私は日本語を書きます。
That bold printed Kanji is the only Kanji of the Kanji you need to know for the JLPT N5 level, that is missing after reaching WaniKani Level 10, and it is introduced in Level 16. If you pull this in earlier, then you’d know all Kanji you need for the JLPT N5 after reaching Level 10. So for me that’s just 6 more WaniKani Levels to goooo 
So how was my week? In a way both, really great, and also a bit frustrating. There where days when I was making good progress, and others where I’d just flunk everything. I need to learn early in the day, and that’s not always possible for me, so a couple of days I had to do it in the evening. Doing reviews was really fun and productive during transit in the bus, however as I am now nearly 100% remotely working from home, this hardly ever happens anymore.
Still, all in all I think I can be proud of myself. WaniKani lists a 11 day streak, Anki a 9 day streak, i.e. I haven’t missed a single day since picking my studying Japanese up again, and that was the most minimal goal I wanted to reach.
WaniKani had it’s up’s and downs. Some of the new items I learned, didn’t want to stick at all, probably because it’s not a good idea to learn something new after a 10 hour workday. On the other hand on those days also the reviews didn’t goo as smoothly as wanted. Still I reduced my Lessons count from 85 (last week) to 31 this week, and while Master, Enlightened and Burned did not change at all, the Apprentice column went from 19 to 40, and the Guru from 111 to 160; so more then double the items got to Guru than to Apprentice. I however suspect that starting Level 5 will probably still take me more than next week. There’s still 31 new lessons, plus two Kanji that are not yet available due to flunking the radicals, and as nearly none of the Kanji are passed, all the Vocabluary is still waiting to be activated. And while they should be faster and easier, it’s still 110 items in waiting before being able to start Level 5.
Anki this is strongly coupled with Genki work, however, as this is a separate tool, I’ll treat it separately here as well. As I already had all cards ready-made, I just copied the deck into a new one (named Bin), removed all cards from My Genki Deck, and then started moving cards from Bin back to My Genki Deck, so that I had a “handable” amount of cards.
For the cards I am using a template I found somewhere online (I don’t remember where exactly, unfortunately), that will create multiple cards from one template, i.e. a card for reproducing the word, a card for the kanji and kana spellings, a card for the definition, etc. It also has some scripts integrated, that fetch me stroke order images, and a pitch diagram, and it has fields to add an audio recording that will be played automatically.
Instead of using translations I tried out using images for the back side. My initial thinking was to make these images as private as possible, to have a stronger memory impulse when seeing and learning them, but somehow I ended up doing rather random images I found on google, as it is rather hard to find personal images of things like りゅうがく, or アジアけんきゅう, or だいがくいんせい.
In the end, however, the goal is to have sentences instead of words, so as soon as I feel comfortable to form more sentences that I can relate to my personal life containing the vocabulary that is new, I’ll use that.
I also somehow made the mistake of including everything, so I relearned even things I already am pretty fluently in - at first I didn’t think about it, and just copied my old cards - once I realized it, I even thought it was a good idea, as it will evolve fast, and come back later when I might have forgotten it. But in the end, I just clogged my reviews with a lot of cards that are, e.g. just numbers, that I am pretty familiar with. Once realizing that, I cut a couple of cards, e.g. I had also made cards for all the time recordings available, so いちじ、にじ、にじはん、etc. I cut that to just the exceptions from the rule, e.g. よじ、しちじ、くじ.
In the end, with Greetings vocabulary, the Lesson 1 vocabulary, Lesson 1 additional vocabulary, exercise recordings that wheren’t part of the vocabulary, and example sentences for the grammar points with gaps in it for the gramatical constructs (e.g. せんこうは__です__。ー コンピュータサイエンスです。), I processed 435 cards the last week. Much more than I planed, but again, this includes the multiplication for having cards shown with front or back, and asking for the Kanji and Kana readings (where applicable). So each vocaubulary will have 3-4 cards, which will reduce this number to about 110-150 actual items. Which seems much, but given that this is mostly a re-learning, I think the pace is okey. Still I am a bit worried about the reviews though, because they might pile up and then clog new things and hinder progression. But it’s always possible to remove items from Anki, so let’s just see how it works.
One annoyance with this approach of having 3-4 cards per word, is that the randomization isn’t the best. So sometimes, I’ll get the definition, then some other items, then the word, some other items and then some spelling, which is ideal. But it could also happen that I’d be asked for the spelling, and after hitting next, be asked for the definition which I just saw. I tried to figure out if there is any way in Anki to supress this, but couldn’t find any. So I guess the only way to change this, is to create the cards with the template, but then manually set the due-date or ordering. I think I’ll even go a step further (because this is probably even easier): I’ll keep the “bin” deck as my “staging” area, i.e. I’ll add new cards to the bin deck, to generate all 3-4 different cards, and then move them on a day-by-day basis to the actual Genki deck. This way I can ask for all definitions first, then for all reproductions the next day, and so on. I’ll keep you posted.
Genki I think I am most disappointed with my Genki progression. I just finished the first chapter, and it took me the entire week. I would have loved to finish the first chapter in half the time. But well… I did all the vocab, all the Grammar, all the exercises in the workbook and the book itself - I did them the way I layed it out - except for the workbook which I did not wait until this week; however I did not do the online exercises from Seth Clydesdale, as I layed out in my plan. I’ll probably start with them today, and use them as the second week recap exercises instead. I also watched the first video of TokiniAndy, but I don’t think it added much - except for weird new vocabulary, that I’d probably not need anyhow. But it’s nice for a recap, so probably I’ll consult them whenever I need it for understanding, but the rest of the time I’d probably just watch it as a whole once I’m finished with a chapter (or maybe even in the end, to refresh everything, once I’m through with the book).
I also signed up for Kanshudo, which - as TokiniAndy - was a suggestion to my Genki study proposal, but did not do anything on that site yet. Probably something for this week as well; I generally liked the page (with the exception of the paywall for some items).
For today, I’ll listen to the Dialog for Lesson 2 and start with the first couple of vocabs. I already did my reviews, and also new Items on WaniKani, so just the Genki work left for today. So let’s see how next week goes…
So, how was your week? 