May 25, 2025 — Tatsumoto Ren
What's actually the best way to find easy anime?
You would think just analyzing the subs for speed,
frequency and words you know, maybe even grammar,
would make it possible to rate how easy it will be for you.
When I learned Japanese,
I didn't worry about categorizing anime into easy VS hard.
The first anime I mined after making my mining deck was Steins;Gate.
Although it isn't the simplest anime if you count the difficulty of every word,
it wasn't hard to mine from it.
I simply went through it line by line,
adding every sentence with unknown words to Anki.
For beginners,
it's fine to start with
any slice of life anime
without stressing over the difficulty.
Don't try to mine sentences right from day one.
I only began sentence mining after I had learned more than 1,000 words
from a premade deck.
There are many resources that claim to organize anime by difficulty for Japanese learners.
I think it's best to avoid them.
They often miss the mark,
potentially leading you to anime that isn't interesting or suitable for your level.
Plus,
many of these resources require you to create an account
and come with questionable money-grab schemes.
If you find an anime that looks fun, it's probably the best one for you personally.
Tags: faq
April 30, 2025 — Tatsumoto Ren
I printed out some handwriting practice templates.
However,
I haven't found any recommendations on
how many times to write each word when reviewing in Anki.
My question is,
should I write each word only once, or should I practice in batches?
If the latter, how many repetitions should I do per batch?
Write each word once.
You just need to write a word correctly with the correct stroke order.
The goal is to test whether you can recall how to write something from memory.
For example,
if you were to go to Japan and needed to write by hand, you'd want to be prepared.
Although writing a word multiple times in a row might help a little,
the real benefits come from spaced repetition.
Waiting before trying to recall a word again is more effective,
which is why Anki has learning steps.
Anki takes care of the intervals for you,
and if you forget how to write a word,
the program will show you the corresponding flashcard more often.
For learning handwriting, see Writing TSCs.
Tags: faq
March 02, 2025 — Tatsumoto Ren
Is it worth learning words not just by associating a word with its translation,
but also in reverse — from translation to word?
For example,
if I look at a list of translations and try to recall the corresponding Japanese word.
It feels much harder than simply memorizing the translation.
However, this method seems to strengthens my memory.
Read more...
January 18, 2025 — Tatsumoto Ren
Absolutely!
Immersion is crucial for mastering a foreign language.
Your brain is a pattern-recognition machine,
optimized for language learning
and designed to learn languages naturally.
By surrounding yourself with content in the target language (TL),
you begin to internalize vocabulary and grammar intuitively,
even if you don't notice it.
Read more...
January 08, 2025 — Tatsumoto Ren
Traditional language classes suck.
They cost money.
They are boring.
And they are not effective.
If you're enrolling in a typical textbook-based Japanese class,
hoping that teachers will magically transfer
textbook material into your brain
during short daily lessons,
you might want to rethink your strategy.
Read more...
November 30, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
I have some exciting news, folks!
You've been asking me to do this for a long time,
and now the moment has finally arrived.
I've decided to discontinue our Matrix community
in favor of a different platform.
Read more...
November 11, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
It's up to you,
but we recommend spending around 15 to 30 minutes each day on grammar.
We all know that reading about grammar isn't exactly the most exciting thing in the world.
Thus,
we think that consuming grammar theory incrementally over time
will make it easier to consolidate and integrate what you've learned.
If you choose to spend about 30 minutes a day studying grammar,
it's perfectly fine to study basic grammar alongside
Ankidrone Foundation
and/or
Ankidrone Essentials.
Tags: faq
November 02, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
Yes, it is.
Watching anime with
Japanese subtitles
counts as reading immersion
because reading the subtitles creates an inner voice
that competes with the spoken language that you're listening to.
As a result,
you are not fully paying attention to the native speech.
Instead,
you focus on your internal subvocalization while reading the subtitles.
If you watched anime with English subtitles before starting to learn Japanese,
you've likely spent thousands of hours listening to native Japanese.
However,
if reading subtitles did not interfere with your listening practice,
you would have already learned the language.
This is why we say that watching with subtitles counts as reading immersion.
When you read subtitles,
your own subvocalization interferes with and overshadows the audio.
Consequently,
you end up learning the language of the subtitles
rather than the language of the audio.
In this case, the language of the English fansubs.
Watching anime with Japanese subtitles can help you notice and learn more words,
but it will cause your listening skills to
lag behind.
Relying too heavily on subtitles can create a crutch,
making it difficult to transition to listening without any text support.
If you've spent a long time watching anime with Japanese subtitles
and neglected listening practice,
you will be frustrated when you decide to turn off the subs and watch raw anime.
While you can improve your listening skills by going cold turkey
and immersing with a lot of raw anime,
it will be challenging at first.
It's better to
train your listening ability
while you're still a beginner.
Therefore,
AJATT recommends prioritizing listening to avoid this issue.
We recommend disabling subtitles if you don't need them.
For those who need them,
enable them only when you don't understand something.
Keeping them visible creates a hindrance,
and you can't help but read the subs even if it's unintentional.
It's difficult to ignore them completely.
So,
regardless of your current skill level,
when we divide our study time,
watching something with TL subs counts toward your reading time.
Tags: faq
September 01, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
If you seriously want to master your target language,
textbooks are not for you.
We recommend skipping them entirely and learning the language through immersion.
Read more...
August 26, 2024 — Tatsumoto Ren
Ankidrone Essentials
consists solely of cards from the JLPT Tango textbooks,
maintaining the original order and content.
The deck is designed for those who have completed Ankidrone Foundation
or wish to expand their vocabulary
and supplement sentence mining.
In contrast,
Ankidrone Foundation
takes the N5 subdeck from Ankidrone Essentials,
but the card order is rearranged.
We tried to arrange the cards so that each new card is 1T.
The sorting algorithm we used prefers cards
with the fewest estimated number of unknown words per example sentence
and puts them in the beginning of the deck.
The deck is intended for complete beginners who only know hiragana and katakana.
The JP1K method
helps new learners get used to reading words with kanji characters
which can initially seem difficult.
Additionally,
many katakana words and place names have been removed from Ankidrone Foundation,
as they are typically unnecessary for learners.
For instance,
words like コンサート are straightforward since they are borrowed from English.
On the other hand,
Ankidrone Essentials includes these terms because they appear in the Tango textbooks.
We also introduced new cards into Ankidrone Foundation
when we saw that certain words needed to be learned before others to preserve the 1T order.
If you decide to skip Ankidrone Foundation
and jump straight into Ankidrone Essentials,
you will need to learn kanji and their readings from the beginning,
which can be more challenging compared to following the JP1K method.
However, this is a choice some learners prefer.
You will also need to suspend or delete any cards you already know,
as Ankidrone Essentials retains all content from the Tango textbooks.
And since Ankidrone Essentials does not maintain the 1T order
as effectively as Ankidrone Foundation,
you may encounter more unfamiliar words within sentences.
However,
it's worth noting that the Foundation deck is not flawless in this regard either.
If you have completed Ankidrone Foundation,
skip the Tango N5 subdeck in Ankidrone Essentials,
as they cover similar vocabulary,
differing mainly in card templates and order.
Tags: faq
