MaruMori.io & Kitsun.io - [UPDATE: ALL ABOARD THE N3 TRAIN] - Grammar SRS, Grammar Lessons, Reading Exercises, Vocabulary, Kanji and more!

You may want to check out the second post in this thread - lots of helpful how-to info there ^^

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Thank you so much! Studying it now!

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Hi!

Yes, a FAQ and Guide will be added later on (sorry about that!). For now you could take a look at post #2 or follow the mini-guide below:

  • Create a new deck → Just fill in the name and description and hit save.
  • Start creating new cards for the deck (there is a button on the page after saving the deck). → Pick a template then pick the layouts you’d want and start filling in the values for the card.
  • Seeing as you’re learning Japanese, you probably want to have “Kitsun - Vocabulary” as the template, and “Kitsun - JP → ENG” & “Kitsun - ENG → JP” as the layouts :slight_smile:

Another option is to import an anki deck or a word list. The import feature can be found in the settings page. The system will automatically create everything you need to start learning the deck/wordlist right away. (Although you might need to do some extra tweaks in order to get JP input support or to tweak the way it looks)

If anything is unclear, please feel free to ask! Making it easy for new users to start without having to do anything complicated is top priority for me, but as the website is currently still under heavy development, I haven’t been able to make the required changes yet. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Edit:
I would also like to note that Community decks will be coming in the near future. Making it easy for anyone to start learning decks made by other users (if they choose to set it as public).

And there will be some standard decks (i.e. JLPT Vocab divided by levels) to choose from which will be made available by Kitsun as well :slight_smile:

Since this is not implemented yet, it leaves currently testers in a bit of a awkward situation if they haven’t worked with a SRS system like anki before

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That is great! I’ve now very slowly made a deck (yet to figure out the difference between a deck and a folder) and made two cards, both with grammar format. Slowly, slowly, getting there! Thank you so much, this really does look like a superb learning resource!

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A deck contains your cards, a folder can contain other decks (you can drag and drop decks onto the created folder). This way you can organise your decks page if you have many decks :slight_smile:

I’m glad you enjoy it so far! I will try my best to make it all a bit easier as soon as possible.

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Please let me know if you release an API documentation for Kitsun, as I am trying to sync my app with Anki and Kitsun is probably more ideal to sync with than AnkiConnect. (Because of 1. truly always online 2. official support )

I’m trying to add SRS to my app. It’s time to type-in the Pinyin…

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BTW, do you have a problem with data size when importing Hinekidori’s 10k deck? The size is roughly 700M. – Of course, shared decks and TTS would be more ideal…

I will not release API documentation for the internal API, as it’s not meant to be used by users/scripts, I can help you out with setting it up through PMs or Discord (if you have it?) though, as the public API is still a ways off (low priority right now).

Hine’s 10k (and even 15k) deck import without problems. Any decks smaller than 1gb should work :slight_smile:

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Three thoughts…

  1. There’s no picture on the tab for Kitsun on the top of my computer

  2. Now I have an account I’m wondering how to go about creating cards, any tips?

  3. I’ve created three test cards so far (based on the first pages of にゃんにゃん) but something’s gone wrong with one of them - it’s blank!

I’m determined to learn this. I’ve never used it, but everyone says Anki is great, and so the idea of an on-line Anki (I use a Chromebook) is brilliant!

Correct, the picture is not included yet. It’s been on my to-do list for a while but I keep on forgetting to do it. I’ll fix it with the next update!

I would suggest one of the following:

  • Start adding vocab (etc) that you encounter during consumption of Japanese materials (studybooks/books/manga/anime/series/games etc)
  • Perhaps import an existing anki deck or a csv/txt wordlist? I plan on adding default JLPT decks for every user within the next two weeks though, so it might be easier to wait a bit :slight_smile:

Or did you mean something else?

I’ve taken a look and added the value to the “English” field of the card. For this layout, the “English” field is considered the display field. Meaning that it will show up as blank if you don’t fill it in.

As stated before, I will simplify the process a lot within the next few weeks so keep an eye out for that :slight_smile:

Thanks for your feedback!

Wow! Thank you! That is brilliant!

The picture on the tab is very useful for when you bookmark sites, I just have a long row of pictures on the toolbar, saves a lot of space. So that’s brilliant.

Yes, I was wondering about tips for creating cards yourself. Using stuff I read (Nyan-nyan, Yotsuba, etc) but making effective use of it. You know, the best way to make a card, the kind of things to do. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas.

And thanks for looking into my blank card. It might be worth labelling the columns front and back in the edit mode for novices like me! Somehow I just couldn’t figure it out!

Thanks again so much for all your help and your amazing site!

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@marcusp Thanks for the compliments!

I would always try to add the following to your cards:

  • Kanji (if it’s in there)
  • Reading in hiragana
  • Main meaning
  • Other possible meanings
  • Example sentence (having the context of the word really helps with understanding)
  • Perhaps audio or an image if possible?

Then I’d use the following layouts:
Eng → JP
JP → Eng
JP → Reading

That way you got all you need for learning the vocab imo. If you want, you could also start adding layouts for listening skills (hear the audio, answer in english / readings?)

Then just creating cards whenever you encounter a word you don’t know yet seems to be the most effective (for me at least). The built in SRS system behaves like WK if you don’t alter it yourself, so the rest should be automatic :smiley:

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Btw, there will be no update tonight. Life got in the way today so I didn’t have enough time to finish new features, yet. Expect a bigger one on Sunday to make up for it!

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Just to add to what neicul said -

You can select multiple layouts when creating a card. This means that you can fill in the info, select all three of the layouts neicul suggested (EN > JP, JP > EN, JP > reading), and it will just automatically generate all three cards for you :ok_hand:

You can also then tell kitsun that you want those layouts to be the defaults for that deck, if you think those are the ones you’ll always / usually be using. You can always add or remove layouts when creating specific cards if you need; it just saves a bit of time.

If you’re at all confused as to which fields go where, the dynamic preview at the bottom when you’re creating cards is awesome. Not only should you be able to see where each field goes, but as you fill in the info you can see it appear in the preview. So you can see where ‘English’ and ‘meanings’ and so on will appear (‘readings’ and ‘meanings’ and like the answers, by the way, where ‘vocab’ and ‘english’ are what appears on the front of the cards).

I’ve been including links to relevant Jisho pages in all of my cards too, so that it’s easy to link out to more detail if I want.

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Are all cards created with different layouts at the same time considered siblings? It just occurred to me that EN → JP and JP → EN can interfere with one another.

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Thank you so much @neicul and @Radish8 !

I spent a lot of time trying the site out yesterday and figuring out how best to use it. At the moment all I do to study Japanese is use WK and KW, do a bit of reading, listen to a lot of Japanese radio (most of which I don’t understand at all!) and sometimes (rarely) glance at my physical copy of Tae Kim. I know I need to study grammar, but I fall asleep the moment I start. It’s only really reading that I like.

So I’ve set up a deck based on にゃんにゃん, just to help me read that. I’ve taken sentences (or bits of sentences) and made them into cards to read aloud. The kanji is left in raw and my task is to add the reading. (I actually used the grammar template for this as it seemed easier to use). The idea is that I’ll read the sentences (or sentence fragments) aloud each time and it will help a bit with grammar too!

I love that this site allows you to create what is effectively your own little study pack totally tailored to what you need. I know I still have a lot to learn about setting it up, and I’ve only made 11 cards so far, but it’s already helpful, and a lot of fun! Thank you!



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Aaah, I love that you used the front cover as the deck image :smile:

One of the main things I’m using it for is to create an EN > JP deck of words I learned in FloFlo :+1:

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Right now, yes. I am working on implementing the following features though:

  • A second dropdown in which you can select which layouts should form siblings

  • A deck setting which makes it so you never get any siblings in the same lesson/review sessions (next session you’d get the sibling with layout #2 and so on)

@marcusp I’m really glad to hear that you enjoy using the website. There are a lot of tools in there, which you could eventually get yourself familiar with if you’d like to. Just take your time and keep on building the deck :smiley:

I think you’ll eventually have a really cool deck which might be fun to share with other users as well :slight_smile:

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I totally didn’t realise you could do that!
Super helpful info!
It’s a shame you can’t change that once you’ve already made cards, but I’ve only made 15 so far so I’m just going to recreate them.

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Which aspect do you mean? :grin:

(just don’t want you recreating cards if it’s not necessary!)

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