MaruMori.io & Kitsun.io - [UPDATE: N3 COMPLETED & Verb Transitivity Training Tool Release!] - Grammar SRS, Grammar Lessons, Reading Exercises, Vocabulary, Kanji and more!

[neicul]

N3 content drop

Well well well, long time no chat! I bet you thought we forgot allll about N3 content, and were too busy making mock exams to notice all the mischief you’ve been up to in the Jungle of Tenacity. Wrong! I know for a fact that at least three separate “Jungle Unions” have formed, and are working in secret to extract valuable minerals, treasure, and bananas. I’m also aware that Maru has been either kidnapped or is playing “hide and seek” again (she doesn’t know the rules). This activity must cease! You must return to your grammar studies! … Please!

In the latest N3 batch of content, we’ve got some serious, high-brow, “yes-yes very good thank you” grammar for you. For instance, さ, the particle, sentence-ender extraordinaire, with its many uses and nuances. Or, get your こそあど fix with 「そこで」, a phrase so similar to それで that you’d be forgiven for mixing them up (but only the first time, after that, there’ll be consequences). And 「言うまでもない」 (“it goes without saying”), but this batch is full of new and interesting kanji/vocab for you to ponder: get comfy in your brand-new 庁, while you prepare to 勤める, and don’t forget to keep up with the current 状況.

Finally, I’m both excited and a little wary to announce that this batch’s reading exercise features an account of a rather frightening robbery. I dare say that… well, no. I’ll let you find out on your own. Oh, and we also have culture series 17 for you: “Shichi-go-san”. What do the numbers mean!? What do they meeeaannn!!!???

Happy studies!

[neicul]

First N3 Mock Exam Released!

The (short) wait is over! We are happy to announce the arrival of the very first MaruMori N3 mock exam!

It may be just one for now, but rest assured, it’s a high-quality practice exam, and there are more in the works. We plan to release two more (to start with) in the not-too-distant future, so keep your eyes peeled for more N3 goodness!

For now, we wanted to make sure that those of you going for the N3 had at least something to practice with on the Maru side of the internet, and we really hope you enjoy doing this mock exam (as much as it is possible to enjoy doing a practice test, haha!).

JLPTを受ける皆さん、頑張ってください！全力を出しきれますように！

From the MaruMori team

P.S. Passing this exam will also give you a new title, achievement, badge, and certificate image for your profile

[neicul]

N3 Mock Exams (the sequel)

Hey all, just a quick announcement to say that the second N3 Mock exam has just been published! This one’s for everyone that’s stressing out and last-minute cramming with less than a week to go.

Enjoy, and good luck!

[_gregor]

Hey Will there be any Black Friday discounts?

[neicul]

No Black Friday sale this year, mainly because our annual sale starts in about two weeks So just a little bit longer!

[neicul]

N3 content drop

Arr, matey! Did ya know it’s bad manners to hide yer treasure and not tell anyone where it is? ‘Tis a little-known fact, but it’s actually very, very rude! So be sure to post where you keep all yer treasure on socials media and on the newspapers. Do it now, actually!
(This message not brought to you by the Secret Association of Pirates (ltd.))

Speaking of treasure, who’s ready for a brand new adventure batch!?
This week’s drop brings you such unearthed chests of grammatical gold as ～ようと（する・しない）, for things that we try/don’t try to do, as well as the closely related ～ようと思わない, for things we wouldn’t even think to do (like stealing another pirate’s treasure, amirite?). And that’s not to mention めったに, the grammar point that’s so “meta”, using it is try-hard and cringe.

Now, I know many of you have been waiting with bated breath for a follow-up on the previous reading’s “banana” incident. And I’m happy to announce the wait is over. Get all the details you did and didn’t ask for in this week’s reading! Also, read a much more normal essay about… something, and catch up with Mike, who just took the JLPT!

That’s all for now, and happy studies!

[neicul]

November 2024 Community Profile Share Roundup!

Hi everyone! It’s time for the monthly progress roundup again!

For those who don’t know: Over on our Discord, we have a “share your profile” event on the 1st of every month. Sharing your profile banner is a great way to track your progress and show off your beautiful custom profile share images and statistics.

So if you also want to be featured next month, be sure to join our discord and post in the corresponding channel on the first of January!

Let’s show off those pretty profile images!

[neicul]

Presenting: The 2025 and Beyond Roadmap for MM

Are you curious about what 's coming to MaruMori and when? Worry not—our new roadmap is now live!

You can check out the full roadmap by clicking here, but here are a few of the main points:

• N3 will be completed in Q1 2025, meaning we’ll start Q2 with our new N2 region and content! This means our release schedule will also increase soon! Starting January we’ll be releasing a new batch of N3 content every 10 days.
• Q1 will bring a lot of different mini games and study tools to help you nail down some of the more difficult parts of learning Japanese (counters, intransitive vs transitive, etc). But next to this, it will also bring some cool new features, like sharing study lists and having a community study list section!
• Q2 will focus not only on new tools (like a MPV (video player) mining plugin, and a reading assistance tool for novels/text), but also on completely reworking some of our existing features like the reading exercises.
• The mobile apps will continue to be worked on while in early access, we’re aiming to get all bells and whistles in there in the coming two quarters, and release it “for real” somewhere in Q2!
• In Q3 and Beyond, we will of course keep our schedule filled with releasing N2, as well as N1 content later on, put out Graded Readers, release a browser mining extension (a la Yomichan et al., but with a way to directly add items to your MM Study Lists). And much more! (But more on that later!)
• Aside from the features and tools listed, we’ll of course also keep improving MaruMori with smaller features and bugfixes as we go. The same goes for content! We’ll keep adding content and making adjustments and changes where needed.

View the full Roadmap

Speaking of N2… Our talented artist is working on the region’s artwork, and so far it’s looking fantastic! Here’s a small sneak preview of a small part of the region!

We’re super excited to disclose our plans for the coming year(s), and we hope you’re just as enthusiastic about them as we are! 2025 is looking to become another great year for MaruMori!

---

P.S. Our Annual Holiday Sale is starting in the next few days, keep an eye out for that!

[neicul]

The Annual MM & Kitsun Lifetime Sale Has Begun!

Hey all!

I’ve got exciting news for those of you who have been waiting for this!

Our annual holidays lifetime sale has begun on both MaruMori and Kitsun. This means that you can get lifetime accounts on both platforms individually for a great price, and that you can get them both bundled together for an even better price!

Be sure to look at https://marumori.io/billing if you are interested in getting MM or the bundle.

If you wish to get just Kitsun, check out Kitsun.io for that.

Last year when making this same announcement, we announced that we’d be rolling out N3 grammar from January onwards. As I make this announcement, I’m pleased to say that we’re well on track to finishing N3 at the end of March! This means we’ll most likely be starting N2 in April! A pretty good pace I’d say! Big thanks to our content team for always slaving away at bringing you the best grammar content available!

For all other upcoming content, features, and release schedules you can of course check the renewed roadmap for 2025 and beyond! 2025 will be awesome for MaruMori, and hopefully, that means it will be awesome for you too!

View the renewed roadmap

Hope you all have a great holiday!

[jamesbassett]

Just got MM lifetime!

I just reset WK to level 1 after a few years break, I think I’ll still use WK for kanji for now as my brain still remembers all the radicals and mnemonics. But I’m excited to learn grammar with an SRS on MM. I just smashed through the intro island and it reminded me a lot of TextFugu! I wonder if it’s anything like what Koichi was trying to achieve with EtoEto (edit: oh I just looked it up, it wasn’t just grammar, they were trying to do shadowing as well - I guess Satori Reader filled that gap)

[neicul]

Awesome! Thanks for the support!! Great to have you on board

[neicul]

Just remembered that I forgot to post this, so here goes!

N3 content drop

T’was the last batch before Christmas, and all through MM, learners were SRSing, cramming words in their heads. And overhead through the sky, flies someone on a sleigh, though not pulled by reindeer, no way–no “neigh”! In their place, nine red pandas, majestic and furry. But wherever they’re going, they’re not in a hurry.

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all happy studies!” shouts Jesse from the back of the sleigh, muscles bursting through his Santa outfit. Like for real, massive muscles. Absolutely yoked. You guys should see the size of these biceps. They’re nothing to laugh about.

Now if that doesn’t get you in the Christmas spirit, what will?!

Yessiree, it is indeed, the last batch before Christmas, and boy is it a good one! You might even think Christmas came early!

In this batch, we’ve got grammar points like ～に当たる for fancy “corresponds to X” statements; ～に違いない for “there’s no mistake about it, that buff Santa stole my car” statements; and なるべく, for “as much as possible” (but don’t go overboard) type situations.

And in this batch’s reading, learn about urban planning in Japanese, take a trip to the woodshop to build a desk, and learn a bit about religion in Japan! (Don’t skip it, or Jesse will put you on the naughty list.)

From all of us on the MaruMori team,

Happy happy holidays!

…
Can you guess who wrote this one?

[Fletz]

Hello! I’ve been following Tofugu’s lapamese learning guide and I’m currently in level 7 of Wanikani. In the guide It says to wait until level 10 to begin grammar because it’s easier that way and I can see why. Nonetheless I’m looking for a way to learn grammar whem the time comes.

Is using MaruMori while doing Wanikani lessons a good idea? Because the “gamification” really helps my way of learning but I don’t know if the content woud be very similar (at least kanji/vocab wise) between the two of them. What do you guys think? Thanks in advance!

[neicul]

I think there’s never a bad time to start with grammar. Once you get used to katakana and hiragana you can most definitely already start grammar.

For me personally, when I did WK I focused on getting to level 60 and completely neglected grammar due to getting a ton of reviews every day. The end result was that I could read the words, but not understand what a sentence actually meant.

With MM we tried to balance this so that grammar plays a significant role next to learning kanji and vocabulary. I think this balance is really important.

That said, you can of course just use MM for the things WK doesn’t teach (mostly grammar). We have a Daily WK Sync that marks learned items on WK, as known in MaruMori. Meaning you won’t get those items in your SRS on MM at all. Or you can just forego the whole Kanji and Vocab SRS part.

The only downside to that is that our grammar lessons, reading exercises and grammar SRS does expect you to know the items we give you through our adventure courses. But that would be the same as doing a textbook where there is unknown vocab that wasn’t learned on WK (yet).

I’m obviously biased as the creator, but I’d recommend giving the free trial a shot! Doing say, 1 adventure tile a day and seeing where that gets you 14 days later

[Fletz]

Starting grammar now sounds like a good idea! I don’t want to wait until really late levels of Wanikani because maybe I’ll get demotivated along the way. If I start grammar and feel like I lack some basic knoledge to, at least, wrap my head around it then I’ll focus only in Wanikani again until I’m confortable with the grammar again.

I think I’ll give the free trial a go and see how I feel about It because I feel like thats a other way to learn vocabulary too. And if there’s much overlap between the two I’ll see how to proceed about It!

[neicul]

Awesome! Sounds like a plan

If you need any help, just let me know and I’ll gladly answer your questions ^^

[teamaiden]

@neicul does kitsun.io have a feature to sentence mine from YouTube and Netflix?

[neicul]

I’m afraid it doesn’t. Though you could put the subtitle text into subs2kitsun or into the reading tool and have that open as a secondary window next to what you are watching. Perhaps that could work

[s1212z]

Couple of other utilities if you use Language Reactor extension, which works for Netflix and YouTube, you can set your custom dictionary to Kitsun.io and just pick off vocab readily, just a couple clicks to make a flashcard. LR can also readily download excel files of the sentences w/ translations of the entire episode (or just your favorite phrases), just save as an csv file and use import feature, whole process take about 20 secs. Not sure what works on YT, don’t really use it as AI translations make a ton of mistakes. Maybe already aware, just thought I’d mention.

neicul, is the MPV mining plugin still a consideration for either MM or Kitsun?

[neicul]

Thanks for the help

@s1212z

neicul, is the MPV mining plugin still a consideration for either MM or Kitsun?

It’s on the renewed roadmap for MM!

https://marumori.io/roadmap

It’s for Phase 2 (Q2)