A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Study Log 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱 [Asia Travel Arc]

[GolyBidoof]

(it’s not a test yet, it’s just a new class that i’m starting taking tomorrow ^^
it actually started two weeks ago, but because I was off, I’m gonna be like a new character introduced in a season 5 of the show seeing everyone already get along and me being like

Ich baller’ Löcher in die Nacht
Sterne fall’n und knall’n auf mein Dach
Es tut noch bisschen weh, wenn ich dich wiederseh’
Aber ich komm’ nie wieder, egal was du mir sagst
Ich baller’ Löcher in die Nacht
Sterne fall’n und knall’n auf mein Dach
Es tut noch bisschen weh, wenn ich dich wiederseh’
Aber ich komm’ nie wieder, egal was du mir sagst

xddd)

[GolyBidoof]

May 13th, 2025

• 155 reviews on WaniKani
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 46 reviews on Bunpro (still not getting much easier!)
• 0 lessons on Bunpro (break day #5)
• 3 stories on Satori Reader
• Book club: a smol bit of ファタモルガーナの館
• Misc: a smol bit of Xenoblade X GER/JPN

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• 3.5h (!) of a German C1.1 course

Jeez, the German course was wild. On one hand, I’m really glad I could follow and I feel much stronger in German than I do in Japanese, on the other hand though, my tongue got in a tangle something like two hours in xdd

I’m really glad about the topics we’ve discussed today, we’ve had a bit of politics, philosophy, social programs, and that’s how you really know you’re hitting C1 levels - but once again, I got told I make a lot of fundamental mistakes, so haaaaa. At least the teacher told me that the Genus (der/die/das) is something that comes as last for German learners, so I’ll just pick one at random and make up for the rest with confidence, and often use DeepL for writing things xdd

This course will definitely be an endurance course and I’ll see how much stamina for consuming German I can get, but I got a sheet to file in with questions of how are you studying german, where did you learn it first and what do you expect out of participating in this course, and it’s an essay for each of those questions xdd

So right now I have the Japanese 発表 and the German Präsentation to write

Let’s talk about the topic sustainability xddd
Endurance is separate from this topic, and it’s really ironic that I’m bringing it up after walking twenty-thirty-something kilometers every day in America, but I found this short:

Autism at work

and like, AAAAA xddd

And the next couple of weeks/months are going to be really hard with balancing small crunch at work, doing Japanese every day, having a Japanese course, doing homework from Japanese, doing the book clubs, doing a German course, doing homework from German, trying to find native-level source material to immerse myself (Xenoblade X! Woo!), and why am I exposing myself to all of this xddd

I suddenly wish I was in Basel, but that’s maybe beca-
life:

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST SEMIFINAL ONE

GOOD STUFF POLAND IS IN THE FINAL
(i didnt question the chances of poland getting in, we have the weirdcore song that makes the eurovision this year, but im happy for justyna steczkowska anyway xddd)

I’m growing to like the Albanian song, I can’t see it winning much, but it has this part of mixing folk music with symphonic music with electronic music that I really like, shoutouts to Go_A and I really wish more games had soundtracks like those xdd

Shkodra Elektronike - Zjerm (LIVE) | Albania 🇦🇱 | First Semi-Final | Eurovision 2025

And fanart, credits to u/SessionExciting ^^

Same with Swiss one, though staging for their song broke today and that was pretty funny xdd

Zoë Më - Voyage (LIVE) | Switzerland 🇨🇭 | First Semi-Final | Eurovision 2025

But damn, this song is SO GOOD

Was really scared for Ukraine not making it this year, because their song this year was surprisingly not-very-Ukrainian, and they were announced to have passed as one of the last, but they pulled it off, good job Ukraine xddd

Ahh, the Eurovision season

Today, finally rest day, I might treat myself to some Indian after work at my favorite spot and turn on Do Not Disturb on my phone/my watch, time to manage autistic burnout before it develops for real xddd

See you tomorrow! C:

[GolyBidoof]

May 14th, 2025

• 155 reviews on WaniKani (same as yesterday, lol xdd, but 22 burns)
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 41 reviews on Bunpro
• 0 lessons on Bunpro (break day #6)
• 3 stories on Satori Reader

Mitrac wrote a super inspiring post in the study log about how all of the reading slowly adds up and makes progress actually happen over time, and I’m looking over it and going like “yep, I should be reading even more”, after which I sit down on the sofa and put on another english-language YouTube video essay instead xddd

Also, Akashelia is BLASTING through Fata Morgana and got to the second door of the game already, I’ll try taking some time over the weekend to play the game, but that time definitely will not be today though ^^

For real though, I’m really happy that spring is springing and people have energy for doing things and are motivated, be it Japanese or visual novels or cello or horribly long walks, I hope that if I immerse myself with super ambitious people here, ambition will become easier with time, so for today I’m just nodding my head and going like “wow Mitracさん you’re so cool, wow Akasheliaさん, you’re so cool” and procrastinating waiting for motivation to come like Godot inevitably would xddd

There might be a difference in the fact that my study log is daily, which is not often the case here, so sometimes you have winning days, sometimes you have less winning days (you never have zero days though!!!), so today is the less winning day ^^

Today I’ve been going a bit with the Secret story on Satori Reader and I stopped right at the cliffhanger where I still don’t know what happened, but the voice actor introduced great tension, so I’m like “dammm” waiting for tomorrow to come instead xddd

Tomorrow at 10pm a block of 105 reviews alone will come, those are probably a really long block of burns, so they’ll get in the way of my tomorrow’s reviews, but today’s burns have been pretty simple, so let’s keep it up ^^

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Life:

選挙。

Topic 選挙 is fresh on my mind today for many reasons! To give you a breakdown of the 選挙s in my life:

• Tomorrow my Works Council is going to elect people to preside in the council until 2030 (!), and I’m a high runner! We arranged everything today for the election to go smoothly tomorrow, I’m in the organization committee (Wahlvorstand), so I’ll be taking the votes tomorrow and shining my yellow teeth to people hoping that they cast their votes on me! But because I’m high in the list, I’m very likely to make it until the full council for the next term ^^
• Also tomorrow is the second semifinal for the Eurovision Song Contest! Semifinal 2 will have a few of my favorite songs, so will be tuned in!
• On Saturday, there’s a final of the Eurovision! Of course will be glued to the screen ^^
• On Sunday, Poland is electing their own president, and I’m signed up to cast my vote as well, I hope the line won’t be too long ^^

On the note of sitting down and watching video essays though, I found a really interesting one, that plays on the idea of “theater kids will save the world”, well now I know why xddd

We're Irony Poisoned... but WHY does sincerity feel cringe? | Internet Analysis

Something something, don’t kill the part of you that’s cringe, kill the part that cringes ^^
I need to implement this more in my daily life C:
Was a really cool video essay though!

So today, had my Indian, the whole platter is €10 including the drink, chicken tikka masala C:

Got my German textbook for tomorrow:

And I can’t wait for this stupid amazing action flick to come out, I booked a ticket for the advance screening for Saturday and looking forward to see that moron do a trick off of an airplane in the air in motion without any stuntmen or without any guards xdd

So fingers crossed for my election tomorrow! Let’s see how I do!

See you tomorrow ^^

[Shannon-8]

頑張ってええぇぇ!!!
Good luck with your election, Bidoofちゃん!

The Eurovision bangers were fun to watch…
I can’t watch a whole season omg

[mitrac]

@GolyBidoof

waiting for motivation to come like Godot inevitably would

that tricky word motivation - learning Japanese has changed my whole perception of that word. In the sense that I feel like I don’t understand it at all now -

Summary

My motivation feeling for learning Japanese got supercharged in 2018 when I met my Japanese conversation partner, who would go on to become my best friend. But my actions and what we mostly mean when we say motivation - my actions didn’t change until 5 years later - 2023 when I started my log here with that single goal to read a certain small amount every single day no matter what.

Somehow it was the 2023 shift that mattered (for me), and I would have never predicted it before - that that would have made the difference, and that it would have supercharged my Japanese. So now I’m just really wondering - what is this thing called motivation? It’s a very murky concept.

Because my subjective feeling of motivation hasn’t changed this whole time since 2018. But my actions changed in April 2023 at the flip of a switch. I think a lot of it was the way I framed my reading as an experiment. I love research, I love tracking things, and so I have this direct connection between my reading volume and then testing my vocab level, and then comparing that to a theoretical published study. And I thought that “motivation” would run out, but it’s got a life of it’s own now actually. I’m even toying with the idea of contacting the author and being like, soo… I did a wild experiment on myself for years based on your research and should we co-author a paper about it?

So as a summary to this confusing and long aside - this whole experience hasn’t helped me understand motivation at all. It’s just made me more confused. My experience says motivation is important, but perhaps not the most important piece of the puzzle. But what are those pieces? I really don’t know! I’ve taken elements of what I think I did well here - strong core motivation, having a single focus, 1 clear goal, tracking something, accountability, etc etc - and I have not ever experienced such a dramatic shift in other areas of life as I have with reading in Japanese.

one day, maybe the switch will flick for you and you can tell me the answer

[mitrac]

@Shannon-8

The Eurovision bangers were fun to watch…
I can’t watch a whole season omg

well - all you really need is the show on Saturday that will be broadcast your time in the afternoon. I’m pretty sure it’s licensed in the US now. Join us!

[budojunkie]

On motivation...

@mitrac

My motivation feeling for learning Japanese got supercharged in 2018 when I met my Japanese conversation partner

@mitrac

my actions didn’t change until 5 years later - 2023 when I started my log here with that single goal to read a certain small amount every single day no matter what.

Do you think there’s a difference between these two in terms of being extrinsic/intrinsic motivation? I’m not confident enough in understanding them myself to know, but my knee-jerk reaction was that the first motivator is more “external” than the second and I have heard the intrinsic motivation is a more reliable one?

[GolyBidoof]

im in the committee right now and we have some downtime, so i can yap just as well for a bit ^^

@mitrac

Somehow it was the 2023 shift that mattered (for me), and I would have never predicted it before - that that would have made the difference, and that it would have supercharged my Japanese. So now I’m just really wondering - what is this thing called motivation? It’s a very murky concept.

I think for me there is one big problem getting in the way of motivation, and that’s having 500 hobbies. All of them are your children and you want to take care of all of them, and that’s why I bounce from “oh yeah tomorrow I’ll be able to rest up” to “oh yeah and I also did 10 different things that day”, and on top of that the prioritization aspect is really getting in the way.

Not to mention how with the shortening attention spans, with the fatigue from work, it’s really hard to pivot my life towards Japanese, and neither do I actually want to? It would be a bit easier if I didn’t have that block in my head xdd

Don’t get me wrong, having made a study log here does make a difference, and the fact I study every day now is exceptional for me, I even ranted about it in my German homework for later today xdddd

German homework for later today xddd

I both struggle envying people that are experimentalists and people that can stick to something and persist at something, and of course I’m aware both are fallacies and I do better in both of those categories than I think I do, but the best I can do is to be UNAPOLOGETICALLY MYSELF and desperately yearn for it to pay off one day ^^

But you know that it won’t. Being insatiable has been a terminal issue for me, so even if by any stroke of luck I become C2 in Japanese, then it’ll be the same rollercoaster with Mandarin or Cantonese or Korean or if I get C2 at those three, why not beat myself up over Thai ^^

@budojunkie

Do you think there’s a difference between these two in terms of being extrinsic/intrinsic motivation? I’m not confident enough in understanding them myself to know, but my knee-jerk reaction was that the first motivator is more “external” than the second and I have heard the intrinsic motivation is a more reliable one?

I think there’s also value in yearning and wanting to be someone different than you are, I only am able to improve because I howl at the moon complaining about how far I am from where I’d like to be, but you’re right that the yearning needs to take shape in order to become productive ^^

[Akashelia]

@GolyBidoof

Also, Akashelia is BLASTING through Fata Morgana and got to the second door of the game already, I’ll try taking some time over the weekend to play the game, but that time definitely will not be today though ^^

Hehe, well I had a great time with door 1, and you guys commenting that it’s not even the best one, how to not want to continue I have a lot of traveling coming up though, so I won’t be keeping up that pace forever, I’ll probably be the one catching up in the end!

[mitrac]

on motivaion

@budojunkie

I’m not confident enough in understanding them myself to know, but my knee-jerk reaction was that the first motivator is more “external” than the second and I have heard the intrinsic motivation is a more reliable one?

ah you’re right, intrinsic motivations are considered more reliable.

I always saw the motivation for the vocab rise as the same extrinsic social goal, and that maybe what supercharged things was the habit formation. But that hasn’t been a reliable method in other areas for me. I think you might be on to something there, that I introduced a new intrinsic component - even if it is surprising that on the face of it, it looks much weaker than “communicating with friend”. Being a tad more objective - actually even with my very basic Japanese, I still had my friend, so it’s not like I got more of that friend with better Japanese because we always speak 50/50 English/Japanese and her English is great. so with the social motivator → action → doesn’t actually lead to (an immediate enough) reward (genuine surprise, I hadn’t really thought of that). It was probably a year or more into these consistent habits that I started noticing more ease in my verbal communication - very very slow effort to reward feedback on that one.

So - perhaps I kicked in at least something intrinsic on top of everything else. interesting, I’ll have a think about that. I wouldn’t have planned this tracking/research/vocab level thing as an intrinsic motivator, it sounds too shallow and basic to be rewarding. But - looking at what acting out on the motivation delivers - despite the rather arbitrary internal decision to figure out if I read x amount would it really make my vocab go up - I do get a big kick out of measuring my vocab every month and plotting my graphs .

So the model would be internal motivation to measure progress and compare to research → action → see results on a graph - actually delivers reward

maybe part of my issue in applying this elsewhere is (not) knowing what I want in the first place. I’ve read some research around us humans being rather poor at predicting what we actually want. I wouldn’t have predicted I would be so rewarded by seeing the graphs, but I’ll admit, yes, it’s a really fun highlight of the month and I’ve not forgotten once in 2 years.

@GolyBidoof

it’s really hard to pivot my life towards Japanese, and neither do I actually want to?

I remember in a similar discussion you mentioned that for your German, too. And really, it’s not like you have to be a machine and go 100% all in on every hobby or interest.

In a lot of ways, although I kinda “wish” I got supercharged on Japanese earlier, I don’t regret my slow years with Japanese. It was still fun, and I spent more time on other things!

[GolyBidoof]

@mitrac

maybe part of my issue in applying this elsewhere is (not) knowing what I want in the first place. I’ve read some research around us humans being rather poor at predicting what we actually want

P R E A C H

time to defer to my zodiac sign… no, wait, 16personalities… no, wait, CliftonStrengths… no, wait, DISC assessment, no, wait, The Winslow Personality Profile, no, wait, Hexaco Personality Inventory…

That’s gonna be pretentious, but my current direction came to me when I was watching the final Evangelion movie, 3.0+1.0, when I just realized that what I want is to keep wanting, and to keep surrounding myself with people that want things so that I’d want things for them and by extension, for myself, but I don’t know how well does it translate to wanting people or being wanted yet ^^

Wanting for the sake of wanting, what a concept. I’m sure I’ll make an educated decision after I’ve wanted for a little longer ^^

「AMV」Beautiful World (Da Capo Version) - Hikaru Utada | Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0

[Shannon-8]

LOL!!

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but for my ADHD and to address the of 500±interests problem…I resolved that to actually advance in an area (and be “more than a Jack of All Trades”, and hopefully be employable), I imagine myself as an Amoeba, and it will actually MOVE (“advance”) when I permit myself to work on multiple subjects that are related to each other (so that I generally BLOB in one direction overall)…
Shannon’s “Amoeba Philosophy of Life”

[WeepingWeeb]

Apologies for the late replies that are probably irrelevant now

@GolyBidoof

WaniKani: 秀

I never remember the readings for these but I find the meanings useful based on school grades (according to Wikipedia anyway )

@GolyBidoof

Satori Reader has a spring discount!

!!!

Lots of interesting travels and food pics you’ve had :0 good luck in your election!

[GolyBidoof]

@Shannon-8

Shannon’s “Amoeba Philosophy of Life”

That’s a really good framework to think about things I feel like ^^

My amoeba is moving towards linguistics, activism/politics and art these days, I’m wondering which direction will end up pulling the strongest C:

May 15th, 2025

• 173 reviews on WaniKani (41 burns!)
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 36 reviews on Bunpro
• 0 lessons on Bunpro (break day #7)
• 3 stories on Satori Reader

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• 3.5h of German classes
• Writing 2 homework essays and 2 homework grammar tasks: comma sentences and cases

Listen, the longer WaniKani is slowly starting to get on my nerves xdd
Today’s review block was like 1h20m, partly because I was side-screening Eurovision, but partly because WaniKani is simply both getting harder and longer at the same time. Tomorrow I should hit level 36 though, so we’re on a direct course towards the fast levels and then… what?

Bunpro is slowly getting more manageable, but a little more, today’s おいたまま vs おいてあった got me thinking and すればいい vs したらいい are another two things I often mistake

Satori Reader: still doing シークレット and will for a while, this is a loooong story. I got to the detective being introduced and the voice actor is putting his spirit in ^^

German: we’ve talked about tools used to control rent prices and the Berlin rental market of the yesteryear, we’ve chatted about Genossenschaften and how it’s physically no longer possible to join them, when memberships were given out like candies in 1990s apparently ^^
Then, Akkusativ vs Dativ once again, as you do at every level of German classes, and Partizipialgruppen

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Life: I didn’t expect the election would work so well ^^

The last time we’ve had elections, I was at the very bottom of the list, but at least I made it in, this time around though, my name was on the main voting card of the list and I did make it on the seat #3 out of 18 candidates

The activism our group has made ended up working, and I’m pretty proud of being able to rile up the people to vote, and to vote for us ^^

In the voting committee today, I was the one responsible for handing ballots with envelopes to people:

I started with the instructions in English, but our workplace has more Germans than English, so halfway through I tried a few times to explain the folding and gluing bit to people in German and the other members from the Voting Committee high-fived me and were like “all that hard work in German finally paying off” xddd

Sitting in the commission was fun, because I could do some of my German homework on the side and go here on this forum too, and tomorrow we inaugurate the new Council and vote for the main bodies, I’ll be aiming for a secretary spot because I like documents and I like taking notes of things and putting tasks on the boards and all, there shouldn’t be much objection for it C:

I think the election was really neat to be a part of, counting the votes was cool too, and going to the top floor to announce the results to one of the candidates (“you… got… IN… BITCH ”) has been one of the highlights of the day xdd
Actually, her boyfriend bought her the Karl Marx manifesto as a good luck charm, so see, it worked C:

Then, German, really long classes, Ausdauer wieder nirgends nah, but we’re working on this C:

EUROVISION

The results of today’s semifinal made me go like “HUH???” xddd
It was much more competitive than the first one, for sure, but like, MILKSHAKE MAN IS OUT???

Go-Jo - Milkshake Man | Australia 🇦🇺 | Official Music Video | #Eurovision2025

LAIKA PARTY IS OUT???

EMMY – Laika Party (LIVE) | Ireland 🇮🇪 | Second Semi-Final | Eurovision 2025

I sat there being like “NOOOO”, but I’m glad countries like Denmark made it through, but also IRELAND? AUSTRALIA? WTF???

Also, the second semifinal reinforced the idea that I really like the German entry this year, the Baller one, and the singer, Tynna, said “thank you” in Hungarian at the end of the song and that was so <3

I checked their YouTube performance afterwards and found this note:

AND I WAS LIKE “NO WAY OF COURSE IM GONNA GET MY EUROVISION 2025 ALBUM SIGNED…”

…until of course I found out that the tickets were long sold out xddd

But man, my list of favorites will still change tomorrow, but at this point I’m team Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Latvia and Albania, let’s see what the final brings ^^

Erika Vikman – ICH KOMME (LIVE) | Finland 🇫🇮 | Second Semi-Final | Eurovision 2025

Also, rel xdddd

So, see you tomorrow everyone! C:

[GolyBidoof]

May 16th, 2025

• 136 reviews on WaniKani (4 burns!)
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 38 reviews on Bunpro
• 0 lessons on Bunpro (break day #8)
• 3 stories on Satori Reader

Hopefully not that long before I return to Bunpro lessons, but right now the issue is more with finding time for reviews and not the difficulty of the reviews, so I’ll probably start doing N2 lessons on Sunday or something and see how I go ^^

Also,

wuuu, level 36 here C:

It seems like my config for jQuery might have died:

because some of the scripts are not even loading, I really liked the Confusion Guesser and today I wrote a couple of onyomis in the place of kunyomi and i was like “ooo did i mistake onyomi with kunyomi or did i mess up the reading in general ”

I’ll see if jQuery goes back tomorrow, and if not, we’ll be experimenting around ^^

In terms of Bunpro honorifics, I’m still not very comfortable with grammars such as お～になる and they caught me by surprise twice today

Anyway though, tomorrow will be another day when I don’t do much Japanese, but I should get a bit more time on Sunday ^^

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Life: Really, really tired today xddd
I still ended up adventuring as per general, but because of work related things, three days in a row I woke up much earlier and after a much shorter sleep than I normally do and my body refused to wake up with the alarm clock today and almost got me late for the first meeting at work today ^^

Not waking up with an alarm clock doES NOT HAPPEN TO ME, like at all, so imagine how terrified I was when my heart went from the 50 beats per minute while sleeping to “OH SHOOT IM LATE” and pedaling as fast as I can ;___; xdd

Luckily, I made it barely late, so my survival instincts are still sharp, I wish I just didn’t have to use them xddd

Meetings of the Works Council today have been great, we’ve flown through bureaucracy and riled up so many people to volunteer and try different positions, and we spent a really long time making sure that everything would be in order today and I came out of work being really refreshed and content, that doesn’t happen often ^^

Then, we’ve had the final session of D&D for me and I said goodbyes to the group and collected my character card, I think if anything, I’ll probably miss our food exchanges on each one the most ^^

One of my friends in there likes owlbears, so I brought her a keychain from PAX East with one and she was happy with it, so hey, departure gifts C:

And I wish I could tell that tomorrow is going to be a day for rest bUT OF FREAKING COURSE NOT BECAUSE I’m seeing Tom Cruise on big screen and then watching Eurovision in that Biergarten with another friend of mine xddd

(full MP4 here xddd)

Before Eurovision happens tomorrow, I want to have my hot takes documented somewhere, I’ve already annoyed a few of my friends with them, but I want to be actively wrong or right xddd

So for the people that aren’t very familiar with the concept of Eurovision finale songs, there are a few types of songs that have been very successful in the last few years and have been in the top5 repeatedly xdd

• a song from a genre called LOUD with guys screaming the same random nouns straight to the microphone over and over again, example, Käärijä - Cha Cha Cha, Baby Lasagna - Rim Tim Tagi Dim, this year: KAJ - Bara Bada Bastu
• a really high quality produced song that comes with freaking incredible vocals and has little choregraphy, that the fans of the previous group are really upset about if they end up winning, example, Loreen - Tattoo, Nemo - The Code, this year: JJ - Wasted Love
• Ukraine. They somehow manage to have the best folk songs I’ve ever heard, year in and year out. Example: Go_A - Shum, alyona alyona & Jerry Heil - Teresa & Maria, this year: Ziferblat - Bird of Pray
• a strong-vocaled ballad in French that just steals people’s hearts, examples: Barbara Pravi - Voilà, TALI - Fighter, this year: Louane – maman
• Israel. Doing reeeeeeally good in the televote, really good Eurovision, but they could use a little less boo-removing technology and applause clips added in the background , example: Eden Golan - Hurricane, Noa Kirel - Unicorn, this year: Yuval Raphael – New Day Will Rise
• Italy. I don’t understand why they do as well as they do, but they always do well and I’m like WTF each year running, example: Angelina Mango - La noia, Marco Mengoni - Due Vite, this year: Lucio Corsi - Volevo Essere Un Duro

And when I look at this year’s song from all those six categories… I’m not really seeing the X Factor from any of those six this year? Don’t get me wrong, JJ - Wasted Love is really good without context and Louane - maman will get a ton of votes, but I really would like to see a winner not be in any of those six categories and I think this year is when something like this could happen. It probably won’t, but my mostly ordered top5 looks like this:

1. Albania: Shkodra Elektronike - Zjerm, folktronica is always in my heart and I just love what this song exemplifies, I know it won’t win, bUT WOULDN’T IT BE COOL
2. Germany: Abor & Tynna – Baller, of course it’s a BALLER song, I think the semifinal 2 had a little too little energy and Tynna will have to do a heavy carry if she wants to elevate this song, but it’s so cute to see people that look like they could be straight A students actually put fire in the club! Both Abor and Tynna are really, really attractive and I can’t really point to why, but I stan the fact they still shoutout Hungarian in their performances ^^
3. Switzerland: Zoë Më - Voyage, this took me by surprise because most of the time I’m not a huge fan of French ballads, but this one just tugs at every string of my heart, Zoë has such a powerful radiance in her voice, wtfff, so I’m definitely team Switzerland tomorrow ^^
4. Finland: Erika Vikman – ICH KOMME, I find it blursed how much I love hate love hate love this song, it’s already earwormed me back and forth like 50 times, Erikaa, whyyyy xddd
5. Estonia: Tommy Cash - Espresso Macchiato, this is a song that was made to be made fun of and I just can’t have enough of those, they’re so precious each year at Eurovision and Joost Klein from The Netherlands last year deserves justice ^^

As for who will win? I think it’s a tossup between Austria, Sweden, maybe France and maybe Finland, but pleeease, get my top 5 as high as you can xddddd

So see you after the Eurovision tomorrow! C:
Please argue with me about Eurovision until then! ^^

[mitrac]

@GolyBidoof

a song from a genre called LOUD with guys screaming the same random nouns straight to the microphone over and over again

but yeah

How about the genre of taking the piss and stealing the show? A la Finland 2006ish? The Polish milkmaids. Espresso probably counts this year on the light-hearted end.

I was disappointed that Portugal didn’t have their usual chilled ballad. They never do well and it’s not something I’d play on repeat but I always like the vibe

@GolyBidoof

Italy. I don’t understand why they do as well as they do, but they always do well and I’m like WTF each year running,

Except when Maneskin won right??? Right???

I’m disappointed Laika is out. I’m going all in joke songs this year. Although dangit maybe you convinced me with Albania and the Swiss ballad

@GolyBidoof

my mostly ordered top5 looks like this:

Albania - love it - I’m calling this Albanian Bond

And Switzerland’s entry is gorgeous, although the melody isn’t original, not sure if that hurts it

@GolyBidoof

So see you after the Eurovision tomorrow! C:
Please argue with me about Eurovision until then

I did my best

[GolyBidoof]

May 17th, 2025

• 122 reviews on WaniKani
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 33 reviews on Bunpro
• 0 lessons on Bunpro (break day #9)
• 3 stories on Satori Reader

…yeah, speaking of rest, I don’t think I managed to get much of it today xddd
Doing reviews at 2:30, had the lowest accuracy on WaniKani in a while and I didn’t even follow the stories on Satori Reader, so I slapped my cheeks a few times and tried to get myself to focus, not much luck however.

Tomorrow focusing on Japanese will be unconditional, I’m making cleaning up the room and focusing on Japanese my main goal for tomorrow.

---

Life: OH MY GOD JJ UNIRONICALLY SAVED EUROVISION.

I didn’t realize how bad it’s gotten, and even though Austria wasn’t even in my top10, I’m so, SO happy he won, Eurovision the only possible not horrible ending and all xdddd

Winner's Performance: JJ - Wasted Love ✨ | Austria 🇦🇹 | Eurovision 2025

The jury vote was really, REALLY bad, Poland, Albania and Iceland got absolutely snubbed for a reason I absolutely don’t understand at all, but the televote was just abysmal, 底知れぬ, what happened there I have absolutely no idea xddd

I’m not calling any countries specifically (wink wink), but how come Switzerland got zero points??? As soon as I heard this, my heart sunk and people at the bar went together with me, I’m sure there must have been a miscalculation, or somebody tinkering with the votes, because, wtf??? xdddd

I was a huge fan of Loreen - Tattoo and Nemo - The Code, but JJ makes me grateful to have won, as soon as the announcer went like “one hundred-” votes on Austria the whole bar went wild and some people started crying, so, man, Eurovision was this close away from imploding this year and it was wild.

Ironically, although I’m very much not a fan of Cha Cha Cha and Rim Tim Tagi Dim, this was one of my highlights from the show:

Käärijä & Baby Lasagna - #eurodab at the Grand Final | Eurovision 2025 | #UnitedByMusic ​​🇨🇭

This might have been one of the best recognitions that they could’ve gotten together, and they also shouted out Joost Klein and started dancing Europapa, so this definitely is a legendary performance ^^

Also, shoutouts to the Latvian Axolotls, they did way better than I thought they would and I’m really proud of them C:

And huge shoutouts to Tommy Cash for Espresso Macchiato today as well, if not for whatever the frick happened in the televote, they could’ve been the winners, but Tommy Cash being third is a huge, huge win for him and really deserved ^^

Tommy Cash - Espresso Macchiato (LIVE) | Estonia 🇪🇪 | Grand Final | Eurovision 2025

Also, I saw Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning in the cinema today, adorable movie, probably not my top3 Mission Impossible movies, but I liked the way how conclusive it felt and Tom Cruise is a moron who normal would go for all those tricks wtf xdddd

I’m really wondering how did he practice the choreography for the jumping on top of and between planes scenes, because you just can’t rehearse that normally, can you?

Anyway, short today because it’s 3:30 and I’m on the verge of falling down because I’m chronically fatigued for the last while or so, I’m begging for a restful night and a restful tomorrow xddd

See you tomorrow!

[Shannon-8]

Good night, Bidoof.

By the way… It’s YOUR FAULT that I made my friends watch excerpts from Eurovision at the dinner party tonight. 100%.
Almost as much as if you were here putting the videos on yourself!

and great fun was had by all

[GolyBidoof]

May 18th, 2025

• 117 reviews on WaniKani (15 burns today!)
• 15 lessons on WaniKani
• 25 reviews on Bunpro
• 3 lessons on Bunpro
• 3 stories on Satori Reader

Who’s back to new lessons on Bunpro? I’m back to new lessons on Bunpro ^^

Since N2 is a bit more difficult than the previous levels, I’m thinking of pacing myself better with those grammars, though I was really happy that all three grammars today touched on using the same words in different context, so they were all interconnected:

Also, I have a feeling that the シークレット story on Satori Reader was calling me out today, xddd

Granted, still haven’t been to Yosemite though ^^
I’m having a bit of a trouble following the main story line of this story, it feels a little non-linear in a way where it makes me wonder whether I’ve missed any words, or is it just the way how the story was written

In terms of WaniKani, the scripts using jQuery I mentioned before still aren’t working, so I should go around the forum and find out what happened, but that’s not the only thing I’m behind on xddd

I wonder how are people doing these days, even if I’m not responding to you for a while, I hope you’re doing cool in there!!

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Life: I voted today!

I’m sure there must have been closer voting stations to my place than the one I voted from, but I wanted to find an excuse to discover a new part of Berlin, and here it is, Polish Academy of Sciences:

Apparently the turnout at the polling station was above 90% already by the time I arrived there, but no wonder, of course it’ll have a really high turnout if people have to manually go out of their way to register themselves as interested in voting abroad ^^

Exit poll, a bit more surprising than expected, still, happy to have taken part ^^
That concludes the mini-arc that I didn’t know that even existed called 選挙 and we back to alternating Japanese and German classes from tomorrow on ^^

Also, WolfeyVGC released a 4.5h video on the regional in Toronto

How I Won a Tournament with the Hardest Strategy

and I just put it up in the background as I cleaned my apartment, and didn’t succeed at doing everything, but four rounds of laundry and a significant progress right next to my desk has been achieved, and I finally took the stuff out after my America trip, so, whew, thank you Wolfe Glick and also amazing video btw C:

Either way, work and Japanese classes tomorrow, see you tomorrow!

[WeepingWeeb]

@GolyBidoof

I’m very much not a fan of Cha Cha Cha and Rim Tim Tagi Dim

This makes me so sad