This is my rant for learning Japanese. I have been learning over the course of ~4 years. I am not the best with Japanese, but I have a feeling I can give some advice.

this is based on some more "advanced" methods, and pieced together using a mix of trial and error, plus a bunch of knowledge, tips, and things I pickup along the way.

I 100% am sure a similar method(s) exist, and I get this feeling that I am basically just reinventing the wheel here.

anyhow. the main inspiration for this word vomit, is that I always see comments like these: "One of my biggest regrets is not sentence mining earlier"

this solves this issue by making you sentence mine from the get go. and at a micro scale, not a macro scale.

Overview

This method for learning Japanese (or any other language) is simple in principle but can become as complex as you want it to be.

It does not promise fluency in a month, or even in a year. It’s a slow, steady burn. However, thanks to its structure, you’ll often feel fluent well before you truly are. which makes it much easier to stay engaged long-term.

This method is great for:

1. giving beginners initial immersion content
2. increasing comprehensible input within topics you personally enjoy
3. building kanji recognition skills
4. keeping you motivated over long periods of time

This method is not great for:

1. quickly gaining general-purpose Japanese
2. learning hiragana and katakana (this guide expects you already know these)
3. people who don’t have time to build their own decks
4. people who want to skip setup and avoid “fluff” (this method takes more effort)
5. building grammar in a structured way

If grammar is important to you (very much is, if you are wanting to actually understand Japanese), supplement this method with Cure Dolly or Tae Kim example sentences. There is also this neat little deck here anyhow, just squeak in some grammar, no matter how, it pays dividends!

The core concept is simple:
Choose something you want to read in Japanese, and mine every word from that material.
(You are allowed to skip words you don’t want to learn)

For example, if you love N64 content and 90s magazines, you might choose 電撃ニンテンドウ64.

By creating an Anki deck with every word and example sentence from a single issue, you’ll be able to understand nearly all of it. This leads to highly effective immersion in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Here is the basic review method:

1. Try to recall using the dictionary/plain form alone.
2. If that fails, read the example sentence as a second cue.
3. Only fail the card if neither triggers recall.

Step 0 – Laying the Foundation

This step is crucial, it is the equivalent of laying the foundation of a tall building. one wrong step, and you could be left with an unstable base!

this step is dead simple, and it will be the same for everyone. but it will take some time. (a few hours if you are diligent)

we will be setting up Anki, our first deck, as well as our card format.

Huh, why are we making the deck ourselves?????

because this makes retention better, and allows you to adapt the cards to something you are interested in.

this also lets you provide your own meaning image, making the meaning of the words have many more ties in your brain. (humans remember images better than text)

first, we will open anki, and make our first deck. title this something along the lines of "Beginner Deck", or "Stimulus Deck".

there are two reasons for making this deck:

1. this will give us something to study while making the deck for the first real mining adventure.
2. it will get you charged up with some great primers for immersion.

this deck will use the top most useful 50 Japanese words. these are not set in stone, and you can swap em out. or reduce the number if needed. heck, if you don't care about "top 50 words for all of japanese", you can instead do "top 50 words in japanese manga" or even make your own analysis.

however, I recommend sticking to the premade list, since it speeds stuff up considerably.

if you are already versed in the top 50 Japanese words, you can skip this deck, however, I still recommend you read the rest of this step.

The reason why we are sticking with 50, is because you can easily breeze through these in 1 week (10 cards a day). 2 weeks if you do it on easy mode (5 cards a day)

this also gives you plenty of time to pick out your first spot to start mining.

anyhow, lets not get too ahead of ourselves. we will now focus on the very important part; creating your note fields!

here are the fields for your anki deck note type:

1. word (kanji)
2. word (kana)
3. example sentence with target word highlighted
4. meaning image
5. English definition (optional)
6. Sound (Optional, but highly encouraged)

we will be making one type of card using these fields:

Front:

<div style="font-family: 'Liberation Sans'; font-size: 24px; margin-top: 10px;">
{{#Word (Kanji)}}
{{Word (Kanji)}}
{{/Word (Kanji)}}
{{^Word (Kanji)}}
{{Word (Kana)}}
{{/Word (Kanji)}}
</div>

<hr style="height:2px;border-width:0;color:gray;background-color:gray;margin: 10px 0;">

<div style="font-family: 'Liberation Sans'; font-size: 20px;">
{{Example Sentence}}
</div>

Back:

{{FrontSide}}

<hr id="answer">

<div style="font-family: 'Liberation Sans'; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
{{Word (Kana)}}
</div>

<hr style="height:2px;border-width:0;color:gray;background-color:gray;margin: 10px 0;">

{{Meaning Image}}

{{English Definition}}

I will explain why the front and back are formatted like this

for the front, we have the full sentence, with the target word highlighted, as well as the word in dictionary form. the reason for this is 2 reasons:

1. you will build up the ability to recognize the word in a sentence
2. you will start learning the types of conjugations as a byproduct

next, we move onto the back

the back will include the front, but with an image that does its best to convey the meaning of the target word. do not worry too much about this for adjectives or some verbs. but pay close attention to the meaning image slot for nouns, as this greatly increases the link in your memory

and finally, we include the english definition as a backup method to better describe the word. this is mainly used for verbs and adjectives as well. since an image might not give you everything you need to know about it.

now, you might be wondering, why we have english on the back. and it is simple, this will accelerate the "crystallization" of Japanese.

if you think about rock candy, you need to use a string like a catalyst to form the foundation for the crystals to form. the english definitions are the string.

as you go through these decks, you will be able to start leaving off the English definition, and even replace it with japanese dictionary entries as time goes on. for now, it is okay to have some english mixed in.

you can make your cards by looking online for "top 50 japanese words" and then making cards for them in anki.

just do your best to fill in the required fields for each card. you can even use an AI to make an anki formatted csv for easier importing, leaving only the meaning images to you.

Step 1 – Starting your Mine

This step is almost as important as the last one.
Once your stimulus deck is created, you can decide what material you want to deep-mine.

It can be:

• Dengeki Nintendo 64
• Someone’s surreal X profile about worshiping a can of beans
• A song with Japanese lyrics
• A manga
• Anime subtitle text

The world is your oyster.

However, for your first mining deck, avoid sources with an overwhelming number of unique words.

Start small. Instead of mining all 200 chapters of a manga, mine just the first chapter.

As you progress, you can gradually tackle larger sources, which gives you more time to build the next deck while studying the current one.

Step 2 – Scrape the text from the media (if image based)

This step is only needed when you can’t copy/paste text directly from your source.

It’s time-consuming, but each source only needs to be scraped once.

if you are getting your text from manga, I highly recommend you use manga-ocr. Install manga-ocr, then use the Snipping Tool to automatically extract Japanese text. (Or use any OCR tool you prefer.)

Paste all scraped text into a document, in order, and save frequently.

If the media has furigana and the OCR struggles, you may need to type some parts manually.

remember, there are other tools out there, like:

GameSentenceMiner – An All-in-One immersion toolkit for learning Languages through games and other visual media.
ttsu reader – Online e-book reader that supports Yomitan
mokuro – Manga reader with yomitan support
mangatan – Yomitan On manga Sites no pre-processing no self-processing either! (using Suwayomi)
Kaku – Japanese OCR system for android devices

Step 3 – Formatting your scraped data

There are a few ways to build your cards:

1. Use a word frequency analyzer to find every unique word in your text.
2. Then search (Ctrl+F) through the raw text to find example sentences for each word.
3. Create each note manually (or using a CSV).
4. Paste your scraped text into an AI and tell it to generate an Anki-formatted CSV with your fields. Have it include placeholders for the meaning images. tell your AI very explicitly: “Target word must always be dictionary form”

Import your cards into a new anki deck, named after the source.

Step 4 – studying

Do these three things at the same time:

1. Study only one deck at a time – the deck you have 100% finished building.
   • Start with your 50-word stimulus deck.
   • When you switch decks later, it’s always to the next one you finished building.
2. Study at a pace that feels good forever. Most people do great with 7–20 new cards per day.
   • If reviews ever take longer than ~20–30 minutes, lower the “new cards/day” number.
   • If you want lighter weekends, turn on “Easy days” in deck options (e.g., minimal cards on Sat/Sun).
3. While you’re studying Deck A you are allowed (and encouraged) to build Deck B, Deck C, etc. in the background. Just don’t start reviewing them yet.

When can I switch from Deck A to Deck B? Only when both of these are true:

• You have seen every card in Deck A at least once (they don’t have to be mature).
• Deck B is 100% finished (all cards created, images added, etc.).

Once you start studying Deck B:

• Go enjoy the original material for Deck A guilt-free (you’ll understand virtually everything now!).
• Keep building Deck C in the background if you want.

That’s it. One deck under review at any time, everything else is just preparation for the next one.

Think of this as that one meme with that clay dog placing tracks in front of him as he is on a train.

Step 5 – charting your next course

After completing your first deck, congratulate yourself! you’ve leveled up!

you should be able to read your source material, and understand virtually everything! (except the grammar if you have been putting it off)

this will genuinely feel wild, and it will give you a rush! you will also realize that other Japanese seems much more approachable, and based on your starting deck, you might realize that other things are much easier to understand.

but eventually, this will feel like the new normal, and you will quickly realize, that the different domains of the language have words you have never seen before. this is normal, but absolutely nobody is stopping you from setting up a mine over in the new domain.

anyhow…

Now it’s time to begin a new mining project!

For an easier transition, you can choose something close to your previous material, such as:

• another song in the same OST, by the same author, or in the genre
• the next issue of Dengeki Nintendo 64 (or canned beans guy on social media)
• the next chapter of your manga

Or, you, like I said earlier, you can take a bigger leap into a very different domain. for example, switching from video-game magazines to manga or movies.

as you continue mining, you’ll run into many repeated words. You can:

• skip them entirely (since they’re already in your deck), or
• add new example sentences to your existing cards.

Either option works. but after a card has 3 sentences (or a sentence for each form), you can skip adding more sentences. make sure the sentences are short, as to not cause too much mental fatigue.

you are the boss of your deck. don't like a word, cast it into the pit, and never study it again.

Once again: the world is your oyster.