In order to develop a vocab I’m considering doing the core 10k at kutsun, maybe 5-10 words a day at the same time as learning kanji here at wanikani.
Would you recommend against doing both at the same time? Would it be a better approach to first learn a bunch of kanjis here at wk before starting the kitsun grind?
I would say, get used to one method first, build up a steady routine, make sure you’re not taking on too much workload. Then gradually add in the other.
Doing both SRS at the same time could end up being overwhelming, especially if you miss a day and you end up with a big pile combined. But if you manage your workload well, it could be a huge benefit for your vocab. At some point you will have to start putting it all into practice, by reading and such.
I think there is also an option on Kitsun to exclude WK vocab? That way you aren’t doing double work, unless you also go EN-JP on Kitsun.
I’d say it’s fine to do both at the same time if you can manage them. For that, I think you need to give them a try and see if you can indeed handle them both 
My opinion is that if you’re a beginner in Japanese, you should go by this order:
Kanji: start working on getting used to the WK’s routine. Make sure you stick to it. Don’t focus too much on doing things fast, but on doing this steadily, day in and day out. Consistency is King. Read my guide for Wanikani. It has pretty much all the advice you’ll need during your WK journey.
Grammar: Once you get solid on Wanikani after a few weeks, I recommend starting with grammar. You could know all the words, but if you don’t understand how those same words connect through particles, etc… you’ll have a hard time. The grammar taught to beginners is very very frequent, so it will definitely be a good usage of your time.
Vocabulary: Assuming that you’re a beginner and your kanji knowledge is limited, I’d recommend going to Kitsun’s Core 10k, then to the manage cards’ table and search for the tag “kana”. This will give you a list with all the words on the top 10000 that are written in either hiragana or katakana. You can select them and add them to the front of the lessons pile. This will give those items priority and display them in your lessons first. Let me know if you need help with the steps on how to do this.
I think 5 lessons a day on kitsun would be more than enough to keep you going. Like I said, focus on making Wanikani work for you and then jump to grammar. You can use the reading tool on Kitsun to start practicing your reading with some beginner-friendly stories too
Thank you! I will do just that
Take a look at iKnow.jp. There are WK sets so you can go level by level, and the app itself is well made.
Kitsun is great but if you are only interested in the 10k, you can do it for free with Torii.
Hi. I was in the same wagon as you when I was in level 10, 15 or something like that. Thankfully, I realised WK is enough as is, specially if you strive to level up within a week or so. It gets tough after level 40+, so managing Kitsune would’ve been overwhelming.
I recommend that you do not do any personalized decks. It is best to set up Anki and start reading or watching anime and building up your own deck at your own pace. Don’t worry about the words, they stack up fairly quickly.
Personally, I believe that a downloaded deck is quite boring. Plus, I might be learning vocabulary that’s not really important or that I don’t wish to know (ex: sport terms. WK teaches some and I didn’t even know them in English). Well, not yet, at least. Besides, you get the unvaluable experience of learning vocabulary through context.
Of course, you should learn a little bit of Grammar first. I don’t really recommend books. I only know Genki for beginners, but it wasn’t a good idea. Use the internet and the dictionary of grammar.
The Kitsun’s Core 10k isn’t the same as any other Core 10k decks though. Not only can you study it in 6 different (and optional) ways but Kitsun’s userbase has sent way over 10000 improvements to the original version.
I’m addressing this because it’s a common misconception. I’ve personally spent hundreds of hours improving it.
My one personal rule for multi-platform SRS is to clear my WK reviews daily 
, everything else (BunPro or Kitsun will have hanging reviews because I have too many decks). I probably daily average ~160 WK reviews, 30-40 BP reviews and 80-100 Kitsun pending no life interruptions and that is all I want to do, after that I’d rather do something else. Depending on my mood, I emphasize one area over another and add lessons as I go. Oh, I’ve recently switched to non-input on Kitsun because I’m sick of typing all the time with WK and it’s 33% more typing with eng->jp…maybe I’ll switch back after WK but I’m not convinced typing makes me learn any better.
I was thinking about learning more vocab outside of wanikani as well but I noticed i struggle everytime I see a kanji or vocab that I can already read because I also need to learn the wanikani mnemonics since sometimes they stack onto each other and if you don’t learn them the next kanji that uses them as well will be harder to learn. So for now I stopped actively studying new vocab outside of Wanikani. I mean I still pick up stuff since I read a lot of manga but I am trying to be patient and instead focus on the wanikani vocab. I have heard the higher the level the more you have to review and study anyway so I am pretty sure soon I won’t have time for new vocab anyway. But I understand the desire, it’s so slow in the beginning.
In my experience they often stack the reading mnemonics over the meaning mnemonics for the same item but they don’t stack mnemonics across different items. The problem you describe shouldn’t occur.
Well as an example, they use “kouichi” for all the “kou” at least the ones I have encountered. So I just guess that there is more of that down the road.
Yes they often reuse keywords. They don’t pile up the mnemonics stories. Mnemonics using the same keyword don’t depend on each other.
I use WK, Bunpro and Kitsun. My system has been similar to what @jprspereira suggested, except I’m doing the full core 10000 deck not simply kana terms.
I’ve found it slightly helpful (and maybe it’s cheating) that terms I was on the verge of forgetting through WK have popped up there.
If I know a kanji already and the reading and do not memorize the mnemonics for it and than later vocabular comes up with a kanji combination saying “remember kouichi” I will be confused if I didn’t study that. ^^
So I study the kanjis/vocab with the mnemonics of wanikani instead of memorizing them outside of wanikani. That is what I meant with stacking
I’ve had the same experience, but I do think it was beneficial to do their lessons and review them. It gave my brain a new opportunity to learn something I knew with more depth, whether that’s learning the extra meanings or seeing in greater detail how it’s used in the example sentence. Even better, I find that doing the sentence cards (reading + listening to the sentence) for those words I already know to bring me even better results, since I’m learning through context.
Same! It also helps me to remember new vocab on WK if I have already seen it before in a textbook or core deck
You are totally right. Apologies. That deck is the Rolls Royce of the 10k decks. The Anki version was pretty amazing already but the Kitsun one is on a level of its own. Sorry, I did not want to diminish the excellent work that you guys put into it in any way.
The gripe I had with kitsun was that it only had one example sentence for each item, the example sentence was on a different card (so I couldn’t learn it with the vocab itself), and I can’t remember if it had audio or not. Otherwise it seemed like a great app but I stuck with Torii being free.
No worries about it, didn’t mean to say that you meant harm Just something worth mentioning for those reading about it for the first time.
The example sentence is on the card itself though. It’s on the back of the card. The separate card with the sentence is for you to SRS the example sentences themselves. Those sentence cards have 2 ways of studying it: audio of the whole example sentence (so you practice your listening) and the example sentence itself without translation on the front so that you can practice your reading + reinforce how the word is used in context.
The deck does have native audio, both for the words and also for the example sentences. For more example sentences, the deck would has links to dictionaries like goo and weblio so you can learn more.