I know this is a dumb question but I never participated in an Etourney but do I have to just participate to get a shiai token or do I have to win the whole tournament?

you can get shiai tokens by claiming your daily reward (claim it every day for a week and get one shiai token), alternatively in ETourneys hosted by the Event Squad, you can win shiai tokens by placing first or second.
You can also get shiai tokens in a EHotseat server, you just have to beat whoever is in the hotseat.
Hope this explained it

Thanks for the clear explenation but where can i find the daily rewards

when you log into toribash it should pop up (its a 5.1 update thing I believe)

I still haven’t updated from 5.12, will my shiais have stacked up by now (probably not but)?

Nope...You only get them when you log in for a whole week straight
(you only get the shiai token on the last day)

P.S. It's only a steam thing if you didn't know

Nah standalone can get daily reward too

huh...it said on the news page... nvm then