+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Warning: this thread is one wall of text after another. If you're interested/can't live without all the details, then grab a drink, a snack, and get comfortable before starting this thread. Otherwise, you can skip to post #18 to see how I fixed my issue (a wall of text all on it's own). If anything new/pertinent is posted on this central business of enjoying Japanese sustainably, I'll link to it here in probably a month's time. Thanks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(I edited my original post for being too long). Cutting straight to the chase, the problem I face with vocab is that it takes 2+ hours to get through 100 reviews (20 new cards a day), and I’m constantly failing cards; 7+ fails for new cards, and then failing them subsequent times from any lapses in reviews that might arise (or just general decay of memory). This causes for high levels of frustration, and when coupled with the 2+ hour time sink, it’s simply unsustainable (this is nothing like my kanji experience or current Tae Kim grammar efforts which, while not “fun”, are sustainable).

Quickly rounding off some stats: Feb-June = 2k+ kanji done, Feb until now = 300 episodes of Bleach (plenty of skipping), 300 DBZ (again, skipped a lot in the last 80 episodes), 150 of dragon ball, 100 fairy tale, 50 code geass, 50 Gundamn Wing, and 14 Asura Cryin’ (passively watched). I’ve listened to 6000 songs passively (I generally drone out the music until my ears perk up to something interesting, and then I keep that song for my collection). These efforts have netted me zilch in Japanese ability (not unsurprisingly since I’m pretty sure immersion over the short term of a couple years is only good for picking out vocab to memorize/reinforcing it, not actually putting it in your head (also, I’ve not been consistent with my levels of immersion, so that’s something to consider)). I’ve been trying vocab on and off ever since late June.

I’ve tried adding shocking images/pictures with plenty of mental hooks to cards, and this works, but is a hit or miss thing based on whether I can find a good picture. Not only that, but this in itself is a pretty large time sink, taking upwards of 3 minutes sometimes for finding a picture. I also tried ditching core2k6k for making my own vocab cards (though with the same setup as core2k6k). These cards were based off of dialogues from FF7 (this was after having a discussion with someone and deciding A) core2k6k was too stale and not sticking enough to make it sustainable, and B) I had done 0 reading up till this point), and while there was certainly an intrinsic interest in the cards, it still faces the same sustainability issues (lots of time/frustration from fails).

Just to quickly cap off how I do my actual reviews, I generally write/or air write the vocab’s kanji/furigana and read the sentence/listen to the audio upon first seeing a card. For reviews, I write/or air write kanji/furigana and just listen to audio without reading the sentence (I find sentences are pretty useless in helping me figure out the vocab given how little grammar/vocab I possess, and they’re actually kinda distracting). Also, I don’t make the mistake of just pressing ‘hard’ (did this back when I started kanji).

When failing a card, I’ve tried redoing the initial learning step, adding pictures (as mentioned), stare and stare at the card, and/or spend only 3-5 seconds on a card in hopes of cycling back to the failed card before it’s forgotten (this worked with my kanji reviews in keeping times down/frustration low, but with vocab I just miss and miss and miss until something eventually clings, and it does nothing for review times).

As to where kanji had a straight path to learning them via mnemonics, and my new experiences with grammar have been straightforward (given that they follow set guidelines), vocab has provided no clear path to memorizing them. My first attempt netted me 255 cards before I fell off the track, and my second attempt 360ish (the first 255 this time were about as easy as my kanji cards were). I only made it to 60 FF7 cards before figuring out that the newly added interest in the sentences themselves was not enough to drive me through failing cards over and over.

A few things occur to me about this whole situation:
1. SRSing vocab from media I use is most likely the path I'll take since it generates a reason to read in a phase where it is rather slow and difficult to do so. It’s a nice tie in.
1.5. Reading needs to be kept on-board so things stick. I was immersing audio before, not text.
2. Lapses in reviews are left to account for in all of this since I've definitely not been consistent in the vocab phase. Who knows, maybe it'll just take 2 consistent months to warm up my vocab engine and get over the hump?
3. Perhaps I should remove fluff from vocab cards and copy paste what I get with the rikaisama 's' key.

I’ve had 5 stagnant months of Japanese, and am currently playing Chrono Trigger every now and again with some rikaichan lookups; it’s highly sustainable (from what I’ve seen) and is serving to keep me on board, but feels pointless without SRS and lacks any momentum. I need to figure out something or quit while I’m ahead, and the latter is just something I’m not willing to do. Thanks in advance.

I noticed you said you take 2 hours to do 100 reviews. This just seems like a waste of time to me. I can do 180-290 reviews a day in about 30 minutes or less. If I can't remember a card in 4-5 sec, I mark it as hard and just move on.

I used to spend about that much time reviewing and getting less done, and becoming unmotivated all at once on my last attempt at learning Japanese. I had made it to Core, around the 300 word mark and stopped. At that time I spent more time and energy trying to remember the vocab for reviews instead of doing more reading. It's quite the reverse now, but I'm at about the same point in Core and getting burnt out on it, I feel. I've spent the last 3 months doing more than I ever did in the 3 years I spent studying Japanese the first time.

I read at least a page a day in Japanese and try to hit at least 100 reviews in 10 mins every morning. I ordered game guides, some game magizines, play Pokemon and a few other games in Japanese(placing a higher focus on reading books than playing games this time) and listen to Youtube Japanese channels like Tokyo MX and TV Tokyo. It was a great motivator till this past week when I started to get burned out. I guess it means it's time to change some things.

So I dunno what to tell you. I'm pretty sure you need to change your view on reviewing cards though, that just seems like a huge waste of time and energy that could be spent doing things in Japanese instead.

I've adjusted my Anki routines a few times to make it more interesting, and am finally at a point where I enjoy it. So here's my two cents. Keep the change. (Note: no nihongo in this post, as I'm on a computer with no IME.)

1. I would dump Core and make a custom deck. It sounds like Core bores you to tears. It bored me, too. Make your own deck, and load it with vocab items from Rikaisama and Subs2SRS.

2. Find a routine in Anki that works for you. I do the following:

* Start off with ONLY reviews. No new cards.
* Once reviews are done, I review all cards I failed. This can be done in Anki 2.0 with a Cram deck. Like you, I usually write these words out. I also read the associated sentence a couple of times.
* Add new cards. Again, I do this with a cram deck, but I explicitly load cards from something I've just read or am working on reading. Don't just add 1,000 words with Rikaisama and review them at random. This might be fine at the beginning, but eventually you'll end up adding words that you barely ever remembered reading, and that don't seem to appear in whatever you're currently reading. Add only words you can be sure are relevant to you right now.

When I use Anki like this, I can usually get through review of 200 cards in under 30 minutes with an 85%-90% success rate. (Today was 88% at 21 minutes.) Obviously it takes extra time to study the failed and new cards, but I count this as Japanese study time, not as Anki review. It's pretty easy to load and study the words I want to study, and this ensures that my Anki studies continue to feel relevant to my daily immersion activities.

I agree with PTA that 2hrs to review 100 cards is too much, and you need to find a way to cut this down. Personally, if my failure rate for cards falls down below 80% a day (or close to it), I stop adding new cards until my pass average edges back up. (This is where that study component becomes important.)

3. Do less listening to random Japanese and more targeted study. I don't really believe all of that passive listening will have as big of an impact as sitting down with a single episode of something w/ Japanese subtitles and understanding it thoroughly. When you're done studying something, rip the audio to an MP3 using VLC, load it on your iPod, and listen to it.

I'm not saying NEVER listen to arbitrary Japanese. I still watch a lot of anime on CR where I can understand anywhere from 50% to 90% of the dialog. But spend more time in active study than in passive reception.

4. Study from a variety of things that include both text AND audio. Douwa, NHK News Web/News Web Easy, audiobooks, etc. See buonaparte's massive list of L-R resources for pointers.

Again, just my two cents, and given very quickly before I take my kids out trick or treating. Caveat emptor.

When I was going through Core6k, I had a lot of trouble with some words as well. I had no trouble remembering a lot of words, but some of them just seemed like they were destined to become leeches.
I eventually decided to just go for the low-hanging fruit during my first pass through (in order to easily maintain a high number of new cards) and suspend hard ones, and then once I finished, go back through and do those hard ones at a slower pace.

Basically one of the first things I looked at is "do I fully understand this word"? A lot of the words seemed to have a rather ambiguous meaning even with the example sentence. It would be pointless to memorize if I didn't really understand it, so I just suspended these.
Next I would decide if a word is a synonym for something I already know. If this new synonym seemed easy I would go ahead and learn it, but otherwise I would just suspend based on the fact that I can still express myself fine since I know another word with a similar meaning.
Finally, I would just suspend anything that seemed like it would give me a lot of trouble.

I ended up suspending about 1000 cards from core6k on my first run through.
Then on the 2nd pass through, I can learn at a slower pace, and make sure to look at plenty of example sentences, and maybe come up with some mnemonics.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:1. I would dump Core and make a custom deck. It sounds like Core bores you to tears. It bored me, too. Make your own deck, and load it with vocab items from Rikaisama and Subs2SRS.

I started this for 2 weeks, but ran into similar issues with high fail counts. It's definitely going to be a core part of my SRS routine since it ties reading into it nicely.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:2. Find a routine in Anki that works for you. I do the following:
* Start off with ONLY reviews. No new cards.
* Once reviews are done, I review all cards I failed. This can be done in Anki 2.0 with a Cram deck. Like you, I usually write these words out. I also read the associated sentence a couple of times.

This just seems like it's shifting around the time spent on failed cards, and not actually eliminating the problem (lack of sustainability due to time/frustration). This would in all likelihood help me commit those failed cards to memory, but the problem is making the process sustainable enough for me to endure it (either via more fun or less time/frustration, the former leading to the latter possibly).

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:* Add new cards. Again, I do this with a cram deck, but I explicitly load cards from something I've just read or am working on reading. Don't just add 1,000 words with Rikaisama and review them at random. This might be fine at the beginning, but eventually you'll end up adding words that you barely ever remembered reading, and that don't seem to appear in whatever you're currently reading. Add only words you can be sure are relevant to you right now

I can see this method helping to alleviate the issue. I'll incorporate it, but I'm not sure it will be enough by itself.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:It's pretty easy to load and study the words I want to study, and this ensures that my Anki studies continue to feel relevant to my daily immersion activities.

This is the main discovery I made when SRSing FF7.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:Personally, if my failure rate for cards falls down below 80% a day (or close to it), I stop adding new cards until my pass average edges back up. (This is where that study component becomes important.)

Sensible, but I see it being a problem since I would realistically average 5 cards a day if I stopped adding every time my failed cards piled up.

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:Do less listening to random Japanese and more targeted study. I don't really believe all of that passive listening will have as big of an impact as sitting down with a single episode of something w/ Japanese subtitles and understanding it thoroughly. When you're done studying something, rip the audio to an MP3 using VLC, load it on your iPod, and listen to it.

I agree with the listening part, it's just something easy to do when I lack motivation to do other things or something to act as a time filler (it's not totally useless: I'm building up a list of awesome songs I like that are likely to keep me in Japanese). As for episodes with subtitles, I have yet to do that. It's been all raw and unsubbed. I'll give subtitles and sub2srs a go, but it's most likely not the solution to making my fail count lower.

Zarxrax Wrote:When I was going through Core6k, I had a lot of trouble with some words as well. I had no trouble remembering a lot of words, but some of them just seemed like they were destined to become leeches.
I eventually decided to just go for the low-hanging fruit during my first pass through (in order to easily maintain a high number of new cards) and suspend hard ones, and then once I finished, go back through and do those hard ones at a slower pace.

I'm not sure I could make myself go back to core2k6k at this point, but going for the low hanging fruit is a good philosophy. The thing is that it's not just "some" cards which are leeches, it's a good portion of them.

As I only have word lists to rely on, I purged the Core 6k list since I find a lot of them redundant.

Might as well remove the counters and verbs should I get the hang of them.

PkmnTrainerAbram Wrote:If I can't remember a card in 4-5 sec, I mark it as hard and just move on.

Somehow I completely missed this, and it's interesting because it ties into a thought I was having about how anki forces you to stay with your failed cards until you've ingrained them in your head. One might astutely observe that this means the card wasn't learned in the first place, and thus you're are misusing anki to learn cards. My question is how do you learn a card when reading the entire sentence, writing the vocab, and listening to audio fails (not fails indefinitely, but quite a number of times nonetheless)?

By removing the repeated failure component of anki, this would relegate anki to being a refresher course rather than something to pick up the slack from faulty learning techniques (or perhaps faultily applied techniques). The problem with always pushing the hard button is that the not-yet-learned vocab intervals would be pushed further and further out, so let's assume we press the 'again' button every 3rd or 4th lapse. While this obviously eradicates my current problems completely with constantly seeing failed cards, the question arises whether this would actually work as one might hope?

In theory, if I were to stick with my old review methods, add 20 cards a day, and increase review times to make sure cards stick, I could learn 600 cards in 1 month. With the new method and going at 20 cards a day, you would've covered 600 new cards in that month, but you wouldn't have actually committed 600 new cards to memory; let's say the first 2 weeks of cards for that month are committed to memory, and the latter 2 weeks are primed in your memory.

I wonder if this *theoretical* pattern would hold true on a constant basis so that you're only ever 2 weeks away from having all the vocab committed to memory (e.g you've studied for 1 year and 2 weeks, and have 1 year worth of vocab committed to memory with 2 weeks in the priming state), or would the ratio stay constant (e.g you've studied for 1 year and have 6 months of vocab committed to memory, and 6 months in the priming state)? I suspect and hope the former, but perhaps someone more knowledgeable or who has considered/tested this idea before could comment?

Lastly, is this idea of using anki as a refresher for words akin to what the people who only read/immerse do (the refresher component would be looking a word up in rikaichan when it is forgotten)? My understanding is that people generally switch to reading/immersing as their sole means of study only after they've gained a sufficient vocab base. In any case, I'd really appreciate any input on these thoughts, and thanks for the insights so far.

ragdim Wrote:This just seems like it's shifting around the time spent on failed cards, and not actually eliminating the problem (lack of sustainability due to time/frustration). This would in all likelihood help me commit those failed cards to memory, but the problem is making the process sustainable enough for me to endure it (either via more fun or less time/frustration, the former leading to the latter possibly).

Once you've really learned the words, you can speed through them. It should only take you a second or two two process a card you truly "know". So yes, you do more study up front, but you save more time in the long run because you're consciously studying the card and working to commit it to memory.

I've tried using Anki by just speeding through a bunch of new cards, and it's agonizing. The reviews pile up, and you start failing so many cards that you wonder if it's worth it.

I might note that Anki also has a bury function, where you basically tell Anki, I don't wanna see this card again for this session. If you find yourself having trouble with a particular card, sometimes it's better to wait a few hours or even a day before seeing it again. I find that for very particular cards, a couple minutes is sometimes way too short a wait.

Yeah, I'll second what everyone has been saying with your taking too long to review. 2 hours for 100 reps is nothing. That is like 1 rep a minute. Race yourself and move faster. One thing I loved about Anki 1 is it told you your average time for the day. I would always pay attention to this number and note my mental state and how high or low it was for the day, and I would try my best to stay above my daily and lifetime average. Sadly this feature was removed in Anki 2, maybe someone will add it back via a plugin. Also there is a Anki 1 plugin that will sound a "ding" sound when you reach a certain number of seconds, a good way to remind and train yourself you need to move on. Don't think this has been ported over yet either. :/

I'll also second that Subs2srs and the Morphology plugin are certainly the way to go for interesting sentences. The Morphology plugin will learn the morphs you know well, and order your cards in an ideal fashion.

A while back I dropped Core2K in favor of Subs2srs, however I recently integrated both into my studies. Anime sentences with Subs2srs provides a lot of enjoyment and Core2K gives me a good basis to build off of. I don't have to drown myself with only boring Core2K sentences. I think mixing it up is good for variety.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Let me preface this large post by saying this is all theory by a newbie and is subject to being updated. I probably seem like I'm stating facts in some parts, but it is all just theory. There are a lot of steps listed here, and it may seem like extra work, but hopefully the steps outnumber the time it takes to execute them. I'll remove this message after I've used these methods for a bit and come to a conclusion.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

After much deliberation, I've realized that something about my learning technique isn't quite kosher -- whether it be that my current learning style is different from the technique being used, or that the technique is being faultily applied, I'm not 100% sure.

What has ended up happening is that I'm paying the price for this misallocation in my SRS. For those that are interested or are having vocab issues of their own, here is how I've decided to adjust my studies to fix this issue (I've had false starts with vocab in the past, so I'm cautiously optimistic):
=================================================================

Reviews How?
1. set anki to show failed cards after all other reviews/new cards.
2. use plugins to limit time per card down to 3-6 seconds.
3. review old/new cards and then add failed cards to cram deck once the failed cards are reached. Review cram deck on phone whenever there's dead time (if not, it doesn't matter).
4. take a minute at the end of the day to bury any remaining failed cards so they don't halt new cards the next day (thanks for the suggestion Daichi).

Reviews Why?
At it's core, SRS can perform 3 roles: (1) creating memories (using core2k6k & nothing else), (2) building up memories (seeing a sentence somewhere and srsing it, but then repeatedly failing the card until it sticks), and (3) retaining memories that you already built (I still know the vast majority of the kanji I learned 5 months ago).

The problem is that SRS does 1 of these roles really well in all situations, and the other 2 with varying degrees of success. As I've found out, the proper place for SRS in my own personal vocab studies is role 3, with role 2 only sparingly (light exposure). Of course, there are some people on these boards that have used SRS in all 3 roles for vocab (just as I did for kanji) with success -- however, I have to wonder if it's not best just to guide all newbies in the safer direction and tell them to stick to using SRS for role 3 and immersion for the other 2 roles (just in the beginning).

In any case, the reason I decided to use SRS for role 2 at all is more for convenience than anything; instead of stopping to delete leeches and having to re-add that vocab at a later date, I'll simply take a laissez-faire approach to studying them. At the end of the day I'll bury them and then see them the next day, constantly getting light exposure to them from my SRS until the immersion can do it's thing. In this way, I can blaze through the cards I do know, and can rest assured that the combination of immersion, light exposure, and "dead time studying" can nail into memory any leeches that pop up. Before, I was skirting around the problem by trying to go slow/thorough, or trying to cycle through the cards really fast; both methods led to frustration and a lot of time spent SRSing, and one method didn't even lead to retention after all was said and done. The hope is that I've addressed this problem head on now.
=================================================================

New Cards How?
1. immerse by watching & reading (latter is more important, at least for me personally).
2. lookup unknown words, shadow them within context, and air-write kani/furigana.
3. use rikaisama's 'S' feature and extract however many vocab I feel like for the day (goal is minimum of 20) and add to anki.
3a. use sub2srs where applicable and offload the audio to phone for listening instead of music (thanks for the nudge gaia, and thanks for the guide nukemarine). I've heard whispers of the morphology plugin, so hopefully that's something that will help me automate the sub2srs part of things even more (not sure at this point).

New Cards Why?
I've come to think of this whole SRS/immersion ordeal like a puzzle: the immersion places the pieces down and snaps the connecting parts together while the SRS keeps the pieces in place (this is just fancy speak for my media will play roles 1 and 2 while my SRS focuses on 3). My hope is that I've replaced the stick (SRS) with the carrot (media). More or less my vocab problem boils down to the fact that I am essentially encountering vocabulary for the first time and expecting to have it nailed down the same day. I assume that the instances where people do see and acquire vocab the same day are either from SRS grinding or the person was already well adapted to acquiring new vocab in this fashion (could be any number of reasons why that is).

As I mentioned before, it could be that I study a year of vocab, but only have 6 months worth committed to memory and the other 6 in the priming stage since the SRS will no longer be used to pound leeches into memory. Again, I welcome anyone to comment on this as I'm really curious what your opinions are.

In the end, I feel it's most efficient to marry the SRS with my media instead of keeping them in separate areas (at least for me, but maybe not for someone who can endure the premade vocab decks or who has a memory more suited to that style of learning).
=================================================================

Auxiliary Strategies:
1. when reading, read page once casually.
1a. read through page again, looking up words and shadowing them in context.
1b. speed read the page.
2. all cards should be kept simple (just import words straight from rikaichan) with exception to sub2srs. Context isn't really as necessary here as having the variety is (any and all vocab is good so long as it's not a duplicate card); simple cards keep me from feeling like I'm being bogged down by their content, and sub2srs adds a some color to the mixture.
=================================================================

In closing, I'd really appreciate input from someone who has been down a similar road of difficulty with vocab and also lacked any reading input up 'till that point -- any and all input is welcome, though. Thanks.

All your points sound nice but that is a lot of text. Be sure to keep your eyes on the main goal of the advice that was given. I think main advice that I saw was simply to review more cards in less time.

ragdim Wrote:2. use plugins to limit time per card down to 3-6 seconds.

I don't think you need to cut down to specifically 3-6 seconds, just less than what you were doing before. Time might also depend on content, like sentences might take longer than that.

ragdim Wrote:4. take a minute at the end of the day to bury any remaining failed cards so they don't halt new cards the next day (thanks for the suggestion Daichi).

Be sure you understand how the bury function works, for the most part it is a temporary suspend for the current session. I believe you can only bury a card your currently trying to review. I tend to use it after I've already failed a card several times that day and just think it's taking up too much of my time if I keep seeing it right now. I actually use it rather sparingly, but it's handy when I need it.

Also this shouldn't be hard, but don't forget to have some fun with your Japanese exposure outside of your SRS.

This is an interesting discussion.. I'm around the same level as you I guess. I know what you mean about 100 cards taking 2 hours, I think this can definitely be sped up after some practice. I remember at first being afraid to open my RTK deck, as I just didn't want to deal with it (I still did though everyday), but now its just so easy, I can do it even when I'm half asleep. I think with core6k (I'm using the optimized version) it could be the same after some practice.

I've leeched so many new cards, probably 90% of them - the second day I see them isn't nearly as bad though. And some words stick much better than others. I have a LOT of trouble with the single character words that are extremely obscure.. but even those I just fail them until I get them right one time - hopefully it will stick later on down the line I think don't be afraid to hit the fail button, it speeds things up a lot.

I wouldn't drop core.. I don't have a problem with it to be honest. I'm about to use Sub2SRS alongside core and get more interesting sentences going.

Anki is used to help you review and turn something into long term memory. It is not used to help you learn/memorize words. I say limit reviewing to 30 minutes and spend the rest of your time doing whatever the hell you want in Japanese. Oibviously 2 hrs of anki review with lots of failig is not productive

I use Anki for learning from core, it's useful for hearing the sound files easily.

I noticed that when I started adding J-J-cards, I had to add a lot of extra words with boring dictionary sentences, and the thing I noticed was that not much of the new words sticked that well.

I eventually returned to adding J-E cards from stuff I love, Zelda games and right now, a nice reader called Read Real Japanese.

Add sentences from stuff you learn from (for instance textbooks at very early stages and native media once you're past the beginner level.
I was unable to learn anything from Core because it didn't tie itself to my learning at all.

And it is important to understand the sentences when you add them -- you can memorise a history book in German without knowing German, but it wouldn't help you in learning history.

Wall of text, coming up. If you want, skip to the bottom.

I'm right where you're at as well and my personal experiences coincide with yours.
RTK was easy 25-40 cards at day for 2-3 months.
Tae Kim was boring but I was able to go at a slow pace and keep my reviews down. Usually aiming for 20 cards or at least one section/page. Another 2-3 months/
I finished Tae Kim maybe 2 weeks ago, and with both RTK and Tae Kim together. I can usually speed through them both in 20minutes. Easy, since new elements aren't consistently being added anymore.

Ive only just started Vocabulary, 20 cards a day, for the past 5 days. and my review time just went past 1.5 hours today.
I knew this wave was coming, I had trouble remember the readings whenever Tae Kim introduced new vocab. This is something I'm already mentally prepared to go through, I knew it wouldn't be easy.
My hope is that, once I see enough kanji readings within vocab, it will become easier. You know, like 大 is probably going to be 「おお」「だい」「たい」 or 不 will probably be 「ふ」 ect.

But all this talk of being in front of my SRS too much is a little worrying, haha. I did know it wasn't great, but its only way I know how and I figured a faster way might come to me along the way if I just keep going. After all, most of the advice I see around topics like this is "Find your own way that fits you". I find that easier said than done myself because being in school for most my life, I always took to default route and that always seemed to work out for me. That may be just an excuse, but I'm doing my best.
Either way, when I'm adding vocabulary, I'm not speeding through in 10 minutes, that's for sure.

Because you see,
I find myself in front of my computer SRSing away all day and it isn't until the end of the day that I open up a manga, or pull up a game and fetch out 20 sentence before I go, "I'm tired" and do something else for what little time I have before I sleep. Be it something in Japanese or not. I do listen to Japanese music as I SRS, and that's always something.
==========================================
To the main point.

I can see where you're going at when you say you don't exactly need to commit to memory the desired vocab that day and your "any kind of exposure, is good exposure" take. Where as, I don't need to memorize it today, but if I see it over a long period of time, Ill get eventually. This, in turn, resulting in me spending less time doing reps and more time doing things in Japanese.

I say this because, new cards are easier the second time around. I'd be willing to bet, if I saw something like..特定 once,twice or thrice a day, over the course of a week. I'd be able to pick it up a lot faster when I put it in my SRS.
I was reading through TWGOK, and I knew 地獄　and 駆け魂 before I even saw it in my SRS.
So, why not just see it a couple of times a day in my SRS every day over the course of a week? Then on that fated day, where it you go "I got it" will the sentence finally move over 1 day intervals.

But I wonder, if you go about it like this, will the cards pile up faster than you can eventually "know" them? I think you still have to be careful.

Mark card as "good" even though you fail them the second time they come around. Repeating them more than twice has no benifits at all, and doesn't increase your chance of remembering them tomorrow.

That's at least how I do it.

You know you're on track when you'd rather be doing Japanese than visiting these forums every 5 seconds. I've been reading a lot this past month(exclusively games and manga for now), and have been sustainably SRSing 20 vocab cards a day.

I've kept some of the stuff I mentioned that I would try originally, and I threw some of it out. Before I outline the things I am using, I'd like to add a preface; though I think some of these methods could benefit pretty much anyone (and that's why I'm listing them), the take-home message should ultimately be to ***EXPERIMENT*** with your deck type/format (is it j to e, is it grammar+vocab, is it sentences?), ***READ*** stuff (don't wait until you're partially fluent to read, you might not ever make it otherwise), and of course ***IMMERSE*** (this was the easiest for me all along -- the main thing that changed is I'm more actively paying attention/catching words (don't drone out) looking words up on my phone while watching anime, and also listening to less music and more anime rips (music is harder to understand and easier to drone out on)). Without further ado, here's the stuff I switched up:

1) Reading manga and gaming. I have both English and Japanese scripts so that I can parallel read (it's important for enjoyment that I understand the plot. Also, despite the fact that English/Japanese translations aren't a 1 to 1 thing, it *does* help understanding if you know the jist of a sentence). I use rikaisama to lookup whatever words I don't know while gaming (since the game scripts I have are in my browser), and kanjitomo for words I don't know while reading manga. Manga is being used as a replacement for Japanese subtitles for anime (since Jap subtitles are hard to come by and the anime dialogue usually follows the manga anyway). I rip audio from the anime to listen to until I get bored of it, and then I rip audio from the next episode and read the corresponding manga. Here's some pics just to give an idea:
Parallel reading manga: http://tinypic.com/r/2a9r5vb/6
Kanjitomo (free OCR): http://tinypic.com/r/ipz4p1/6
Parallel reading game: http://tinypic.com/r/2r41yjm/6

2) Failed cards are set to show after all reviews/new cards have been done. I have 2 phases of study: a quick phase where I take only 6 seconds per card (I use an addon to force me to stay with it), and a slow phase where all the failed cards show up at the very end (I disable the addon and take as much time with these cards as I want). Let me further clarify the "slow phase"; these failed cards *only* show up at the end, which means they aren't showing up during my reviews/new cards. In other words, I do reviews and new cards without ever repeating a failed card; this is important because having failed cards pop up during the quick phase really breaks my momentum. At the very end, I have a nice pile of all the reviews/new cards I failed. I review this pile throughout the day as I feel like it on my phone, making sure that I at least get through all the failed-new cards (since leaving them overnight would prevent new cards from showing up the next day). It's nice because the new cards are always at the top of my failed pile, so they get done first.

3) Changing the actual format of my cards helped a lot. I had to experiment with 3 different deck setups and reread some of the stuff on AJATT (pertaining to sentences specifically) before coming to a conclusion (I ended up going back to Core 2k6k Optimized Vocab since it has audio for the cards and also since I'm more comfortable personally with something that has been designed and edited to a great degree by someone more knowledgeable than me). Anyways, these are the realizations about card format I came to:

(A) E to J cards is pure suckage. This is essentially what I did before... there was a Japanese sentence on the front, but I completely neglected it in favor of just glancing at the English keyword and trying to guess the corresponding vocab in Japanese. Here's a picture of my old method (google images ftw. Back side of the card is missing, but it would have everything that the front did + the closed kanji/its reading): http://tinypic.com/r/2ir8d3b/6
(B) just like khatz said, the reading of a sentence has a sort of flow to it which helps memorization. Flow is kind of a nebulous term, so a more concrete way of putting it would be *connections*. The research on the brain makes it clear that we learn by connecting things.
© cards with too many things going on slows me down. I found that the important thing to increasing retention was reading the Japanese sentence (something I never did before), so I removed anything that distracted me from that; pictures and English sentence. Here's pics of my new setup (note that these cards also have audio):
front: http://tinypic.com/r/2vwz979/6
backside: http://tinypic.com/r/o0ngg0/6
(D) trying to guess both the reading and the vocab-kanji was too much. I now just try to deem the reading/meaning of a single word.

This last segment will be about why I do what I do. Again, it's important to note that experimentation, reading, and *actively* immersing in stuff you love is (I feel) the guaranteed route to being successful in your Japanese, not *my* specific methods; they're just a nice example/stuff to try.

Keeping this real simple: the combo of reading *and* immersing is the best way for me. My opinion is that using just immersion is to put yourself on par with the tools a baby/toddler has, and they will win in every instance (meaning it's going to take a lot longer to become fluent). Using immersion+srs is a step up, but immersion lacks clarity/control over speed when it comes to picking up words, and SRS sucks at initially imprinting them. Reading is the best way to make initial contact with vocab (since you have complete control over speed, and there's no issue of clarity here), audio/video immersion adds more connections to that word via voice acting/pictures, and finally SRS makes sure you don't forget things and also acts as a light form of exposure in and of itself. Is this all scientifically proven? No. Is it a nice guideline/something to start with? I think so.

Anyways, that's all for now. People will obviously want to know how this worked out for me on a longer scale than just a month, so I'll post some bi-monthly updates. Toodaloo.

It's nearly been 4 months, and I'm up late tonight for no good reason, so here's an update. I'm sitting at 1600 cards for my C2K6K deck (had a month's worth of no new cards -- life reasons), and am still chuggin' away with the same methods. My reviews are manageable, and the manga+media immersion practically takes care of itself. I'm obviously not N1 worthy (yet), but I know I will be some day.

To reiterate, it's really clear now where I was going wrong in the past with regards to my vocab deck:
1) taking my time with reviews -- this was bad. I now stick to a 20 second rule; 10 sec to guess the answer, and 10 sec to look over the answer.
2) having failed cards show up 10 minutes later -- this was very bad. Having to review failed cards every 3-4 cards (I'd usually sit on a card for 2-3 mins) was depressing and momentum breaking. I now have failed cards set to show up 1 hour later (usually when I'm done with reviews+new cards). I review these failed cards as I feel like it (or not) throughout the day.
3) sucky card format -- this was integral. I have screenshots in post #18. Moral of the story: cluttered cards and E - J cards = sucky.
4) using desktop anki -- this was meh. While it's not necessary, I really recommend using anki on your smart phone. It's much less depressing doing reviews while you're laying down or sprawled out somewhere than sitting upright at a computer for a few hours. Plus, it allows adhoc reviewing!

That's basically it. Also, I just remembered that I have started doing one new thing, and that is to whisper sentences aloud when doing reps (basically shadowing). I find it is much less depressing and embarrassing to whisper than to say things out loud. That's it for now, I'll check back when I have something noteworthy to report! Gl all!

edit: also, I forgot to mention an important tidbit. Become really good at forming habits -- I recommend using a calendar of some sort and marking off the days that you do the habit. There's more too it than that, but I'll leave you to do your own research. It's useful for more things than just Japanese obviously. William James has a lot of reasons why habit formation is good (in case you didn't already know).

*Grabs drinks and snack*
Was interesting, thanks for discussing it. I'm in the same position you were of beginning to learn more vocab, and have been using similar methods. I had intended to just do Core, but looked at it and just felt my brain freeze over (didn't help that there were so many numbers early on, I can't handle numbers even in English). A lot was vocab I knew, I didn't understand many of the sentences, didn't like the card format, was pretty obviously just not going to get on well with it. So, I'm making picture cards, using the Core just as a frequency list, and also getting vocab from native media (mostly Tales of games for me). I've noticed my retention for native media cards is drastically better (even when you'd think the words would be trickier), even more so if I understood the whole sentence so was able to add it as a sentence card instead of vocab. Unfortunately, this rarely happens, though, the downside I've found with native media is that mostly I waste a huge amount of time just struggling with it, understanding nothing and finding no words that seem like they'd be good to add. It's encouraging that it seems like it will get easier.

Where do you usually look for game scripts, btw? I have the ones for a few Tales games (Abyss, Vesperia) in English but didn't know where to start to find them in Japanese.

ragdim Wrote:edit: also, I forgot to mention an important tidbit. Become really good at forming habits -- I recommend using a calendar of some sort and marking off the days that you do the habit.

Yep, I do this and it's definitely helped, I have a calender for Anki, tick off the day when I've finished my reps, and note down how many new cards added. At the end of the week, I total up the new cards just to help keep track, and if I did all my reps, I get a shiny gold star like a little kid might. Still working out a reward system with exchanging those - I've learned I respond well to bribery. XD