If you like Anki, maybe Kitsun.io is a good alternative. (Though it’s paid.)
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When was the last time you used bunpro? You were right maybe one or two years ago I think-- despite getting life time I never used back then-- but they improved it so much. When you place a related grammar point in your answer, instead of getting marked incorrect, you get a hint explaining why the point they are asking is a bit different.
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They also recently added Anki mode. So it shows the Japanese sentence with the grammar point highlighted and you click to review the answer. I personally like that mode the best, but I also use Bunpro more as a supplement/review than my main grammar source.
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“…spend so much money on something so trivial as learning a language.” I’m shocked by your family’s reaction. Spending money to invest in yourself and improving your skills in something is one of the best ways to use it. What do they think is a good use of money? Video games? Streaming service subscriptions? Movie tickets? Grubhub?
They’re jealous that you’re enjoying something that’s going to reward you for a lifetime it sounds like. Enjoying it enough to spend money on it. I feel like by telling them the money you’ve spent to supplement and enhance your studies, they saw how serious you were and unfortunately some people have the immediate reaction to talk down to someone they see doing good for themselves.
Seriously. What would they consider a good use of money if not this?
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I used it back in Auguest for a minute. While there were a lot of changes and improvements the fundamental problems with it are still there.
Everyone is allowed to have their preferences but for Grammar the way BP works is not for me and seems to get in my way.
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I see … it is great to know that a fan created a new platform to enrich learning performance.
I was just wondering as it really looks similar (though the layout and display at BP is eye-pleasing – from my point of view)
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@WaniTsunami - do you mind sharing what method you are using for grammar ? I am still looking around to see the variety of options which might help me (hopefully assist me to learn better)
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Grammar text books are just the honest to God easiest and straightforward way. If you’re looking for memorization or reinforcement reading helps, but if you can’t read yet, I think Renshuu’s method of placing the blocks in the right order is a better way to get you thinking about the structure of the grammar and not just X-point means Y in English.
You could also get a dictionary of Japanese grammar to supplement these methods, which I think is always fine to do. But BunPro is just not for me and I don’t think its an effective way to learn grammar. I do use Anki for SRSing the grammar, but I am against the fill in the blank style BP does.
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I have tried Anki … but as I am not that tech savvy, I have difficulties on setting up the “decks”.
As for the books, yes I have purchased one -as well as Genki I (though not yet start as I am trying to get more comfortable with either Kana & Kanji --at least at the minimum so by reading the book, I might be able to “practice/review” again)
You don’t have to be tech saavy at all to use anki. You can just make simple flashcards with a front/back, or download deck for a top you wanna focus on. It’s super straight forward. It only gets technical when you want to design cards to be pretty but its totally unnecessary and doesn’t make or break your study experience.
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This is so true. All you have to do is press “create deck”, click your way into your new deck, click “add”, and type in a front (question) and a back (answer). To review you click the deck and press “study now”. Anything beyond this is actually just bonus! If you want to add an image just copy paste it into the box, same for audio and even video (drag’n’drop). Most of my Anki cards are just a short sentence on the front; audio and the pitch accent graph from Prosody Tutor Suzuki-kun on the back.
One neat feature almost nobody talks about in Anki is the ability to record from microphone (shift-v). Can be very handy for comparing your pronunciation to that of a native speaker!
This said, I don’t use huge Anki decks and I add little by little to them. I tried large decks before and got so overwhelmed (though I might not if I tried again now). I personally think WK is perfectly fine for kanji, and I love the fact that it has so. good. audio and that I don’t have to make or download a huge Anki deck from some source of unverified quality. I’m sure the reasoning is similar for a lot of people.
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Ooow .. I see .. I misunderstood the process then ( Ooops.. )
Noted – Thanks will re-try again ..
Thanks @WaniTsunami & @finnra 
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That’s exactly what I thought.
I don’t want to be mean but that family sounds 100% like the cliché example of an US or other native english speaking country family that thinks foreign languages have no value because everyone in the world should speak english. Maybe they have never left their country to experience this big misconception.
People spend 20 to 50 dollar a month for streaming or cable tv. 50 dollar for pay per view stuff. Hundreds of dollars for NFL or NBA games or a Taylor Swirft concert. Or they buy a lot of fast food. In my opinion the lifetime option is worth the money. I started 7 or 8 years ago and had to pause because of my working situation. Now I’m back and don’t have to pay again.
I know that there are free options like anki, but I just don’t like to search for the deck that will work for me, the right settings etc. In addition I don’t like the self valuation part.
I appreciate that WaniKani has a fixed amount of lessons per level. I don’t have to decide which would be the best amount or order. And the mnemonic seems to work well for my personal memory. I tried kanji damage for example but I did not like them at all.
Another big plus is the community. It really seems that a lot of the best stuff for learning Japanese comes from people that used WaniKani. And I don’t think websites like jisho.org would even integrade the WaniKani level in their databases if it wasn’t used by a lot of people.
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Exactly. I think the general issue with Anki is that people jump into customizing it too early on and then get lost in the myriad of features it offers. If someone sticks to basic card design + maybe alters the intervals, it shouldn’t be too difficult 
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My newest cards are literally just default settings. Simplicity is best.
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I’d say, if Anki with default settings doesn’t work well, trouble-shoot it. For example, I can’t stand 100 old cards per day sometimes. That’s a lot on a busy day. 20 new cards per day is too difficult for a more difficult deck.
WK operates under the unlimited reviews, maybe it be 50 or 300. I think there are pros and cons. Anki chooses to cap at 100, and people may criticize that too. You don’t need to do new cards per day or for a week at all, in WK, and that might be a good thing.
Anki uses self-evaluation, and I think it may be worth it for meanings, less so for readings. Typing can be done, but it’s still self-evaluation, afaik. Also I don’t have to ask Mods to edit – I edit the card myself.
Anyway, it’s not about the looks.
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I’m gonna preface this by saying that I’m assuming you’re an adult with at least a part-time job. Also, I’m a high schooler who doesn’t work (anymore) so take my real-world financial advice with a heaping tablespoon of salt. Anyways…
Spending money on a hobby is normal. Honestly I don’t know if I can think of a hobby where you wouldn’t spend money. $400 is a lot, but I’d think about it in hours. Idk how much you make so I’ll assume $10/hr. That means the cost of everything is 40 extra hours of work.
If you ask to get more hours at work and you end up getting an extra hour per day, let’s say 5 days a week, it’ll take 8 weeks, or 2 months, of work to pay it off. So now the question is whether or not 2 months of putting in an extra hour working every day is worth the convenience you’re getting. Another way to look at it is you’re spending 40 hours of work now to save more than 40 hours of time later that you wouldn’t have to spend putting a lesson plan together, hunting for resources, etc.
All that being said, this assumes that you have the ability to work more. If you can’t make those arrangements, or if you don’t have enough time, then whether or not spending $400 is worth it would depend on how committed you are. I’d say if you’re still going strong in a few months, you should be good to go, but that’s up to you.
This has been my counters deck for at least a week for now.
It’s definitely a good thing
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A good about WK is the dashboard. How many – Lessons left, Review left, Learning (e.g. < Mastered), Graduated (e.g. Master+). Lessons left is further eased by levelling.
Anki has those (other than levels), but not immediately seen on startup. Particularly, new and review count are hidden from view.
It’s your money, right?
I don’t know what your finances look like, so I can’t say whether spending this amount of money is reasonable for you or not.
But the idea that it’s “silly” to spend your own money on things you enjoy is toxic BS that will haunt the rest of your life if you don’t push back hard. By that measure, music is silly. Art is silly. Eating ice cream with someone you love is silly. Pretty much everything that makes life more than a nose-to-grindstone slog is silly.
Only you can decide whether the joy Japanese brings you is worth the objective cost. But never apologize for spending your own money on harmless things that bring you joy.
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