Ahh, sorry! Now I understood your point as I reread your comment. I was trying to think in the context of me asking the question and mariner getting defensive, when you were talking about the situation between mariner and his wife. I agree that’s possible, but now were just hypothesizing even more 
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Ha! The email I’ve been meaning to write…add a 4th sentence in the first position that is the most basic use of the word.
(and add more than 500 character spaces for “Notes” while at it.)
I’ll get right on that.
Same. I rarely read them anymore.
They’re full of kanji/words that haven’t even been taught yet so you end up with several lessons when you’re just wanting one.
I understand that’s going to happen, but they could at least do some furigana (and perhaps a link to the word in WK) over the unlearned kanji/words.
I’m sure there are people who are more diligent students than I am, or have more exposure to actual Japanese who can make good use of them, so I hesitate to say they’re a “disaster”, but I don’t get much use out of them.
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To speak for myself – I like the example sentences. I’m very new to Japanese and I’ve been following Tofugu and WaniKani up to the point I’m at now (just level 3).
The silliness makes me enjoy learning. Per the Tofugu suggestion, I haven’t done hardly any grammar yet, so when the example sentences come up I just practice reading them aloud with the best pronunciation I can muster. Like someone else said, this program isn’t supposed to get your grammar straight – it’s for vocab. When I want to build proficiency speaking these words naturally in sentences and recognizing them in the wild, I’ll move on to a different program or buy some manga or find a Japanese speaker to practice with me, and I feel I’ll be much faster and better prepared to swim through that. Nothing can replace actual spoken practice with another Japanese speaker anyway. In the meantime, my mouth is just getting used to making those shapes and saying those silly sentences.
Also, honestly, they make me smile, which is not something I ever got in high school language classes. I sympathize with those of you who are frustrated… but maybe consider… this part of the process that you’re frustrated about isn’t really WaniKani’s purpose, and they never claimed that it WAS their purpose. Now maybe it COULD be in the future if they choose to expand and make a comprehensive all-aspects-of-Japanese course. I’d sign up in a heartbeat if they did. But, anyway, for what it is, I am very content with it.
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Personally I use example sentences as to practice the reading of kanjis and laugh the sentences they made. Wanikani clearly meant for learning kanji and nothing else. If there are kanjis I don’t know I look up and read again. As for other uses for me I use to practice my reading. As ridiculous some sentence are, sometimes a meaning could stick or sometimes helps to distinguish to similar meaning of vocabulary. For grammar I use different sources.
Finally I learn Japanese for fun and Wanikani certainly make my days better with funny mmemonics and sentences.
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I don’t have any problem with the sentences – I think it is good that they are frequently ridiculous (‘I farted several thousand feet in the air’, etc) – makes you remember 'em! I view the sentences more as bonus entertainment actually, especially the BL/bromance storyline of Koichi and Viet, the marriage troubles of Salmon and Fugu, the sinister plans of Aya for her corpse collection, and of course the ongoing mystery of who ate Koichi’s bacon.
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Thanks for the feedback everyone! We’ll be closing this because we’ve received a few flags here and we want to make sure things stay civil.
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