Japanese Mining Deck Template

Anime Cards Sample Deck This deck provides a template you can use to make mining cards with Yomichan. It includes a number of different cards and explanations regarding the different types of information you can include on the cards. Cards overview

• Sample Card #1
Standard vocabulary card without an example. Functional but not recommended. Can be fully automatically generated. {expression} {reading} {glossary-brief} {audio}
• Sample Card #2
Card with an example sentence. Example sentences are important and you should always include one. Beyond finding out how to use the word, it will make the word a lot more memorable especially if you are using a context you are familiar with. This is especially useful on lapses. The same fields are used as for the standard vocabulary card but you add the sentence manually in most cases. Yomichan has a field that adds the sentence automatically but I found it too unreliable too use as it is incapable of determining what the context I would like to have on my card is.
• Sample Cards #3 #4
Big step up from previous cards now utilizing images and audio. There is two ways to make these sort of cards. Either using the ShareX + Animebook approach (detailed on https://animecards.site/) or using Anacreon's anime cards script (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4t7HYS73ZQ). Both methods are very fast and produce good results. These cards are fun and quick to review and you will notice yourself making a lot of progress if you do them consistently. I will write an updated guide on the new site soon.
• Sample Cards #5 #6
Most cards from now on use Japanese definitions. You should attempt to use Japanese dictionaries as early as possible as they do not only provide much more accurate descriptions for the words you are learning, they are also simply more input that you get and it's really valuable input as you see the language describe itself. My recommended approach is loading up Japanese dictionaries into Yomichan and attempting to read them when you look something up. If you understand one of the Japanese definitions use it, otherwise keep using the English one. I think mining dictionaries is not smart.
• Sample Cards #7 #8
Cards from now on have pitch accent indicators and graphs on them. They are generated fully automatically using Yomichan und it's helpful to pay attention to these when you review cards. In my experience you will gradually build up an ear for pitch accent until it comes to you more or less naturally. It's also helpful for determining wrong pitch accent audio in the Japanese pod audio as there are a handful such cases. In that case you could grab audio from Forvo for example. The color of the graph here is the white, but it is black (and therefore invisible with this background color) with the standard handlebars. Handlebars are discussed at the end so look there for options. Pitch accent dictionary: https://github.com/toasted-nutbread/yomichan-pitch-accent-dictionary/releases/tag/1.0.0 Fields used: {pitch-accent-positions} {pitch-accent-graphs}
• Sample Cards #9 #10
In the next few cards I will show a couple usages of the "hint" field where I think it makes sense to use it. In this case you have reading alternatives for 音読み and 訓読み variants so I put the type of reading the card covers for ambiguous words on the front. Other words where this differentiation would make sense: 武士 (ぶし - もののふ) 海風 (かいふう - うみかぜ) 赤子 (せきし - あかご) 耳朶 (じだ - みみたぶ) 足跡 (そくせき - あしあと) 悪口 (あっこう - わるくち) And the list goes on and on. It's important indicator to not make your cards ambiguous.
• Sample Cards #11 #12
Another usage for the hint field. Some words appear only in certain expressions or contexts, in those cases it makes sense to put that expression on the front as it will be much harder to review the card without that context and it's pretty much the only context you see those words in. If you are asking yourself why you wouldn't just mine the entire expression, it's simply less convenient. Usually the expressions don't have entries in Japanese dictionaries (as they are sorted under the word in question) and they are often not voiced in the Japanese pod audio. Of course you are free to handle this however you like.
• Sample Cards #13 #14
Another usage for the hint field. Onomatopoeic words are difficult to review on their own without context. The hint straight up serves the purpose of making those cards easier. It also makes sense to use the hint field for other non-kanji words. The reason you can review kanji words without a context is because the kanji themselves carry semantic hints that make guessing the meaning not difficult at all. Ultimately you review faster and more effectively than if you used sentence cards and a context you are already familiar with.
• Sample cards #15 #16
Two more well formed cards. These are the types of cards you should strive to make. I will make a remark about handlebars on the Ankiweb version of this deck so look there for more information.

Screenshot of Yomichan fields You can of course create another field for the pitch-accent-positions field if you find this solution to not be very elegant. Handlebars The default Yomichan handlebars will import every single definition into Yomichan. The handlebars I'm using right now adds a {test} field which will only import the most top definition. Most of the time this means the definition field does not even have to be edited. See the screenshot on how to utilize it. The Yomichan graph is also changed to be white in this handlebars file. To see handlebars in the Yomichan settings you need to activate "show advanced options". You can find it here: https://pastebin.com/zp9YSBDf