Hello there!

steph-dm · February 21, 2021, 5:28pm

Hello! I’m Stéphane, 22 years old, from France .
I just started to use Kitsun after reading the topic on Wanikani

I’m using WaniKani since the beginning of the year. I finally wanted to get serious about learning Japanese.
Anything I’m doing, or most of it , is related to Japan for around 6 years :

Music
Japanese videos with EN subs
Anime with EN subs
Playing Japanese songs on my piano.

And I still can’t speak or read anything. Kana and few Kanji, that’s it.
Now it’s starting to slowly grow after 1.5 month of WK; but I want to improve my vocabulary as well. I know only a very limited amount.

It’s also been 3 weeks that I’ve been using Anki with the Genki 1 deck that I was trying to do at the same time as reading Genki 1. I learnt until now with it but I’m looking for something a little bit more intuitive, natural. That’s why I’m interested in trying Kitsun

The problem is that there are a lot of resources so I don’t know what to do.
Concerning Kitsun, I just took the Deck 10K, and I already know the first words given, I think I’ll have to wait a few days to have unknown words (unless you advise me to do more lessons until I find unknown words… maybe ).
Using WK and Kitsun will definitely help me for the reading and vocabulary part; even though there are still some other problems:

Grammar
Listening or speaking practice.

I heard about some things like Bunpro or JapanesePod101 and I’d love to hear what you’re doing and what you would advise me

Time to get serious so that I can finally better understand what I do and what I listen daily And one of my goals is also to stay at least one or two years in Japan before I’m 30, no matter what and no matter how.

I really hope that Kitsun will be able to help me on this long road; that would make me really happy in the end.
I look forward to getting to know each other

Buscadon · February 22, 2021, 1:36am

Bienvenue à Kitsun! Nice to have you here!

And I feel that. I came here from WK and I wasn’t so sure about it, but now I absolutely love it as a studying tool. It’s pretty great, and it keeps getting greater!

What’s your favorite Japanese music (and to play on the piano)?

Reading kana is good foundation ngl, that’s already a long way to come. If you want to review those, you can find Hiragana & Katana sets in the Japanese Community Center Page.

Also, some advice on the first words you already know: in the lesson, there’s an “action” button int he lower left corner with a button that says “hibernate.” Hibernating of course means you won’t have to study it. If you hibernate a card/term before you finish the lesson for it, it won’t count towards the lessons counter. What I would recommend is to keep hibernating cards until you find vocab you don’t know.

I feel like grammar is a subject a lot of us have been looking at but haven’t really properly tackled so far. I don’t use Bunpro often because of time, but it’s a great way to learn grammar!

As far as audio goes, I might recommend trying out Subs2Kitsun (under “Card Generation”). I haven’t used it myself, but I’ve heard good things about it, and it might help you out!

Sounds like some great goals! I would also encourage you to post on the study streaks thread, it’s a great way to stay motivated.

Tomato · February 22, 2021, 5:11am

Hi!! So nice to see you here at Kitsun, steph-dm!

First thing I wanna say is…

I love this goal and I can’t wait for you to achieve it. You sound super determined and I really love seeing that don’t let anyone stop you, wooooo!

Buscadon-san already said a lot that I agree with but I hope I can add some more to help you out

For grammar, I can tell you three options depending on how much you’re willing to invest in!

You were already learning a Genki 1 deck so maybe you can continue that on Kitsun and why not try looking to see if you can get yourself the Genki book and go through the grammar lessons? I don’t know how easy that will be to do for you but hopefully you can find a used book to purchase.
I heard that there’s a Japan Foundation in Paris and Japan Foundation’s Libraries are really amazing for studying. I was fortunate to have one very accessible to me and I was able to reach N2 studies without ever purchasing a book and only paying an annual library card If you’re not near Paris, maybe there’s some other libraries?
And finally you can just watch those youtube playlists for grammar! And that’s absolutely free so… I recommend Nihongo no Mori’s playlist or Japanese Ammo with Misa’s. You can start by just watching one video per day, pace yourself please! (Study burnout really sucks )

I’m thinking that for serious listening practice, you’re going to need to be comfortable with the basics of grammar first and getting in more vocab so don’t pressure yourself to do that just yet. It’ll happen all in good time Until then, I think even just listening to music or watching Japanese things would be helpful so you can get used to the pronounciations.

I can’t wait to see you more often here, Steph! (can I call you that? ) Don’t hesitate to ask more questions, the Kitsun community is pretty friendly

steph-dm · February 22, 2021, 12:08pm

Thank you Buscadon! Nice to meet you

I would say that Supercell songs are my favorite, such as “My Dearest” or “Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari”. That’s also some of the songs that makes me love and want to learn how to play piano properly.
There are beautiful piano covers of it that I need to learn. The road will still be very long for this too.
I love and listen to a lot of Japanese artists, Supercell, EGOIST, Yanagi Nagi, Aimer, H△G, May’n, TRUE… And so much more. I discovered most of them with Anime or YT recommandations

Thanks for the hibernate tip! I will definitely use it to skip most of the number stuff. I’ll also give a look at the Subs2Kitsun feature I will also give a try at Bunpro after one or two weeks of Kitsun so that I take some time to discover correctly.

Thanks for the support! I will do that maybe at the beginning of March? It might be a bit too late to join in February
But you can already count me in even for this last week of February, hidden We will all stay motivated

steph-dm · February 22, 2021, 12:08pm

Hi! Nice to meet you too Tomato

Thank you, I will do my best
And thanks for all your advices as well!

Actually I’m reading Genki 1, the book, for 3 weeks. I was learning the vocabulary with Anki then giving a look at Genki every 3-4 days, sometimes the opposite :^)
Now with Kitsun, I should maybe do a bit of both, reading and genki deck everyday even if it’s a smaller chunks.

That’s awesome, you studied a lot for it, I’m sure! Sadly I’m in a quite small city in the East of France, far from Paris. The library is really small, I’ve not seen a lot of Japanese stuff in there.

I had already watched 2 videos of Japanese Ammo with Misa but there are a lot of videos so I don’t really know in which order I should do it Maybe should I create another thread to ask what would be the good things to watch, in a nice order.

And you’re right, as you said, I should probably wait to have a bit more grammar and vocabulary before serious listening practice

Sure Thank you again!!

Tomato · February 22, 2021, 12:50pm

Yeah, I agree. That sounds like a great plan! How are you liking Genki so far as your grammar book?

Oh I’m so sorry to hear that, it would have been a great solution

Yeah, go ahead and create a thread! My take on for knowing what order to watch is that you could use your Genki book as a base. Whichever grammar point you’re currently on in Genki, you could search Misa’s (or any other reliable channel) videos for that grammar point as well and get more details or clarifications

mrlbender · February 22, 2021, 1:22pm

Welcome @steph-dm!

I would love such a thread!
I watched a few Misa’s video and I really like the care and efforts she puts into her lessons, but I had exactly your problem: didn’t know where to start and which path to follow.
I eventually decided to see videos depending on what I’m interested in at the moment (specific grammar rules, pitches, conversation etc…) by looking at the list once in a while.

I also like Loretta’s “only Japanese” videos (for example she recently did a video where she plays with some friend the game “katakanashi”, which is a kind of “taboo” with katakana loan words. I didn’t really understand much but I thought it was cool to see ) and also like Onomappu’s channel, where he explains Japanese… in Japanese. Which is pretty hard to follow, especially for me, so I sometimes take a look at English subtitles to see if I got it right (typically “not”)

A thread about music suggestions would also be cool
I will give a listen to the above.
I typically listen a lot of progressive metal, so in the past couple of years I put a lot of efforts in finding some Japanese progressive band, but couldn’t find any that suit my taste (actually I could say that I couldn’t find any at all).
So since January of this year I started listening the “japan top 50” spotify radio and found a few artist I kinda like, for example Official髭男dism (official hige dandysm) and (some songs of) King Gnu just to name two. In the past I’ve also listened a lot of ナイトメア (nightmare) band and the Scandal

steph-dm · February 22, 2021, 5:58pm

I’ve not had too much grammar parts to learn but a lot of important vocab, I’m not really far in Genki yet (Page 85/382). Even if I don’t have too much grammar to learn yet, the vocabulary makes it as interesting.

That’s a good idea! One more reason to do Genki more consistently! I’ll still create a thread, that could be helpful

But I wonder, how many new lessons per day do you learn with Kitsun? I don’t know the average number here

I took 3 decks:

10K: 12 lessons / 4 per batch
Genki : 12 lessons / 4 per batch too
Katakana 4.5k : 3 lessons / one batch

I hope it won’t be too counterproductive to do all 4 at the same time (Kitsun, Wanikani/Kaniwani, and Genki)

steph-dm · February 22, 2021, 6:27pm

Thank you @mrlbender
I agree with you! From what I’ve watched, I can tell that she’s putting efforts to deliver good content in her lessons. We just need to know what to learn and when. I really like @Tomato’s idea to check on her channel after learning some Grammar with Genki, and that’s for sure possible with other grammar ressources as Genki. I will create a thread for this, for better information centralization if we can gather more ideas I will also give a look at the channels that you have linked, thanks for sending it!

I have no idea concerning progressive, progressive metal music, sorry
I know about some metal related (more specifically metalcore genre I think), but I don’t know if that would interest you: Demetori, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, UNDEAD CORPORATION, Foreground Eclipse. It’s been a while that I haven’t heard anything metal related, but I do enjoy listening to it sometimes
I don’t even know for what “progressive metal” stands for, but I just searched and it seems that Demetori might have some for you! Maybe the other bands/groups as well.
Let me know if that could help

Some music by Official髭男dism and King Gnu are insanely popular especially in Japan, they love it!

mrlbender · February 22, 2021, 8:45pm

Thank you for the suggestions!
I will surely give a try to those bands!!
About progressive metal, surely the most popular and a reference for the genere is Dream Theater. (By the way the keyboarder is great piano player in my humble opinion)
But there are a lot of other great bands (maybe even better) all around the world, that are pretty unknown (unless you follow the genre), like Haken, Circus Maximus, Myrath, etc… This just to say that I was sure to find something in japan… But I haven’t given up yet

Tomato · February 23, 2021, 4:23am

Ah, yeah just stick with it! More grammar will come soon enough

It all depends on the person and their capacity to learn a certain number of cards per day without getting overwhelmed! But that sounds about right
I think the average for a person would be about 20 - 30 lessons per day. After all, that means you’ll be getting 100+ more cards to review as each week passes.

Oh! But don’t forget that there’s no shame at all in needing to take in less lessons if you feel yourself getting overwhelmed what’s the point in doing more and more lessons if they don’t stick in your memory, right?

Right now, I’m only taking in a maximum of 10 lessons a day 'cause my schedule is really crazy and I know that I won’t be able to take in more than that or else I’ll just explode

Doesn’t seem counterproductive to me since they all play a specific role And to you too for also doing Kaniwani. I tried it, got too frustrated, and left

jprspereira · February 23, 2021, 11:54am

Welcome to the forums and to Kitsun, Stéphane!

To expand on @Buscadon’s advice, I’d like to explain to you a few terms so that you can better understand how to deal with the situation of your already known cards:

Napping: It skips a card during a lesson/review session.
Hibernating: It removes a card from your lessons/reviews. It won’t appear again unless you awaken it.
Adding as a known word: Kitsun allows you to add cards as known words. This means that if you learn a card in deck A, it will be marked as known in deck B. It will still appear on lessons/reviews on deck B however. This is because sometimes learning the same word differently in another deck might be worth it. To hibernate those known words in deck B (so that they won’t appear in lessons and reviews), you can go to “Manage Cards” inside your deck:

Use this playlist

This playlist seems to not show on her Youtube profile. I’ve talked with Misa a few years ago and she said some people seem to not be able to find the playlist, even though everything should be working. But yeah, the link is up and running

FlamySerpent · February 23, 2021, 12:40pm

And here I am with 10-20 a day and often none at all I blame WK and BP for still giving me reviews to do

jprspereira · February 23, 2021, 12:43pm

I actually think that’s a lot! In my experience, the average user that succeeds and keeps the consistency going does around 10 lessons a day.

Are you learning from the Genki deck in the community center @steph-dm? If so, the cards have tags per chapter, so I think you should plan the words you learn in the Genki deck with your progress on the textbook. It doesn’t make sense to learn more words than the ones you need for your current (and maybe next) chapter imo

About the Core 10k, it can be much harder to learn words using kanji you don’t know, but this deck is actually ordered by Wanikani levels. For example, the tags L1, L2, and L3 have words that you’ll be able to read by level 1, 2, and 3 respectively

So you can go through these lessons as you go on leveling up on Wanikani as well

Tomato · February 23, 2021, 1:09pm

I based this on the fact that you two and our friends from WK would usually say 20 lessons, the hardcore ones saying 30 - 40 (although those very same people tend to burnout soon enough), and the chill ones saying 10 - 20!!!

edit: then again it also depends on how easy the lessons are for the day
All in all…I think adjusting the number of lessons you do according to how many reviews incoming you have is the best way to go about it

Also…wait, hold on.

@steph-dm I just reread your post and this:

Is just on Kitsun? And on top of that, you’re also doing lessons on WK/KW? oh wow!
I’m so sorry that I misread this at first! The 20 - 30 lessons a day average I mentioned before was for the total number of lessons across all platforms (Kitsun/WaniKani/KaniWani/Bunpro/others) so I think the number of lessons you have is overdoing it a little hahaha I so don’t want to see you drowning in reviews after a month, Steph!

It’s completely up to you on how you want to split it but maybe you could see how you’re doing with a total of 20 lessons per day, and adjust little by little to what you think is best for you? So maybe 10 lessons on WK/KW, 10 lessons on Kitsun (3 - 2 lessons per deck), or however you want

steph-dm · February 23, 2021, 3:42pm

Thank you

The known word system looks good! No more 私一二三, … It will be useful

Indeed, I didn’t know about that playlist, I just checked, it is the last playlist on her channel so we aren’t able to find it easily, she should make it first or put it in a new section for more visibility.

Yes I am now doing the Genki deck from here! I will do that, thanks for the tip!

I will also reorder the cards from the core deck to match WK levels, as you said. that will be better! I was struggling on unknown kanjis in that deck

FlamySerpent · February 23, 2021, 3:50pm

We are clearly ~~the beasts~~ not the normal average users, same applies to you

I did 100 lessons a day on Kitsun in the beginning for a little bit (until I got to 1300 I think ) and that came to bite me sooo many times later And I was doing 20 on WK to get 8 days per level, so 20 in my opinion is already a lot :3 40 was hell and I had all the free time in the world to do that xD

I usually aimed for 150 apprentice/beginner items on my main SRS, that seems to work for me and I think it’s a good way to adjust the number of lessons later :3 I think even 10 lessons per day, consistently, is veryvery good, it gets the job done, at least imo

Tomato · February 23, 2021, 3:54pm

…

FlamySerpent · February 23, 2021, 3:56pm

I was catching up to my Torii lessons, okay I quickly stopped ~~when jp told me to~~, and it was so painful every time that batch of items came back xD At least I can say that I did that and I do not recommend

steph-dm · February 23, 2021, 3:59pm

It’s taking some time now, especially when there are 20-30 new lessons from WaniKani the same day
Yeah, I think that I might need to lower it if I can’t stand too many lessons or reviews! Kaniwani doesn’t take as much time, it’s not too hard because I changed the settings to review only >=Guru items (that was some tip I read on WK forum), that helps a lot!