Okay, I’m glad to hear this reinforcement! I have yet to be brave enough to input my own vocab into Torii, but when I am I will definitely add longer compounds of the smaller ones that are tough for me.
Thanks Tokerokonkoyo! 
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Taking notes is great, but if you want to revisit things in long form for any reason I think this is the giant third party transcripts
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XpuXerkGU8waJ4DPDNJA4bGeqOvM-csXjTe57iHARHc/edit
Along the lines of TokeruKonkoyo was saying, it’s a fairly common belief here that the vocab exists to reinforce the kanji and teach additional readings/meanings. The WK vocab is also pretty limited, only covering around 6.5k not necessarily common words so there’s plenty of words out there to add.
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Wow thank you so much for this Cure Dolly transcript! I’ve also been afraid my notes are flawed, so whether I continue with them or not, this will be VERY nice to have!
Yes so far the vocab does seem that way, and I don’t mind it if that’s their way of teaching the kanji best. But I can see why it’s also why having a second method of studying the more common vocab is important!
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Another important limitation of WaniKani’s vocab is there’s no kana-only vocab. There’s definitely some stuff you usually see written in kana (like 丁度) but no words like はっきり which is super common but has no kanji version. Or, for instance, する - which is according to Wikitionary the third most common word on Japanese Wikipedia (ranking above the particles は, が and を). Now, you probably know する, but it does show the problem.
Which is not to say WK vocab is a waste of time, not at all. They’re all words you may or may not encounter somewhere sometime, and learning the kanji version for some usually kana-only words is good because it only takes one person trying to be fancy before you run into 貴方, 丁度 or 之. And they do reinforce and expand on the readings you learn for kanji. But as a source of useful vocab, WK isn’t your best bet.
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This was a fascinating synopsis! I see your point very much. I’m glad I’m finally settling in to Torii, because I just could care less about how much I fail at it… took me like 3 days to remember 台所 even though I spend half of my day in there cooking 
Also, quick question - The only way I’ve been able to type づ is with “du.” Is there any other reason other than “zu” = ず that it can only be typed with “du”? I only ask this because I just encountered my first づ word and it sounds like “zu” when she says it. Will there ever be a sound like “du”, or does it most always sound like “zu” and has to be typed “du.”
And I’m sure your answer will make me say “DUH!”
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So this boils down to how romanization works, basically. There’s no official one correct way to romanize Japanese, but in short, things like “shi” and “tsu” are the “odd ones out” when it comes to typing (and are put in for convenience) - another way to write these would be “si” and “tu” respectively - and that might already show you why “du” works for づ.
Consider the kana table:
Now, the way you’re used to seeing romanization of Japanese is probably using the Hepburn system. That’s a stellar system to read stuff in because it matches the way you pronounce things - but there’s a clear issue in using it to write, since as you can see both ず and づ are romanized to “zu”. But the thing is, Hepburn was never intended for writing (or typing, rather).
The system intended for typing is Nihon-shiki, which follows the kana table very strictly - meaning し is “si”, つ is “tu”, じ is “zi”, づ is “du”, ちょ is “tyo” and so on. It makes for terrible reading, since something like “tudukeru” is in no way pronounced the way you write that in romaji, but for typing it’s very nice because it aligns very neatly with the kana table and has a one-to-one relationship between kana and their romanization.
However, for convenience, most kana that differ between Hepburn and Nihon-shiki are also mapped to their Hepburn counterparts, like “shi”, “cho”, or “tsu”. However, for づ you run into a problem - the Hepburn romanization for づ is “zu”, and “zu” is already mapped to ず, so for づ only “du” remains.
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Perfectly stated! I like how you call it a mapping system and that “zu” is already taken given the system in use. This was a really well done summary that for little nit-pickers like me was fascinating and educational!!! Before I started Japanese, things like “romanization” and “hepburn system” were totally foreign to me. But now you’ve also introduced me to the Nihon-shiki system, and I will definitely spend some time reading up on that, too! ありがとうございます、やみてんし！
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A mapping system is probably the only correct way to describe it, really.
I think an important realisation that’s not immediately intuitive but seems super obvious once you see it is that as opposed to many of the languages you may know, there is no “Japanese but in the Latin alphabet”. There are transcriptions, but in essence Japanese is written in exactly three writing systems: hiragana, katakana and kanji. “Japanese but written in the Latin alphabet” makes no more sense than “Greek but written in Chinese characters”. You can approximate things based on how the writing system works, but you can never really say “this is the one and only correct way”. The only reason that does work for something like Greek is that the alphabets are closely related. I’m not even sure it works for languages using Cyrillic alphabets.
And there’s a double mismatch because, technically speaking, what Japanese has isn’t even an alphabet. Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries. The writing systems just don’t match up at all, basically, so any attempt to transcribe things into a different writing system means either making use of an existing syllabary in that language (as was done with Chinese characters - which is where kanji come from, and by extension kana, seeing as they were adapted from kanji) or to map the syllabary to an alphabet using some mapping system. You could do the same for mapping Japanese to the Greek alphabet, but I don’t think there’s a standard for that 
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Oh yes this is definitely not immediately obvious at all! You seem to know a fair amount of basic systems and language nuances that exist out there. I remember when I discovered WK / Tofugu last year and was shocked I had to learn hiragana and katakana before learning kanji… I thought I’d never do it, but was able to squeak by after a month spent before stopping. Then I came back a year later, surprised myself with some of what I remembered, but kana drilled myself to death as I did the first few levels of WK over. I actually appreciate the three writing systems, and even the on’yomi / kun’yomi variations even though they’re a pain as a foreigner, I bet they are quite well received as a native learner in Japanese for various reasons, otherwise I’d imagine on’yomi would have fizzled out in many ways over the centuries.
I try and explain this to my mom and even though she’s very smart I keep having to say “the alphabet” to get her to kind of understand
Maybe when time machines are invented this will be a thing! I mean, the native faith of the Japanese is Shinto, which has their 3 gods fairly in line with Greek gods. I bet they would have a lot to talk about over the time machine table 
Only 3? 
Pretty sure Shinto has a theoretically infinite amount of “gods” (or none of them - depending on your viewpoint) considering kami are said to exist in all things. Are you thinking of the Three Pure Ones from Taoism, maybe?
Why do I know all these useless things 
Eh, I’m not sure that’s how languages develop. Things are a lot easier when you grow up in something, and while learning a whole lot of kanji and their readings is hard for us as second language learners, Japanese natives don’t really learn them the same way. They naturally pick up the language and learn to write later, essentially - using kana where they don’t know the kanji.
It’s comparable to how the absolutely ridiculous quirks in English spelling (i.e. the barely even existing relationship between spelling and pronunciation) stick around. A language doesn’t really change to what people like so much as what people use - and that does tend towards what the people around them use, including every bit of weirdness that seems completely counterintuitive from an outside (or even inside) point of view.
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Please quote me in full, sir! @yamitenshi
And I believe it’s sun, moon, and the earthy-type one that did something naughty but was redeemed by the sun god so he’s/she is still good. And I believe sun and moon are goddesses actually, not sure about earthy guy.
As I’m learning bits about Shinto, it’s one of the most interesting faiths I’ve encountered. Their deities began with the celestial bodies and then became part of those ruling Japan. There is no basic text or central figure, and at times it was considered when other faiths being brought into Japan seemed like it might threaten the Shrine Shinto faith. But they never compiled a basic text and it has survived with the faith of the Japanese people! There are historical records, some dating to the 7th century, but none are solely about Shintoism or aspects of the “Kami way.”
I also have been reading that as religious and scholarly people have combined forces to try and come up with some fairly straight forward aspects of Shrine Shinto, it’s been rather impossible to do so, so the collective historical writings need to be “approved” (if you will) by many people along the way as accurate.
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Fun fact: Shinto has only been the ancient native faith since the Meiji Restoration, though the exact reasoning is a bit of a long story.
Short version
Pre-historic Japan certainly had a form of animism and nature-worship similar to Shinto. When the first Buddhist scholars came over to Japan, they said “hey, you know those kami you all worship? Well, those are all aspects of the Buddha”, and so everything became Buddhism (a process called “syncreticism” generally in English, and 神仏習合 specifically in Japanese. When the Tokugawa Shogunate rolled around umpteen hundred years later, ol’ Ieyasu, needing a way to control power separate from the emperor, made Buddhism the state religion. Come the Meiji Restoration, the Meiji Emperor now needed a state religion that was explicitly not Buddhism, so he basically peeled the animism bits and the Buddhism bits apart (sometimes forcefully - temples around the country were required to pick one or the other, and were frequently levelled by soldiers if they refused), and went “hey, remember Shinto? That faith we’ve been following continually since ancient times? Yeah, that’s the state religion now.” (Also, the emperor himself was made a kami, though that practice was pointedly stopped after WWII.)
Kinda? There is a creation myth involving Amaterasu (sun), Tsukiyomi (moon) and Susanoo (storm), in which Susanoo acted up, and Amaterasu hid in a cave, casting the world in darkness - the other kami coaxed her out by having a party right outside. Those three aren’t quite the Big Three in the same way as the Zeus-Poseidon-Hades triad are in Greek mythology, though. They’re about third-generation kami, and they’re not even the oldest of the third generation (having been born from Izanagi-no-Mikoto’s purifying bath after witnessing Izanagi-no-Mikoto’s state in yomi, the underword).
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Yes I didn’t mention Buddhism for a reason, given all you said - and - because Shrine Shintoism actually embraces the idea of all faiths in its vague but inclusive practice of entering a spiritual focus of mind over a secular state of mind. The Torii seen at shrines developed and became a symbol where one was essentially exiting the mundane world and connecting with a sense of higher purpose. Even after WWII it has held strong for the Japanese people and despite the influence of western faiths (on any faith culture for that matter), it interests me because it does not exclude one who would like to find faith in one as well as appreciate the simplicity of how Shintoism works. I’m still learning about this, so I’m definitely not preaching the Shrine Shinto gospel here!
Yes I was just making a time machine joke - cut me some slack!
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‘Twas a good day of Japanese study!
50 vocab lessons
123+ reviews
70+ Torii reviews
10 Torii lessons
Grammar points & sentences read
Cure Dolly Lesson 6 watched
@yamitenshi helpful and random knowledge received 
@Belthazar public Shinto-shaming received
2 pots of tea
1 roll of sushi
Leftover yakisoba
Too much ice cream
Goodnight! 
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Hey, I just wanted to say that I read your V-tuber recommendation, and it convinced me to give them a try. Thanks to you, I am now binging Okayu vids!
Thanks!
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Enjoy ベストキャット’s smooth, smooth voice
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I see this is also the first time you’ve posted in the community, so WELCOME!
Hope you enjoy the wonderful, helpful community of people here!
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Bows to the VTuber せんせい 
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Not gonna lie, it’s probably the subject I know most about at this point
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Blasphemy! やみてんしさん’s knowledge of all things random and useful/useless is unlimited!
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