戒める was on one of the recent N1 mock tests (2024 one) I did in the vocab section… I had absolutely no clue
Sitting there thinking “I have never seen this word in my life” and then it turns out I have definitely done it through to at least master on Wanikani
To be fair I’m confident I haven’t seen it in the wild more than maybe 1 or 2 times in the last 7 months, but still..
Yes I definitely was! I love your energy, it’s contagious
Thanks
I was a bit stuck on 幸せの木 but seeing you reading it this month also gave me the push to finish it myself! And now I’m also reading 枯れた木 hehe. Already at episode 10, this one is a real page turner. (I only have Yuyu and Winter left and then I’ve read all Satori Reader )
Agreeeee. That’s why I love reading through here.
You’re both making stories about trees sound surprisingly exciting. When Akiko finally finishes her foreign exchange adventure (it’s a long one - feels slightly like I’m on week 382 part 77) I look forward to them both.
I third this statemeownt!
Oh yeah that’s a long one good luck!
hiii human beings in the market for a positive energy charge (those ones that are not in the market are also welcome hi) guten nightingen xdd
July 23rd, 2025
- 143 reviews on WaniKani
- 15 lessons on WaniKani
- 71 (
) reviews on Bunpro
- 3 stories on Satori Reader
- Manga: 僕らの愛は気持ち悪い第9話
omg, bunpro likes rabbits, how sweet!
i know a person who claims they recently stumbled upon Lana Wachowski in Berlin and I don’t know how much BS it is, but rabbits definitely are huge fans regardless ^^
(hot take very controversial opinion)
But still, seeing this:
so long after finishing lessons is just depressing and I allowed myself to cheat juuust slightly today again, so both Bunpro and 1.5h long review blocks will keep on haunting me for a while
And yeah, today’s Satori Reader was just doing all of the stories that were added today, because on all three of those stories I’m down to the final episode and I’m mostly with intermediate stories left to finish Satori Reader, might start one tomorrow.
In terms of 僕らの愛は気持ち悪い, there were some lingering panels, some yearning in the eyes, I liked it much more than yesterday’s chapter ^^
Life
Went to boulder earlier in the morning today, there is a special difficulty level of a course that’s labeled with orange which in our grading system refers to “…I GUESS”, those are the weird courses that can be any difficulty level and sometimes they require weird non-linear skills in order to do them, so the three of us bouldering together were try to scale this one today and some rocks at this one are at a very uncomfortable angle ^^
I think two of us three were able to make it, and then a couple other easier routes, not pushing ourselves too much ^^
Topic FLINTA Calendar: bouldering gyms in Berlin are also taking part in it and are organizing events in different halls, including ones I’ve never been to, where you can just, come and meet new people, maybe make new boulder friends, and it sounds like it could be a really fun event to go to, except that the gym is on the polar opposite side of the town, so I’d probably just do it only once xddd
Then, work, and there’s a person at work who doesn’t come to the office often, but she did come today and spent a huge amount of time interrogating me about hobbies and life ideas and travel and directions in life and she was really fun to talk to, after finishing work we still met up in the shared kitchen together and then she told me all about her travels she did over the course of her life, goooals, aspirational people
Also, many meetings of Works Council today, even more tomorrow
Then, with the queer book club('s two trans guys, nobody else came xdd) went to a poetry reading bar called K-Fetisch (xddd) and they had a very wide space for people to talk with and chat with!
And best of all, for the event today, the smoking room was transformed to a non-smoking area and nobody was allowed to smoke in there, WHEWWW
Look at the cool zines they had in there! I’m still preeeeetty broke, so I ended up not getting any, but I donated to today’s show though ^^
If you remember the zine from 21 days ago, today the people that have been featured in that zine were reading their poetry C:
I kiinda had a feeling that the energy of the events at Das Gift wasn’t in there and people were doing a poorer job at presenting their poems and speaking their hearts out than in there. Sooo I presented the same poem at the stage as I did in that bar :DDDDDDDD
One of the trans masc guys, the one that showed me the zine 3 weeks ago, was in one of the zines, and the Rantaro guy, he consented to be known as DRAGON SLAYER from now on (xddd), turned out to be a theater kid as well and WE STAN
he also pointed out a fundamental flaw of my 10/10 poem and I started thinking in terms of how could I get over the critical flaw, without finding any conclusions xdd
Then me and DRAGON SLAYER went to a kebab place together and overshared and ranted and (subjective hot take opinion xdd) had a great time together, so would recommend and I’m so happy I get to expose other people to the idea of speeding up and oversharing things really fast, being an enabler would recommend xddd
Anyway, today was another 3200 calorie day, the bar was much closer to Boulderklub than anything, so another going through the whole city to get back home, but did so, and tomorrow is shaping out to be a pretty big day at the works council, so I’m going off for today and I’ll be seeing yall tomorrow~~~ C:
It’s so great to click with someone!
Your joy leaps off the page.
It’s wonderful to have someone actually substantively and useful critique your poem/“creative offering” (that’s what my writing先生 called it)…(even if you haven’t found the solution, yet)
Re. Bouldering… I’m lazy (and 下手poor at chin-ups), so when I climbed, I prefer cracks so I can REST! I discovered fist/hand-jamming while climbing link, and I got a lot of rest that way en route途中…
…I don’t see any rest in your route pic… But I guess if it’s top-rope at a gym with brakes .. They were only just starting to have bouldering gyms when I was earning money in the city…
…We passed two bouldering gyms here in New York City, and SO protested (winning strong points on grounds of my recent wrist injury)

It’s wonderful to have someone actually substantively and useful critique your poem/“creative offering” (that’s what my writing先生 called it)…(even if you haven’t found the solution, yet)
oh im sorry i got your hope up it was a bit of an exaggeration but its important regardless because my poem was using a metaphor of alvin the chipmunk and simon the chipmunk but i forgot theodore and i didnt realize until DRAGON SLAYER told me that i left him out xdddd
indeed critical flaw

They were only just starting to have bouldering gyms when I was earning money in the city…
It really feels like it’s a very new hobby, but also becomes pretty inclusive of different groups of people, so for as long as it’s gonna be wholesome it might be really cool to partake in this one ^^

…We passed two bouldering gyms here in New York City, and SO protested (winning strong points on grounds of my recent wrist injury)
cmon dont let wrist injury stop you shannon C: nah, actually do let the wrist injury stop you, im so glad your SO is caring for you this much for real
July 24th, 2025
- 153 reviews on WaniKani
- 15 lessons on WaniKani
- 40 reviews on Bunpro
- 3 stories on Satori Reader
- Manga: 陰キャギャルでもイキがりたい第23話
I was having a ton of troubles understanding what 陰キャギャル was talking about xdd
Even the title didn’t occur to me until I put it in the translator and I was like, aaaah… okay…
The actual chapter had a lot of nerdy dialogue about Vtubers and avatars and NFT and AI grifts, and I was losing my train of thought of what was one sentence ago when reading the next sentence, so reading today was pretty difficult xdd
I think it was simply an exposure thing and because my Japanese is very much textbook-centric, throw any slang at me and I’ll go like “uh oh”, this panel absolutely killed me xdd
But I learned that “要約してくれ” is my bane of the existence and I want to avoid this expression as much as I can xddd
When I focused on just reading the kanji in this chapter, I did pretty well, but there were moments when my reading comprehension was at an absolute zero, so I might have to do something about it (by consuming stuff in Japanese xdd)
On Satori Reader, I started reading きつねの嫁入り, it’s a little easier than 幸せの木, but also the story will take a bit to set up, I wonder when the first plot twist will drop ^^
And tomorrow I should be level 43 on WaniKani, now it’s gonna be fast levels for real
Because I do kanji and radicals first, I have a backlog of vocabulary I haven’t done lessons of yet all the way until level 40, and I worry that as the levels speed up, I’ll have even less time to do the backlog, so level 60 will definitely not be the end of my lessons yet:
Life
Very long sittings with lawyers today xddd
It’s exhilarating (and I bet @Shannon-8 probably agrees as well), but there are some creative interpretations of the law that are better left untold and when you finally hear that what you thought means one strict thing actually can be interpreted to mean the polar opposite if you’re creative enough as a lawyer, then it becomes really spooky
I spent 7 hours in meetings today (that’s longer than I slept! ), so I just gave myself a pat on the back and indulged in internet procrastination for the rest of the day xdd
Inbetween though, I cycled right next to the studio/indie cinema where the anime film festival is being held and they got the poster out! I’ll be giving them a visit on Saturday for 天気の子 ^^
And today to reset myself and relax I made myself a wristband C:
Sadly, it’s not very durable, so it can easily come apart, but DIY things are always great C:
I also took part in a workshop for making your own custom shirts, but because I was already falling asleep awake at that time, I decided to make THE EEPER, like sleeper but without SL xddd
Sadly, I kept making one mistake after another and when you have like three, you still can pretend you’re doing the HAPPY ACCIDENTS bit from bob ross, at like 10 mistakes, you go like “out of the four e’s i’ve written, i forgot the shape of an ‘e’ in a different way on every one of those four”, so it became happy disasters instead xdd
Also “er” didn’t fit on the front, so I wrapped around the shirt xddd
Fun times either way xddd
Also, big one, the localization of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I was working on had a person come and start leaving some comments on it and I was so happy when I saw the comments, it’s like, finally someone else certifies that the work is legitimate xdddd
It turns out that the guy is on the Mario Kart Translation Discord server together with me so I chatted him a bit and it turned out he spent a good few weeks making his own custom graphics and fonts and copies for Mario Kart DS translation D:::::
I patched my ROM and tested the game and,
omg it’s all so cursed and so blessed to see the game in Polish at the same time xddd
The patch is in deep web behind Mario Kart DS Modding Discord server, but I can shout out sdg.jupiter for doing god’s work for the translations of MKDS D::::
Anyway, that’s it for today, see you tomorrow everyone ^^

oh im sorry i got your hope up it was a bit of an exaggeration but its important regardless because my poem was using a metaphor of alvin the chipmunk and simon the chipmunk but i forgot theodore and i didnt realize until DRAGON SLAYER told me that i left him out
xdddd
indeed critical flaw
Freakin’ hilarious!!
All right, all right
I won’t be expecting anyone to be requesting a lifetime compilation of your collected works any time soon
Oh man “creative lawyering” can get pretty preposterous! I dunno whether I get impressed, or I get annoyed. I tend to imagine myself in the shoes of a legislator…like as if I had tried to write the law, and never expected some pompous @ss to twist the words like that, so far from the obvious intention.

Oh man “creative lawyering” can get pretty preposterous! I dunno whether I get impressed, or I get annoyed. I tend to imagine myself in the shoes of a legislator…like as if I had tried to write the law, and never expected some pompous @ss to twist the words like that, so far from the obvious intention.
Sounds like arguing with teenagers. I imagine it must be an absolute delight.

Sadly, I kept making one mistake after another and when you have like three, you still can pretend you’re doing the HAPPY ACCIDENTS bit from bob ross, at like 10 mistakes, you go like “out of the four e’s i’ve written, i forgot the shape of an ‘e’ in a different way on every one of those four”, so it became happy disasters instead xdd
I wouldn’t even call it happy disasters, you were simply subconsciously channeling the different spirits of each of those letters and allowing them to live their authentic lives.
(And no, I am not a lawyer, creative or otherwise. I might have gotten my poetic license revoked, however.)

Sounds like arguing with teenagers. I imagine it must be an absolute delight.
From my limited experience interacting with american lawyers i imagine that teenage arguments is how it goes in there xdd
Germany is a bit different because the moment you start messing around with the interpretations of the law, you get a judgmental stare of death on your back and it’s like “WHY WOULD YOU ATTEMPT TO MISREAD THE LAW. THE LAW WAS SIGNED INTO FORCE IN 1911 AND IT HAS SUCCESSFULLY WORKED SINCE. EXCUSE ME, I WANTED TO ASK, DO YOU HAVE ANY DEVELOPMENTAL CHALLENGES. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT STAYS OVER THERE. I’M SORRY YOU DON’T POSESS AN ABILITY TO READ CLEARLY. BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT IT’S A YOU PROBLEM ONLY, EVERYONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS IT CLEARLY.”
I participated in one negotiation already between American lawyers and German lawyers on a Works Agreement and it very much worked like that one above. it was really scary because the American lawyer would walk in with a fully serious face, 100% unshaken voice, stating their case, and a German lawyer would be like “Interesting… But no.” and then an American lawyer wouldn’t even attempt to negotiate this case, they would immediately jump on the next point as if the previous point wasn’t even touched on in the first place, without saying sorry, without trying to wiggle more, that was so bizarre.
I’ve heard stories of the lawyers that work for works councils for Google, Amazon, Soundcloud and a few other Berlin companies, they much more align with my idea of who a lawyer should be xddd
But of course, with American lobby leaking worldwide right now, I can’t help but wonder if the law-wiggling will end up being more popular in Germany over time.
July 25th, 2025
- 138 reviews on WaniKani
- 17 lessons on WaniKani
- 37 reviews on Bunpro
- 3 stories on Satori Reader
- Manga: 伽藍の姫第十八話
Over the course of the summer marathon I praised 伽藍の姫 as one of the mangas that connected with me the most from コミック百合姫 and the illustrations in this chapter were just beautiful
I mean look at THIS, aesthetic
The 18th chapter was very focused on exposure and was flying a few words that I probably would’ve been familiar with if I was reading any fantasy in Japanese, 亡骸, 蘇る, 封じる, etc., all of the landmarks of fantasy that I didn’t know what they were

Either way, very verbose chapter with a lot of reading, but because it didn’t spam chanspeech as much as the yesterday’s manga, I understood a bit more from this one, so, hey, recommendation ^^
Also,
LEVEL 43 :DDDD
I divided my learning block into two sections,
17 today, 16 tomorrow, and I should get to Level 44 next Thursday evening with good winds, curious about how the fast levels will go this time around

Today’s Bunpro was easier than usual, but the amount of correct reviews didn’t represent that because I went one more level down with allowing myself to cheat, now it’s even less cheating allowed: back to 35 ghosts, I need to step up my game remembering those grammars, because they really just leech behind me:
Life
TODAY. IN BERLIN. LABUBUS HAVE LANDED.
There is a pop-up store right next to Alexa shopping mall, here’s a pic from Watson’s article about the launch::
PEOPLE STOOD IN THOSE LINES IN RAIN FOR HOURS
HOURS
When I arrived, at 7pm, the weather was a bit nicer already ^^
Funny thing about the pop-up store is that the hype was so big for the event, that they utilized a different side entrance to the shopping mall not to push people that would want to do shopping at the shopping mall to the side
xddd
I didn’t make it inside of the shop myself, but this is more or less how it looked like:
very deluxe environment xddd
Also, on Alexanderplatz (other side of the road) there was a sort of a foodtruck fair with some bazaar stalls and would you look at that…
…labubus without any queues…
…why wouldn’t you go for those over the deluxe ones? xddddd
Anyway, pride tomorrow, should be fun!
See you tomorrow!
BABE

We passed two bouldering gyms here in New York City, and SO protested (winning strong points on grounds of my recent wrist injury)
If I can refrain from climbing because of injury then anyone can!

- 2h of classes with a teacher (B2.4 at VHS Berlin Mitte)
Is the teacher Daisuke Hasegawa?
The teacher for both the B2.4 and B2.5 blocks was indeed Daisuke Hasegawa ^^
…did we come across one another by any chance? if you were to follow the log, it should be pretty obvious which student I am ^^

a durtle is never late, nor are they early, they arrive precisely when they mean to ^^
July 12th, 2025
Excellent news, I’m just in time then
I used to be at VHS Mitte, took some classes with Hasegawa-sensei. Another teacher that I had was Akane Doi. Also took some classes at VHS Wilmersdorf with Naoe Adami.

I used to be at VHS Mitte, took some classes with Hasegawa-sensei.
Nice, hope you liked them too! Hasegawa-sensei often jokes around and makes German-Japanese wordplay, that I as a person who learns both of those languages (but knows none properly xdd) really enjoy ^^
July 26th, 2025
- 211 reviews on WaniKani
- 16 lessons on WaniKani
- 49 reviews on Bunpro
- 3 stories on Satori Reader
- Film: 天気の子, sub:
dub:
- Manga/panel: フィルムに咲く百合の花を集めて君に贈りたい
- Manga: ヒモ吸血鬼が出ていかない
The whole ヒモ吸血鬼が出ていかない manga is on ichijin plus for free and let me tell you, I LIKED IT VERY MUCH. Probably my favorite story in コミック百合姫7月号 yet, or maybe in the entirety of the Yuri Hime magazine xddd
MAN.
Having two high functioning women both do their part and joke around and save their own lives does something to me, especially compared to the other stories I’ve read so far
So for context, this is the one-shot section at the end of コミック百合姫, the story was 66 pages long and it was self-contained. And the illustrations were so pretty!
Yuri version of 傷物語??? Maybe??? xddd
Either way, it’s free, check it out, my favorite story in the 1200 pages of コミック百合姫 yet xdddd
Also, フィルムに咲く百合の花を集めて君に贈りたい seems to be a regular panel at the end of the magazine that goes over fictional pairings in movies and tells you how gay they are, today’s panel was on Maleficent movie and that Maleficent and Aurora are super gay for one another
I love how my mom’s interpretation was that Maleficent is like a mother figure to Aurora and those women over there were like ひたすらに百合だ!!!! xdd
Well, Maleficent fun movie either way ^^
I saved the final panels of the magazine for tomorrow: they’re no longer manga and seem to be actual panels, maybe with the people who made the magazine? they are huge walls of text and I’m curious what’s inside of them, will try to read them tomorrow and then the July issue of 百合姫 will be over!
ちなみに, the september issue is out already and the cover is so pretty omg
but i’m broke so not today xddd
In the meantime, Satori Reader was very today, I’m not vibing with the きつねの嫁入り story yet, feels very philosophical in a way how some Japanese novels also don’t vibe with me, but I’m still only 11 episodes in, so let’s keep going ^^
Today’s WaniKani just kept going and going and
and going and
my god i was really tired, it’s ひんぱつ and going and going and I haven’t figured out a good practice to break down the 200-item review block, I just press enter and write in the next one, and the next one, and the next one xddd
Depending on how you feel about 天気の子 being with English subs, I have studied Japanese for either 2.5 or 4 hours today, so hey, long study today ^^
Also, 天気の子, literally the story of Berlin in the summer of 2025. I-it definitely isn’t the gulf stream getting weaker and collapsing, it’s 晴れ女 xddd
IT RAINS ALL THE TIME
Life
PRIDE!
Significantly smaller this year and some people seemed to be deterred by the rain, but it was great craic nonetheless ^^
We had a group of like, 6-8 people we were walking with, most cis-het, but there were a few queers there too ^^
I had the full face of body paints and an outfit and all… and was the only person to do so xdd
I brought my instax and I was taking their photos as well ^^
Since corporate pride is dead this year, a lot of pride this year seemed politically-themed, insulting German and American politicians and it was good fun that way ^^
And important environmental causes as well, like:
Speaking of pride being political, this was my favorite picture I’ve taken today
Got a few freebies today,
And then after the Pride, me and the two bouldering friends went for 天気の子 to the cinema
and yeah, apparently the story resonated very strongly with one of my friends in there, so we’ve had some vulnerable in-depth conversations afterwards, that was pretty sweet ^^
We went for some dinner and I think that was my last big expense until I get my paycheck, because my checking bank account started sending me really scary notifications : I xddd
But man, really fun day today and I was really happy I went regardless of the funds/weather! 16 instax photos went out, 3 are on my wardrobe right now ^^
See you tomorrow! C:
Happy Pride celebration
Thanks for the Yuri vampire link

Nice, hope you liked them too! Hasegawa-sensei often jokes around and makes German-Japanese wordplay, that I as a person who learns both of those languages (but knows none properly xdd) really enjoy ^^
They are all really good teachers and made learning Japanese fun
It’s interesting that ya’ll have the pride celebration in July and not June or is this like a monthly/recurring event?
Either way, happy pride! Your pics are fabulous!!