KameSame - a fast, feature-rich Japanese memorization webapp

[searls]

Ok, another cool update today! In two parts!

1. Improved item list formatting

Previously:

Previously, list items were kind of a mess, with kanji on one side and kana on the other. It made it hard for me to glance at an item and not immediately anchor myself with the english (which is why the Japanese and English are on opposite ends of each row).

Now, the formatting should be more balanced/cleaner, also dealing with longer words better:

2. An option to reduce English in the app

Additionally, sometimes the English doesn’t really add much and it’s better practice to just try to read the Japanese. So I’ve also added a new option on the account page:

And when set, English will be hidden when it isn’t needed (i.e. if you’re searching for a translation it’s kind of important regardless of setting):

Enjoy the new stuff!

[marosluuce]

Hi, all. I’m new here but I’ve recently started contributing to KameSame. I want to share the first feature I helped build.

Skip results page for correct answers
There’s now an option on the account page to go directly to the next item when you get a correct answer.

When that’s enabled, you’ll bypass the results page when you get an answer correct. It makes reviews feel a lot faster to me.

Try it out!

[searls]

Thanks so much for helping out, @marosluuce!

I know a few people in this thread asked for this feature, and I hope they’ll take advantage of it. I recommend everyone give it a shot, because it definitely makes reviews go a lot faster. Plus, I’m actually pausing when I get one wrong.

[searls]

Hot on the heels of, well, the other five features we shipped in the last week or two, I’m happy to share that we’ve just pushed the most significant refactor since releasing the XP, Level, and home page overhaul last December!

These changes are mostly beneath the covers, but they lay the groundwork for most of the follow-up features that we want to build.

However, you’ll notice some things moving around.

For starters, there are a couple new options on the account settings page:

You’ll see a few new options:

• Included lesson types - You can now kanji and/or vocabulary in one place, throughout the app. Many of you prefer studying only vocab with KS, and now if you uncheck “Kanji”, no Kanji cards will appear in lessons or reviews at all. They’ll also be removed from your lesson/review counts, out of your way. If you disable both, you’ll find there isn’t a whole lot to do in the app, but that’s your perogative, I guess.

• Batch studies by type - This is huge, and will actually encourage many of you to turn kanji back on, I bet. With this, each card type (for now there are two, but I suspect we’ll be adding more this summer) will be done as one batch, in order. That means you can do all kanji cards with a kanji-drawing IME, then do all vocab with a normal Japanese typing IME.

Oh, and refresh your tabs! I know many of you keep a tab open for days or weeks, but this will absolutely blow up left and right if you don’t give the page a refresh. One fun addition in this release, however, is it’ll give us a way to actually push down a notification to you to refresh your tab when there’s a breaking version release, so you don’t have to come to the forum first

[EdwardStone]

Hey there !
Loving the website and just pledged 2 dollars to help you out
I was wondering if including kanji stroke order diagrams was planned in the future.
I force myself to write everything down before typing it out and I would love to see the stroke order,
whether I’m wrong or right.
Also, when I can’t remember how to write a specific word, I just put something random in the input box. Maybe adding an “I don’t know” button would be a good idea.

Anyway thanks for making this awesome website.

[lilalas]

I can highly recommend this userscript for WaniKani that displays stroke order diagrams for kanji: /t/userscript-stroke-order-diagram/5040

I also practice the same way as you do (write down by hand first), but only vocabulary items, and I don’t know if there is a nice way to display stroke order for vocabulary.

[EdwardStone]

Yeah I already have that one Thanks for the suggestion though.
I meant to have it directly on KameSame when you pass or fail an item .

I don’t know any scripts that do it for vocabulary items on WaniKani unfortunately.

[searls]

Thank you!

One idea I’d strongly recommend is to use an IME or custom keyboard that lets you draw kanji on your phone/tablet and converts it to text. That’s a great check on whether it’s “close enough” to be legible, since if a computer can read it, then you can. Same goes for using dictation as your input mechanism.

As for resources on stroke order, I think the right place to do that is as an app-or-web link in the summary view after the answer as an external resource. Do any apps or sites offer this and support URLs for specific kanji?

[lilalas]

As for resources on stroke order, I think the right place to do that is as an app-or-web link in the summary view after the answer as an external resource. Do any apps or sites offer this and support URLs for specific kanji?

Check out the userscript I posted earlier. It grabs data from jisho.org

Other resources I can think of are Wiktionary and www.yamasa.cc/ocjs/kanjidic.nsf

[searls]

Right, what I’m saying is that KameSame doesn’t support (or intend to support) user scripting. Instead, I’d rather have links out to other services that provide follow-up resources in a richer, and more purpose-focused way.

In this case, there’s already a link to jisho after every review—so does that link to a place where you see its stroke order?

[lilalas]

I’m not sure if I understand your question since you could easily check that yourself.

No, the Jisho link only links to the word, not the kanji. When viewing a word on Jisho, you can separately click on all kanji to see their stroke order.

So you can see the stroke order, but it takes a few clicks.

[searls]

My question was if there was a consistent link structure, and it looks like the answer is yes:

https://jisho.org/search/日%20%23kanji

Where the 日 is interpolated. It would probably be better for us to just change the jisho link for kanji cards to this URL pattern.

[lilalas]

That’s a good idea and probably very easy to implement. So yes, please do that.

[Nerhak]

Hi there, kinda new to Wanikani and trying my hands on Kamesame and I hit some kind of a wall other people doesn’t seem to notice… I see it asks me the kanji for water… I know what it looks like but… how do i enter it ?

[searls]

The easiest way is to type a word that contains it and then submit only the kanji. (e.g. type みず, complete to 水 and submit it).

If you’re on a touch device, you can also use drawing keyboard to draw it and reinforce stroke order

[Nerhak]

So… I need to be able to type kanji and the like with my keyboard… is that what’s implied ? On wanikani I’ll type “Mizu” then the word appears… but on kamesame ?

[Nerhak]

Found my answer like a big boy, don’t bother, and thanks ^^

[Aircoookie]

@searls Just wanted to say thank you for creating KameSame! It is an awesome resource that rivals WK itself in simplicity and features. Also became a patron I believe everyone who can afford it and finds it useful should contribute a bit, you put so much development time into this amazing app, paying for servers is the least we users can do to help out!

Also, the new update is great. I like to use KS vocab-only and was getting annoyed by having to review the kanji from before I noticed the lesson “Include kanji” checkbox. Now they are gone because we can toggle it globally!

[lilalas]

So I was continuing a very old, unfinished review session. However, KameSame did not accept a single answer and instead suggested all sorts of unrelated, completely wrong answers. I guess this is due to some internal IDs changing. I got it resolved by simply abandoning the review session and starting a new one. This is probably not a big deal—I just wanted to share some funny screenshots.

KameSame messes up

[searls]

Yes, this is correct. If you’d refreshed the page it would have immediately invalidated that study session.

In the future (meaning, as part of last weekend’s update), any breaking changes will also broadcast a notification along the top telling you to refresh the page so you don’t lose any progress or get marked wrong invalid-ly