Hello
I started learning Japanese this year. I did RTK and KO since my prior knowledge of Japanese was nothing. So now I'm going to mine my own sentences. My idea was to go jap - jap right from the start, since I have some vocabulary and kanji under my belt now after KO. By playing games, listening to the news, reading magazines I bought from Japan, and all those sources I started to get some words, so that I'd find the sentences for those words in jap-jap dictionaries. But when I started to make my first card the doubt came. In AJATT blog for example, Khatz says you have to begin by looking for definitions of words you already know, so that's how I did. From my notes in a notebook the first word in the line was しっかり, so I went to see in 3 different jap - jap dictionaries the definition of the word. I read the 3 definitions, and chose the one I understood most, which was: "しっかり:　堅固なさま。容易に揺らいだり崩れたりしないさま。". Along with it there was the following example sentence: "靴ひもをしっかり結ぶ。". What I did was to put this sentence in the front part of the card. In the back part though I was kind of confused of what to put. At first I attached the しっかり definition I got, but within that definition I didn't know what 堅固 meant, so I looked for that one too, the same with 揺らぐ, even considering I could understand that from context. So I also put the definition for those in the back card. But upon those definitions there were other words I didn't know, and so I'd look more and more and more. At the end my card was like this:

front:
靴ひもをしっかり結ぶ。

（靴紐を確り結ぶ。）

back:
くつひも　を　しっかり　むすぶ。

しっかり:　堅固なさま。容易に揺らいだり崩れたりしないさま。
堅固（けんご）:　しっかりしていて、壊れにくいこと。
揺らぐ:　ゆらゆらと揺れる。また堅固な基盤（きばん）などがぐらぐらと揺れる。ゆるぐ。揺れ動く。
ゆらゆら:　ゆっくりと繰り返し揺れ動くさま。
ぐらぐら:　物が揺れ動いて安定しないさま。
安定: 物事が落ち着いて、激しい変動がないこと。
変動:　状態や事態が動いて変化すること。
事態: 物事の様子や成り行き。
成り行き:　物事が自然に推移していくようすや過程。また、その結果。
推移:　時が経過すること。
経過:　時間が過ぎてゆくこと。

Now, is it correct? Is this how it's supossed to be? What I did was to add definition for every word I'd found and didn't know the meaning. I'd also put the reading for kanjis I didn't know how to read. But I'm not sure if the card has to be that long, or maybe I should get each definition and put each one in a different card? Or maybe it's not that, and it's all wrong. I'm confused, if you could give me an opinion, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you in advance.
Oh, and sorry if I created the topic in the wrong section ,I wasn't sure where to create it

Dude, you will spend hours on each card if you do that. Just put japanese definitions of the words in the sentence. If you need explanations for words in the definitions, make new cards for them, it's not like you're going to learn words from definitions on the back of cards anyway.

If you're incredibly determined, certainly, that card will work, but I think you're going to be exhausting yourself mentally going through each and every card.

For one thing, since you already have a general idea of what しっかり means, I don't think you need to add the definition. Seeing the word used in many other sentences will give you a better impression of its different nuances. I don't think you can really pick that up properly from a definition.

As Tobberoth stated, you only need to put the definitions of the words that are actually in the sentence.

This is how your card should look:

front:
靴ひもをしっかり結ぶ。
（靴紐を確り結ぶ。）

back:
くつひも　を　しっかり　むすぶ。
靴：はきものの一．
ひも：結んだり縛ったりする細長い物．
結ぶ：はなれているものをつなぐ．

If you know a word, obviously, you can just leave it out. You can also, if necessary, put furigana next to a kanji you don't know how to say. I suggest you use this site to get your definitions, since they are very simple and straight to the point. Because the definitions are so simple, it's usually easy enough to figure out, through context, a word you don't know.

I also think, ideally, you should be using sentences that have only one vocabulary word you do not know.

Yeah, shoot for i + 1 with your sentences to minimize this kind of thing. Of course, that's not always possible. I think it's fine for you to make cards like this for quick reference, but the extra definitions (the ones of the words within the original definitions) should probably be made as separate cards as well. This way you get all of the benefit of the process of looking absolutely everything up, but less of the confusion. The SRS will help you focus on the things you're learning well and the things you are not learning well.

Congrats on going into monolingual sentences!

J-J sentences can be confusing at times.Especially dictionary lookups. Going monolingual is good though. It forces you to work with japanese instead of english. But what i've found out is that, by exposing myself to japanese in context that the definition is much more efficient then random one-word lookups. Hence full japanese sentence. But yea, best to go J-J-short concise examples when using the SRS

"Jap" is a discriminatory term. Use "jap." to signify an abbreviation. Or just put J.

I'm not sure how bad 'jap' is considered these days, but I know I cringe every time I see it, picturing some old WWII vet talking about 'them Japs'. Reeks of the 'other' mainstream stereotypical view towards Japan (aside from the 'wacky fetishism' one), where every discourse is framed as postwar/imperialist.

I'm fond of .jp myself. Stylish. ;p

thank you all for the advice, I already changed the card and added other ones following it
Oh, and thank you for the dictionary advice too..
oops, I'm sorry, I didn't intend to offend anyone, just forgot to put "." to indicate abbreviation, won't do it again

nest0r Wrote:I'm not sure how bad 'jap' is considered these days

It's used mistakenly so much these days, and it's the most logical abbreviation, so I think it's kind of turned into one of those "in context" things.

I've been called a "Jap", in a discriminatory way, maybe 2 times in the US. Each time I was completely shocked that somebody actually knew it. Most people who know it's a discriminatory term wouldn't ever use it. Most people who would use a racist word don't even know the difference between China and Japan (I'm stereotyping stereotyping people, yay!)

J-J, J-E and E-J are very common abbreviations in reference to the type of dictionary you're using.

About the way you do cards: It'll change as time goes on. What may need to be J-E definitions early on can turn into simple J-J if not later more verbose J-J with sample sentence(s). The only perfect way is the way that works for you at the moment. Now, one can easily say "change when you're ready" but sometimes you need to be tossed into the deep end as it is easy to hold onto the safety net that is a J-E dictionary.

Also, Kenkyusha is a J-E dictionary, but it has some great J-J short definitions for many of the entries which makes a nice stop gap. Meikyo seems to be a good dictionary for J-J also, but I've not used it much.