Sorry I know I've asked questions about Core 2000 several times up to this point. But more questions keep coming to mind. Lately to go through Core 2000 I've been downloading those individual step decks from Anki. They seem quite good, and they question your knowledge in several different ways. The downside of that being there are 5 cards for each vocab word.

I was wondering on other peoples opinions on this. On one hand it seem really good for ramming the vocab into your head, but on the other hand that means I'll have 10k cards for 2k words and that seems a tad silly.

I also have another Core deck that I haven't used much. It's simply Word in Kanji to Kana + meaning + core sentence example + audio for sentence. That overall seems like a lot less of a hassle to go through. But I find myself wondering if only 1 card per vocab word is really enough to help me remember it.

So basically I'm not sure if I should stick with the step decks or use the other one that I have made. I suppose just doing 1 card per vocab could work with enough exposure to Japanese which (on most days) I get quite a lot of. But I still find myself unsure and would like to hear what others have done.

On a side note has anyone here used premade sentence decks, and are there any really good ones? I don't find myself to fond of the whole sentence mining idea. I simply don't like doing it and it hurts my motivation, but I have no problem working my way through Anki reviews and the like.

On your first question : Im not an expert and don't know these premade decks, but I think 1 card is enough for easy words, maybe 2 cards for harder words?
From my experience, it just takes a long time until they stay in my memory. Maybe because I don't see all those words every day. More reading could help. But time is a factor, as with grammar.
BTW: I use the smart.fm importer, and last time I downloaded compiled Deck 10, I got 200 cards, though the title says it's below 100 items oO

Listen to sentence (front)
Sentence in 漢字・かな + Vocab word (back)
Grade on passive understanding.


Sentence in 漢字 (front)
Listen to sentence + Sentence in かな + vocab word (back)
Grade on ability to speak / remember meaning.

Don't forget to set your leech threshold low (like 3-5).

Not the only way to do it, but it's working well for me. Core-2000 + ~ 1300 sentences of Core-6000 seen so far. Suspension rate is ~9%. ~2800 sentences mature between C2k and C6k.

Arch, I'm using those step decks, and like you I only wanted two cards per word, not five. So I just suspended 3 of the 5 categories of cards. I left myself with only (1) word alone in kanji/kana on the front, with English/audio/picture on the back; and (2) sentence in kanji/kana on the front, with English/audio/picture on the back. Makes the decks go much quicker. Of course, you may have different interests; I'm primarily interested in reading/understanding, so I was happy to go with just recognition.

Alright I finally figured out how to suspend cards in Anki so I think I'll just stick with my core step decks. gotta figure out what cards I want now. I definitely want sentence on front. Not sure about listening on front I might want that. And maybe the word solo on the front. Just gotta think about that for a bit.