Make Wanikani Style Anki Flashcards in One Click (Yomichan)

Hey guys, I managed to use Hinekedori’s wanikani anki cards and adjust ever so slightly so that they work with yomichan. This is by no means anything incredible, but I didn’t know how to do this before, so I reckon it could help other people.

First off, you need to install yomichan on your browser (I use google chrome, but I am not sure if yomichan is available as an extension on other browsers or not), which I believe is just in the google play store. The website for yomichan is here:
https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/

Just follow the steps on the website below the ‘Basic Usage’ section to get yomichan in its most basic form setup (just make sure when you go to yomichan settings, when following the ‘Basic Usage’ steps, that you import the three dictionaries, otherwise when you hold shift, nothing will happen).

Next, you need to install AnkiConnect (there is a link to it on that website on that same page, but in case you don’t see it, I will put a link below):
https://foosoft.net/projects/anki-connect/

Just follow the steps on that page. Once you have done that, then you need to use the modified version of Hinekedori’s template that I made (I barely changed anything). Technically, I can send over any deck using the template, so I am going to use one which has some vocab for the song ‘Sayuri - Anonymous’ (no good reason, I just like the song lol). The link is below:

Make sure you have anki open on the profile you want it the deck to appear, and then just double click the apkg file so that it installs.

If, on anki, you go to Tools → Manage Note Types → Wanikani Style (Yomichan) [this should now be there) → Fields you should see something like this:

If you see this, then everything seems to be fine for the most part. The ID is just used as a unique identifier, the Kanji is, of course, just the kanji for the vocab (however, because I use these cards primarily as vocab cards, I actually put kanji with furigana in the Kanji slot), the Raw Kanji slot is just for kanji alone without furigana, the meaning, alternative meaning and definition slots are fairly self explanatory (there are some key things about them which I will explain later, however), the focus reading slot is actually for the raw hiragana reading of the kanji (I really should have changed the name of this slot but I was lazy), audio is self explanatory, and the last two slots are just leftover baggage I didn’t feel like getting rid of because I didn’t want to mess up the code.

If you now close this window, and then click on ‘Cards’, you will see what the cards will look like. There are three types,

KanjiToKeyword:

KanjiToKana:

KeywordToKana:

The Kanji to keyword (in the way I use it) is essentially the kanji with the furigana on top of it, so the goal is really just to see if you know the vocab (not know how to read the kanji). The KanjToKana is essentially the raw kanji (no furigana) expecting the kana, so in this one it is attempting to see whether or not you know the kanji reading. Keyword to kana is for testing whether or not you can go from english to japanese basically. If you want to change things up a bit here, it’s pretty easy (you will probably just need to delete the card you don’t want anymore and then make a minor change on yomichan which will be clear later).

So, hopefully you have a rough idea of what the goal of these cards are, so the final step is pretty straightforward. Go to chrome, open yomichan settings up (make sure anki is open and on the right profile), and then scroll down until you get to this part:

You can of course just make a new deck if you wish, just make sure you have the model selected. If you want explanations on what each of the filler terms mean, I suggest you look at the yomichan website page (once you understand the terms, it’s a bit easier for you to make changes to the layout if you don’t like certain stuff).

Now you will notice that I left the Meaning and Alternate meaning empty. This was on purpose, and it’s because ‘glossary’ is basically usually a massive list of definitions, so it wouldn’t be possible to type in your answers based on that. As such, when you first open any cards, you will have to edit that specific card’s field for meaning and alternate meaning, picking the two meanings that you think are most appropriate (a bit inconvenient, but it barely takes more than like 10 second for a 3 card set).

To make the cards, you just hold shift over a piece of kanji you see on the internet (e.g. jisho if you want a specific word), and click the big green ‘+’ button and it will make the cards in a click.

And you’re done basically! I will include a bit of extra information below about a few of the problems that arise in this layout.

Firstly, if you want to get rid of the audio on any of the 3 card types, you have to remove this line (it won’t show properly on here, but you have to remove the whole line):
div style=‘font-family: Arial; font-size: 20px;’>{{Audio}}</div’
which is on the back template part of the cards on the fourth (or fifth depending on the card type) line

One other key problem here is the KeywordToKana card. This card can cause problems occasionally if the a word has a ‘slightly’ longer definition e.g.:

One solution is to make the size smaller across all the card types, but I really like the Kanji being as large as they can be, so I didn’t want to do this. The other option is to write the meaning in short hand like “kpng up aprncs” and then have the alternate meaning as “keeping up appearances” which I guess could work, although it isn’t the best. Lastly, you can just make it fullscreen in all fairness, but it would still be nice if I could find a way to fix this. I may try and take the time out to fix this, but I just can’t be bothered at the moment, so if someone else does it before then, just leave the updated version in a reply.

That pretty much covers everything. Hope this is helpful to at least someone :slight_smile:

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This seems pretty amazing to me. I got it working in a few minutes and added a few words from WaniKani, Jisho… So easy, I can make my own robust custom decks effortlessly now!

Still playing with it.

Yeah it’s sick. I even added an extra audio card version to mine, where I need to hear the audio and then type the english meaning, but yeah, it’s so effortless to make such awesome decks once it’s set up (most thanks should go to hinekedori for making the base template in the first place though)

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Just bumping this back up again in case people didn’t really see it (because I probs made the thread at a bad time)

This is awesome.

Does this work with Ankidroid?

Yup, I am pretty sure it does

When you create the cards, how do you get all three to show up to review? I’m still pretty new to Anki, but if I could learn new vocabulary words this way, it would be awesome!

Has anyone else had the problem that only 25% of the words that come up with Yomichan have the green plus sign to allow them to be added to Anki?

It seems somewhat random as to what will and wont be added. However, it does not change. Even though a word has a definition in Yomichan, the plus sign stays greyed out even with page and browser reloads.

Thoughts anyone? Thanks.

Thank you this is great. Would you be willing to share the audio card version?

This happened with me a few times and I narrowed it down to two things:

  1. I already had a card with that word in my deck; or
  2. In the Yomichan settings, I didn’t have a deck selected in the Anki Options section.
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Ah, thank you.

#2 is not the case here, but #1 certainly may be. My Anki settings allow me to have multiple identical cards in my deck, but maybe Yomichan does not like it!

Did you make sure that Anki is open. Pretty sure the Anki-Connect feature that Yomichan uses only works if Anki is open. That’s caught me off guard a few times.

I did check that, but sadly, it doesn’t seem to change things for me…

So Invalid HTML on card: TypeError: Cannot read property ‘childNodes’ of null this is appearing to me any idea why?

same here. i can get a few to work but most are doing this for me. Anyone have any idea?

I would also like to see this updated. I’m also receiving the error “Invalid HTML on card: TypeError: Cannot read property ‘childNodes’ of null”

I had the same problem, but it was solved when I added the meaning of the kanji to the field. Try that and see if it helps!

It seems that there was an error in this format which didn’t allow people to use it properly. To fix it one has to go into note types, then ‘cards…’, and finally click on the second and third card type and remove the “i” from StrokeDiagram. I hope this helps anyone trying to use this!

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OMG I was just about to comment about this problem! You’re an absolute lifesaver! Cheers, mate!

what malifact says, and:
Make sure Anki is opened

Note that yomichan just remembers whether a word was added or not - once, I accidentally moved an item to a different deck and got confused as it was greyed out but not in my target deck.