Customer Reviews

Japanese Vocabulary Cards: Academic Study Card Set

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I felt that I needed to chime in here and defend these cards. First the bad so that you know I am not trying to sell them or work for the company or anything....

Yes, I will agree with the first reviewer here that the font leaves much to be desired. The kanji on the front is small so sometimes it is hard to make out how many strokes there are etc. Each card is only 4cm by 9 cm so the reduced font is because of this.

...That being said, I didnt buy them to study the kanji. The hiragana is quite legiable and the English font is fine. Also I dont read each one for more than about a 5-10 second period so unless you plan to sit down and read one all night, its not a problem. In addition they make perfect pocket cards since they are not big. I can carry like 20 of them and not even notice it.

Second and most importantly....there's 1,000 of them! It's got words from all over the place in here..Verbs (passive/active) Nouns, Conjectures, etc. The whole point of buying the cards is so that you DONT have to sit down and copy out 1,000 words from "a good textbook". The best part is that each card has one or two example sentences in both romaji and hirigana so it helps to put the word you are looking at into context.

Also dont worry about "getting them out of order". WHO CARES! What order?? Sure there are numbers on the cards..but what does that mean? Are you really that organized that you need your flashcards in alphaebetical order? Every week I just grab 10 from where ever and go at it. I make two piles. The words that I got that I already know and the words that are new for me and giving me trouble. For me it helps that they are random so I dont go crazy from spending 2 months only learning words that begin with A. Also if you try to learn them in order it'll be tough going since because there are 1,000 of them you'll feel that you're never getting past a certain letter.

Lastly, font problem aside...how can you find anything wrong with a flashcard?? Its a word. Thats it. The Japanese word and the English word. How can you screw that up? They have the correct English word that corresponds with the correct Japanese word. THERE! That alone means they get 5 stars. But I gave them 4 becasue I took off one star because of the font problem. Only one since its not a big deal unless you really want to know the kanji for each word. Then dont buy this. Buy some kanji flash cards!! :)

Seriously, if you want to learn vocabulary and you want to use flashcards, then these will do the job just fine! Stop complaining about the card itself and just learn the word! :)

As I often tell my students here in Japan "YOU CAN DO IT!!" :)

Dont press the back button, buy the cards and I'll see you in the Nihongo nouryoku shiken nikyuu test!

Be Seeing You

This is absurd. The negative reviewer said "I can't write enough bad things about this product," or something along those lines, but he hardly even WROTE anything bad about them!

Order--why do you want them in order? What purpose could that possibly serve?

Font--they look fine to me. What, exactly, is wrong with the font? Is it too small? If you're going to be reading Japanese competently, you're going to have to read font this small, and smaller, in the real world. Japanese use small font sometimes.

The only gripe I have with these cards is the romanji. I actually would prefer to just read the kana. The romanji is a distraction and hindrance, in my opinion. I know the kana, and if I did not, I would get kana flashcards, learn the kana, and then use these.

I have actually whited out the romanji on my cards. All 1000 of them.

I think they're a steal. 1000 words is a great vocabulary foundation.

I didn't want to make flash cards by hand because I don't have the energy or patience.

I think these cards do the job for me. Now I can just take some and look at them whenever I want. The font size is probably around 11, which is just fine with me.

I do find the romanji a bit annoying, but I guess I can just ignore it.

I just got these little cards, and, since I don't yet know the kanji, I really don't (yet) care what the Kanji look like. Probably I will someday. On the other hand, it's true, it's a great price for 1000 vocabulary cards! I like that each card shows not just the meaning of the word, but several ways that the word can be used, or several Japanese words for a given English word.

What I find to be a problem is the order. Yes, it is true that in some ways it doesn't matter what order the cards are in. They come in English meaning alphabetical order, and they are numbered in that order as well. But it depends how you are trying to use the cards. If you're trying to learn random words, these cards are great. If you need to learn, say, a certain specific group of verbs that week, they are a lot harder to use. Finding the card for a specific Japanese word in a box of 1000 cards by looking for the English definition is not easy, especially since a given Japanese word can be defined using several different possible English words, not all necessarily beginning with the same letter. If you need to learn a certain group of words in a set amount of time, I suggest some of the smaller card sets that are sold that organize the cards by category: verbs, adjectives, days of the week, counters, colors, and so on.

So if you want to use these cards, use them as a couple of the previous reviewers suggested: grab about 20 cards at a time, in whatever order, and just use the cards to increase your overall store of Japanese vocabulary. Over time, you can learn a lot of new vocabulary, and it does save a lot of writing!

Don't waste your time or money on these cards. It is much better for you to make your own cards by copying information from a good textbook. Out of all of the items I have purchased related to learning Japanese, this was by far the most useless. I didn't learn a single thing from these cards, except for what it feels like to waste your money on educational material that is sub par. If you are looking at this product and reading this review, quickly press your back button so you can quickly forget about even thinking about buying these vocabulary cards.

The worst part is that they do come in order, but you are afraid to get them out of order, so you don't really pull them out. If you do pull them out, they just end up hurting your eyes because the font is really bad.

I cannot say enough bad things about this product.