First of all, thank you community! I have been reading some motivational posts here for about two months, and am at 1800 heisig kanji (using anki). I am facing many problems, which motivated me to make an account (finally!) and ask for help. I am relying on you!

I am not currently enrolled in any Japanese classes. So here are my queries.

1>How much grammar do I REALLY need to know?That is , after building a strong base, how much grammar can I PICK up (PL1 and PL4)?
I am using Tae Kim , Japanese The Manga Way, Core10k and JapanesePod101.
So if I finish Tae Kim and Japanese The Manga Way, aside from vocabulary, do I need any advanced resources?
This is my way to do all of my studies -
a> Build a strong base (Basic Script, Vocab,Grammar).
b> Dive into the medium and study slowly till you get the 'hang' of it.
Is it the right approach in learning japanese?

2>How to learn vocabulary effectively. I have searched and found two ways ->
a)Using Core Decks - The 'list' of 10K most common Japanese Words. Please can you describe your experience with the Core Deck (or any List Deck) and how you did it? D
or
b)Not Using Core Decks - Go all commando, and tackle the words as they come. The problem is I want to SRS Vocab also, but then I'd have to make my own deck. If it were PC, then there would be no problem, since I could suspend core cards and enable the ones that come across. But I am primarily an android user. AnkiDroid is not easy to navigate.

I want to learn Japanese most effectively and without wasting any time. So what is the best way to learn Vocabulary?

Also, To read a manga like Yatsubato, Doraemon, Naruto, how much VOCAB and grammar do I need to know?

This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook, or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car. There is no simple answer because every case is different and depends on so many factors that it's barely worth even discussing. I'd wager that if you stick with studying Japanese you'll come to a point where you look back on the current you who asked this question and simply laugh.

I apologize that this is a non-answer. The only actual answer would be to use programs to extract all the vocabulary from a piece of work you want to read and learn them, along with whichever grammar structures you come across. The numbers themselves don't matter and even if such things were quantifiable their specificity would ultimately be meaningless, like any theoretical answers to the questions I posed above would be.

As Roketzu said, there are too many factors to give a simple answer. Here's what I did to figure out whether I was ready for a particular native text (and this method worked great for me):

1. Pick up text and try reading it.
2. If I can handle it (i.e. I don't feel like quitting out of frustration), then keep reading. If it's too hard, set it down and continue studying and using level-appropriate materials.
3. Pick up the text again 2-3 months later.
4. If I can handle it (i.e. I don't feel like quitting out of frustration), then keep reading. If it's too hard, set it down and continue studying and using level-appropriate materials.
5. Repeat above steps until successful.

To give you a more concrete answer, however, I didn't start reading novels until after I had passed N2, and I didn't complete my first novel until after I had passed N1. Reading a novel requires a lot of stamina, and I just couldn't read fast enough at the N2 level to maintain my motivation. Reading short stories and essays was much more satisfying than novels early on.

I actually really enjoyed the short stories and essays in my JLPT materials, but I'm also the kind of person who's fascinated by the behavior of obscure animals and the other random academic/business/autobiographical topics those texts tend to be about. For people who aren't as hyper-intellectual as I am, I recommend Japanese folklore, e.g. Momotaro (桃太郎) and similar stories. I also really enjoyed reading rakugo (落語) scripts, which are often hilarious. One of my favorites is Afraid of Manju (饅頭恐い).

*Manju is a seriously delicious Japanese confection.

To be able to read Yotsubato! slowly, and with the help of the English translation, you need about a thousand words (you don't need Kanji). Basically nothing. You can start reading Yotsubato! two months into your vocab learning. What you need more of is grammar, and some basic understanding of slang.

To be able to read Yotsubato! comfortably, you need about 3500-4000 words, a few hundred Kanji (just to keep you from having to read hiragana all the time), and grammar on an intermediate level (pretty much everything in Tae Kim's guide).

To be able to read something like Death Note (a difficult manga) fairly comfortably, 5000 words (preferably with Kanji, but it's not an absolute must, since it has furigana), and intermediate to advanced grammar skills.

To be able to read an easy novel, I'd say 7500 words or so, including how to write them (so 2000+ Kanji), and advanced grammar skills. With difficult novels, the sky's the limit. I'm sure I could find an English novel I can't read, if I looked hard enough.

P.S. As long as you learn your vocab by drilling sentences rather than just plain vocab drills, and you make sure to keep reading level appropriate materials while you study your vocab, grammar should not be a worry at all. I just mentioned grammar to make it clear that drilling vocab alone won't allow you to read a novel, no matter how many words you learn. I wasn't trying to suggest that you need to actually study grammar, at least not beyond a basic level. You probably need to study a little bit of it, to get yourself started with Yotsubato!. After that, reading increasingly difficult manga and drilling increasingly complex sentences will take care of it.

Roketzu Wrote:This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook]

One.

Roketzu Wrote:or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car.

A few dozen. That's how many I practiced on while I was getting my license, in my average sized home town.

Re vocab required, "vocab required for this book" is much less than "vocab required for books in this genre" and very much less than "vocab required for anything in general".

For example this deck has all the words from the first 12 novels of the very easy Zero no Tsukaima series (which I'm currently reading), minus those in core 2k, and weighs in at a modest 5489 cards (excluding grammar junk like particles etc).

So a focused study of a mere ~7500 words could bring ~12 light novels into range, though it would be tough going without some reasonably well-developed comprehension skills.

Stansfield123 Wrote:

Roketzu Wrote:This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook]

One.

Roketzu Wrote:or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car.

A few dozen. That's how many I practiced on while I was getting my license, in my average sized home town.

The point is that they are barely related to one another, and giving numbers to questions like this tells someone very little.

"To be able to read an easy novel, I'd say 7500 words or so, including how to write them."

Not sure I follow here, what has the ability to write words got to do with reading exactly?

Roketzu Wrote:This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook, or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car. There is no simple answer because every case is different and depends on so many factors that it's barely worth even discussing. I'd wager that if you stick with studying Japanese you'll come to a point where you look back on the current you who asked this question and simply laugh.

I apologize that this is a non-answer. The only actual answer would be to use programs to extract all the vocabulary from a piece of work you want to read and learn them, along with whichever grammar structures you come across. The numbers themselves don't matter and even if such things were quantifiable their specificity would ultimately be meaningless, like any theoretical answers to the questions I posed above would be.

Dishonest. There are general ballpark figures that you could give him. For example once you have ~3000-5000 words you can generally read most shounen manga (what he seems to be interested in) without much trouble. Can even start manga at 1000 words if it has furigana, but you'll be a lot more dictionary reliant.

Also OP I recommend adding sentences not lone vocab words.

ryuudou Wrote:

Roketzu Wrote:This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook, or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car. There is no simple answer because every case is different and depends on so many factors that it's barely worth even discussing. I'd wager that if you stick with studying Japanese you'll come to a point where you look back on the current you who asked this question and simply laugh.

I apologize that this is a non-answer. The only actual answer would be to use programs to extract all the vocabulary from a piece of work you want to read and learn them, along with whichever grammar structures you come across. The numbers themselves don't matter and even if such things were quantifiable their specificity would ultimately be meaningless, like any theoretical answers to the questions I posed above would be.

Dishonest. There are general ballpark figures that you could give him. For example once you have ~3000-5000 words you can generally read most shounen manga (what he seems to be interested in) without much trouble. Can even start manga at 1000 words if it has furigana, but you'll be a lot more dictionary reliant.

Also OP I recommend adding sentences not lone vocab words.

I stand by what I said. Your numbers are not only meaningless, but more dishonest than anything I wrote. But then, I'm someone who likes to read for pleasure, something I find requires good comprehension rather than simply passable comprehension. Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume that most people would prefer their reading experience to be a smooth one, not one that leads to a 'backlog' of new vocabulary, which anyone reading manga with a vocabulary of merely 3000-5000 certainly would end up with.

Roketzu Wrote:

ryuudou Wrote:

Roketzu Wrote:This is like asking how many recipes must one memorize before one starts to cook, or how many roads must one be familiar with before driving a car. There is no simple answer because every case is different and depends on so many factors that it's barely worth even discussing. I'd wager that if you stick with studying Japanese you'll come to a point where you look back on the current you who asked this question and simply laugh.

I apologize that this is a non-answer. The only actual answer would be to use programs to extract all the vocabulary from a piece of work you want to read and learn them, along with whichever grammar structures you come across. The numbers themselves don't matter and even if such things were quantifiable their specificity would ultimately be meaningless, like any theoretical answers to the questions I posed above would be.

Dishonest. There are general ballpark figures that you could give him. For example once you have ~3000-5000 words you can generally read most shounen manga (what he seems to be interested in) without much trouble. Can even start manga at 1000 words if it has furigana, but you'll be a lot more dictionary reliant.

Also OP I recommend adding sentences not lone vocab words.

I stand by what I said. Your numbers are not only meaningless, but more dishonest than anything I wrote.

And I stand by what I said. Your posting was not only meaningless, but dishonest like I mentioned. There are general brackets of vocabulary milestones that can be given to fresh learners with certain kinds of media in mind. To tell a fresh learner "there's nothing I can tell you in regards to this" is simply lying to him or not applying yourself.

Roketzu Wrote:a vocabulary of merely 3000-5000 certainly would end up with.

You vastly overestimate the majority of manga aimed at children and teenagers. Manga in itself is heavily based on pictures and tends to not have much narration.

ryuudou Wrote:There are general brackets of vocabulary milestones that can be given to fresh learners with certain kinds of media in mind. To tell a fresh learner "there's nothing I can tell you in regards to this" is simply lying to him or not applying yourself.

"You pass this fuzzy line and you'll have a fuzzy understanding of this fuzzy area in which certain media is aimed at." Sorry, I just don't find any of it meaningful. If the OP does then great. Personally if someone told me I'd be able to read X manga upon reaching Y number of vocabulary, and then I got to that number and wasn't satisfied with my reading ability I'd first feel that I'd been lied to, but then hopefully come to the conclusion that the question wasn't even answerable in any meaningful way to begin with. I dunno, maybe for an absolute beginner any number at all is better than nothing.

Let's stay on topic.

2,000 words is the general consensus as the bare minimum to get you by in any language. I've done 1,500 of the core2k, but also know maybe 1,000 or so additional words from watching ridiculous amounts of anime, spending time in Japan, etc. At my level, I can easily read Yotsubato and similar manga (I'd also recommend NG Life as a hilarious and easy manga, and Natsume Yuujinchou as a kind of simple but heartful and truly enjoyable manga). I can have basic conversations with Japan people. I've watched some anime and movies without subs and I don't understand everything, but I can follow along easily with no outside knowledge.

I think at any level, you can find native materiel to enjoy. If you aren't there yet, spam 1,000 words and then try again. I think native materiel is an essential part of your study at every level as well, because it teaches you real grammar, it teaches you how to actually use the words your vocab deck is introducing you to, and most importantly, it teaches you that Japanese is fun, and keeps you motivated. Whenever I'm on a "down" time in my Japanese journey, it always starts with me no longer playing Japanese Pokemon or something because I'm "too busy" and I don't prioritize immersion enough. But soon enough I associate Japanese with boring anki and stop practicing at all. ALWAYS make sure you have time for native materiel in your study routine. Even if you can't find anything you can understand now, just get something you like that others tell you is easy enough to understand, and keep that materiel around you. One day, just like magic, it will suddenly make sense.

[RawToast]

It's not a novel, but there have been 5562 words in NHK News Easy over the last 6 months

This site has collected the words http://www.kanjiwebeasy.com/

To reply to the OP's other questions:

manman2a Wrote:How much grammar do I REALLY need to know? That is, after building a strong base, how much grammar can I PICK up (PL1 and PL4)?

First, I have no clue what PL1 and PL4 mean. Anyway, I can't really give you a solid number, but I had to look up most grammar points in my reference books and online, probably 70-80%. Regardless, I always looked up the grammar points I understood in context just to confirm my intuition, if anything. In any case, my preferred reference books are the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar series, and my preferred online resources are jgram.org and Google.

manman2a Wrote:So if I finish Tae Kim and Japanese The Manga Way, aside from vocabulary, do I need any advanced resources?

As long as you have a computer and an Internet connection, you don't need any advanced resources. However, I strongly recommend them. Good learning materials make learning much easier since they:

(1) Include new vocabulary with the accompanying grammar and reading section
(2) Include new grammar in the accompanying vocab and reading sections
(3) Reuse both vocab and grammar throughout the materials.

As for the materials, I recommend the Kanzen Master series.

manman2a Wrote:This is my way to do all of my studies -
a> Build a strong base (Basic Script, Vocab,Grammar).
b> Dive into the medium and study slowly till you get the 'hang' of it.
Is it the right approach in learning japanese?

This sounds about right. You should initially spend more time studying and less time with native materials, and then gradually start spending more and more time with native materials and less and less time studying. Keep in mind, however, that I still study Japanese even though I've passed JLPT N1 and work part-time as a professional translator. Although, I should add that much of what I study isn't really essential to communication (I basically study stuff like what yudantaiteki and drdunlap post, e.g. the blue text in drdunlap's recent post).

manman2a Wrote:I have searched and found two ways [to learn vocabulary effectively] ->
a)Using Core Decks
b)Not Using Core Decks

I want to learn Japanese most effectively and without wasting any time. So what is the best way to learn Vocabulary?

I did both, and I recommend that you do too. Using the Core Decks will introduce you to the most essential vocabulary and save you all the time you would've spent making your own decks. However, the Core Decks don't include every word you'll come across. So it's a good idea to create your own vocabulary flashcards after you finish the Core Decks.

cb4960 (our resident toolmaker) created a great program called Epwing2Anki (see thread) that allows you to make Anki vocabulary flashcards in no time. I've used it to make hundreds of flashcards in minutes. The program will probably take an hour or two to figure out and set up, but it will save you many more hours in the long run.

If you really want to get into the fine details of effectively and quickly learning vocabulary, I recommend nest0r's (our former research archivist and caustic debater) blog ja-dark. Although I think nest0r's ja-minimal method is too codified and convoluted to be practical, there is no question that the blog provides plenty of useful summaries and links to relevant research regarding vocabulary acquisition.

Concerning the vocabulary estimates are essential vs. vocabulary estimates are impossible debate
Before the debate gets out of hand, let me point out two things:

(1) Roketzu is right that any number you give won't be precise because there are other factors at play (e.g. your reading speed, the author's style, or even the genre of the text).
(2) However, ryuudou is also right to stress that a concrete estimate of the vocabulary needed to read certain material is helpful because, as a rough estimate, it is helpful. Sure, you'll never know whether you can pick up Death Note and start reading it if you know you have 5,000 mature vocabulary flash cards, but that number can serve as motivation and will at least let you know whether it'll be worth your time to even try.

At any rate, I don't really see the point of the debate. It's not like numerical estimates are either useless or essential—and there is no middle ground. They have their purpose, but they have their limits too.

I feel like people putting figures like 7500 words is really daunting and unhelpful. You mean to say someone could spend a year or more doing core 6k and still be unable to look at native material? I would quit.

What you've got to understand is that you should be ready to use a dictionary with everything you read and listen to, because you will never never understand everything. But the best method is to highlight while reading and come back and look up and add to anki in study time later. This will be torturous if you understand less than half of the text though so you need to choose stuff suitable for your level. For someone coming to the end of the beginner stage who know's a decent amount of grammar and around 2,000 words, something like like Yotsubato!, Chi's Sweet Home, Shirokuma Cafe and Doraemon should work well. They will not present you with 7500 words and doing that before reading them is super overkill.

I am at between 2,000-3,000 words and Doraemon presents me with almost zero new words (or at least not any that I can't work out without looking up). However, a book of short stories I was given by my teacher for my studies next year is horribly hard, though I must say, I can still read a few of the stories even though there is no furigana or anything. For that reason, I have not read through that book yet, but have set myself a plan of progressing from material like Doraemon and Yotsubato, up to slightly harder manga up to the children's novels that inspired the ghibli film Kiki's Delivery Service, then finally to those short stories. I've checked Kiki out on Amazon jp preview and the number of unknowns in the first few pages is really suprisingly low so I know with some reading practice and some anki hopefully the book will be at my level. One day I hope I could read a detective novel like my classmate...

I am super guilty of trying to read things way above me, but if you think really carefully about how many unknowns you will run into in a page of a book, and properly choose the book that has only a light sprinkling, you should be able to have a good reading experience. No matter how much you love a book, if there's several unknowns in every sentence, you're going to get annoyed really fast and start thinking you need 7500 words to be able to read.

Helena-san no iutoori.

The thing is, all kinds of things have all kinds of different vocabulary, so just "learning vocabulary" in the abstract and then hoping to read a book will tend to be disappointing.

Tatoeba: A girl who had completed a four-year Universtity course in Japanese, when she joined in one of the regular Skype conversations I have with my friend said that it took her quite a while to learn "our vocabulary". We don't use any special vocabulary, and nothing terribly advanced most of the time, but she had learned textbook vocabulary and we chat about things in general that interest us - the same things we used to talk about in English (yes, we have a Japanese-only relationship now).

I asked our graduate friend (in Japanese of course) how her university Conversation Circle managed for vocabulary and she said that their conversation was directed by the things they had learned in their books. I thought "That isn't using Japanese, that's just practicing Japanese."

Once you have very basic vocabulary, I would make the material you use your vocab list and build your anki decks from that. But then I have never gotten on with pre-made decks. I don't need to know 政治体制. I never use it in real life (I do know it now, but by getting to it naturally and organically).

I really stopped using vocab lists very early. When I was about half way through Genki 1 (which I stumbled through quickly and rather haphazardly, without doing the exercises*, in order to get grammar basics), I started ploughing through Japanese subtitled anime looking up every other word and adding it to Anki. It took me days to watch 借りぐらしのアリエッティ (my first). I don't recommend that by the way. I probably should have started more gently. But that is essentially how I built vocabulary and still do.

Currently I am using some first-grade kanji software on my 3DS (mostly to practice writing because I have a paper phobia and was starting to forget even how to write kana although I have no trouble reading them). I am learning a lot of words from that. 千羽鶴, あやとり, 独楽：words every five-year-old knows but a lot of JSL graduates don't.

The point is that even when you know a ton of vocabulary you will still find a lot of new words in every new area you go into. The best way, I firmly believe, is to learn them as you go along.

PS Another advantage of making your grammar list from your material is that the words have associations rather than just being off a list. "Ah yes that was what they said when Aiko fell into the well". This a) makes them more memorable and b) helps you know how they are actually used.

*I actually wrote little stories around the grammar points instead, because the whole exercise format ties my doll-mind in knots, even in English.

@CureDolly

I very much agree with making the material you use into your vocab list. Most of my words were picked up from dramas or were Anki cards made from drama transcripts. A smaller section of them are from anime and songs and another larger chunk from my textbook, Japanese for Everyone. I am trying to finally finish my textbook sentence cards in Anki because I feel like it's the only thing that really helps with grammar, but my main focus recently has been getting subs2srs to finally work for me by sorting my cards using the Morphman 3 Anki addon. I hope to mine from books in the future, but I want to finish my textbook sentence cards and 2000 kanji first (on about 700, with some more I can recognise in certain words but haven't studied), because then I will have left to worry about and I can focus on the cards I create from books. I definitely have no desire to work from an out of context, dry word list like core 2k, 6k or 10k though. I started the optimised 10k a while back and it completely burned me out I coulnd't bear it after 1k, because it felt like a never ending task of waiting to enjoy native material instead of doing it now, as I mentioned, if I had thought I needed 7500 words for native material I would have quit.

I also agree about how your vocab really depends on your interests and situation. My Japanese teacher was super impressed when I whipped out the word for binoculars in my first lesson simply because I had been learning words from a drama but soon she realised my handwriting of kanji was appalling and my grammar lacking in some noticeable spots. I also know some music vocab and kansai-ben from my following of Osaka girls' rock band, Scandal. All of this weird stuff at a rather basic level makes for a completely unpredictable mix, but it's best to learn what you're interested in not just the most common stuff, because what you're interested in is what you want to be able to talk about! You don't want to be the perfect small-talker who can talk a little bit about everything but nothing about what you really want to.

My vocabulary comes from: anime, texty games (visual novels, RPGs - I barely play non-texty games currently), books (children's novels), writing and talking (one discovers the words one needs), serendipity (finding word B while looking for examples of word A) other places like the occasional textbook, probably in that order.

Bear in mind that fundamental vocabulary, the nuts and bolts of the language (even the less basic ones) you are going to encounter pretty much wherever you get your vocabulary from. On top of that every area has its particular vocabulary. You can spend ages learning "newspaper language" (which is what the Core decks seem to specialize in to me, but my exposure is limited so I could be wrong) and be at a loss in a novel.

When I started watching a lot of Precure I was humorously aware that I was getting a disproportionate vocabulary for talking about fighting, defeating, hitting etc. But it was useful since I was going to be watching more Precure. I always rather like コテンパン (though I am not usually a slapstick fan).

I make heavy use of sentences in Anki both for exemplifying word use and grammar. (I do my sentence Anki almost entirely by ear. If I have to look at the Japanese text I fail the card). Most of the words I have in my sentence deck I also have in a single-word vocabuary deck.

I find words stick much better when you have examples of their use though.

CureDolly Wrote:My vocabulary comes from: anime, texty games (visual novels, RPGs - I barely play non-texty games currently), books (children's novels), writing and talking (one discovers the words one needs), serendipity (finding word B while looking for examples of word A) other places like the occasional textbook, probably in that order.

Bear in mind that fundamental vocabulary, the nuts and bolts of the language (even the less basic ones) you are going to encounter pretty much wherever you get your vocabulary from. On top of that every area has its particular vocabulary. You can spend ages learning "newspaper language" (which is what the Core decks seem to specialize in to me, but my exposure is limited so I could be wrong) and be at a loss in a novel.

I find words stick much better when you have examples of their use though.

Come to think of it some of my words come from things like writing too, and a few bits from Persona 3 Portable which I played for quite a while but was quite hard for me to read without furigana. I really don't have a good count for my words because there are many I've learnt that I never really needed to send through anki, as I've seen now I've installed morphman and it will still present me with words I know.

Your point about newspaper language is poignant because the core 2k, 6k and 10k decks ARE from newspaper frequency lists as you said and therefore, although the 2k will include many many words you find in all media as you said, as you go along through 6k and 10k trying to reach that magic 7500 words so you can read that novel you really want to read, you are getting less and less value and would definitely be better of learning your words from that novel, which would enable you to read other similar novels more quickly too.

In terms of types of decks and cards, I have a textbook deck, a Kanji deck, a Subs2srs deck fro dramas, a News deck that I used for one article and can't rally be bothered with right now, and an older deck where I mined from drama transcripts, which is the only deck O have with a mixture of vocab and sentence cards. I prefer to just try and find sentences with only one unknown. This is hard, which is why I had vocab in thtmat deck, but now I have morphman, it will find the sentences with one unknown in for me.

Oh me too with not knowing how many words I know. Occasionally I have been asked and I just have no idea. They aren't all in my Anki by a long way.

My ideal sentence I would say has one new word or grammar point and a couple of newish words (and/or another grammar point) that I am not completely solid with. That way it is doing a bit of learning and a bit of consolidating. I also like to find other uses/nuances of words I know.

Often I add more than one, sometimes several, sentences for a new word, to show its range of meaning, and I try to make them do double duty by containing one or more useful "secondaries". And of course those sentences can also contain an actual new-new word.

That's ideal, of course. One can't always get that and it may not be the best use of time to try too hard to. Still it very often works out, I find.

I tend to keep a lot of sentences randomized on my iPod so I can do extra-Anki reviewing while I am out or doing a physical task. Though I like listening to 童話 too.

Interesting about the Core decks. That confirms my impression.

The words marked Common in Denshi Jisho and (P) in Rikai are also from newspaper lists. However, the frequency numbers in Rikaisama are from novels (5,000 of them I seem to recall). I take more notice of this as I didn't bother with the news even in English.

My current policy is, if a word I encounter is four figures (ie, under 10,000 frequency on the novel scale) I always add it, and if it is over I only add it if I want it or know I will remember it easily. Also if I encounter a word a few times I add it even if I didn't before.

My thinking here is that the quicker you can read and otherwise imbibe media the faster you can acquire words, so it makes strategic sense to acquire them (very roughly) on a frequency basis, so you are most effectively expanding your capacity to acquire more.

PS on games. If you do get a Japanese 3DS, they are very good for furigana. 逆転裁判 (Phoenix Wright), Professor Layton, the wonderful Fantasy Life, Animal Forest, Dragon Quest and Zelda all have them for example. The main (really annoying) exception is Pokemon which has always been kana only (very difficult in my view). X and Y actually brought in kanji, but you have to decide between all-kana and regular text with no furigana. 悔しいね. However Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the 3DS (I love that series) has furigana.

Yeah, that's one reason I really want a 3ds. Omg Mystery Dungeon. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red for GBA was the only pokemon game I ever actually owned. I borrowed my cousins other games. I didn't even know that series continued! I really want to be able to play Persona properly one day though.... Do the Phoenix Wright games really have furigana? I thought it was only the Layton vs Wright game that had it and the rest were full kanji. If they do I will run and get a 3ds now, I love a bit of Phoenix.

I would probably do the iPod thing too but I can't bear electronic voices. I really wanted to use nhk news easy to read and listen at the same time à la L-R technique but it just made me uneasy. I do do it with my subs2srs deck though but that's more to do with the principle of relistening to the same material for better comprehension than it is to do with an auditary anki review.

Oh I am sorry. You could be Wright about Phoenix. I am playing Layton vs Wright now and kind of made the assumption. ごめんなさい.

I understand about electronic voices. They are mostly terrible. I have a Mac and the OSX Kyoko voice is really a lot better than any other electronic voice on the market. Still not human of course (though she can fool people sometimes) but she does the job. I don't think I would do it without her.

I put a recording of her on this page describing my sentences method if you want to hear her.

A cheaper alternative for games is a regular 古い DS. They are region free (except DSi enhanced games I believe). My friend played Dragon Quest 9 on hers (it has furigana) and is Currently playing one of the Final Fantasy games. They don't have furigana but she's doing fine. She is actually my kohai in Japanese but she is a natural kanji wizard! 羨ましい .

@ CureDolly

I still can't deal with her voice... not that I have a mac anyway.

I was thinking about the DS since I don't have much money but I feel like I'd still want a 3ds, not for the tech, but for all the games I want to play on it.

@OP

Since you seem to really want a guide, I think I need to answer you're questions more directly:

1. I think getting stuff in beginners courses down is important, and other stuff is better learned as you go along, referencing a book if you want to, unless you want to do a JLPT test, in which case, you may want to study it properly. I like your choice of resources. Although they don't have questions, you don't need those, just make sure you review the sentences in anki. I think they both have premade decks.

You're approach also seems sound. I think anyone would agree with that.

2. I didn't enjoy core decks. The lack of context burnt me out, however, to be most efficient I feel like the small 2k deck is worth doing, since the most common 2k words is what makes up something like 70-80% of text. Obviously its the rest that really carries the bulk of the meaning though. Jumping in to native material without the 2k will sort of take a lot of fun out of it. But after 2k, you don't need the 6k and the 10k is notoriously useless. Use subs2srs and morphman.

subs2srs can take subtitles and a drama/anime video file and make them into cards. It can process Japanese and English subtitles all at once and so create both sides of the card for you, however the English subs are usually an awful translation, so just use Japanese subs to create the front side. This is where morhman comes in. In order to create the back side yourself effectively, or to even have a good experience with these cards, you need to be finding only 1 unknown word per sentence. Morphman, once set up (difficult) will identify all the vocab you know from Tae Kim, Japanese the Manga Way and core 2k decks, and then will sort you subs2srs deck (or any other you make) so that cards with only one unknown come up first, and the cards build on each other, making this actually more efficient than a core deck, because not only does it build effectively like a core deck, but it uses imagery and context to help your memory (this helps everone's memory, it's just science). Once the cards are sorted, you go in like you're going to learn new cards, but when you are presented with a new card, edit it, look up the unknown word in the sentence at jisho.org (simple copy and paste) and enter in the meaning and reading. Should take less than a minute per card, and will be part of your new card studying time, rather than annoying batch processing before hand. Obviously if you don't have a basis like 2k this won't work too well.

Thus you can watch the first ep of a drama/anime without subs or with Japanese subs (english subs will create a stronger memory of English over the Japanese, removing benifits), start learning the words from that, keep watching the drama/anime every day or every other day, subs2srsing the next episode that comes up after you finished your first deck (don't wait to watch the next episode until you've learnt all the vocab from the first, that's really tiresome if you acutally enjoy the show). And then you can use the episodes you studied as passive listening in your car, on the train, when doing house chores etc. to reinforce all you've learnt and fr listen practice, the most vital type of practice.

As for how much vocab....

Doraemon and Yotsubato! present pretty much zero new words at my level which is about 3,000 words. Grammar... they use basic grammar and slang. The slang is something you can only pick up. Naruto is slang galore and obviously ninja words. However, since I watched a lot of the anime, even though it was English subbed, the ninja words sort of ring a bell so it's not hard. With Naruto it's really helpful that I've watched the anime in Japanese and read the first 14 manga in English. I read Naruto immediately after I learnt kana and then after I learnt some grammar and 200 kanji and still enjoyed it because I already knew the story and was mildly familiar with the weird sentence ending Naruto uses だってばよ！！