I love Yomichan (and Anki)! It’s a very essential part of my Japanese journey. I talk more in detail about how I use both in my study log (along with links to some helpful add-ons), so I won’t repeat myself too much. I’m definitely getting a lot out of both of them with how I’ve been using them, so even if it isn’t the most optimal way to do it, it works for me.
I use individual word flash cards and not sentence cards myself (though I’ve configured Yomichan to automatically pull the sentence I found the word in and add it to the Anki card for the word, which helps me remember the context of the word), though I think this is probably just personal preference, and if sentences work great for you, then that’s great!
I’ve had pretty good success with focusing on words in Anki that I’m either about to see in my reading (in the case of my Minna no Nihongo vocab), or which I just saw in my reading (in the case of words I’ve mined from native media), and I really prefer doing it this way rather than trying to go through a premade deck of words in a vacuum. I think this helps motivate me to do my Anki reviews, because I get to immediately apply the words that I’m learning there.
As far as optimal Anki usage goes, I would just make sure that whatever you do, you’re very careful not to overload yourself with it. This forum is full of cautionary tales of people who tried to go too fast and added too many new cards every day and ended up burning themselves out, so just keep in mind your own limits, and scale back on adding new cards if you start to feel the strain.
Yomichan and Anki are literal gifts from god. While Yomichan is indeed great for making Anki flashcards, it’s also very good for just looking up words that you come across. If you’re interested I made these addons (as dictionaries) which display WK and JLPT level of items in Yomichan
Whenever I come across a word using a kanji I don’t know yet I just love looking up a bunch of words using that kanji and adding them to my Yomichan deck in Anki
I would love to be able to do this because I started sentence mining recently. I don’t need a detailed explanation on how to do it but just for my understanding on how difficult this setup would be, would you mind to just give me short impression on the level of difficulty this involves?
If you say super easy I would try it today, otherwise maybe ‘later’…
A few days ago I installed Yomichan plus some dictionaries.
I think you just need to have a field for a sentence in your note type and set Yomichan to put the sentence in there. Just pick “sentence” from the dropdown when configuring your model
I made a personalized (ultrasimple) note type once and realized that if I change it later on all previously created notes of that type are updated and possibly destroyed. It might be better to create a new type to avoid that. Sorry, just random thoughts of a person not really in complete control of computers but who likes to ‘program’ without bothering to acquire the necessary knowledge
I recommend having a note type specifically for Yomichan. Possibly one for terms and one for kanji
I have a field for most (though not all) fields that Yomichan provides. Most of them remain unused (don’t show up on any card), but I think it’s nice to have that information in case I would like to add it to my cards
Interesting, I see. Did you create it or is there a sample to download somewhere? Sorry, now I ask detail questions without any previous effort from myself, I have to check out the basics now
I made it myself. You just create a new note type then add a field for all the information you want to get from Yomichan. You can look at the dropdown (as shown in my screenshot) to see what it offers
It is indeed the sentence you found the word in, yes. Though you still need to add {{Sentence}} somewhere in the HTML of the card template so that Anki knows where to put it.
Here's one of my cards (the sentence came from a blog post reviewing a deathmatch wrestling production of King Lear by Jun Kasai):
Yeah, it unnecessarily add the Kanji form. Furthermore, if there are more than just the detected Kanji form, and the Kana form; the alternate Kanji forms / alternate readings might not be detected.
You can add it as kana by clicking on the small plus button instead. Although it can indeed be handy to learn apple in kanji, as you do come across it every now and then
Sometimes what I do is manually switch the kanji and the reading to each other’s field on the individual card if I want to have the kana reading be what I’m primarily testing myself on, but still keep the kanji somewhere on the card. I’ve done this for very common words which are normally written in kana, but which can be written in kanji that I haven’t learned yet.
Actually, not only sounds / Kana; but Kanji also convey some meaning, especially for alternate Kanji; and sometimes both Jisho and Daijisen lump them together.
