Frequently Asked Questions

1. Kanji Box - General
   1. What is Kanji Box?
   2. How to use Kanji Box?
   3. Can I use Kanji Box on my iPhone/smartphone?
   4. How does it work?
   5. Licenses and acknowledgements
   6. What's up with the bugs?
   7. Feature requests.
   8. Where can I report Japanese mistakes?
   9. KanjiBox HTML Badges
2. Upgrading - Donating
   1. What is the 'Elite' status?
   2. Other ways to join the 'Elite'...
   3. Contributing...
   4. Roadmap and future updates...
   5. Donations...
3. Specific Issues
   1. Difference between Quiz and Drill modes...
   2. Why so few options with kana?
   3. Out-of-level questions...
   4. Meaning of stats...
   5. How does scoring work?
   6. Answer display time...
   7. List export features?
   8. What happened to grade 7?
   9. Confusing choices with identical readings...
   10. Keyboard Shortcut keys...
4. Dave
   1. Who are you?
   2. Why Kanji Box?
   3. Can I add you as a friend in Facebook?
   4. How's your Japanese?
5. Non-KB related requests
   1. Can you help me move to Japan?
   2. Japanese tattoos...
6. Etc.

1. Kanji Box

   • What is Kanji Box?

     KanjiBox helps you study and learn kanjis and Japanese vocabulary, for fun or test preparation (JLPT, school exams, Ninja Academy etc) and includes many nifty features, such as adaptative drilling, learning statistics, quizz and score comparisons with your friends.

     For more info, recent updates and miscellaneous inconsequential banter, KanjiBox's page on Facebook is generally the place to go.

   • I don't understand anything!?! Please help!

     Most stuff in KB should be rather self-explanatory. However, you might be confused by certain advanced features or wondering about the meaning of some options/stats. For this, I wrote a very complete step-by-step guide on Facebook to using Kanji Box, along with suggestions on what might be your best strategy to achieve your studying goals (depending on what that goal is). If what you are looking for is not in there, you can also check out the forum in Facebook, but please: RTFM and do a quick search before you post any request.

   • How does KanjiBox work?

     In addition to its visible features, there are a couple things worth knowing about the way KanjiBox works, behind the scene:
     

     1. Choices for each question are offered in pairs of closely (and often confusingly) similar answers. Where 'similar' holds a different definition for each type of quiz. For example, in kanji mode: '気' might be offered alongside '氣', while, in vocab mode, a word will be proposed along other words of similar grammatical function (verbs with verbs etc.). This is all on purpose: making the quiz harder is in your best interest.
     2. KanjiBox remembers your answers (the ones you get right, the ones you get wrong) and uses this knowledge to quiz you more or less often on a given entry according to a very specific 'adaptive' algorithm. This means that, in drill mode, a kanji/word/etc. you consistently answer wrong will start coming more and more often until you start getting it right. This is also on purpose (obviously).
     3. An exception to 2. above is Quiz mode, where questions are completely random (only function of the level you are training for). Because Quiz scores are shared across all users, they need to reflect an unbiased set of questions. However, your answers are still stored by KanjiBox and used to control drill mode (and statistics), meaning it's usually a good idea to alternate between drill mode (better to learn and fix your weaknesses) and quiz mode (more fun to use).
     4. Furthermore, in Quiz mode, questions are offered in a progression going from below your level, all the way up to slightly above it. This is a way to make the quiz more engaging and help better differentiate players in the final scores. If you only want level-specific questions, stick to Drill mode.

   • iPhone/iTouch/iPad version

     Theoretically, there is no limitation on which type of device you can use to play KanjiBox (as long as they support standard webpage formats). However, due to requirements linked to Facebook Connect and other practical consideration (screen size...), it may not always be possible to use KanjiBox on your smartphone.

     There is, however, a dedicated offline version for iPhone which will allow you to play KanjiBox on any iPhone or iPod Touch (without need for internet connection).

   • Licenses and acknowledgements

     This application uses the EDICT and KANJIDIC dictionary files. These files are the property of the Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, and are used in conformance with the Group's licence.

     It also uses data from the HispaDic project, in conformance with its CC license.

   • Damn this thing is buggy...

     It is very likely that, if you use using Kanji Box long enough, you will eventually run into bugs. Even though I spent a lot of time debugging it, KB certainly still has a few bugs in it. Generally speaking, I welcome all bug reports. For issues linked to specific questions (such as confusing choices or mismatched levels...), use the small button located in the lower-left corner of the playing screen. For anything else, please post in the forums or contact me directly.

     There are however two categories of bugs you should not bother reporting:

     1. Anything that has to do with japanese characters not displaying properly on your computer. Unless you are positive that they show up fine in all other applications running on your computer and only fail with Kanji Box (doubtful). Basically, this sort of problem has nothing to do with Kanji Box and is a matter between you, your Operating System and Google. You can always try asking for help in the forums, but I doubt you'll get much response from other users (understandably) and you won't get any from me (other than maybe advising you to purchase an OS that comes standard with a beautiful set of Japanese fonts, next time), sorry.
     2. Anything having to do with waves loading slowly or other general page-loading time issues. These are usually due to server slowness anywhere between Facebook's own servers and mine (oftentimes a combination of both). Unfortunately, the only fix for those would be for FB to get a decent infrastructure that can accomodate its recent growth and/or for me to invest in a dedicated server with better performance, neither of which is likely to happen too soon.

   • I would really love if there was an option to do [xxx] in Kanji Box!

     And I would really like a pony.

     Tell you what: help me get my pony and chances are, I will be much more receptive to your Kanji needs.

     When making donations, feel free to indicate a new feature in Kanji Box that you would like to be given top priority (there's a special field in the form to this effect):

     

     Please note that short of donations reaching a dozen million yens a year, I am unlikely to quit my day job and therefore unable to commit to any hard schedule for honouring your feature-request (especially if they are along the line of "Here is $5, now make it teach me Japanese during my sleep"). I recommend you contact me before donating if you have any doubt or question.

   • I found some kanji/vocabulary mistake in your quiz, where can I report it?

     Any quibble having to do with definition/translation/pronunciation errors should  first be checked with Jim Breen's original dictionaries (whence KB draws its datasets). If WWWJDIC shows the same "mistake", then Jim Breen is the man you want to be contacting directly (contact me afterward, if Jim confirms that there is, indeed a need for correction). If the mistake does not appear in WWWJDIC, it might be a bug, please contact me directly then.

     If you ran into any misclassification problem (such as ambiguous choices, levels mismatch etc.), please use the in-application report button (small grey '?' icon in the bottom left-hand corner) and it will be fixed when I go about reviewing reports (it can take a while, so if you feel there is an emergency, send me a message too). If you want to go farther and help out with the ongoing effort to bring clean JLPT data sets to KanjiBox and the community in general, have a look at these collaborative spreadsheets and contribute (after carefully reading contributiong guidelines). All corrections annotated in the spreadsheets are eventually brought over to KanjiBox's data sets.

   • I can haz KanjiBox badges?

     Yes you can!

2. Account upgrade, donations...

   • What is this 'Elite' status business? I thought we were an autonomous collective living as an anarcho-syndicalist commune!

     Although KanjiBox has always been entirely free to use (yet far from cheap to keep running) and will remain so, for any foreseeable future, I felt something should be done to reward generous souls who donated, even a few bucks, of their own vollition.

     Simultaneously, I have been looking for a way to make available all sorts of extra features or superfluous niceties which, while fun and enjoyable, would put too much of a strain on the server if used by everybody (such as KanjiBox's latest addition: Text Drill/Quiz, a really cool mode that is unfortunately too CPU-heavy to be opened to all).

     Thus was born a class system of sorts.

     Like any class system worth its salt, this one is completely unfair and based on monetary worth: generous donators (past and future) receive 'Elite' member status (indicated by a small 'エリート' mark, next to the header), while stingyregular users should see no difference.

     In addition to the smug satisfaction of knowing that they belong to a race of superior beings whose delicious fragrance and intellect shall be praised all the way to the pubs of northern Demachiyanagi, Elite users have access to a special page (by clicking on aforementioned mark) with a couple tiny extra features (more will be added over time). Note that none of these features will ever be of a nature to affect scores and ranking in any of KanjiBox's quizzes and therefore fairness will always reign, regardless of donation status (we might be heading the way of a corrupt oligarchy, but not quite that far yet).

     

     Note: There is no set donation minimum: you should donate however much you feel KanjiBox is worth to you while making sure you can safely afford it. Stopping and taking the time to show your appreciation, is at least as important as the actual amount. If even a couple bucks would put a strain on your budget, there are still ways you can obtain an account upgrade by helping on miscellaneous KB-related projects (usually, dataset cleanup and editing) which benefit the entire community.

     Important: if you ever made a donation and do not see the Mark of the Blessed on your KanjiBox page, please contact me with your full name and Facebook ID: status updates are manual and I do my best, but I can sometimes make mistakes. If you just made a donation, give me a few days to make the update before panicking.

   I can't afford a donation for a status upgrade. Any interest in a camel and a few goats? My young nubile sister? My first-born?

   Unfortunately, current international regulation on human trafficking and health inspection at Japanese customs make it difficult to accept such gifts in nature (but feel free to send me chocolate or samples of your local alcohol). However, if you have more spare time than money (or if you simply prefer to contribute in this way), you are more than welcome to donate some of your time and contribute.

   Although there is no formal mechanism to reward contributions with status upgrade, I do my best to collect the names of people who put in a reasonable effort and switch them to 'Elite' status manually (if you ever feel you have contributed and do not see an upgrade after a while, you should not hesitate to contact me: it is sometimes difficult tracking contributions efficiently).

   • Contributing...

     I regularly call on to the KanjiBox community for help with miscellaneous tasks geared at improving KanjiBox, such as cleaning datasets (fixing entries incorrectly assigned to a given JLPT level, definition errors etc.), gathering data from paper sources (e.g. new JLPT exam specifications) etc. etc.

     In the spirit of Jim Breen's invaluable EDICT dataset, all such work is done under Creative Commons licensing schemes, so that it can benefit any future Japanese-related project.

     Most projects are very straightforward and can be tackled in small bouts, without advanced software or Japanese skills. It is, however, essential that you read whatever instructions are provided: there is nothing more frustrating than good-willed contributors whose work has to be discarded, generally due to failure to follow the most basic instructions.

     The best way to be informed of such projects is to subscribe to KanjiBox's fan page on Facebook: in addition to occasional update notices and misc. discussions, this is where calls for help on KB-related projects usually pop up. You should of course also have a look at past news on that page, to see if any project might still be underway. If you don't see anything (or if you have any suggestions on other ways in which you can make yourself useful): don't hesitate to contact me.

     Ongoing (Feb. 2010): a massive dataset cleaning effort is underway. It essentially consists of going over all entries in each JLPT dataset used by KB, annotating those that seem out of place (or otherwise incorrect). The task is ridiculously simple (all you need is basic spreadsheet skills and a few links to verified JLPT lists), but long and a bit tedious (trust me, it's even worse on my side, when I have to convert the corrections to actual DB modifications). Sets for JLPT 4 and 3 have now been [mostly] completed. JLPT 2 and 1 (which are considerably larger) still need much love and attention. So feel free to head out there, have a look at the instructions sheet, take a glance at how it is done (for example, by looking at JLPT 4/3 sheets) and get started!

     Ongoing (Feb. 2010): Another big project is to gather enough data on the new JLPT levels in order to support them in KanjiBox. Most levels stay the same (N5 = J4, N4 = J3, N2 = J2, N1 = J1), but N3 (located between former J3 and J2) is the big unknown. Since JLPT officially refuses to disclose lists of required kanji and words (i.e.: prefer to discreetly hand them to their friends in the textbook-publishing industry), there is no other way than manually gathering them from all possible sources and annotate the spreadsheets mentioned above.
     Use the "N3" spreadsheet to report kanji that you know belong (or do not belong) to N3: use green/red to highlight each line.
     The "Vocabulary JLPT 2" sheet has a special "N3" column, which you can fill with "Y"/"N" (if you put "Y", use the comments column to give indication of reading level, if any).

     Coming soon (March/April 2010): Time-permitting, KB is going multi-lingual soon (at first: French, German and Russian). However, none of the non-English datasets available are as complete as the Japanese-English one. A rather ambitious project is in the work that would let users contribute their own translation while playing (using both Japanese and English versions as a support).

   • What's in store for the future?

     I am still actively developing Kanji Box, fixing stuff and adding features. All subject to heavy schedule constraints and occasional need to go drink myself silly at the nearest bar instead of writing PHP code. In practice, every once in a while, I will go on week-long KB development benders, hoping my PhD advisor doesn't notice the sharp decrease in work productivity at the lab, only to be cut short in my momentum by more urgent life-or-death matters (advisor progress meetings, paper submission deadlines, conference trips, girlfriend's attempts to deep-fry my laptop etc).

     All in all, keep in mind that KB is a pet project and far from the center of attention in my life, so development can go on hiatus at any moment and development schedule is very tentative. Needless to say, donations, contributions and supportive message go a long way to motivate the very venal person that I am.

     Here is a tentative roadmap for the months/years to come. Feel free to contact me with your own suggestions (but have a look at the forums and App page first to see if it's not already covered):

     • Multilingual KB: support for French, German and Russian in Vocab/Reading mode, Spanish and French in Kanji mode.
     • Facebook-free login: possibility to create accounts and log in directly without going through Facebook.
     • Sync learning data with iPhone application.
     • Grammar quiz: extending current Text mode to cover grammar points in each JLPT levels.
     • Customisable UI: page width, font size etc.
     • Smartphone-friendly version: essentially a small-screen version with perhaps lighter Javascript use.
     • ...

     You can become a "Fan" on KanjiBox's Facebook page, if you want to receive occasional notifications through Facebook when I release a major Kanji Box upgrade.

     If there is a feature you feel you cannot live without, check the entry pertaining to feature requests.

   • Donations... ($¥€ -> \o/)

     ... are encouraged and gladly accepted:

     

3. Specific Issues

   • It would be cool if Quiz mode had feature [xxx], just like Drill mode...

     There is a very specific reason why Quiz mode does not offer as many options as Drill mode (specific level training, adaptive drilling, show/hide English, pronunciations etc.): while drill is entirely personal, quiz answers put you in direct competition with other users. For this reason, Kanji Box needs to ensure that quiz mode is absolutely uniform, within a given level, across all players. Generally speaking, if an option you are looking for is not in Quiz mode, just use Drill mode (or request it for drill mode if it doesn't exist at all): the only notable difference is that it won't log your scores (but it wouldn't make much sense anyway to compare those)...

   • Why isn't there a quiz mode or revision export for Kana?

     As for most other "why isn't there an option to do [xxx]?", the short answer is that I haven't got around to implement it yet and that, maybe one day, when I have time.

     The longer and slightly more realistic answer is that, given the amount of free time I have (precious little) and the amount of potential features that outrank kana options (heaps and heaps), you are unlikely to see much new kana features until a very hypothetical Kanji Box Inc. IPO on the NASDAQ allows me to quit my dayjob. Kana are only a secondary feature of Kanji Box, as they are [comparatively] rather easy to learn and shouldn't take a devoted student more than a couple weeks (whereas you can easily spend years on the kanji/vocab/reading parts: trust me on this).

     Of course, if you beg to differ with these priorities, and so does your wallet, please by all mean make me an offer I can't refuse.

   • I seem to be getting out-of-level questions in Quiz mode. Is this a bug?

     Probably not.

     Quiz is meant to give you waves of questions in progression "around" your level. This means some of the first waves will be below your level, while the last few are likely to be slightly above it. If you want to only be asked questions at your chosen level, use Drill mode.

   • What do these colors and numbers mean on the stats page?

     In a nutshell, each bar represents your mastery of a given level. The greener, the better.

     For each entry (kanji, vocab, reading, kana...) in each level, Kanji Box associates a color, going from red (failed many times) to bright green (consistently answered right), with all sorts of nuances in the middle. White indicates entries that you haven't been presented with yet.

     When you start with Kanji Box, your stats will be entirely white, progressively filling up and constantly evolving, as your answers get better or worse.

     For more details, check out the step-by-step guide.

   • How does scoring work in Quiz mode?

     Scoring uses a dark and secret algorithm that takes in account your level, the current wave you are answering and how fast you answered (and whether you answered correctly, obviously). The higher the level and the wave, the higher the amount of points up for grab. I then apply a ridiculously complex (non-linear) function of time to decide how much effective points you get. That is: from that base amount, you will receive all or a share of the points depending on the amount of time you had left when you clicked. You still get the maximum amount after a couple seconds and you do get a few points, even when the counter has reached zero.

     "Passing" a wave has nothing to do with scores and is only calculated on the percentage of correct answers per wave. Each wave has anywhere between 5 and 20 kanjis, you must obtain a 50-70% success rate (depending on the level you are training at) on each of these, in order to reach the next one.

     As of version 2, a 'skip' button (apearing as a question mark: '?') lets you skip a question without providing any answer. In drill mode, this helps KB assess your level more efficiently. In quiz mode, this is also the only way to not risk losing any points on a question (a wrong answer will remove points from your score).

   • Answers to the previous questions appear and fade away way too fast!

     Note: behaviour for this option was changed from the old Facebook-hosted version! Please read below.

     Simply click on the correction box (its background color should change slightly) and it will stay on-screen until the end of the wave (or until you click again).

     Alternatively, you can also change the corresponding option in the settings, but be warned that this will increase the waiting time between waves (new waves can only be loaded when all previous answers have vanished).

   • Is there a way to export a list of words or kanji for offline studying?

     Yes there is. On the main tab (Home), just click on Export Printouts, select your options and click on 'Generate List': you should have a nice printable list of words or kanjis. If nothing happens when you click on Export Printouts, this might be due to a browser compatibility problem: try again using any non-Microsoft-made browser and let me know if the problem persists.

   • Oh my God! What happened to all the kids in 7th grade??? Were they sent to a remote island as part of a shady government program?

     Thanks to some awesome user contributions, grade 7 kanji should now be properly labeled in the datasets. Feel free to contact me if you notice some errors.

   • Some questions offer choices with identical readings: it is impossible to know which one is the correct answer...

     If you choose to disable English indications in Drill mode, you might run into cases where two of the possible answers share the same reading, making it impossible to pick one.

     This is not a bug, but a consequence of many kanji sharing the exact same set of readings. Although ensuring that such homophones are never presented together would be possible, it would also break one of KanjiBox main feature of selecting closely resembling kanji choices (in terms of shape, radicals etc): similar kanji are statistically much more likely to have the same reading (since they may share radicals).

     However, you will never get two choices sharing the same (or confusingly close) English meanings. This is why, even with English display disabled, you can always have a peak by clicking on the '>>' mark, next to the reading line.

   • Is there a way to use keyboard hotkeys instead of clicking on answers?

     Yes. Simply make sure that the 'Enable Hotkeys' option is checked in your settings. Once enabled, just use keys '1' through '5' to answer a question in Drill or Quiz mode (pressing '5' is the same as clicking on the '?' button).

     Note 1: At present, this feature is only available to Elite users.
     Note 2: This is an experimental feature: there is a chance this might not work on every browser/platform. If you notice any issue, please contact me with details and I will do my best to fix it.

4. Dave

   • The man behind the machine...

     Hello my name is David, but friends call me Dave.

     When not busy throwing my life away debugging Facebook applications at 4am on a random weekday, I also enjoy knitting, unicorns, rainbows, humorous postcards featuring kittens doing wacky anthropomorphic activities, binge drinking and hardcore pornography. Just kidding: I'm not all that much into rainbows.

     I am currently embarked on a PhD course in Bioinformatics at the University of Kyoto, where I recently moved after living a decade between San Francisco, London, Paris and Tokyo. Actually, my research campus is not located in Kyoto-city proper, but in somewhat nearby Obaku (on the outskirt of Uji-city), where I therefore live, work and most likely will die a long-awaited and lonely death enjoy the lush nature and quiet surroundings conducive to fruitful academic research.

     I like to believe I possess a certain worldly character and wry sense of humour. Most people just seem to think I am an annoying prick. Japanese people tend to stare blankly. a lot.

     Although writing another twenty paragraphs of that self-gazing drivel would come fairly natural to me, I will suggest that anyone bored enough to want to know more, check my blog instead.

   • I love you! Can I have your kids?! Do you want to join my very exclusive list of 3642 Facebook friends?

     Quite a few people over the months have been spontaneously sending me Facebook friend requests without so much as an explanation. I am very touched by this attention. Heartbreaking as it may be though, I usually decline them, as I try to keep my FB account somewhat limited to actual friends, or at least people I have some connection with. This doesn't mean I am closed to the idea of meeting new people on the interwebs, far from it: I'd just rather we make acquaintance first before we exchange the privillege to inundate each other's newsfeed with boring updates and mundane details of our respective lives.

     If you feel we have much to bond over, do not hesitate to contact me via FB message. If you are just curious to know every detailed minutiae of my life, then head over to my blog (it's the same, only with more pictures), but please do not send me FB friend requests awkwardly devoid of any explanation: they make me feel like a complete asshole declining them.

     Conversely, if you happen by the greater Kyoto area and feel like taking me out for a beer, don't hesitate to send me a note.

   • Why, oh why?

     While actively looking for ways to occupy those two extra hours of free time I had recently gained from eliminating sleep altogether from my weekly schedule, I once realized that absolutely none of the existing study-assisting software for kanji worked the way I'd like. This realization came about 1 month before 2008's JLPT and coincided with the realization that I was hopelessly behind in my 2-kyuu revisions.

     It certainly wasn't enough for me to catch up on my revisions, but apparently helped a few, so it wasn't all in vain after all.

   • By the way, what's your Japanese level yourself?

     Poor, very poor. It might get better one day, if I stop wasting my time building Japanese-learning software and actually start using it.

5. Non-KB related requests

   • KONNECHEVA!!!!~~~~LOLZ~^^~ I really like Japanese anime ^^ Can you help me move there!?!

     Every so often, I seem to get contacted by Japanese immigration hopefuls who, after watching twenty episodes of Naruto in a row, have come away convinced that Japan is the country they were meant to be born into.

     So far, so good. More power to them, really.

     But some of these people apparently work under the delusion that I, of all people, can, or would care to, help them achieve this goal.

     Allow me therefore to use this occasion to set the record straight on a couple of the million things wrong with this picture:

     1. Contrary to what you may have heard, the Japanese entertainment industry is not in such a hiring boom that they desperately seek foreign 16 year-old anime fans with dubious language skills (as exhibited by their native language spelling skills) to join their ranks.
     2. As it turns out (and you would find out eventually), Japan is not that different from the rest of the world. In that compulsively watching and obsessing over animated cartoons while eating junk food 24/7 (instead of, you know, bathing on a daily basis, reading books with words or meeting people) will also put you in the "socially inept" category, just like anywhere else. The fact Japanese have a word for it, doesn't make it any less of a social shortcoming. So you might as well save yourself the hardship and stay in your mum's basement.
     3. I have absolutely no personal incentive to encourage your misguided attempt at eloping to that fantasy eldorado of yours. At best, you'll only end up one of those semi-adapted douchebags whose complete lack of social skills are misinterpreted as cultural difference by the locals (thus furthering well-ingrained notions among Japanese that all foreigners must be "weird" and adverse to personal hygiene). At worst, you will curl up in a ball near Harajuku bridge, waiting to be evacuated by your embassy and becoming a tripping hazard on my morning commute in the meantime.

     All that being said: if your interest in Japan covers more than Dragon Ball Z and 12 year-old schoolgirl outfits, and you think I might be of assistance with some Japan-related inquiry, feel free to contact me and ask. I am not that mean in real.

   • I want to get a Japanese tattoo. Can you translate "Super Princess Warrior" into Japanese for me?

     In a way that won't make people laugh when you go for a swim in Japantown? probably not. Feel free to ask in the forums, but if I may say: you probably should stay away from permanent body modifications in a language you do not even remotely understand.

6. Etc.
   • Kanji Box page (become a "Fan", if you want to receive occasional FB notifications for new Kanji Box upgrades).
   • Kanji Box Discussion Board: for all your questions and comments about Kanji Box and studying Japanese in general.
   • On the first Sunday of December, I am committing seppuku: a simple FB group dedicated to those poor souls who plan on taking the JLPT (again) this year or have taken it in recent times.

7. Work in progress... More to come...