Oops somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed…
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Why post a non-constructive comment like that? I not only said “why it be like this”, but I suggested an alternative. Maybe not the right place for it, but we’re just shooting the breeze here, so what’s the harm? Relax.
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My guess is that the radical/kanji/word becomes more deeply ingrained in your memory if you have to recall it twice instead of just once.
But I can see that it feels like a waste of time since it takes more time the way it is now.
I agree with the OP that it’s frustrating when I’m going fast and mistype, or type the Japanese instead of the English. I turned on the ignore button in the mobile app on the second lesson. That said, if I don’t know something, I’m fine to take the hit because it just means I do the review again. More reviews aren’t a punishment (yet), I’m trying to learn. The only situation I think would really frustrate me is if I was waiting on a couple kanji to level up that I knew were delayed due to a typo. I dunno, I think the restrictions in WaniKani are part of its appeal. The gamification is a big part of why I decided to use it over making my own flashcards.
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Yeah, same here. Always been a touch typer, but for some reason my brain see me writing out “juudai” or whatever and says to itself “yep, that’s absolutely the meaning of this vocab”. The reverse doesn’t happen because it wobbles if you have a roman character in with your hiragana.
And it’s not a huge pain in the ass to redo reviews, so not a major thing, but yeah, it would be nice.
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I wonder if exposure to romaji is part of the problem here because I have never used it and my brain would never confirm that romaji is the correct answer, apart from when English has a word borrowed from Japanese already (ie kappa, or kaiju, or sushi). Have you guys (or ladies or other) spent time using romaji to read rather than kana?
I haven’t really learned words as romaji and it’s not my brain confirming that romaji is the right answer. I realise that’s probably what it sounded like, but if anything, it’s words that I’ve internalised as japanese in my thoughts that this happens with. eg genki to me means genki, not “energy” - “energy” is a convenient shorthand, but it doesn’t have the nuance, etc. So I think genki when I see it, and type genki, because that’s what its meaning is, and hit return and at the same time realise what I’ve done.
I start thinking in another language quite quickly, and have to say the english word with the japanese phonemes each time to have any hope of avoiding this slip up more frequently than it currently happens. That feels counterproductive to my overall language learning, though. I’m not interested in translation, I’m interested in understanding.
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How else are they supposed to check your understanding though?
No one wants to have to type out 活動のもとになる気力 as the answer to the meaning, not least because the average beginner on WK doesn’t start with enough Japanese knowledge to understand Japanese definitions.
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If that’s what you did want to do, is it possible to add meaning synonyms in Japanese? 
Sure, you just have to type them in romaji!
katsudou no moto ni naru kiryoku
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If I’m not mistaken, you even mentioned wanting to do that on some WK run, right?
Sounds fun.
Hmm, I remember saying that I wanted to add pitch accent to all the answers. But maybe I said both.
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I’d love that too. Theoretically if someone gathered all the data, it could be put into the Self Study script.
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But its meaning is not “genki” as that’s not actually a definition. You don’t define the meaning of a word by saying it is itself.
心や体の活動のもととなる力．
That is an actual meaning of “genki.”
Honestly, I think you’re just still new and need to figure out your groove with the site.
I think I know what you mean and it is among other things one of the reasons why I only use WaniKani with the Anki mode script, without typing. Everything else would annoy me too much.
Some cases are just because English is not my native language and I don’t want to bother thinking of proper translations because I’m just here to learn Japanese. I see 晩ご飯 and I think “evening meal” which is of course stupid because I know the word “dinner” but the idea is the right one (it is also a literal translation of my native language which is probably where that thought is coming from). So I mark it correct and move on. But even more often, I see 頭 and “あたま” is the first thing that comes up for the meaning. I’m definitely not going to tell my brain that wants to think about the meaning of kanji in Japanese that this is incorrect and that it should take an extra second and think of the english meaning instead. Because:
Yup, exactly.
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I think you said it better than me. 
Sure, absolutely. I don’t mean to say that I think the meaning is “genki”, more that I look at the characters and think of the concept linked to that and the two are the same.
Anyway. I found it interesting that some people are saying touch typing is the answer whereas others say that doing it on your phone (where there’s no touch typing) is the answer. Clearly there isn’t any one answer, and there’s a few of us who struggle despite (in my case) having been doing wanikani for some time and trying different solutions (I’m a scientist by heart!).
I hate making this kind of error and I’ve tried several approaches and none really solve it for me and feel like it affects my overalls learning progress. But it’s not like I’ve quit because of it and I’ll keep plugging away.
The title of this thread is so inflammatory and I am so chill about this that it’s wierd to still be chatting about it, but here we are.
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I had the same problem at first. Didn’t realize it was asking me for meaning rather than reading. A different color would help differentiate between them. There are other clues though.
I said both touch typing and using your phone are useful, because both force you to read what you’ve written before you hit enter. Unless you’re happy making a million typos on your phone when you use it to write text, I dunno.
Anyways I think your point is kind of silly, my goal is understanding which is why I’m using an app that requires me to repeatedly reinforce the meaning of a word in English and its reading in Japanese, to connect the neural links I have to words in English all over my brain from years of native use to new representations in Japanese. I don’t see why typing “energy” or “health” on top of げんき is supposed to limit that.
Besides for every one word like that which gets reinforced in other places very frequently like 元気, there will be hundreds of words which will take effort to link the meaning and reading and I don’t think it’s worth adding functionality for the comparatively few because of laziness regarding typing the meaning, when it would give you an out for every kanji or vocabulary item you didn’t remember the meaning for by default. Just add it as a synonym if it’s that big an issue.