That was a pretty neat shoutout, I knew it existed but never bothered to use the service in more detail and made an account on it today, listened to three stories, and, hmm.
This rant has multiple angles to it, I’ll approach it like Dante’s Inferno where we’ll go down with every respective ring of hell xddd
第一地獄: Satori Rant
The content I played around with today was pretty wholesome and I liked it. I just wish there was more of it xddd
And Satori comes with a subscription plan that’s strictly necessary to enjoy a significant part of the content, I still would take a few more days to go through the free content available on the website, so I don’t have to make a decision whether to subscribe today.
In terms of dropping the content though, it seems there are 3 regular shows right now that drop only 3 things a week, which wouldn’t be that much in terms of keeping streak, but there is a wide library of content available already, so catching up would take a while.
I really wish there was something like a lifetime license, because I like, hm, “owning” japanese tools and knowing they’re always by my side when I need them: my three favorite purchases so far have been Japanese Kanji Study, WaniKani and Bunpro in chronological order and I still refer to all three ^^
第二地獄: WaniKani Rant
…though I don’t know how I feel about lifetime subscriptions for ever-evolving platforms, I’m still angry at WaniKani for removing the Summary page and Review endpoint and losing all the data from 2020 and so on, and even though I understand why a SaaS company would do something like this to limit the server upkeep, I paid for something I no longer have, and that’s making me a bit more distrustful in services like WaniKani or Satori Reader or Bunpro in the future ;_;
So maybe monthly subscriptions really is the way to go?
第三地獄: MaruMori Rant
See, if I really wanted to start spending my money on something I know I most likely would use, I’d go for MaruMori, I have a feeling that their content is really well organized and I love all of the different ways of interacting with Japanese that take a bit longer to become stale than WaniKani and Bunpro, and I really have a feeling I could enjoy myself with that platform if I were to set my mind towards it…
第四地獄: Immersion Rant
…but like, why would I even pay a nauseating $350 for a service if just as well I could simply use native immersion content, I have my Nintendo Switch back, I could finish Famicom Detective Club: it checks every box for me, is engaging, is long-form, has kanji I understand, has full voice acting, I just could keep on powering through and then I’d get so much of it.
And what about book clubs? I’m a bit behind both of my current ones, but I have the manga volumes just ahead of me! What could teach me Japanese better than just digging into the volumes by myself!
And Language Reactor! It’s so good at watching Crunchyroll or Netflix or YouTube and just adding subtitles everywhere, not to mention that I have Yomitan in my browser and I can just highlight any Japanese news story and understand 100% of it!
I should be immersing myself with free materials instead…
第五地獄: Japanese Rant
But we’re at a local minimum in terms of my interest in Japanese language in the first place xddd
It feels like every passing day is giving me yet another reason to be disinterested in consuming native content, which is a similar thing to what happened in the second half of 2020 for me when I was grinding Japanese every day and it simply stopped being fun. For now, the fact my review load still is manageable and the fact I meditate through doing reviews is keeping me on the ship, but I’m getting less interest with Japanese language as a construct with every passing day
And it’s okay, Japanese has ebbs and flows, sometimes comes, sometimes goes. In a way I’m glad I have structure to my review, and also this forum, but it makes me care more about this structure and this forum than the actual Japanese language by itself xddd
I don’t know, maybe I just need to have a good night’s sleep, or a good week of nights of sleep xddd
But yeah, Japanese is less fun with every passing day and I should probably start looking for things that would be fun BECAUSE of language and not DESPITE of it, if you have any advice, shoot this way ^^
whew xddd
What a surprise, he has his own speak-Japanese-like-a-native course xddd
I don’t want to come across as very judgmental here, but I know of a stereotype of Americans in Europe claiming that they never have a reason to learn more than one language and they obsess over the idea of being “fluent” at one other language to compensate for the insecurity towards other countries of knowing just English.
But aside from the stereotype, my mom also falls into that thinking pattern, being like “hey daughter, how many languages are you fluent at?”, and my answer ranges from 0 to 4 depending on a day 
xddd
April 17th, 2025
- 134 reviews on WaniKani
- 15 lessons on WaniKani
- 43 reviews on Bunpro
- 3 lessons on Bunpro
- 1 lesson on Duolingo
- Misc(?): 3 stories on Satori Reader, Chance Meeting and two stories from 幸せの木
IM LEVEL 33 :DDDDD
The level of very useful kanji indeed, such as 股 (groin) and 屁 (fart) xdddd
I love WaniKani’s attempt at circling around those words not to say them out loud, but as a side consequence it makes it a bit harder for me to remember what the actual definition provided by WaniKani is xddd
In terms of Satori Reader, I found the stories I listened to today to be just about the right level, it’s really neat when you have the text right in front of your eyes because your brain connects listening to the actual kanji underneath. The kanji in all three stories I’ve been listening today have been pretty simple, as in, I really like getting to the level of being comfortable with kanji where its reading pops up in your head immediately, no “hmmm is it でんかがいった？ でんぱ？, no, it’s instantly 電話が鳴った”, I imagine that this is the fabled “flow state” language scholars have been talking about xddd
I’ll see tomorrow if I feel like doing Satori Reader, my attention was being held for just the minute or two it was necessary to follow the story, so maybe I could keep going?
Anyway, life!
I went to an electronics market today and left a ton of money in there xdd
Here’s a painful reminder I haven’t drawn anything in years at this point, and that I won’t be able to afford a Remarkable paper tablet, and that even if I could (I probably can xdd), I would probably never use it because I simply stopped taking analogue notes forever ago ;_; xddd
There is one toy called Nintendo Clock Alarmo I was convinced you could only get in My Nintendo Store:
…but somehow they had it at my local Media Markt, and they had it at a substantial discount
So I got one of those, I connected it to the outlet and remembered that I don’t need to set up an alarm clock for tomorrow beCAUSE ITS EASTER BREAK TIME :DDDD
i still could because im curious about the movement detection mechanism and i would like for the music to play, but I need to give myself a window of like, 12 hours to sleep and recover xdddd
Then, my Nintendo Switch came back and I bought it a bigger microSD card because I flooded the old one with my redownloads and didn’t have space for games I’ll probably never play again but still would like to have on the console xdd
Through all of this, I realized that I can also use the Switch card to update my storage on the Steam Deck, and I’ve initiated a painfully long and drawn out process of moving stuff from SD cards onto SD cards and let me tell you, it takes a while xdddd
I got a friend of mine into Severance and she’s going down the rabbit hole of every episode being darker than the previous one, in case you’re still on the fence, give it a try!
And yeah, definitely YouTube day today, watched the new Content Cop, watched a video essay on different rereleases of the original Ys game, learned how people are poisoning AI algorithm crawlers with tar pits, learned about ins-and-outs of blood industry, it kinda does feel like wasting time, but for some reason I really like learning those completely unrelated facts and I go like “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, I FEEL SO SMART” after going through these xdd
It’s that level of preferring to watch somebody talk about a playthrough of a game than playing the game on your own already xddddd
Anyway, SOOO looking forward to having a long sleep tonight and Saturday and Sunday should be more busy, I’m only back to work on Wednesday and only for two days, and then, the big East Coast tour~
See you tomorrow!
” and then the game says that you’re still friends with people regardless, which, like… it’s a bit too vanilla for me xddd
he’s not putting on a show of wincing and rolling his eyes. It really is that bad.
I started that whole appreciation thread I linked to and there are loads of tips there!