[Discussion & Feedback] Prefectures of Japan

[acm2010]

A deck for the 47 prefectures of Japan, and the regions they are located in. This deck uses an interactive map of Japan, so you can either enter the prefecture names, or locate them by clicking on the map.

(This deck uses experimental features of Kitsun, visit the forums if you encounter any issues.)

Kitsun’s first SVG deck is finally out! Learn the prefectures of Japan with additional visual input.

The deck contains the 47 prefectures and 7 regions of Japan, along with statistical data from 2019.

Currently there are two layouts:

• Marked on Map: a prefecture/region is highlighted on the map, and you have to type in its name
• Click on Map: you are given the name and must locate and click it on the map

The origin of all data and images are public domain (from Wikipedia/Wikidata).

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Technical Discussion: Adding SVG images to cards

This deck uses some cutting edge features of Kitsun, expect unusual problems.

Know issues:

• You cannot ignore answers from the “Click on Map” questions at the moment
• You have to click “Next” to advance the “Click on Map” Cards, no hotkeys yet
• The deck preview function doesn’t really know what to do …
• I wish you could somehow zoom the map on mobile, currently the is only a min-width and scrolling on small displays

[Neicudi]

I really like the deck and it showcases how Kitsun can be used to create different kinds of decks as well. So I’ve added it to the featured decks category of the community centre

[Krispy]

takes a deep breath This deck looks fantastic, and from the first 5 lessons it feels fantastic too. Thanks so much for making this! I’ve been looking forward to it ever since I first seen some discussions on the SVG technicalities.

I’ll drop by with feedback as I go and if I discover problems. Happy new year!

[acm2010]

Thank you both!

I removed some additional features for now such as prefecture capitals, images of flags/seals, and something like a backside popup to show “this prefecture is known for X” information to make them more memorable. Maybe there are some extensions coming in the future.

And I ended up using a few interesting features like SVG, fetching all information from Wikidata.org using SparQL, and making cards with genanki in Python. I should write some tutorials on how to use them, at least for the SVG part quickly before some distraction factors are returning from their parents/grandparents again

[hinekidori]

This is seriously cool. I’ve been waiting for someone with better coding knowledge to show up and put me to shame!

I agree with @Neicudi. This really shows what Kitsun is capable of.

Love it!

One thought I have is that having an IME option to type in the card would be nice. Or if it could at least accept the answer written in kana.

[acm2010]

Thanks! The SVG part is actually quite straight-forward to use if you have the proper image, SVG+CSS is just incredibly strong.

I was thinking about a Japanese input layout, but don’t know if you can disable layouts by default and people who don’t know anything about Japanese get a カナください card and freak out.

[Krispy]

So far my biggest want is to have bigger font for the kanji and kana underneath the English name. For a lot it wouldn’t matter, but especially for Chubu or Hyougo. For example,

When the front of the card looks like this:

I can end up typing in just Hyogo which is, I guess, acceptable romaji. But that doesn’t reinfornce the correct Japanese spelling. When I hit enter, I again see the “romaji” Hyogo with a line over the first o. So if the font was a little bigger I might focus on that a little more. I can hardly even distinguish the lines on the kanji myself.

I submitted this same comment as feedback so sorry for duplication, I forgot the forums might have been a better place.

[jprspereira]

So far my biggest want is to have bigger font for the kanji and kana underneath the English name.

Yeah, I’d like this too. At least so that the kanji would be minimally visible.

Doing 5 lessons a day, loving the deck

[acm2010]

OK, the text is finally bigger. I wanted to work a bit more on the answer card layout, there are still some things like flags and URLs I can add …

@Neicudi, could you change the tag sanitizer in the layouts editor such that the <defs> tags don’t longer turn into a self-closing <defs />? In that case I can think about adding the capitals.

[Neicudi]

Sure! I’ll look into it, not sure what is causing it atm.

[jprspereira]

OK, the text is finally bigger.

Thank you, it’s perfectly readable If anything, you can reduce it a little bit if you wish to

Maybe there would be a better font for the kanji too? I’m fine with this one, just a suggestion.

[Krispy]

OK, the text is finally bigger.

Thank you, it’s perfectly readable

It’s certainly a huge improvement, so thank you for that The kana is easily readable now, but I still think the kanji is hard to read. If it was maybe 5-10% bigger I think that could be enough. If you don’t wish to increase the size of the font on that, perhaps a different font altogether would help, as JP suggested.

[jprspereira]

I finished it

[acm2010]

Just a quick update, I was working on a deck for the US region and I got an alpha deck in Anki format compiled. There are still a few fights with Pandas left, but the next deck may be release relatively soonish.

[jprspereira]

I’ll definitely do that deck

[jprspereira]

Are the black dots the capitals of the prefectures or something? I’m seeing them on firefox (first time using this deck there).

But they’re not there on Chrome

[acm2010]

It shouldn’t be there, I set the circle style to not display them, it looks like Firefox is ignoring the style information. I changed the radius of the circle to zero for now, until I actually use the capitals (and figure out how to hide them properly).

@Neicudi I tested it on Firefox, strange things happened, for example only editing the back side changed the front side preview for the circles, not sure if it is a Firefox+SVG specific problem or the previewer.

[Krispy]

Also finished! Loved the deck, had next to no issues. Can’t wait to see how it develops in the future regarding capitals etc. My one outstanding inconvenience is not being able to hit enter to progress through the cards sometimes but I believe that is a Kitsun thing that’ll be fixed eventually rather than a problem with the deck.

[acm2010]

Hi, glad you liked it!

I will see what to do with the cities, maybe I add large cities instead of capitals. Often they are just named after the prefecture, so it’s like “What is the capital of Aomori? Aomori”, “Click on Aomori”, “Click on Aomori, the capital of Aomori” …

[Krispy]

“What is the capital of Aomori? Aomori”, “Click on Aomori”, “Click on Aomori, the capital of Aomori” …

How big would the clicking zones be?