KameSame - a fast, feature-rich Japanese memorization webapp

[vnClJTUL]

Hello and thank you for creating KameSame. It’s a very useful tool in my studies, early as they may be.

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that KameSame does not round reviews down to the earliest hour like WaniKani does. In a couple of my review sessions, I’ve ended up finishing some of the reviews that would have been available at the hour, and then waiting a few minutes for the rest to become available (or simply leaving them for the next session).

Are there any plans to implement WaniKani-style review rounding? It’s a minor inconvenience at worst, so it’s not much to bother about, but it would be nice.

[gamerpuppy]

Love the service, thanks for putting it out. I just thought I would share some things that I wish were “close but not right” instead of incorrect".

Because I am going full speed wanikani its really hard to keep up with kamesame and missing an item hurts a lot. The difference in the number of lifetime reviews for 90% accuracy compared to 96% is huge.

ps: The repeater kanji can hard to enter. On OSX it does not show up in the dropdown for のま so I end up typing 中々 and deleting 中. Maybe an exception could be added for that kanji to type in the reading.

[gamerpuppy]

Another thought. Entering single kanji in general can be really slow because there are so many equivalent readings compared with vocabulary words or sentences. One way to make this faster could be to have the user enter in the reading for kanji, then select from multiple choice the correct kanji from other kanji with the same reading and similar look. It seems to me it would be equivalent cognitively because the user is doing multiple choice in a drop down otherwise.

[searls]

You should add those acceptable answers you want as alternate spellings (e.g. add 千).

As for 々, there’s not much else you can do. Some kanji are so rarely written by themselves that there’d be no easier way for a Japanese person on a Japanese keyboard to input it except by doing the same thing, so I don’t sweat this personally.

[searls]

This is honestly not something I had considered, but something I’ve logged and will track.

[searls]

Ok, this has been implemented. If you click the jisho link from a kanji card, it’ll open Jisho’s kanji page now

[Aircoookie]

@searls There is a small suggestion I have regarding alternate meanings which makes them hard to memorize. Basically what would be helpful is an option that instead of “X does mean Y, but we were looking for Z this time” doesn’t give Z away, but just says “X does mean Y, but we were looking for something else”.

An example would be “very”. Let’s say I can always remember 中々 but never remember 大いに.
Now, I enter 中々 in both cases and in one it tells me it wanted 大いに, which is a vocab I forgot. Because this will happen in every review, it will be extremely hard to memorize the translation that didn’t came to mind at first because KS will straight up tell it to you. This is also the case for many other words with alternate translations.

[searls]

This is a good point and something I struggle with. It can be really, really frustrating to imagine hiding the word we’re actually looking for because some words (like Sick) have 15-20 alternate matches.

I think the solution is two-fold:

• Improve information on the question page with more hints about what the word is not
• Potentially hide the answer the first time it comes up as an alternate match in a review session

[Kappa420]

Any tips on how to alleviate the problem that KameSame technically sees my kanji answer as correct, but in reality I got it wrong because I used the wrong reading to get to the kanji? Maybe an option to mark it wrong manually so that it’ll show up again within the current reviews deck?

For example it wanted me to type the kanji for above, I typed うえ, but the kanji reading actually is じょう. It doesn’t really help me with learning the correct reading for the kanji if it only shows up again at the next reviews and I visually see all the “Perfect!” and hearts and stuff that rather reinforce the wrong in my head.

[searls]

Short of a manual button (which is on our todo list but not high priority), I don’t know what to tell you. The app can’t tell what reading you used, of course. And still, both are valid readings, even though they don’t match what WaniKani prefers.

If you want to use the onyomi, I recommend writing a jukugo and deleting the attached kanji. That’s usually what I do. Others use a drawing keyboard for kanji cards.

[Kappa420]

Thanks for your answer!
You’ve reminded me that while it is not the reading WaniKani specifically wants to know, they’re (as far as I understand the whole kanji reading thing) still totally valid. I think I just need to approach it a bit differently: “Oops, not the specific reading WK wanted to see, but still a correct reading (else the kanji wouldn’t have shown up, I guess)” and then try to keep it in mind, rather than “Oof, completely wrong.”

[UInt2048]

Short of a manual button (which is on our todo list but not high priority), I don’t know what to tell you.

I think a manual button would be a good idea, actually.

[Alenaf]

I still feel new to WaniKani and very new to KameSame - just wanted to thank you for making it, it’s a perfect companion to WaniKani. It also warms my heart a little that you are using Heroku (not sure if it’s appropriate to explain why but let’s just say my daughter loves playing with Heroku stickers).

[Alenaf]

P.S. just became a patron on Patreon - it might be worth putting the link to it on the main page of the app, next to the contact link?

[lilalas]

It is currently linked at the bottom of your account page, but I agree it could be more visible.

[searls]

Thanks y’all. I’m just sensitive to making it too prominent so as to be garish.

Taking a few days off this week and hope I get some time to work on KS!

[searls]

Ok, after thinking about this I’ve implemented it. You should only see new reviews appear on the hour from now on.

[vnClJTUL]

Thank you very much.

[searls]

Got some additional things done today:

• Fix errant apostrophes in certain english translations (e.g. Speech -> Words • One’'S Lines • Remarks)
• Prevent the back button from taking you back to transient screens like the loading screen
• Fix notification animations that might flash suddenly
• Only show XP / rank / level notifications when studying after you successfully complete the card
• Scroll to the top of the page when hitting any of the save keys (so you see the notification clearly)
• Clear any info/error notifications when you navigate to a different page

[searls]

Pretty awesome new update today. I’ve been really frustrated since launching KameSame with the fact that the top of my navigation bar would tell me I had 7000 lessons available. It’s such a big number that it’s not motivating. Additionally, if I add the ability to study words outside WaniKani’s corpus, then what would that number even be?

So I decided to create a new system to incentivize continuous learning rather than completionism: Stars

Starting tonight, KameSame will challenge you to learn 50 new words each week. If you hit that mark, you’ll earn that week’s star. Each week resets at midnight Sunday, Japan time.

Additionally, I’ve changed the navigation from text to visualizations for your progress:

1. Progress wheel: outer loop is level (to 100); inner loop is the amount of XP you need for the next level
2. Star: each 10 words you learn gets you a point of the star, and when you hit 50, it’ll fill completely
3. Inbox: the inbox icon will start piling up as your review queue does! 1-25 is 1 bar, 25-50 is 2 bars, 50-100 is 3 bars, 100-200 is 4 bars, 200-300 is 5 bars, and if you’ve got over 300 reviews due, it’ll render 6 bars.

To give these visualizations a bit more space to breathe and to show off how many stars you’ve earned and how many inbox zeroes you’ve gotten, the top of the home page repeats the three visualizations with a bit more context about the data that drives them.

Here’s what an example looks like:

Please enjoy!

By the way, we’re almost halfway to our goal of funding KameSame’s ~$70 server fees on our Patreon. It’d be a huge encouragement if you contributed!