet.