Hey everyone! I may not look it if you’re familiar with my wanikani profile of the same name, but I’ve been learning Japanese for quite some time. I even remember back when bunpro was just a wee little baby, and free to everyone–and the following apology emails when they unleashed subscription plans on everyone.
I was curious, what do you use for studying Japanese? Do you have a particular method?
Here’s mine (or at least, how it was before Kitsunio; I may have to tweak this!):
- Keep wani kani apprentice level somewhere between 25-50, by learning new lessons to that quota as I guru items. This has fallen to the wayside however as I have seasonal depression and tend to take long gaps during the winter when I don’t have the energy to study.
- Study from Genki and take liberal, extensive notes. Then do the assignments in the textbook with the notes for review. Each day following after, I’ll work on a section from the accompanying workbook corresponding to the lesson. This one I won’t be allowed notes. I’ll grade them all when it’s done. If the grades are less than a 90%, I’ll redo the same pattern the following week.
- Do duolingo lessons. I’ll only get to crown level one on each topic before moving on to the next. I stop when the information seems to “overload” me too much and get too confusing. From there, I’ll slowly work on each of the topics, moving them up in crowns. I’ll try to keep the crown level the same for each topic in the batch; I swear by never using the test-out function! As much as it is satisfying and time-saving, the tedium of working through the prompts makes the information more concrete for me. If I really think I can test out (like Hiragana, for example, when I already knew it), I make a rule that I’m not allowed to lose a single heart. If I do, I have to back out of it and take at least an hour pause, then try again from the top.
- Go to Bunpro and add in all the new grammar points I’ve learned in duolingo and in Genki. Start working on reviewing those and any previous ones I have left. This one is great when I have downtime in the office and don’t have any homework to work on.
- Use quizlet for any new vocabulary. If it was just a kana-only term, there would just be a card for Kana>English meaning. If it involved kanji however, it would include Kana>English meaning, as well as Kanji>Kana.
- EDITED: I also forgot to add! Using italki’s notebook system to write a journal in Japanese and submit it for corrections. I try to do it every day. Sometimes I will also submit my assignments from the Genki textbook, since I’m self-taught and not in a college course for Japanese (yet). I also try to pay it forward and correct people who write English entries.
Obviously, all of this can be EXTREMELY streamlined now that I’ve discovered Kitsunio. So much of this can just be condensed into decks on here. So if you’re like me and had the most spaghetti-esque study system before now, I’d love to hear how you made it more efficient with Kitsunio as well! 
I definitely need to put in more work for this aspect.
I like to watch Japanese movies that I have on DVD (Studio Ghibli is pretty good for this) and listen at a slower speed with the video player on my PC. It makes it all worth it when you hear something in the wild though and think “wait, I understood that!” Listening and speaking though are low priority for me, even though it’s probably gonna end up being the Japanese I use the most OTL