Woooo it’s posted!!
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令和６年７月１７日
Not to overshare on the internet, but I'm about to overshare on the internet. But it's relevant to my Japanese studies
To be completely honest I’ve been going through a depressive episode (smth that’s happened in the past but I thought I’d been recovering for good… just gotta remember that healing isn’t linear). Which means I’ve lost a lot of interest in the things I love, including studying Japanese. Or language in general. This is why I keep saying “I’m going to do this” and then… not following through. And now that I’m done with school and since I’m still job hunting, I thought I’d have more time for Japanese! But instead my depression has gotten worse and I’m still not studying. Ughh.
I’m trying to figure out how to still do the things I love while my brain’s like this. I want to read Japanese, I want to take grammar notes, I want to do active listening practice! But getting started is so hard. And staying consistent is even harder.
idk, guess I wanted to put this out there. Give a little context to my studying (or lack thereof) and find out if anyone else is going through the same thing and has any advice 
Since I haven’t done SRS for a while, here’s my review counts:
Ew that’s so many reviews. On the one hand, I don’t really need to do SRS anymore (especially WK). But on the other hand, I do like the structure it gives, and it’s an easy way to do a little bit of Japanese, even if immersion is more effective for me at this point. So I think I’m going to still chip away at these but not worry too much if I can
Also: randomly decided to update this study log today and it’s coincidentally also my wanikani cake day?
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Sorry to hear you’ve been struggling! I think a lot of people on the forum can relate at some point or another. I wonder if lowering the barrier would help? Rather than saying ‘i need to do grammar’ ‘i need to do active listening’ etc, just do low effort activities in japanese you enjoy, like watching youtube or anime or something? I think it’s fine to not do active grammar study for a while. And, tbh, if you do nothing at all for a while, Japanese will still be here later for you to study.
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Mirroring Soggy, a break from active learning isn’t a death sentence for your progress, passive enjoyment of Japanese content without explicitly studying grammar/vocab/etc will maintain all of your hard work while giving you some much-needed mental rest. But first and foremost, above all learning goals, is taking care of your mind and body – please don’t push yourself during this time. I know the depression instinct is to beat yourself up over long breaks and paused progress, but please be so patient with yourself Japanese will be here when you feel better, as will we!
(btw happy cake day!)
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令和６年９月３日
I’m back!! Thank you all for the kind replies after my last update. The break was really needed, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get back into things.
What I’ve been up to
I played through Ghost of Tsushima in July/August, it was great to be able to kinda understand what the random unsubtitled NPCs were saying! (Also I’ve now memorized the Mongolian word доошоо 
)
Recently listened to some mochi real japanese, I knew I could understand her N5 videos but I was surprised that it was pretty easy to understand her N4 videos too! All in all, I think my listening skills are finally catching up to my reading skills. There’s still an obvious gap, and god I still struggle with speaking, but it’s not as big as before.
Irodori
Starting over with Irodori. Made a new account and everything. I’m determined to be able to use Japanese in my daily life, going to give it my all! これから頑張る！
Last time, I was going through the Elementary 1 (A2) course. But this time I’m actually starting with Starter (A1). My written Japanese is way above this level, and these first few topics are kinda boring ngl. But looking through the course, there’s so many of these simple speaking/listening Can-Dos that I… can’t do.
It’ ll also be nice to see how they do their starter course, and I love the topic videos where they show their lessons being applied in a real world setting, so I don’t really mind going through beginner stuff again.
Can Do:
- Can exchange greetings when I meet someone
- Can say goodbye when leaving
- Can thank someone or apologize to them
- Can understand stickers with messages such as “good morning” or “thanks"
- Can ask someone to say something again if I don’t really understand
- Can answer when someone asks if I speak Japanese and ask if someone speaks other languages.
- Can ask how to say something in Japanese and understand the answer
Goals
By the end of the year I’d like to:
- complete Irodori Starter
- start and actually keep doing an audio diary for speaking practice. Goal of at least 1 entry per week
- start up Anki again, specifically geared towards listening comprehension + speaking practice
- get to my year goal of 1000 minutes of listening (currently at 317/1000, or 5h17m)
No specific reading goals for now, and I’m not doing the read every day challenge this season. But I’ll be participating in the Fall Readathon and will rejoin the Intermediate Manga Club
鰐蟹は．．．ちょっと．．． 
Like I’ve said before, kanji isn’t really a priority anymore though, don’t really need to continue to use WK. But it’s kinda wild to see it this high
Maintaining N5-N3 grammar on Bunpro, not sure about learning more for now. I’d rather maintain and strengthen what I already know.
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Oohhh a fellow Ghost of Tsushima player !
Playing it again with the Japanese voices is one of my goals, it’s one of my favorite games ever. Did you like it ? The gameplay with the sword feels so good to me, and of course the art direction is incredible. Just exploring the world feels great, the beautiful fields of pampa grass, the leaves and flowers falling in the air, the vibrant colours ; it’s just amazing. Sometimes I even wish there was an option at the end of the game where we could disable the random NPC fights, to just be able to enjoy the scenery without annoying NPC (those golden birds were too much too I think). I can’t wait for GoT 2.
I’ve seen someone else talking about these digital books in an other thread, they seem really great, I will probably start them too this year…
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nice Jin pfp!
omg I loved it, even platinumed it! The world was so beautifully crafted and the combat was incredible. You worded what I love about it perfectly. I watched some GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) talks about it too after I played because I was so blown away by the game design, you can tell the devs really put a lot of love and thought into this game
I’ve been a fan of Irodori for a long time! To the point where I referenced the JF Standard Can-Dos in a final paper in grad school. I like how Irodori teaches using real life scenarios and shadowing too.
I’m using their web app now, but the pdfs+audio are great too
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Thanks ! 
Same for me ; the Iki Island expansion was amazing too. The multiplayer was also great but it could have been even better if there was an option to fight directly other players (not just the Rivals games), and also the possibility to finish the Raids missions alone.
When I went on the website and saw that I could just download these PDF I was so surprised, it’s awesome that they just let us have them for free.
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令和６年１０月１０日
Speaking: Mango Languages
My new temp job allows me to listen to things while working, so I’ve been trying out Mango Languages. I like Irodori more, but Mango is a lot more convenient since they have an auto-play audio format. The repetition is really helpful for getting it to stick in my head!
Listening: Anki
The other thing I’ve been doing for listening is making an Anki deck!! This is specifically geared towards listening and speaking, so there are three note types:
- Listening comprehension (audio → meaning)
- Speaking practice (meaning → audio, I make myself say the word out loud)
- Reading comprehension (written & audio → meaning) → this is mostly so I can make the connection between the written and spoken word
I’ve been adding words from Irodori, words that are relevant to my daily life, and some collocations from WaniKani that have Forvo recordings.
Goal Progress
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令和７年０３月２０日
久しぶり！ I took a very long break from Japanese and language study in general. I don’t have as much time for language learning anymore now that I have a full time job, especially since I’m studying for the CompTIA A+ rn. But I can also feel my Japanese slipping awayyyyyy
My main goal right now is to maintain / strengthen the Japanese I already have. So no moving on to N2 yet! And also shortening the gap between my listening and reading.
Grammar
I reset Bunpro N3 again… After such a long break I couldn’t remember most of it. It’s not as big of a deal as resetting WK though b/c you can mark grammar as mastered again anyway and go at whatever pace, so really it’s more like reviewing. At least that’s what I keep telling myself 
I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m thinking of writing a journal entry or something for every N3 grammar point and also saying it aloud. That way I’m practicing output that’s not just fill in the blank.
Listening
Listening to more Comprehensible Japanese! It’s nice to know that even after a big gap I still understand what she’s saying. I’m aiming for 3/day, and so far that’s working out!
Reading
I’ll be joining the Spring Equinox 24hr Readathon! Like my post there says, I’ll be joining on the 22nd and focusing on 銀の匙.
Speaking of 銀の匙, I’m so excited to be running the club! But also a bit nervous, it’s been a while since I’ve run a club and it’s my first time running a club from the beginning instead of taking over an offshoot.
Not a whole lot of reading otherwise, but I’m trying to read a page of 366 every day. And also reading ルックバック with the BBC. They showed the movie at my local theater a couple weeks ago, and of course I couldn’t resist going, so I kinda got spoiled for the ending whoops
Speaking
I went through the N5 Bunpro points and shadowed the example sentences to get used to speaking simple sentences again. (N5 uses real speakers now instead of TTS thank god). Other than that, not a whole lot of speaking.
I’ve actually been practicing speaking Irish more lately instead, making a little audio diary during my lunch break. A whole lot of “i’m walking back to my office now, today it is snowing again, i ate a sandwich at the cafe, i am tired” kind of stuff
Some life updates:
- Like I said above, I am now Employed™, I work in IT which is why I’m studying for CompTIA (not required for my job but i’m trying to get certified anyway)
- also brushing up on my programming skills. and then ended up doing a wikipedia dive of like every major programming language in history. and making a new obsidian vault about programming languages and frameworks and game engines and ides. so i haven’t actually done much programming haha
- finally got the full version of ffxiv after years and used a fantasia for the first time (male elezen to female hyur). and then haven’t renewed my sub b/c infinity nikki took over my life
- trying not to think too hard about the state of my country
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Welcome back, and good luck finding a study routine with the new job!
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Welcome back!! Happy to see you around again! Congrats on the job 
I’m super excited to read 銀の匙, very very curious about it! I’m sure you’ll do great running the club 
see you soon, I also spotted you in the readathon thread 
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令和７年０６月２７日
Grammar
I’m planning on making a bigger (themed!) post soon about my study goals, but I’m trying to decide how to go about grammar study / review.
I’ve taken notes on the entirety of Bunpro’s N3 deck twice now, but since I haven’t interacted with the language much in a while, I’ve forgotten a lot of it.
Re-retaking notes doesn’t seem to be the most efficient way to review, but neither does just immersing and looking up grammar when it comes up… I do genuinely enjoy grammar study (morphology is one of my fave linguistics fields), but I want it to actually stick
Luckily N5~N4 stuff is still pretty solid (with some outliers here and there). Mostly just focusing on speaking on that front.
Reading
銀の匙 ended up being way too difficult, so I ended up running the club without actually reading much of it…
I participated in the Summer Solstice readathon and met my goal!
Listening and Speaking
Starting up Irodori again, aiming for 1 per week. Also still listening to Comprehensible Japanese.
I watched Ito with English subs, but the protagonist uses the Tsugaru dialect, so I got to pick up some of that! For example く means 食べる (probably from 食う?)
And I’m going through some N4 grammar, writing sentences, and recording myself speaking them. It’s not spontaneous, but I think it’s helping my mouth get used to the words.
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伝説の勉強裏 | A quest to learn japanese: Master Quest
I finished WaniKani over a year ago, but there’s still so much to learn! And so, I’m reviving this study log with A quest to learn Japanese: Master Quest. I have six general goals (each corresponding with one of six Ocarina of Time temples 
). I’ve already started on these, and in fact I wanted to wait until I knew I could do them before actually making this post.
These are long-term goals. In a way, they’re a way for me to categorize what I need to work on and make smaller goals that push me towards the bigger goal. In fact, I already have some mini goals (marked with the beginner symbol 
) that are much easier to achieve.
There’s no end date, but I’ll be checking in once a month and giving an update on my progress.
Usually, I think having an end date is really important for setting goals. But since these are such long-term goals, I think it’ll be better for me to chip away at them slowly. Some months I might focus more on grammar. Other months, I’ll work on speaking. But I want to make at least some progress in all of them each month. Whether it’s a little progress or a lot of progress, it’s still progress!
Review N3 grammar
I’m reviewing N3 grammar on Bunpro after resetting last winter. But I’m not necessarily spending the same amount of effort on each grammar point! Here’s how I’m taking notes:
- Already know it? Reading the lesson as a quick refresher and marking as mastered
- Don’t remember at all? It’s basically new info then! Handwriting notes and adding to reviews
- Sort of remember? Probably won’t rewrite notes, but I’ll add to reviews
And then for the grammar that I’m really interested in from a linguist perspective, I’m taking some notes in Obsidian regardless if I know the grammar or not.
MINI GOAL: First 5 sections reviewed
Read 16000 manga pages
That seems like a lot of pages, but really it’s 100 160-page manga. So not too crazy, right? Especially with no end date.
I chose manga because 1) they’re easier for me to get through than books, 2) digital manga are more consistent page-wise than digital books, and 3) I have way too many manga in my TBR
Along those lines, I’ve rejoined the Read Every Day challenges, which will help me stay on track!
MINI GOAL: 1600 pages (10 manga)
Burn all WK items
This is by far the most arduous task ahead of me, and I won’t finish for 6 months at the earliest. And probably much, much longer.
I’ve noticed my kanji comprehension slipping in the last several months, likely because I haven’t been reading. Reading is more important to me, but I’d like to fit in some SRS again to establish a routine.
The first stage, of course, is to get through the mountain of reviews. Going to chip away at it 10 reviews at a time. Every day, I want my review pile to be at least 10 below what it was the day before. For example, yesterday I ended at 1130 reviews left, so today I want to end at 1120 reviews, and tomorrow 1110 reviews. But if today I end at 1100 left, tomorrow I need to end at 1090.
This is quite a slow pace, but since most of these reviews have been ready for months I think a few more months won’t hurt. And I want to avoid hundreds of apprentice items at once lol
MINI GOAL: 8000 burned (only ~50 more!)
with 8500 and 9000 as additional mini goals
Listen actively for 50 hours
Listening: the thing I keep telling myself I’ll practice, and then don’t 
Recently I’ve switched to watching Comprehensible Japanese on their actual site instead of youtube. They have a built-in tracker that tells you how much time you’ve listened!
I’d like my total lifetime study hours on Comprehensible Japanese to be 50 hours. This is a very doable goal, I just have to actually put in the time.
MINI GOAL: 10 hours
Vanquish leeches and ghosts
This ties into burning all items, but it’s a quest of its own.
Right now I apparently have 343 leeches on WK and 0 ghosts on Bunpro. I’m sure these numbers will change a lot though.
I can’t remember if I’ve talked about how I study leeches before, if not I’ll write a different reply b/c I’d love to explain the setup and routine in full (and this post is already pretty long!) But tldr I use Self Study to find them and then study collocations so I understand the meaning better.
MINI GOAL: no leeches left from levels 1-16
Speak my thoughts
Speaking is by far my worst language skill. In English and Japanese lol. I’m continuing my previous goal of doing all Irodori chapters.
MINI GOAL: Irodori Starter complete
Going to track my progress in the next post and link it at the top b/c this post is already getting long enough 
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伝説の勉強裏 Progress
| Progress | Goal | % | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
69 | 219 | N3 reviewed | 32% |
|
68 | 16000 | manga pages read | 0% |
|
7987 | 9254 | WK items burned | 86% |
|
1 | 50 | hours of Comprehensible Japanese | 2% |
|
343 | 0 | leeches remaining | ? |
|
5 | 54 | Irodori chapters | 9% |
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令和７年０８月０１日
| Progress | Goal | % | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
69 (+26) | 219 | N3 reviewed | 32% (+12%) |
|
68 (+68) | 16000 | manga pages read | 0% |
|
7987 (+38) | 9254 | WK items burned | 86% |
|
5 (+2) | 54 | Irodori chapters | 9% (+3%) |
Grammar
I’ve switched from the default cloze reviews to reading reviews. It takes longer to get through each day, but it actually forces me to look at the sentence as a whole and understand what the grammar point is doing to the sentence.
Since I’m not used to this review style, I crammed some N5 and N4 reading reviews. So even though I didn’t get a lot of manga reading done, I still feel like I’ve read a lot every day.
Notable grammar:
- ばかり and all its uses. I remembered the basic meaning of ばかり, and I know it still literally means that in the “just because” and “continues to” meanings, but . Reading reviews have been great for training myself to notice the little details like the tense before ばかり and whether there’s a に.
- The same goes for ほど. I understand what it means (‘extent’) but when I’m reading I tend to kind of gloss over how it’s actually affecting the sentence.
- よる continues to be a struggle. Luckily it pops up in unrelated reading reviews
- I understand 点 in theory but every review sentence is so hard to parse. Doesn’t help that the sentences are much longer than other grammar points’
Oh, also! I’ve created a Bunpro deck for Human Japanese This was my first textbook/app and I often recommend it to beginners since I still think it’s a fantastic resource.
It was so nostalgic going through each chapter as I made the deck. To think 9 years ago I was struggling with て形 and で vs に, and didn’t even know kanji. Time flies huh
Reading
Read ~40% of レンタルおにいちゃん (1) | L16. I was never really drawn to this series before, but I wanted an easy manga to start off this challenge. It’s a bit sadder than I expected 
I probably won’t read the whole series but I’m enjoying it so far
It’s not reading that counts for my goal, but like I said above I’ve been reading a lot of grammar examples every day.
Kanji
I’m down to less than 1000 reviews! 
I’ve ordered it by lower levels first, that way the SRS timings still kind of work. Once my review count is much lower I’ll change it back to shuffled.
Speaking
I finished 2 Irodori lessons. Lesson 4 taught some simple introductions and saying where you live. Very easy stuff, probably could’ve skipped this. And then Lesson 5, which is all about talking about foods you like/dislike and responding when offered a drink. Phrases I’d absolutely understand when reading but would probably freeze up with in an actual conversation 
I use Firefox so the recording functionality doesn’t work, but they don’t have a grading system anyway so I just speak without recording.
Can-dos completed
- Can listen to a family being introduced and understand who is who
- Can ask and answer questions about where you live and your age
- Can ask and answer simple questions about a photograph (e.g. ‘Who is that?’)
- Can read a short social media post made by a friend and understand the topic with help from the photograph.
- Can answer questions about foods you like and dislike.
- Can ask and answer questions about Japanese food you like or dislike.
- Can respond when offered a drink, for example by saying what you want to drink.
- Can ask and answer questions about what you eat for breakfast
- Can write a simple explanation about a photograph of food and post it on social media.
Of course, it’s one thing to complete the lesson in Irodori, it’s another to say I actually can ‘respond when offered a drink’ or ‘ask and answer questions about what I eat for breakfast’. Maybe I’ll talk to the cat to practice
Goals for August
MORE READING!! I want to finish up レンタルおにいちゃん 1, finally finish 極主夫道 14, and read 極主夫道 15
I’d also like to do Irodori a bit more often and also practice on my own. I’ve had company basically all July so it’s been hard to practice speaking without feeling a bit selfconscious lol
Finally, I want to work on listening since I didn’t really work on that at all this month.
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令和７年１０月０６日
| Progress | Goal | % | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
107 (+38) | 219 | N3 reviewed | 49% |
|
175 (+107) | 16000 | manga pages read | 1% |
|
8015 (+28) | 9254 | WK items burned | 86% |
|
2 (+1) | 50 | hours of CJI | 4% |
|
257 (-86) | 0 | leeches remaining | ? |
|
7 (+2) | 54 | Irodori chapters | 13% |
Grammar and Kanji
SRS has been going well the last two months. First off, I’ve made it to my first mini goal: 8000 BURNS! I’m down to 740 kanji reviews as of this morning, although I’d made it to 670 earlier in September.
I’d been keeping up on grammar reviews… except for the last week thanks to being extremely busy. So now my grammar reviews have grown a bit high for me (30).
I’m not focusing on leaches rn, just getting reviews down in general. But ohh god some of these have been haunting me for a long time
- 技: a leech since April 2021. I actually do really like this word, but I can never remember the reading. And so it’s always stuck in the Guru > Master > Enlightened > Guru loop. My new meumonic: What’s the (わざ) reading for this damn kanji again? /hj
- 審査: currently my most-missed leech according to Item Inspector. I did the lesson in June 2021, and it’s in apprentice. I usually get the meaning wrong, I get it mixed up with some other examination/inspection vocab.
- 供給: since August 2021, and tbh I feel like I know this one well (supply, きょうきゅう), yet somehow I mess up either the reading or meaning every time it comes up in reviews
Reading
I finished the first volume of レンタルおにいちゃん a while back but haven’t read any manga since. I’m reading lots of other things though, namely FF1! I’m finding the text in that game really easy to get through, although the pixel font can be hard to decipher at times.
I’ve also read through more 366, and one of the weeks was on idioms and proverbs. Here are some fun ones I learned:
- 後ろ髪を引かれる ‘to do with painful reluctance’, lit. to have your hair pulled from behind
- 尻に火が付く ‘to be under the gun’ (i.e., under pressure), lit. to catch fire in the butt
- 犬猿の仲 ‘like
catsmonkeys and dogs’ - 猫の手も借りたい ‘extremely busy / shorthanded’, lit. wanting even the help of a cat
- かっぱの川流れ ‘anyone can make a mistake’, lit. the kappa’s carried away by a current
- 棚からぼた餅 ‘unexpected piece of good luck’, lit. azuki-covered mochi fallen from a shelf
- 七転び八起き ‘keeping at it until you succeed’, lit. falling seven times, getting up eight
Speaking of 七転び八起き, I’m also trying 魔女の宅急便 once again, this time with the 2025 reread club. I think I’m just about to where I’d stopped before. It’s not so much that the language is difficult, just that I still don’t read prose all that much.
Speaking
A little more Irodori completed! These lessons were on ordering at fast food restaurants and describing houses.
Can-Dos completed
- Can look at a menu in a fast food restaurant and understand what is available.
- Can order in a fast food restaurant.
- Can ask and answer questions about what you want to eat when eating with other people.
- Can order food at a restaurant and ask for a plate or glass, etc.
- Can look at different restaurants’ signboards and understand what each place is.
- Can listen to simple explanations when being shown around a house and understand the layout.
- Can ask and check whether a house or room has everything you need.
- Can give a simple answer when asked where you live and what your house is like.
- Can ask and answer questions about what kind of house you live in.
- Can read the buttons on an electric appliance, for example the remote controller for the air conditioning, and understand which one to press.
Listening
Nope 
Miscelaneous
Came across this talk from the Japanese Studies Association of Australia 2025 that discusses how non-speakers of Japanese refer to Japanese, how normal words are mysticized, and how these interpretations are used to make a claim (usually by describing Japanese people as a monolith). This definitely occurs with other languages too, but it constantly happens to Japanese in English self-help books.
It’s an academic talk but very accessible to non-academics. Highly recommend giving it a watch!
Goals for October
Actual goals to work on, based on priority:
- Read Every Day Challenge
- Keep up with clubs: FF, 魔女の宅急便, and the new Children’s Book Club
- Practice speaking outside of Irodori (even if it’s just talking to myself)
- Finish 3 more sections of Irodori
- Try out the new JLPT practice exams on Bunpro
- Keep whittling down those WK reviews and keep on top of Bunpro reviews
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I’m so glad I’m not the only person to notice this by studying Japanese. I studied engineering in college so kaizen and kanban came up some and they’re really just the words for improvement and sign. Like guys, yeah this is useful, but do we have to act like Japan is uniquely magic for doing it? Even with something as “anciently Japanese” as Origami, it really is the art of folding paper and they call it folding paper. WOW! Super Sugoi (sugoi means amazing by the way)
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ugh the peak of the ikigai craze had tons of random japanese words being mysticized in annoying ways online. but thankfully it also gave us this
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寿司 – there must be a reason why, of all the kanji, they chose “lifespan” and “director” to represent that word! Why would it be? Clearly, there is a hidden meaning here: Sushi is the director of your lifespan! The more sushi you eat – the longer you live! 
In other words, may everyone here read a lot of Japanese material and eat a lot of sushi as well. Well, unless you don’t like (or are allergic to) sushi – then may you read a lot of Japanese material and eat a lot of some other food you like 
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