In case anyone is wondering: it was resolved through Discord 
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Small reminder that our sale will end in a few days 
Don’t forget to grab it if you are interested!
Woopwoop! \o/
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N3 Content Drop
Happy Tuesday once again!
I can’t believe it’s time for more N3 content already, but here we are! This week, you can dive into grammar such as 「〜のは〜だ」 for emphatic statements, using 「〜型」 to talk about various shapes and sizes, and last but not least, 「〜向き vs 〜向け」: yes there’s a difference!
Also, in this batch’s reading exercise, we discuss blood type-based personality analysis (a big thing in Japan), with culture series #10. Be sure to check it out and practice your new vocabulary/grammar!
Happiest studies!
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N3 Content Drop
Hello! It’s time (actually, it was time, but I’m a bit late with posting the update here 
) for another delicious N3 content drop, filled to the brim with grammar, vocab, and kanji.
We’ve heard you: you want to know more about の. That’s why this batch features four new ways to use the の particle, in compound particle form! What’s more, learn how to use ところ to say “however”, and “by the way”, and take your grammar to the next level with your new best friend, 「ほど」.
Do you have any tattoos? In this batch’s reading exercise, we’ll take a look at how tattoos are perceived in Japan as well as a few of the reasons why. All of this and more… waiting for you in the Jungle of Tenacity!
Happy studies! 
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Development Roundup: Major Dictionary Search Improvements, Adventure Unlocks Page, and a whole bunch of other features, improvements, and bugfixes!
Hey all! Welcome to another development roundup! There have been a lot of changes, bugfixes, and improvements lately that I had yet to write about in a proper changelog. So here we go!
Dictionary Search - Sentence Parsing
You probably have noticed already if you’ve been using the dictionary, but you can now throw in complete sentences in the search bar, and it will automatically parse and tokenize the sentence for you!
As you can see, it will automatically display the words in the sentence separately and let you click on them to search for that word right away.
Even better, if the word is conjugated, it will automatically search for the base-form version to get the most accurate results, and show you the exact process of the deconjugation.
Adventure Unlocks Page
The adventure unlocks popup modal has been replaced! We now have a new page dedicated to the Unlock Items Tile in Adventure. This has two major benefits:
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You can now instantly mark (selected) unlock items as known while unlocking them at the same time
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You no longer have to navigate back to the adventure region to check the unlocks when finishing a grammar lesson or reading exercise. Just click on “next lesson” and it will take you to the unlocks page if the next tile is an unlocks tile. It’s also the same when you want to go to the next lesson from the unlocks page. Woohoo!
So how do you mark things as known while unlocking them? Simple! Just hit the button → start selecting the items you already know → click the button at the bottom → Done!
Need a little reminder of what marking as known does? I gotchu! Marking as known is similar to suspending items, in the sense that they don’t show up at all anymore in either lessons or reviews. However, the main difference is that items marked as known also won’t show furigana in Grammar SRS sentences (and other sections in the future).
Other New Features
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Study Friends - We’ve upped the limit of friends to 30! Some of you guys were getting too popular, so we had no choice but to up it
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Grammar SRS - Furigana will no longer show on fake tokens if the correct token is known to you, and the reverse is also true (show furigana if unknown). This prevents spoiling the correct answer for you.
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Quick Study - Now actively tries to prevent showing the same layout again right away where possible.
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Dictionary - Now shows the MM Adventure Study List index on search results and detail pages of items, so you can quickly see if the item is in the adventure list, and what index it is at.
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Manage Items - Each item now has a button to go to the dictionary details page of that item easily.
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Study Lists - When you add the same item twice to a study list, it will no longer change the index, so the item stays where you first added it.
Small Improvements
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Dictionary - Search - Now displays what you searched for in the browser title
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Dictionary - Search - Improved the results for English searches
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Manage Items - You can now filter on level 0 (unlearned) items.
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SRS - Added tooltips for the lightning mode and settings buttons.
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Profile - Badges now have tooltips
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Manage Items - Now shows a loading visual when doing large actions (suspending/demoting many items, etc.)
Bugfixes
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Resolved issues with database lock timeouts, which would sometimes result in MM showing a 500 error page upon navigation.
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Number Input - Number validation was too aggressive and would not let you input single digits after backspacing. This has been resolved.
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Profile - Fixed an issue where you’d be unable to select which badges to display on your profile.
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Grammar Lessons - Fixed an issue with the newest iOS versions having horizontal scrolling on the page.
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Manage Items - The demote popup would default to level “-1” if unlearned items were also selected. This has been fixed.
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Manage Items - Fixed an issue where you would be unable to search through grammar items.
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Dictionary - Search - Now properly trims trailing whitespace from searches.
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Dictionary - Search - Fixed an issue with items with parentheses in the main meaning from displaying properly.
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Manage Items - Demote - Fixed an issue where the count for selected items to demote would be wrong.
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Statistics - Fixed some timezone display issues for the heatmaps.
Pfew! That’s all for now, but we’ve already got a few other awesome projects and features lined up for the next few days. Keep an eye out for a recently studied/mistakes & leeches page going live very soon!
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Leeches and Recently Studied Page, Quick Study Layout Options and more!
Hot off the press is another update! This one went live just minutes ago!
Today we have a few much-requested new features and improvements for you. Let’s get into it!
Leeches and Recently Studied Page
When you open the MM home page from today onwards, you might notice a new section informing you about a Recently Studied page. If you click the button (or follow this link) you will get to a page where we list your study “leeches” and also show you tables containing your recently learned items, your recently reviewed items (and the review result; level-up or level-down), and your recent mistakes (as a filter). To make it more convenient, we split them up per Review Type (Grammar, Vocabulary, and Kanji), so you can check each type separately.
So you might be wondering, "What exactly are these “leeches”?
Leeches are items that you often fail, meaning that they constantly return in your SRS reviews and you just can’t seem to get them to Mastered rank. Our criteria for this is the following:
- Leveled down more than 4 times
- Currently below level 9
- Review Accuracy Percentage below 70%
Don’t worry if you see a big list of leeches, everyone has these study leeches throughout their journey, but without putting in extra effort, they might just keep bogging down your review sessions!
So to help you with that, we’ve also added quick study buttons for all of these lists (except for the Grammar Type, as you can’t currently quick study those)! Just select the items you want and hit that button to do some extra reps on those pesky leeches, newly learned items, or recent review mistakes!
Here’s a quick pro tip: You can use the SHIFT key to select many items in the tables at once!
Aside from leeches, it’s also quite handy to view your recent SRS history! You can keep on loading more to go further down memory lane too! Especially handy to see all your recent mistakes.
Quick Study Options (Layouts)
Another new feature to tie into this is the ability to choose which layouts you want to do during Quick Study.
You can either do all layouts, meaning only, or reading only, whichever you’d prefer!
Other Features & Improvements
We’re not done yet! Here are a few other features and improvements that went live next to the above:
- The Known Statistics Graphs for Native Materials (Novels, Games, etc) are now available on your Study List Details page if it’s a Native Material Study List.
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Manage Items - Now shows how many items you’ve selected next to the overall item count.
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Vocabulary & Kanji SRS - Now shows - “読み方 (Reading)” - as the placeholder when prompting for a Reading answer.
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Manage Items - If your sorting is set to Frequency, it will now sort on Frequency (Descending) by default.
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Stories (SRS & Dictionary) - Made the edit buttons more obvious and added some text about getting a community story or creating a personal one when no story has been favorited yet (or there is no MM story available).
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Grammar SRS - The prompts now support Furigana! We’ll be adding furigana to all prompts with kanji in them over the coming weeks!
Bugfixes
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Study Lists Details Page - Added some padding to the bottom to prevent statistics from being hidden on mobile due to the navigation bar.
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Dictionary - Fixed an issue where the page would not render properly if the meaning of an item started with “(” and contained multiple “,” inside the parentheses.
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Quick Study - Fixed an issue where the redirect after ending a quick study session would have a wrong URL and result in a 500 error page being shown.
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General - Fixed issues with caching resulting in 500 error pages being shown whenever the cache expired after a new update. This change should result in the page automatically getting the latest version and refreshing upon navigation to another page. Preventing the page from erroring out
There’s also something else I’d like to share with the reading champions that made it to the end of this changelog: I’ve started coding work on the mobile apps for MaruMori 
Hoping to share some more news about this in the near future!
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N3 Content Drop
Another batch of notoriously awesome N3 content, coming right at you! The announcement may be a day late, but that’s only because Maru wanted to befriend all the creatures of the alphabet starting from Z. Zebras and yellow-eyed penguins were fine, but things went downhill from there…
Anyway, in this batch, find plenty of grammatical trouble-makers demystified, such as 〜ば〜ほど (the more you learn about it, the better it gets), 〜のに for “for”, and もの・もん for excuses and justification (does your country’s soccer/football team need this right about now?). What’s more, you’ll level up with a new verb form: 〜ず. Exciting stuff!
Then, in this batch’s reading exercise, check out a Japanese city hall, chat about “half-truths”, and get a sneak peek into Shiori’s diary.
All of this, and more, awaits you in the Jungle of Tenacity!
Happy studies!
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N3 Content D-d-drop!!!
Yo yo yo, it’s another terrific Tuesday, and we’ve got some dope-fresh grammar lessons comin’ straight at ya! Ahem 
Straight from the depths of the Jungle of Tenacity, it’s a batch at max “awesome” capacity! W-w-what!?
Okay, aside from the fact that I’ve been listening to a lot of old-school rap recently, I’m also happy to report that we have hit tile #100 of the N3 region! Wahoo! This is definitely cause for celebration, so be sure to treat yourself to a nice beverage or snack. I will personally be drinking my usual black coffee, because I hate myself.
This batch’s content features such grammatical curiosities as ～ずにはいられない, for the things you can’t help but do, ～最中に, for when you’re interrupted in the middle of something, and ～に基づく, so that you can say that the movie you watched was based upon a true story (one involving pizza, and thievery).
Plus, in this batch’s reading exercise, PIZZA THIEF strikes, civil unrest ensues, we debut the MaruMori cooking show, and you’ll get an exclusive interview with the famous film director, Mr. Kitano.
All of this, and also… more! Awaits you. Yes, you. In this latest N3 content batch.
Happy studies!
– This message was brought to you by Jesse (who else would write this way eh 
)
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A review of MaruMori
Stolen from my study log
MaruMori review
Tada! I completed the N4 region in marumori. I think this is a pretty nice milestone to have now, but I’m curious how motivated I’ll be to keep up with marumori once I’m current on its content since there is no n1 or n2 island yet. It’s mostly the daily streak feature keeping me coming back each day and I have mixed feelings about the gamification feeling of that, but it’s kept me doing more than nothing with Japanese. They’re about halfway through n3 content so with 1 article a day there’s around a hundred days of content before I’m caught up to the release schedule. I think I’d be less motivated to keep up with their srs on a daily basis than the daily grammar articles, but there’s a clear limit to how quickly those can be made.
If I do have to complain their writing and humor can sometimes be a little “how do you do fellow kids?” and I remember when I was trying out their srs being annoyed with some of the grammar questions because they’re harder to recall and answer correctly than plain vocabulary, but the amount of detail and examples given in their grammar articles is extensive. After every 5 grammar articles there’s a srs unlock tile and a reading exercise with optional sentence by sentence translation. It’s really nice.
I forget the normal price for lifetime but I think during one of their sales I paid $250 for lifetime access to Marumori and then let it sit for six months before getting into it. This price seems like a very good deal to me for what I have gotten from it so far. The number and quality of grammar articles available in a paid sub means that each island is basically a textbook made for that n level. And that’s before factoring in the vocabulary srs that’s integrated into each island (unlocks a certain number of items as you go) let alone the separate grammar srs drills that can be done. These remind me of the duolingo sentence building exercises so your mileage may vary on how useful that is, but it’s a lot of daily practice with the grammar you’re learning if you do keep up with it.
I first heard about Marumori from the forums here on wanikani, specifically I think it was Caesar on the polls threads. I wanted to support what looked like a really well rounded project and I’m glad I did. It’s a good service already at 2/5 islands completed and I’ve definitely learned to recognize some grammar I hadn’t run into before. I might not keep up with the srs once I’m current on the articles but even if I do break my streak I’ll probably come back to it in the future. I’ve heard they’re even working on a first party app coming soon^tm.
I’m not ready to say that it’s better than wanikani because I think wanikani has value in its specialization but as I’ve said before in this study log, Marumori is feature competing with both wanikani and bunpro (and textbooks to some extent, but srs competitors are probably the best apples to apples comparisons) so it may be “fair” to compare its features to the combined price of both other resources. It’ll likely be a long time before n2 and n1 islands are complete, but I think I’m ready to say now that this is a worthy competitor worth paying for.
Completing the n4 region doesn’t mean that I’m really n4 already, (listening 
) it just means I’ve read the grammar articles for that level, so there’s still a need for exposure to native materials and it won’t make you fluent by srs alone, but for those thinking wanikani is incomplete or should teach grammar in some way, really consider marumori as an “all in one” alternative rather than a separate sub to bunpro and juggling those srs separately.
Every week or so there’s a question on the forums here from someone who’s new to Japanese asking, “what level of wanikani will make me able to read?” And while neither of these tools are actually capable on their own of creating fluency, Marumori is more of a Swiss Army knife tool compared to wanikani alone, bunpro alone, or the two being juggled together. So while it’s still only half complete, I think I can say that I recommend marumori for Japanese learners.
I just wanted to share my thoughts on the service now that I’m further along in using it and encourage you to keep developing it.
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Congrats to the MaruMori team who are the ones actually developing it though
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Well I know you’re not the developer, I just remember seeing it mentioned in the polls threads some. It was 19 days after the summary page was removed.
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And guess what - it still is 19 days
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Thanks so much for the review! I’m really glad MM is helpful for your Japanese studies!
As you mentioned, the streak is a bit of a touchy subject in learning apps in general. I personally feel like it truly helps set up those daily habits for studying because it gets you to come back every day to keep the streak up. On the other hand, if the streak breaks, it’s hugely demotivational. To prevent this from (hopefully) being an issue, we implemented the streak restore tokens.
That said, if your (or any other user’s) streak ever breaks and can’t be restored by the restore token anymore (e.g. 2 days in a row), feel free to contact me and I’ll restore it for you
Anyways, really awesome to hear that you enjoy using MM!
Thanks a bunch @JasnahCaesar for recommending MM
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Yeah, this is a nice compromise. I remember thinking it was cheating to have a streak restore button if you missed a day, but then I missed a day and I wanted to use it. The fact that it needs a smaller streak to build up to earn it back is a good balance for it.
MM is a good resource, (partly because the streak) I kept coming back to it to make progress on it and sometimes I’ll see a grammar point I read about in the wild and it’ll click, “oh I’ve seen this before”. It’s even helping me with some words on wanikani like 得意 because I’ve seen more examples of usage through marumori as opposed to just knowing and remembering that it means skilled.
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100 N3 articles hype!!!
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Giveaway, New Trials and Mobile App Update
Hey all, exciting news! You might’ve read about it already, but to celebrate hitting over 1k members on Discord, we’re doing a fun giveaway. And as a bonus, we’re including fresh trials for all registered users!
Here are the details:
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All un-subbed registered members have been given a brand new 14-day trial
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All users who have an active trial and complete at least six grammar lesson tiles between now and August 20th will be entered for a chance to win one yearly or one of five monthly subscriptions!
We’ll be drawing the winners randomly, and if you win, we will automatically upgrade your account and inform you about winning through your registered email!
And in other news, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been making good progress on the MaruMori mobile app, and that we foresee an initial alpha release in the very(!!!) near future.
For now, here are some sneak-peek WIP screenshots!
We’ll be offering a closed beta of the app for MaruMori subscribers , so be sure to sub for early access to the app, as well as access to our (top secret) supporters-only discord channel where we’re providing exclusive progress updates and more! This channel is also where we’ll first send out the invites for the alpha/beta of the app, so be sure to check it out!
Keep an eye out for more information about the mobile app very soon, and happy studies!
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N3 Content Drop
Yes, the rumors are true: it’s Tuesday Wednesday. I know, I know. Many of you were hoping it was in fact, still Monday, but alas, the days move on… and so do we age…
Anyways! I’m delighted to bring you yet another spicy batch of N3 content!
In this drop, you can find such grammar as 「において・における」, for your formal で particle-like needs, 「ながらも」, for “while” (with a twist!), and 「第一」, because you truly are “number one”!
Also, after many, many requests, we’ve also made sure that this week’s reading exercise features a super cute animal: the small-clawed otter!
Continue your adventure in the Jungle of Tenacity to check all of this out, and more!
Happy studies!
P.S. The giveaway is still ongoing! You have until the 20th to enter the draw!
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