If you don't like Anki, consider giving Mochi a try

[VegasVed]

I do agree that mochi is way nicer. The reason I never bothered with it is because they don’t have a Lifetime option. That’s typically a deal-breaker for me.

@Sumerechny

I switched to jpdb.io

Aye, jpdb does have a lot of what someone would want in a Japanese language flashcard app, except for an app. If the data were exportable (including sentences), then it would be very interesting since you could whack it in Kitsun and be done.

As someone who is almost entirely mobile-only, it’s hard for me to recommend something that does not have a native experience even if the Web app is amazing.

I have this odd reverse problem where, when I get on my computer, I get distracted… By work . So mobile is where I get my studying done.

[veritas_nz]

I’ll never understand primarily mobile users
Not being able to use my ten fingers on the keybard makes typing feel so sloooow.
Looks like Mochi does have a native app? Behind the scenes it’s a glorified web app though, if that’s what you’re referring to.

And agreed. No Lifetime subscription is a bit stinky.
I actually emailed the dev asking about it, and he said there are no plans for it in the near future :<

[nullptr]

This looks really nice, especially the bit where notes are formatted with markdown.
Is there yomichan integration (or plans to add it)? In my opinion, this is the single best feature of anki for learning japanese, and the major blocker for me switching to better alternatives.

[severian]

@Sumerechny

I’ve been tired of spending so much time on making “good” cards in Anki, so I switched to jpdb.io.

Another jpdb.io user here! The only real issue I have with it is that there’s some vocab that just isn’t there, usually because it’s very new or dialect-based, but even then it’s not that devastating.

I’m extremely technologically illiterate, so something like Anki or Mochi is pretty inaccessible to me. Premade decks are fine of course, but the process of getting them in Anki is a ballache, and Mochi looks about as complicated to me!

I can definitely see the appeal if you’re able to use them, because I’m sure the customisation and freedom is wonderful! And it’s always good to have more options available, so thank you for sharing, ThousandJP!

[ThousandJP]

@nullptr

In my opinion, this is the single best feature of anki for learning japanese, and the major blocker for me switching to better alternatives.

What kind of cards does the yomichan integration generate? If they are just simple cards, the export from anki → import apkg will probably be your best bet. My impression is that this kind of integration is not in the works, just a guess though.

@severian

Premade decks are fine of course, but the process of getting them in Anki is a ballache, and Mochi looks about as complicated to me!

I probably made it seem more complicated than it is because I wanted to highlight some of the different features. Actually the main reason why I like it and wanted to share was because making the cards is a lot easier.

You can just type what you want in that box, save then you’re done. It’s not much different than using a notes app. You’re also free to make every card different. Maybe some have 2 sides and others have 3 or 4, and some have pictures which you can just add by dragging the picture directly into that area.

You don’t have to set anything up before hand like in Anki. You could but you don’t have to.

[SmolSwol]

@veritas_nz

And agreed. No Lifetime subscription is a bit stinky.
I actually emailed the dev asking about it, and he said there are no plans for it in the near future :<

This is very good to know.
I am also against services without lifetime. That’s why I haven’t purchased Satori Reader. It’s really a shame.

[ThousandJP]

@VegasVed

Lifetime option.

@veritas_nz

And agreed. No Lifetime subscription

The offline free version has been working pretty well for me, but I am not a heavy SRS user. I’m curious which premium features you feel are essential.

[VegasVed]

These ones:

[MC_2018]

I read your blog post, but I wonder if there is some confusion about a feature for Anki. On it, you write:

Anki offers no cloud storage options if you often switch between devices. You have to manage this yourself somehow. I did this using Google Drive for a while, but just found it clunky.

As far as I know, all you have to do is create an Anki account and it will allow you to sync all of your data with their cloud, and they give you up to 10 gigs of storage for free. You can then simply hit the “Sync” button on your mobile, desktop, or web app (or alternatively, it will sync when the apps close) and the data is backed up and updated.

Anki’s interface is also hard to navigate and a bit Jurassic.

Yeah, this is kinda true, and having to deal with JS/HTML/CSS as opposed to Markdown can be slightly more time consuming if you want to create more custom designs for your cards. But at least for me, I’m a programmer, so I don’t mind, and I’ll live with clunkier interfaces if it means getting access to Yomichan and it being a free service. To each their own though, and Mochi does seem like a nicely polished service.

[veritas_nz]

As far as I know, all you have to do is create an Anki account and it will allow you to sync all of your data with their cloud, and they give you up to 10 gigs of storage for free.

Thanks for pointing that out!
I’ll clarify that when I get the time. The last time I used Anki was like 5 years ago, but shoulda probably done more research before giving my hot takes.

Yeah, this is kinda true, and having to deal with JS/HTML/CSS as opposed to Markdown can be slightly more time consuming if you want to create more custom designs for your cards. But at least for me, I’m a programmer, so I don’t mind

I’m a programmer too, so I could deal with that type of stuff too, but for me it all just felt so much easier with the good UX/simplicity of Mochi. Plus the templating means I never have to write any Markdown anyway.
The most impressive for me is that the guy that builds Mochi is a solo dev, but the app feels super polished

I’ll live with clunkier interfaces if it means getting access to Yomichan

What Yomichan features are built into Anki? Curious

---

Once we polish Bunpro Decks (and potentially add community deck sharing), I think the combo of having pre-made decks filled with hundreds of Cloze-style (fill in the blank) questions/sentences will remove the overhead of having to DIY your own flashcard system anyway.

[rdennison7]

Yomichan is an extension on browsers that hook into Anki. Essentially it can allow you to very quickly make Anki cards and put them into various decks. I use them to take a screenshot of the browser, use the picture in the Anki card to help review a word or Kanji based on context.

You can also add in other dictionaries into Yomichan which in turn can be used into Anki. Let’s say you wanted to use a Japanese to Japanese dictionary instead of an English to Japanese one. In many ways it’s a very powerful tool that works with an already powerful tool, as Yomichan can pull data such as pitch accent, parts of speech, even voice to text for most words.

I think Yomichan and Anki are the best combination in learning Japanese due to how powerful it can be. This is of course how much pain you’re willing to endure to understand how to use Anki. But if one is serious about learning, I think they should be willing to spare just a 'lil pain.

@veritas_nz

Once we polish Bunpro Decks (and potentially add community deck sharing), I think the combo of having pre-made decks filled with hundreds of Cloze-style (fill in the blank) questions/sentences will remove the overhead of having to DIY your own flashcard system anyway.

In my humble opinion, I think it would be very, very difficult to offer more compelling features than the setup I have for Yomichan/Anki. After setting things up that make me happy, making a card literally takes a fraction of a second. I don’t see a reason to split resources and offer multiple subpar services when the focus should be on offering a premier grammar service.

There’s already way too many SRS programs out there, and I tried so many of them. Anki is a pain in the ass to use, but man is it darn good once you know how to use it.

[severian]

I keep misreading the title as “If you don’t like anko, consider giving mochi a try”, like it’s some kind of tutorial on how to train yourself to enjoy anko.

[CursedKitsune]

Yeah, I have to agree with the above comment by rdennison. There are so many SRS services out there already (and most of them offer a better SRS system and/or better features than the Bunpro one) that spending time on expanding the Bunpro system isn’t worth pursuing immediately. That is how I feel as a user, anyway. Maybe from a business perspective it is worth doing but…

I use JPDB for vocab (and it can be used for kanji although I use the excellent Kanji Study app on Android for that) and, despite having issues, it is miles ahead of the Bunpro vocab SRS system. I don’t use Anki but, equally, it is insanely versatile and pretty much does everything you might want it to do.

I would want to see time and effort spent on improving the grammar side of Bunpro rather than anything else. I guess this is personal opinion only and, again, if there are compelling financial reasons to not do that then I understand. But I I don’t think I would recommend a beginner to use the Bunpro system for vocab.

Sorry this is a slight derail on the thread topic so to keep it as relevant as possible I will say that people should check out JPDB for vocab if you don’t like Anki.

[Flammen]

Wow, that is a cute blog. Just try to hover your cursor over the digletts.

In general it is a very pleasing to look at colour scheme.

[MC_2018]

@rdennison7

In my humble opinion, I think it would be very, very difficult to offer more compelling features than the setup I have for Yomichan/Anki. After setting things up that make me happy, making a card literally takes a fraction of a second. I don’t see a reason to split resources and offer multiple subpar services when the focus should be on offering a premier grammar service.

I definitely follow the same light, and I’ve found after a couple of years of learning Japanese that I’ve fallen into using several services that can do one thing really well: Satori Reader for reading comprehension, Anki+Yomichan for vocab, BunPro for grammar. If I wanted to, I could do all three of those things on each of those platforms (minus reading comprehension on Anki, reading paragraphs in an SRS format just doesn’t seem useful ), but I feel like my study time can be better spent with the several platforms that are a master of one instead of a jack of all trades that is master of none. I feel like I started to fall off of the Genki books because of this; they try to teach you vocab and grammar, explain cultural phenomena, provide readings, give and you practice material to challenge yourself, but I personally didn’t see as much progress as when I started to use more and more of these programs.

All of this to say, that’s just my opinion, and if you guys try and branch out to strengthen other aspects of your program, that’s definitely a plus, but I think sticking to grammar as your #1 is keen.

[veritas_nz]

Damn Yomichan and Anki integration for card creation is sick. Just watched a Youtube vid on it. You might have just converted me! Mochi needs an integration like that too.
Any good manga (as CBZ/PDF/Image files) readers with that type of integration too?

But if one is serious about learning, I think they should be willing to spare just a 'lil pain.

Yeah I’ve switched SRS tool about ~3 times, so a bit fatigued at this point (used Anki, Memrise, WK etc.). Curious to see if anyone has tried Memrise here. Was a bit of a ball-ache.

In my humble opinion, I think it would be very, very difficult to offer more compelling features than the setup I have for Yomichan/Anki

Yeah I can see the appeal. The stack you’ve got for vocab seems pretty OP!
I think the pros for Bunpro Vocab SRS (once you finalize Decks especially) will be the curated nature of the content.
I dream of Cloze questions that have a bunch of hints/extra detail, all curated by our content team.
But if you can’t tell by my badge, I’m a lil biased

[Sidgr]

I have used them all, and right now, I have just decide to grind out reading and a basic kanji app and leave it that. Vocab comes naturally. That is how I learned English. It is how I will learn the back 20,000 words of Japanese I have left to go. After the first 2000~3000 words There are quickly diminishing return from such deliberate practice I’m my experience. Especially The worry over optimizing the exact structure of the SRS.

For those intrested I am currently using LingQ as a reader and pseudo SRS. It is essentially a overclocked kindlesque online/app reader. The killer feature is that it keeps track of your words and has community definitions for phrases.

It’s glitchy and buggy and strange, but that is par for the course in this space. It’s been developed by Steve Kaufmann if that means anything to you. This person gives a decent overview of how to use it: How to use LingQ.

Keep in mind that it is optimized for space based languages and the notorious issue of parsing is constant problem, but if you are already an intermediate to advanced learner it’s at least worth checking out.

Edit

Mixed up the Steve linguists lol

[pasan]

I love LingQ’s concept, but as you said, it’s just not designed for Japanese and we can’t blame them. Despite being in the “golden era” of AI, I have yet to see a software/library that efficiently parses Japanese words in a text.

I seriously wanted to love it, but I absolutely hated the UX and the stock articles were uninteresting to me. I tried importing my texts and ebooks and it was a nightmare.

I think Anki is still the most efficient method, you just have to stop being obsessed with 100% memorizing the word(s).

[Sidgr]

You really are not wrong, but it you can get it too work its magical. I mostly read through community posted stuff and edit it as I go along. I am reading through the first Harry Potter as a test and the error rate is surprisingly low.

[ThousandJP]

Just wanted to clarify quickly that Mochi isn’t being suggested as an Anki replacement or even necessarily a vocab SRS app. SRS was kept in the description mainly because that’s how the creator describes it so I didn’t want to change that.

I have been using both Anki and Mochi and one use case that I have found Mochi to be very good at is reviewing summary sheets. It might just be me but compare to when the summary sheets were in separate documents, it has been much easier to just click the deck tab then cram button to quickly refresh my memory. The deck isn’t in the review queue.

Anki + Yomichan is excellent but if you don’t want to set it up and have a Kindle, you can use the built-in vocab builder to save your look ups and it will grab the context sentence with it. It’s obviously not as feature rich as AnkiYomi but it only requires a toggle to enable.