ANY OTHER DECK NOT MENTIONED ON THIS PAGE IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH ME, INCLUDING ANY AI OR PAID MODIFICATIONS.

Kaishi 1.5k

Welcome to the public repository for Kaishi 1.5k, a modern Anki deck made to introduce beginners to basic Japanese vocabulary. Kaishi 1.5k is highly modular and this page is dedicated to explaining various options you can use to change the deck to your liking. Here is what the front of the deck looks like:

As you can see, both the word and the sentences are there but the word is highlighted in the sentence, making it easy to immediately isolate the important information. Once the word is known well, reviewing is faster because the word appears first. Here is the backside of the default deck:

Contrary to most other Core-type decks, here furigana gives the reading of the word, with the meaning right below. Audio for the word and for the sentence are then available for you. If you would like, you can also add pitch accent, see below. If there are notes related to that specifc card, they are displayed down below.

If you are new to Japanese or immersion, please read the guide first.

Where do I get the deck?
How do I use this deck?
Other related decks
What options are available for the deck?
I don't like the images!
I don't like having sentences always on!
The audio for this word is wrong!
How to import Kaishi on top of another deck
The genesis of the deck
Translation of the deck
What do I do after this deck?
Credits

Where do I get the deck?

You can either get the deck on the releases page of this GitHub or on AnkiWeb, provided the deck is not undergoing review. The deck is supported on Anki 2.1.50+.

How do I use this deck?

For an explanation on how Kaishi fits in with learning Japanese more generally, see the guide.

Other related decks

ねむい made a radicals deck based on Kaishi 1.5k, linking every kanji radical found in it with the first word in Kaishi that features this radical. It also covers a few more radicals that aren't in Kaishi proper. You can use this deck in parallel with Kaishi if you struggle with kanji, because it introduces kanji radicals as you go, helping you break them down more efficiently. You can find the deck here on AnkiWeb. Thank you ねむい!

What options are available for the deck?

There are multiple options you can use to change your cards. To modify them, select the Kaishi deck, click Browse, select any card from the deck, and click Cards... on the top right.

Pitch Accent

The most important option is whether you would like to include pitch accent on your cards. Currently, whether one should learn pitch accent or not tends to spawn pretty heated arguments in the community. We decided to take a middle ground approach: the pitch accent data is there for you, you choose whether you want to use it. If you decide not to use it, you can always enable it later. The way you enable pitch accent is easy. Here is the card options under Back Template for the deck (click on the small dot above the Search bar.)

<div lang="ja">
{{furigana:Word Furigana}}

<!-- This part enables pitch accent.

{{#Pitch Accent}}
	<br><div style='font-size: 24px'>{{Pitch Accent}}</div>
{{/Pitch Accent}} 

-->

<div style='font-size: 25px; padding-bottom:20px'>{{Word Meaning}}</div>
<div style='font-size: 25px;'>{{furigana:Sentence Furigana}}</div>
<div style='font-size: 25px; padding-bottom:10px'>{{Sentence Meaning}}</div>

{{Word Audio}}
{{Sentence Audio}}
<br>
{{Picture}}

{{#Notes}}
	<br>
	<div style="font-size: 20px; padding-top:12px">Note: {{Notes}}</div>
{{/Notes}}

<!-- This part enables pitch accent notes.

{{#Pitch Accent Notes}}
<div style="font-size: 20px; width: fit-content; max-width:40vw; margin: auto">
	<details><summary>Pitch Accent Notes</summary>
		<br>{{Pitch Accent Notes}}
	</details>
</div>
{{/Pitch Accent Notes}}

-->

</div>

To enable pitch accent, you simply need to take out all the  parts which represent comments, like so:

<div lang="ja">
{{furigana:Word Furigana}}

{{#Pitch Accent}}
	<br><div style='font-size: 24px'>{{Pitch Accent}}</div>
{{/Pitch Accent}} 

<div style='font-size: 25px; padding-bottom:20px'>{{Word Meaning}}</div>
<div style='font-size: 25px;'>{{furigana:Sentence Furigana}}</div>
<div style='font-size: 25px; padding-bottom:10px'>{{Sentence Meaning}}</div>

{{Word Audio}}
{{Sentence Audio}}
<br>
{{Picture}}

{{#Notes}}
	<br>
	<div style="font-size: 20px; padding-top:12px">Note: {{Notes}}</div>
{{/Notes}}

{{#Pitch Accent Notes}}
<div style="font-size: 20px; width: fit-content; max-width:40vw; margin: auto">
	<details><summary>Pitch Accent Notes</summary>
		<br>{{Pitch Accent Notes}}
	</details>
</div>
{{/Pitch Accent Notes}}

</div>

To see how pitch accent notation works, please see this issue.

Minor options

There are a couple of minor options you can modify.

Furigana

If you would like to take out furigana, simply take out the furigana: parts of the back template.

Other card options

You could entirely change the type of cards you want to see. Here is the Front Template of Kaishi 1.5k:

<div lang="ja">
{{Word}}
<div style='font-size: 20px;'>{{Sentence}}</div>
</div>

As you can see, we only have the word and the sentence. If you would like sentence cards, simply take out the {{Word}} part, or put Sentence inside instead and take out the rest. If you would like word cards, simply take out the <div style='font-size: 20px;'>{{Sentence}}</div> part. If instead you would like audio cards, take out everything and add {{Word Audio}}, {{Sentence Audio}} or both if you would like both.

Changing the fonts, font size or other styling options

Here is the Styling template of Kaishi 1.5k:

.card {
 font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", "Noto Sans JP", Osaka, "メイリオ", Meiryo, "ＭＳ Ｐゴシック", "MS PGothic", "MS UI Gothic", sans-serif;
 font-size: 44px;
 text-align: center;
}

img {
max-width: 300px;
max-height: 250px;
}

.mobile img {
max-width: 50vw;
}

/* This part defines the bold color. */
b{color: #5586cd}

You can find the various styling options here. As you can see, Kaishi 1.5k uses very little options in the style tab directly. You can change the font-family option to get different fonts, font-size to change the font size and text-align to change the alignment of the text, for instance if you'd like the text to be left aligned. By default, Kaishi 1.5k colors bold words. The option to change this is b{color: } as you can see above. Simply put a hexcode or a color name like red to get that color instead. If you would like no color, simply take out the whole b{color: } part.

I don't like having sentences always on!

Some people would prefer not always seeing the sentence in front. This is totally valid as some people end up only memorizing the sentences. The reason is here is to give you context as meaning is always found in context. If you would like, you can modify your front and styling template following the comment on this issue to blur them. Thank you Hit2Skill for the idea!

The audio for this word is wrong!

Certain words such as 次 (つぎ) and あげる have been reported as having "wrong" audio. This is because beginners often do not hear (and are not aware) of Japanese nasalization, where /g/ sounds can sound closer to /n/. Please see this video for an explanation of how this works. Unfortunately, better audio in the form of non-nasalized versions of these words is often not directly available.

How to import Kaishi on top of another deck

If you already started Core2k or Tango N4-N5 (or some other similar deck) and you would like to switch to Kaishi 1.5k, you can follow these steps written by Kuuube.

Import Kaishi normally with the .apkg file.
Go to File > Export... and export the Kaishi deck using Notes in Plain Text (.txt). Leave all other settings default.
Delete the Kaishi deck.
Select the deck you want to import Kaishi on top of, select Browse, click any card, press ctrl + a, and select Notes > Change Note Type... on the top left menu. Make sure all notes you selected are of the same note type or else Notes > Change Note Type... may not show up.
Change to the Kaishi 1.5k note type. Make sure the Word field in the New column shows the field your deck uses for the word next to it. If you don't intend to delete any cards from your current deck that are not in Kaishi, make sure your other fields are lined up to the correct places too. Otherwise you can use the defaults and click Save.
Import the Kaishi .txt file exported in step 2.
When importing, make sure the Notetype is s

Kaishi

Install / Use

README