Whatsup you sexy gaijin, I’m back today for another super swag post.
This time I want to hook you guys up with something you can actually use, yes use, all for yourself, a “resource” if you will. Although, if you’ve read the title of this post you will already know, anki cards and the formatting for them is really just aesthetic thing but In MY personal opinion, the aesthetics of your anki cards are pretty crucial. And again, maybe that’s just me but, I don’t even want to put the effort to sit down and seriously rep my cards in the morning if I feel like they just look like shit. Anyways enough with the blabber
The format (how it looks)
So here it is! This is MY (or at least what I’ve come up with by myself) card format. Now before we even start to begin to talk about how to make your cards look like this lets just get a few things that I’m sure someone will think or say out of the way:
- It looks hard to read
- Does the MIA | migaku(?) Japanese addon still work with this
- Will this look good without night mode enabled
“But Lucasssss It looks so much different than my cards, wouldn’t this be hard to read?”
Ok ok I will admit it’s definitely a change if you’re not used to repping your cards R->L T->B (right to left top to bottom), but hear me out alright? For starters, if you’re studying Japanese getting used to repping your cards like this shouldn’t take much time at all, All Japanese novels are written with this format so if anything this is definitely the most natural format for Japanese to be written in (IMO). I won’t lie, it took me at least a week or so to get used to it myself but to be honest I just wanted to try something new, get away from the norm, the typical looking cards. Something you will notice after utilizing Anki for a while, you tend to want to have your OWN custom stuff, copying other people and using the generic shit always gets old and stale, so that’s precisely why I decided to make the change. That being said, I’m so used to RLTB now that I probably couldn’t go back, at least not with my sentence cards. Point being, yes, it will take some time getting used to, but in my opinion this card format is really nice for Japanese sentence cards and it is worth giving it a shot.
“Does the Migaku Japanese addon still work with this format?”
Okay, soooo. How should I approach this, the short answer: yes. The somewhat longer answer: It works but It definitely wasn’t designed for this format. What I mean by that is that, as you can see in the picture above it will still work of course, if you hover over a word it will still show you the reading just like it would normally, the only “problem” (if you can really call it that) is that often times it will display that little popup with the reading in a box off to the left a little which definitely can seem a little awkward considering where your mouse is. Here’s an example:
Now honestly I’m sure there is some sort of setting to just turn that popup thing off in general because you don’t really NEED it, like as you can see on the right of the word it actually displays the furigana perfectly along with color for the pitch accent so its not really that big a deal. That being said, I can’t confidently say this will work AS WELL as the card format that comes with the migaku Japanese addon, but is still perfectly usable.
“Will this still look good Without Night Mode Enabled?”
Uhh, yes. Duhhhh, Ok to be honest I don’t even know why I made this a point to cover cuz its so painfully obvious lol. But yes, It will look good even without night mode, HOWEVER, I like night mode because well, idk, even on my kindle I read white text on a black background, maybe its because its easier on my eyes? idk, either way IMO it looks super awesome with night mode but you could definitely rock normal mode and it should still look swag.
That being said lets get on to how the FUCK do you DO IT
How To Use This Card Format
Step 1:
Open your browser in Anki. To do this open anki and press B.
This is what it should look like once you’ve done that :
Once you’ve done that click on the deck that you want to change your Japanese Sentence cards format of and then click any card and press カード (card):
Step 2:
If you’ve followed the first step you should be greeted with a screen that looks similar to this:
Once you’re here you’re going to want to copy this text:
<div class=”tags”>
例文{{#Tags}}｜{{/Tags}}{{Tags}}</span>
</div>
<div class=”center-me”>
<div style=’font-family: yuumichou; font-size: 35px;’><div display-type=”coloredhover” class=”wrapped-japanese”>{{Expression}}</div></div>
</div>
And then once you’ve copied this text paste it right into the top section of the the card editor in anki:
IMPORTANT:
Make sure to change what’s in the {{ }} to accurately match the name of your expression/ sentence field. So if you don’t have/use a field named “Expression” make sure to replace the “Expression” bit with the name of your fields name.
Step 3:
Copy this this text:
.card {
font-size: 60px;
text-align: left;
color: black;
background-color: white;
font-family: yuumichou;
}
.center-me {
width: 500px;
height: 800px;
position: absolute;
top:0;
bottom: 0;
left:0;
right: 0;
margin: auto;}
@font-face {
font-family: yuumichou;
src: url(_yumin.ttf);
}
.tags {
font-family: 游明朝 Demibold;
font-size: 30px;
color:#FF8181 ;
}
.expression-field{
font-size: 40px;
}
.meaning-field{
font-size: 40px;
}
.padded-top{
padding-top: 20px;
}
body{
-ms-writing-mode: tb-rl;
writing-mode: vertical-rl;
padding: 40px;
}
h1 {
font-size: 30px;
margin-left: 20px;
}
p {
line-height: 1.7;
margin-left: 20px;
}
Step 3:
Post all that text you just copied into the middle section of the card Editor so that it looks like this:
Once you’ve done that you’re almost done.
Step 4:
Copy this text:
<div class=”tags”>
例文{{#Tags}}｜{{/Tags}}{{Tags}}</span>
</div>
<div class=”center-me”>
<div style=’font-family: yuumichou; font-size: 35px;’><div display-type=”coloredhover” class=”wrapped-japanese”>{{Expression}}</div></div>
<hr>
<div style=’font-family: yuumichou; font-size: 35px;’><div display-type=”coloredhover” class=”wrapped-japanese”>{{Meaning}}</div></div>
</div>
IMPORTANT:
Again, if you’re cards don’t have the same field names as the ones written in the {{ }} sections, then please make sure you change them to match the field names (remember its case sensitive) as the ones on your cards.
Once you have copied that text paste it into the bottom section of the card editor so that it looks like this :
Step 5 (the final step):
Now you’re pretty much done! the only thing left to do is to get in and make some minor adjustments according to your desire like the text size or font family for example. Other than that though, that’s basically it. Obviously make sure it works and if it doesn’t for some reason make sure to go back and make sure you followed all the steps correctly and if you did and its still not working feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to help you out to the best of my ability. Nonetheless I hope you enjoy my card format as much as I do and I hope you benefited off of this someway or another 🙂
The final product:
Anyways guys thanks for reading and I’ll catch you later in the next post 🙂
