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The Inku Blog
Opinionated writing on learning Japanese, flashcard apps, and the quiet pleasures of picking up a language slowly.
Shorter, more opinionated than the pillar guides. Field notes, method essays, and the occasional rant.
Kanji Learning Strategies That Actually Stick
11 min readRadicals, stories, writing practice, and the one strategy nobody recommends but everybody needs.
KanjiStrategyJapanese Pitch Accent: Why Most Apps Skip It and Whether You Should Care
10 min readPitch accent is Japanese's invisible grammar. Here is when to study it, when to ignore it, and how to hear it for the first time.
PronunciationAdvancedThe Best Way to Learn Hiragana in 3 Days
9 min readA schedule, a method, and a set of guardrails against the mistakes that cost most people a week.
HiraganaStrategyHow Long Does It Take to Learn Japanese? A Brutally Honest Timeline
13 min readWorking adults, be warned. Here is a realistic month-by-month plan from zero to conversational Japanese.
TimelineStrategyWhy I Stopped Using Anki (and What I Built Instead)
10 min readAnki works. It is also a blank sheet of graph paper. After three years, here is why I stopped opening it.
AnkiFounder storyMoshi Moshi: Why Japanese Phones Aren't Answered Like Yours
7 min readThe real story behind もしもし, where it came from, and the ghost-related reason it sticks around.
CulturePhrasesWasei-eigo: 50 English Words the Japanese Changed Beyond Recognition
12 min readWhy マンション (manshon) means apartment, not mansion. A tour through the English words Japan quietly rewrote.
CultureVocabularyThe Spaced Repetition Mistake That Wastes 90% of Learners' Time
8 min readMost people set up SRS wrong on day one. Here is the fix that took my retention from 60 percent to 94 percent.
SRSMemoryDuolingo for 100 Days: What I Learned, What I Wish I'd Done Differently
11 min readA journal, a scoreboard, and a reckoning. Ninety-eight green owls later, what actually stuck.
DuolingoReviewStrategyCan You Actually Learn Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day?
9 min readA brutally honest answer to the question every language app dodges. With real numbers from six months of self-logging.
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