Explanation Card

(Suspend this card after reading it.)

This is a reworked version of Core6k/Core2k aiming to eliminate a lot of the weaknesses out of the core deck and provide a smoother and less frustrating learning experience.
I would like to go over some of the features of this deck compared to the original core deck:
1. All duplicates have been either removed (if they were not needed) or reworked to not be ambiguous using the hint field.
2. The original iknow order has been restored. This way you start learning common and useful words, as opposed to the 'optimized' deck which started you off by learning every number in both readings.
3. Every kana word word comes with a context snippet on the hint field to make it easier. The reason this is done for kana words and not for kanji words is because kanji carry meaning (which you should become familiar with) within themselves.
Kana on the other hand don't. The result is that reviewing kanji words context free is both viable and recommended (no reliance on specific contexts, faster reviews) while kana words are better learned using a context as assistance.
4. The fields have been reworked to make more sense and make this deck more viable for mining using Yomichan. You can in fact start mining right away using this deck, for example when you see a word in an example sentence you don't know.
For the complete guide on using Anki and mining see https://www.animecards.site/
5. The deck has been shortened. You can only learn a language through input and being eternally stuck on pre-made decks will prevent you from learning Japanese. Finish this deck and move on to making your own cards.
6. The default font (MS UI Gothic) now actually supports Japanese. You can change this to anything you like provided it supports Japanese. The previous deck caused a lot of clueless people to learn Chinese variants as the default font was 'arial' which has no Japanese defined for it causing your system to default to something else (i.e. often Chinese).
7. Images are already included meaning you don't have to separately download them and put them inside your media folder.

What has not been done:
1. Definitions are more or less untouched as they are not problematic. Try to get a feeling for the word through the example rather than frantically trying to recall an exact English word.
2. Not all words have been replaced with kanji where possible. This is not problematic as those words are much more common in kana however and also because if they do pop up in kanji, you can mine them yourself.

Additional instructions for a significantly improved review experience (you should really do everything listed there!):
- Go into 'Tools' -> 'Preferences' and set the Learn ahead limit to 90 minutes.
- In the same tab set 'Show new cards before reviews'
-Go into your group options and create a new group for this deck (call it whatever you want).
- Under the 'New cards' tab set your steps to '1 10 60'
- Under the same tab set your default ease to '280%'
- Under the 'Reviews' tab set 'Maximum reviews/Day' to 9999
- Under the 'Lapses' tab set steps to '10 60'
- Under the same tab set 'New interval' to 10%
- Under the same tab set 'Leech threshold' to 99 lapses
- Under the same tab set 'Leech action' to 'Tag only'

Additional tips and info:
- The 'hint' field generally serves to disambiguate words and readings. Even when you mine a lot of words will have several readings. Be aware of this and use it.
- There is no way you can know Japanese without being aware of on-yomi and kun-yomi readings. You will naturally acquire and become able to tell which is which.
- DoJG is the best English grammar resource and despite being a 'dicitonary' only covers basic information. Doing a variant of the DJT DoJG deck is recommended.
- As you get better at Japanese your retention rate will significantly go up. An optimal retention rate is around 90%. If you retention rate consistently exceeds that you can crank up 'interval modifier' and 'new interval' even more.
This way you will get significantly less reviews especially once you know a lot and also end up making less cards at general. At 20k total cards I am spending around 10 minutes on my daily reviews.
- Don't use the field 'Sentence-English' in your mined cards. In fact, get rid of it once you have a solid understanding of Japanese. When you mine something you should already have understood the sentence using the additional information on your cards.