sorry everyone! i was really behind in updating the list 
it should be all fixed now, but if i missed you just let me know 
we’re glad to have you here!
edit: i made the op a wiki, so feel fee to add yourself if you want to join!
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thanks so much for keeping the table up to date @quimda! It’s much appreciated. Away to add people now - welcome to all! 
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I’m doing something similar.This is probably the thing I dislike the most about WaniKani. You often come across super common and easy kanji during immersion/studying that are in the 30+ level range and there is no system in place to add these to your lesson queue. With things like 恥ずかしい you even know the radicals fairly early.
Sometimes I wish someone made a proper WaniKani clone so tofugu would have to get off their ass and add features like those 
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Hi everyone, I just found this thread - don’t know how I missed it earlier! Please feel free to add me to your leaderboards I would love to have more people holding me to account!! 
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Shhhh…the Crabigator is always listening. Crabigator is everywhere!
I think this is a great strategy and will help you level up your Apprentice items to Guru a lot faster when you reach those levels.
I just can’t with Anki. I know it can be a powerful tool and you can bend it to your will but I can’t get over how the app interface looks like an AOL chatbox, and there are just so many visually appealing and intuitive resources for Japanese out there.
That’s a great way to look at it because WaniKani is an incredible way to learn Kanji and you are using its resources to learn outside of its system as well.
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Glad I’m not the only one who feels that way It’s a shame because I find it really good for grammar and learning vocab in context, but I guess that’s what I have WK for 
I haven’t resorted to archiving them staight away yet (except for the ones I already know) as I do think I occasionally learn some after seeing them enough times as a flashcard + in sentences through pure bruteforce SRS
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Hmm, so I just ran into an interesting crossroad lol. I was talking to a past level 60 on wanikani about starting to do kamesame and just giving my current schedule and they had told me to stop doing kamesame as soon as possible o.O. After talking about it for a little bit I did understand their angle on the negative impact it could have, but I have no real evidence because its still too early in my learning. They said that the reversed srs production by seeing the English word and then producing the Japanese could create a bad connection. It does make sense that you would not want the extra step or connection in your head if you want to eventually solely have Japanese as its own away from English.I know that kamesame and kaniwani help to cement these words we are learning on Wanikani but now I’m wondering if it really matters later on. I have heard that its really just important to get the kanji in our head and then rely more on other word mining tools outside of wanikani later on.
I’ve come up with a new schedule that I’m going to try since I was only just starting to use kamesame anyway. I think now I’ll continue to do wanikani twice a day but also start doing bunpro twice a day as well. I’ll add back in anki during the days I’m not learning the bulk of new information on wanikani (the day you unlock like 100 new things at once lol). Maybe just mine 10 new words a day and then around lvl 20 on wanikani start really taking time to find material to read so that I’m not losing my kanji knowledge, or even sooner.
I’d like to hear what others daily habits are if ya feel like sharing!
But also anyones thoughts on what the 60 brought up about the kamesame/kaniwani thing.
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Hey neversleep! I get pretty suspicious when someone’s advice about pursuing a learning tool is that you should stop as soon as possible. Of course, that person should give their opinion on the subject, and how it works for them, but that person has no idea how you really learn. If based on your research, you think KameSame will be helpful to you, you should use it. Even if using Duolingo helps you with vocabulary, you should use it (although I don’t personally recommend Duolingo for anything).
I don’t have enough information on the connection issue, so I can only speak from my limited experience but I have found I make logical connections in Japanese by chatting on HelloTalk, reading with my teacher, reading for self study, and active listening. In other words, comprehensible input (and even some incomprehensible input). WaniKani and KameSame have elements of input, but essentially, I’m outputting by writing the English or Japanese reading, so it’s helping to reinforce my guided reading and listening study.
There are already some phrases and short sentences where I don’t even translate to English in my head, and it’s a super weird, but awesome feeling, but that has come from exposure to reading and listening, and not so much from my SRS tools. They are just helping to make my input smoother.
No idea if this really does any “long term damage”. Guess you’d have to read some research papers on language study for anything reliable.
Yes. Yes. Yes. This is why I dont use KameSame. WaniKani isnt about vocab, it was never supposed to be. Learning vocab isolated like this is very… not pretty compared to learning it in context via sentence mining.
There’s only so many hours in the day. Would you rather spend that time on solidifying WK Vocab or on grammar studies?
In my opinion this comes back to the perfectionism issue. Language learning is a lot more about quantity than people seem to believe.
Oh wow, this is very interesting, I hadn’t thought about WK vocab like that before but it does make sense (and vocab I encounter out with WK does stick so much better). I’ve recently been trying kamesame again and trying to get through my huge backlog of lessons after repeatedly setting it to one side due to too much SRS. I may still stick with it but certainly something to think about in terms of where it makes most sense to focus my time 
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Hmm, I understand the vocabulary is there to reinforce the kanji but to say that WK isn’t about vocabulary at all confuses me a little bit. There are 6000+ words that you learn if you get to lvl. 60, and 2000+ Kanji in comparison. Are you saying that the SRS system is not preferable for learning vocabulary, but it is with Kanji? I need to see and hear words multiple times before I can internalize them. Seeing them in context in very important, but reading them in isolation, although not optimal, doesn’t hurt me either. In fact, actually typing the word into KameSame is a real help to get that word into my head. All of this being said, I hope I don’t sound combative, I am honestly curious. This is the first community forum where I feel like I can have solid, respectful debate and share ideas. haha
Both, along with reading and listening input. The SRS is a tool to facilitate a smoother transition into reading and listening, for me.
Yea, I tend to agree if that’s all you’re doing. You can get to level 60 on WK, know a buttload of Kanji and vocabulary and have zero idea how to glue them together into a sentence, but hopefully that is not what most people are doing, unless your goal is to take N1 and fail every category except Kanji knowledge. More power to that person I guess haha
Can you give some of your thoughts on sentence mining and how you go about it? I have tried to do it a few times, but many of the sentence decks in Anki are two or three levels above me and it’s just too incomprehensible to provide me with any enjoyment.
Also! We had some level ups today!!! Whoo! Great job @neversleep, @collmomo, and @SamCreamer.
neversleep 10 → 11,
collmomo 5 → 6,
samcreamer 3 → 4
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In english, my vocabulary naturally increased as I read more and more books. I plan to try to phase out wk more as my vocab and kanji become good enough to read material. I think that learning words in context IS the best way to learn, but you have to get to the point that you know most words used to form most sentences first, and I think Wanikani is great for that. Like most things, you can’t really begin to ‘get gud’ until you have a strong base of knowledge. Sure lots of what guys like mat talk about is great and all, learning from watching, learning from real sentences, but you can’t really do that effectively until you have crammed enough of the foundation into you brain. If kamesame, kaniwani, or wanikani help you get to that strong foundation, there is no reason to not use them.
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This isn’t about it being bad at all. Obviously studying vocab on WaniKani is still going to improve your understanding. But as you said, it isn’t optimal. It would be much better to study these as they appear in the wild, preferably in J ⟷ J. Especially when it comes to words with very similar meanings. (There are a few ahead of us that people frequently complain about)
But it’s always a matter of time. Say I have 2h per day for Japanese. Would I want to spend, say, 15 minutes of that time on KameSame reviews? Personally, I don’t. You don’t need to perfectly know these vocab items yet. Especially because the information that is quizzed is way too limited to test true comprehension of the word.
I’d rather go a little faster on WaniKani, or even better than that, spend more time on my sentence deck or shadowing.
Preferably you’d start out with a pre-made +1 sentence deck. I’d say it’s too hard to just straight up mine your own sentences. There’s supposed to only be one new item in each new sentence (+1). Seemingly popular free versions are the Tango N5-N3 Anki Decks or using the MorphMan Anki extension to sort other Anki decks into +1 (like say the 10k Core Sentence deck, maybe mixed with others for an easier learning curve).
I don’t have any experience with those. I preferred throwing money at someone to make a proper +1 sentence deck for me, aka Jalup.
Obviously you don’t have to start out with an +1 sentence deck from こんにちは all the way to N1. Many people don’t. Alternatively you study enough Japanese without sentence mining until you can comfortably create +1 sentence cards on your own.
I don’t mind it all, there’s always something to learn from these discussions
For me, this is about “How do I get to fluency with the least amount of hours invested?”. Personally I believe the answer to be “Getting to immersion as fast as you can.”. Immersion is what’s going to make you fluent. I don’t think E → J quizzing is necessary for that.
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Do you mean Matt vs. Japan? I love that guy, but he is definitely rigid in his philosophy haha. He did use Anki extensively as part of his process though. I agree, if it works, use it!
love this phrase lol
Hello trombonekun 
Ya usually I try not to jump to conclusions but it definitely made me think a bit more before diving in, knowing I could be spending more of that time on other stuff. But also just the little bit of scare factor that it could cause a lag issue in the future if I get in a deep-seated habit of translating to the English version as well. I certainly know it helped me to recall those words easier when I would either see the kanji on wanikani or see the English word on kamesame.
I think my best option outside of kamesame is to just take the context sentences out of wanikani and make decks out of it like that. This way I get the words I’m familiar with without the hassle of doing a ton of reading elsewhere. I actually customized a text to speech deck that contains all the words 1-60 on anki from a deck that already existed.
I think like me all of us just want an efficient way to learn without fail haha. That’s why its really cool to be chatting with others that are at the same lvl on wanikani, most of us very determined at this stage with different ideas.
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Yeah, I was referencing Matt Vs. Japan. I haven’t been a huge consumer of his videos, I found his videos on tools to mine sentences and learn from netflix to be the most useful to me. I think his whole immersion over all else idea is great, but Its coming from a guy who himself drilled stuff. I think its silly to say wanikani is a waste of your time over using immersion, or all these other decks or whatever. Wanikani has been insanely useful to me for learning kanji AND retaining the vocab. The important thing is to supplement it with other learning material, which even the people who created wanikani have said is important to do.
For me personally, I have been working on reading dragonball while learning with wanikani. Its going pretty slow, but I find myself knowing more and more words in it as I progress in WK. It has also helped me pick up on grammar and stuff too. Ultimately, my first goal is to get to level 10 and then hit up grammar in a more significant way. I didn’t find it particularly productive reading genki or tae kim’s. I couldn’t focus on the grammar because I was trying to recall words too. After I finish lvl 10 I think my base of knowledge will be good enough to pursue grammar and be able to focus just on that part of the books. Also, I do reccomend the Tango Anki decks. They are pretty great, but I’m not particularly fond of how anki does things, so I haven’t used it much.
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I am always okay with throwing money at something if it works haha!! Thank you for the mining tips and providing some resources that I can look into! I’m going to save these!
I think this is where we disagree on matter of opinion, but your point is well taken. I think the use of the recognition and production method really solidifies the material for me, and then I find a reason to use some of the vocabulary I deem useful in a sentence and see if I can make it fit naturally. My teacher and my Japanese pen pals on HelloTalk will tell me if what I am saying is natural or not. But I will definitely be adding mining to my routine once I feel like I have enough vocabulary and grammar under my belt so I can start recognizing patterns more efficiently.
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@neversleep I think your method is solid! And you’re going to do what you think is best for you. Those WK sentences are truly wacky, so they might be fun to mine as well lol
I guess I think of it as using my English language ability to comprehend concepts in Japanese. Like I said before, there are already sentences and phrases where I don’t even think about the English translation, I just understand. It is spooky, which leads me to believe that using my native language to comprehend the meaning of words is helpful reinforcement rather than a detriment or a reliance on English. When I say 食べる I don’t translate it to “to eat” anymore. When I see that word, I just know it means that. Where I think translating in your head could be detrimental is in full sentences since sentence structure in Japanese is SOV and not SVO like in English. That’s where it will take you forever to even speak something, because you essentially are moving backwards, so getting away from that habit is definitely preferable right away. That is different though than translating and picking up vocabulary through sentence mining. That is a useful comprehension skill.
@Giannisan こういちさま also recommends beginning grammar studies at around lvl. 10 for that very reason of vocabulary comprehension! I think with all these distinctions we are making in our arguments we can agree that only doing WK/KW/KS is not a good idea haha.
Anki is not my favorite, great tool, looks like a windows 95 application.
Also, I have spent too much time on the forums. I need to go actually practice what I am discussing lol
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