Hello!
My history with the language
Studying Japanese has been in my backlog for a while. I started the journey around 2017 when I started doing Heisigs’ Anki deck to start learning Kanji. I diligently did that for around 2 months until work got in the way and the habit broke.
Some months later I actually tried WaniKani for the first time, I started very strongly and motivated but by level 3 work got in the way again and I felt frustrated and quit again.
Around November 2019 I started studying very hard on my own again during a sabbatical month between jobs and learned a lot. Started my new job and that once again faded.
During the past two years I’ve been doing Anki on and off with Kanji and Vocab, but the inconsistency didn’t allow me to progress that well.
A month ago I found up about the Refold method and using immersion to learn. They recommend starting to learn vocabulary using SRS in parallel to get through the initial learning curve, for that reason I’m using their JP1K Anki deck, wanikani and jpdb (to get vocab from the specific movies I’m watching).
I feel like maybe I’ve taken on too much workload, but I’m keeping the new words on both JP1k and jpdb to under 10, and most of them I know already so it hasn’t been that bad yet. Also my work-life balance is currently a lot better than it was back then so I think I’m on the right path now.
My idea is to use these tools to boost me to content understanding and then once the ball has started rolling learn using that and Wanikani.
My current learning plan
On any single day I do
- Anki, Wanikani & JPDB reviews in the morning
- Wanikani reviews & new lessons on lunch break
- Wanikani reviews & new lessons at around 8PM
- One hour of immersion (currently rewatching all Gibli movies)
Taking new cards from any of the SRS systems depends on how I’m feeling that day and on how well I did on the reviews that day. Immersion is obligatory.
I also joined the Absolute Beginners reading club. To be started in mid November.
Status
Since starting again I currently have a 2 week streak on all SRS and I’ve done immersion all but two days.
Thanks for reading yet another study log!
Assorted Links & Tools
- Refold
- JPDB
- Migaku Browser extension for immersion, extends Netflix to be able to see two languages at the same time with optional blurring. Also allows creating Anki cards straight from the browser.
Will keep updating!














