Hello, for the past year or so I've been trying to learn Japanese until some friend told me about Anki and its decks.
I'm so used to hear Japanese sentences/dialogues that I can understand what's being said in a daily conversation without problem. (Referring to grammar)
The thing is, I got around to use anki and started with kanjidamage and Japanese Core 2000, and today after almost a month I recently discovered that there are decks for Japanese core from 1000 to 6000 so that came as a big surprise.
My question is, how do I need to study these decks? What would you guys recommend to be able to fully read things in Japanese within some years, I have more than enough time to get into it but I realized I had been doing it all wrong.
What's the proper order to study Japanese core? What can I use to get the most out of it, as in which Japanese core decks can I use?
The main goal is to be able to read novels and such in Japanese so obviously just common words won't do.

[s0apgun]

http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110

Most people here have used Nukemarine's i+1 optimized Core6k deck.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1102215805

After reaching 3000 words I realized I still couldn't understand much without a more extensive grammar understanding (even though I thought I understood a lot). So, try doing the Tae Kim grammar deck along side of CORE and RevTK.

The most important tip we can give you is to timebox and review under a strict schedule every day (preferably at the same time). Its not that important HOW you learn Japanese, as long as you're making daily efforts to improve.

Alright, thanks.
I have some other questions, what's the difference with that and the core10k? I noticed that one has more words on it so I kind of wanted to try that out.
The more words the better, so regarding that, if I wanted a more complex vocabulary what would you recommend? I'm really up for learning more words if possible. Or should I just stick with the one you mentioned?
Also, the RevTK is a single deck only? And yeah I'm really constant when it comes to studying Japanese so there's no problem with that end, in fact I'm willing to learn more if possible (thus why I mention the core10k).

The first 2k words from core 6k are from the core 2k.
The first 6k words from core 10k are from core 6k.
So the best way is to learn all words in the order that they are given.

Core 6k is pretty highly recommended around here. Core10k less so. I never used it, but it sounded like there was some overlap and you end up getting a lot less than 4000 new words. Seems like people mostly finish core 6k and then go off and do their own thing. I guess it just depends how long you feel like spending with dedicated vocab study.

If you do want more words after core6k (and if literary texts are your goal, that's a good attitude because you'll need them), I'd recommend doing what I'm doing: get this deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/194665997 and unsuspend the terms with the tag 'edict'. Those are the terms marked as common in the dictionary EDICT. I'm working my way through those at the moment, and deleting all the unnecessary ones. I'm not done yet, but I calculated that I should have around 13k words by the end.

If you're interested I wrote more about it here:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pi...70#p205770

edit: Just wanted to make it clear that if you do follow my path, you should still be doing core6k first.

Thanks for the reply.
But what about Nukemarine's i+1 optimized Core6k deck? Can I just use this or 6k alone?
Yes, my goal is to be able to read light novels and novels in general so I would definitely follow your path.

Edit. By the way I'm totally new with anki stuff so I'm not too sure about the "unsuspend the terms with the tag 'edict'" part.
So basically you're saying that I should continue with that other deck after I'm done 6k?
And just a more personal question, is this method working with you? Are you now able to read some form of literary text?

Edit.
What's RTK and is it good? I'm not exactly sure how to handle all of this. And the more I read around here just keeps confusing me.
Maybe Tae kim+6k for now? ...

Ok first off, if this is confusing you, you'll probably want to read up a bit about some anki basics. Stuff like: the definitions of production and recognition, note types and card formatting, and the different options for 'cramming'.

But Nukemarine's i+1 deck contains the same vocab as any core6k deck, it is just rearranged in a more logical order so that you can simply leave every item unsuspended and slowly work through the bulk of the deck. You see, normally when you have a huge deck of 1,000+ cards, you 'suspend' all cards (by going browse->click card->suspend), which means you cant review them. They won't show up in your old or new cards for the day. So what you do is just unsuspend the relevant stuff you want to study and work through that, then unsuspend some more. Nukemarine's just made it a little easier for you.

As for the 'edict' thing, tags just allow you to categorize information and you can go in the browser, look up some tag and then deal only with the cards with those tags. Coreplus is a huge deck of over 20k cards, so you'll only want to unsuspend the 'edict' ones and you do that by looking for that tag.

And yeah, I'd say its working for me. My study program is basically just "SRS like a madman", so I don't get much else done. But I'm reading the J-J dictionary at least, and that doesn't give me any problems. I can easily work through texts with intermittent references to a dictionary. Pretty good considering I had very little literacy just a year ago.

Okay, but what about RTK? And what would you recommend for gammar in general? Because I was just about to use that 6k deck and then the next one you suggested.
Thanks for the answers again.

RTK is essential in my opinion. Do RTK1+supplement or RTK1+3. Skip RTK2.

As for grammar, I'm minimalist. Do tae-kim and make up some cards testing conjugations and whatever else. Don't need cloze-deleted sentences or anything fancy, just study the patterns.

But you don't need to do EXACTLY what I did. The type of stuff we are talking about here is discussed EVERYWHERE around here. You should take a look at some other threads. Shop around for some different opinions/resources and then come to your own conclusions.

I'll do that, thanks for your help.

[s0apgun]

RTK = Reviewing The Kanji book/method by James Heisig

The Heisig technique requires you to create and remember stories for individual kanji to learn the meaning but not the reading. I recommend using this site (http://kanji.koohii.com/) to use the RevTK software and user submitted stories.

http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Main_Page

The importance of RTK is highly debated on here, a nice middle ground between doing all of RTK or not doing it... is to do RTK Lite which is around 600 Kanji.

173 kanji make up 50% all kanji in Wikipedia.
454 kanji cover 75% of all kanji in Wikipedia.
874 kanji cover 90%
1214 kanji cover 95%
2061 kanji cover 99%
2456 kanji cover 99.5%
3489 kanji cover 99.9%

Use the Nukemarine i+1 deck because it is the same vocab list as the others but it is sorted in a fashion that makes it easier for you to remember by presenting you with the least amount of new kanji at a time, thus learning the readings is a breeze.

CORE6k is the sentences and audio ripped from iKnow.jp and CORE10k was ripped by some phone app that I think includes words from CORE6K plus some with a lot of differences. I would say do 3k sentences and introduce some easy reading like NHK News Easy. Then finish 6k while continuing reading and from there just read A LOT while adding unknown words that you encounter into your own personal deck.

I would read through the Tae Kim guide and do the Anki deck of it. Reading through will give you nice explanations and the deck will make you practice clozed delete, typing with an IME, and make sure you don't forget what you learned. The other basic grammar resource I recommend is Japanese the Manga Way. Beyond that would be the Kanzen Master grammar books made for JLPT 3,2, and 1.

TL;DR- RTK Lite, Nukemarine CORE6k, & Tae Kim.

the thing that's special about core is that is has good audio to accompany all these words.
1. It helps your listening in general by turning sounds into understandable sentences.
2. It gives you correct pronounciation of this word from the very beginning.
3. It's more interesting that just reading.
I did core 6 and 10k and found it to be great. 6 is better but 10 is also a fantastic resource... The criticism of 10k is valid but exaggerated. In the end there may be 300 redundant entries, but having that high quality audio and example senntences make it a fantastic resource.

I can't recommend any premade decks, but if you want to make your own deck, you can download the Core 6000 data and audio files from https://sites.google.com/site/ankinihongo/home/kore or http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9762.

"Core 10k" is what people call the data that overture2112 extracted from the Japanese Sensei iPhone app. See the japanese 先生 = core 10000? thread. The Japanese Sensei app uses the same example sentences, but they have different (and in my opinion not as good) audio files. There are 9669 words and sentences. When I compared kore.txt and the Core10kv4 deck, the exactly same versions of 5673 words and 3888 sentences were included in both of them, and maybe 1000-2000 more sentences only had small differences.