Link to the list (plus the original Kaishi list in a separate sheet for your convenience)
Due to the recent (and rightly deserved) popularity of the excellent Kaishi deck, and as a person with obsession with vocabulary lists, I became curious about how much of the high-frequency words the deck actually covers. After comparing the deck with several frequency lists (from JP Netflix and anime subtitles) I came up with a list of over 500 high frequency words that are not in the deck. Some of the missing words are extremely basic (like 医者, 映画,運転, 盗む), others are more specific to anime perhaps, but are still worth knowing as beginners (the Kaishi deck itself is based on anime frequency lists, at least in part). Out of the 500 words, around half are in the 1,500s rankings, the rest are in the 2,000, roughly the same frequency range as the words in Kaishi.
If you want to make anki cards from my list I would recommend the amazing Immersion Kit for finding example sentences with audio from anime and tv series (you can directly download ready-made anki cards with audio and pictures.)
I also looked a bit deeper into the wordlist in Kaishi and found some minor issues. Almost a hundred words I felt like they should be removed because they are either too low frequency (compared to the higher frequency words not found in the deck), or are redundant duplicates of similar words of the same root (such as different conjugations). See the following spreadsheet for a list of all my suggestions.
I would also like to know your opinion guys on how to handle transitive/intransitive verb pairs, should both forms be included in the deck? I marked many of such pairs in this list (plus suggestions for correcting a few definitions) and my approach was to leave a few such pairs of very high frequency verbs, but keep only one of a pair when the verbs are of lower frequency (though some are in the middle and kinda hard to decide). I also had a little dilemma of what to do with adjective pairs like 白/白い 赤/赤い 黒/黒い – keep both? Or just one? (and if so then which?)
I would be happy if someone with higher level of Japanese than me could look through my suggestions for changes and give some input. Eventually I plan to let the deck’s creator know about these issues.
by Fafner_88