Wait what? Are you here again? 
October 3rd, 2026
- 8 reviews on WaniKani
- 9 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第１１〜１２話
- Game: 3h of ファイアーエムブレム 万紫千紅
aaand I’m in Act 3 of Fortune’s Weave!
If you’re any familiar with how Fire Emblem games work like post-2019, you know that there’s a time skip in this one and that character designs change after the skip and OMG LEDA IS SO RESPLENDENT IM SO PROUD OF HER
the actual design could be a bit of a spoiler, but I enjoy characters whose even designs are suggesting they’ve matured and grew up, she did drop the color palette I made my nails of, but man, I’m so happy for her ^^
Act 2’s war ended with me not caring much about the war, but Act 3’s first battle was one that I couldn’t autoplay and I abused going back in time many times just not to die, it was really tough with just one lord
And after Act 3 properly kicked off (chapter 2 now!), I’m not that big of a fan of a POV change to our self-insert blank slate now, but I imagine this makes much more sense if you beat the game more times than one to get the stories of other lords as well, I could see myself enjoying Dietrich’s route and maaaybe Theodora’s, but Cai still hasn’t been able to win any favors from me
LEDA THOUGH :DDDDD
funny how in Three Houses I almost universally preferred house members than the leaders, and here there’s a fun character here and there, but Leda is so much better developed than the other characters, minus Talimun maybe, that I can’t help but be a Leda stan, she IS SO COOOL I SWEAR
Oh yeah, and finished volume one of light music club drama club xddd
Life
if by here you mean POLAND, then yes xddd
Today was the German Day of Reunification, which doesn’t take place on the same day as the reunification really did, but it’s symbolic ^^
I got ambushed with the fact all shops were closed and I was like, “wait, why is Rewe closed? WHY IS ALDI CLOSED?”
Oh hey, and new John Green C:
But no, my secretive plan involved going to Poland today, and I spent a few hours on the train trying to play some Fire Emblem ^^
My brother’s wife has a secret Jimin shrine, we stan xdd
There’s a new big Polish film that’s a loose adaptation of a very popular, compulsory reading in high school book called Lalka, and I remember not being that fond of it when I was made to read it in school. It was definitely pretentious and I found it personally a little hard to relate to…
…but I’m pleased to announce that compared to what I know about Polish cinematography before I moved away, the film had a really great production value, especially invested in casting and costumes! The filmmakers made a controversial decision to bring the language the characters speaking to the modern polite language of 2026 and, hot take, I really appreciate this decision, because it made the story easier to follow, rather than having to decipher it, while the emotional core remained the same. I genuinely could see this film being like a, Polish nomination to the Oscar or something, and maybe even doing well on it - I’m very much not into Polish cinematography and this film steered away from the things I usually consider grating
My favorite part was that one of the actors in the film was hired to speak in four languages (Polish, English, French and Russian), and he did all four without having a strong accent in either one of them, especially when he started talking in Victorian English and I was like “yesss, he practiced his phonetics” xddd
It’s definitely a period piece, if at any point in time you’d be able to come upon it, I’d say it’s probably the best Polish costume film I’ve had the chance to witness so far ^^
Anyway, will be in Poland for the next week or something, so see you tomorrow!
Eek! Now I have to phone my Polish “parents” in Florida to tell them about Bidoof’s review of Lalka!!
Enjoy the game
I hope your travels go smoothly
Found something interesting-ish in the wild. I’m in Japan right now and yesterday I found a post covered with stickers. I saw one that said Mainz is nicer than something that got covered up, but I believe its Dresden. Anyway, based on the kinds of city pictures you post, I thought of sharing with you.
So was the no sticker sign put up before or after the stickers were pasted?
Almost ^^
There’s a local rivalry in Germany between Mainz and Wiesbaden, two cities at the Rhine river, and both of them 100% convinced they’re prettier than the other, but as you can see, Mainz can be winning the culture war with better stickers xddd
I haven’t been to either one of those, because they’re both car cities and I’d rather be literally anywhere else in Germany than there xddd
Cool that you found German stickers though C:
Please do! I think it was definitely a fun film to experience ^^
October 4th, 2026
- 5 reviews on WaniKani
- 3 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第１３〜１４話
- Game: 20m of ファイアーエムブレム 万紫千紅
very goodnight, 熟睡 C:
also, me when karaoke, don’t @ me xdddd
one of the most heart-touching random NPC lines I found when I was going through the city in Fire Emblem today, I accelerated the plot absolutely in no way today, but I found out that all of the Act 1 people are back if you find them in the town and speak to them, and everyone has unique lines and some people have a SIGNIFICANT GLOW UP compared to their Act 1 personas
I’m the most proud of Mu probably, she’s grown to be a really dependable ally right now C:
And, hmmm…
…it would’ve been…
Life
…today!
To both actually ^^
We went to an escape room with five people today, that had a time limit of 90 minutes, but somehow they let us stay after time and do the puzzles over 110 minutes or something
“A simple treat for a peasant, refraining from whipping”, Netflix promoting their own TV series adaptation of Lalka as well, the film apparently is much better ^^
There was a pretty thick story behind it, with alternative endings and three different puzzle rooms, where even if you cleared the previous ones, you’d still have another puzzles in the old rooms afterwards ^^
Towards the end my mom was the one to pick the ending, and I was like “PICK THE BAD ONE”, and my mom was like “NO IM GONNA PICK THE GOOD ONE” and unknowingly she did pick the bad one xddd
Apparently only around 10% of the people went with the bad ending, so we’re unique xddd
They had a lot of really fun handmade props, proper sounds, narration, light effects, and even actors, so I appreciate the lengths they went to to make it fun ^^
OH AND WHY IS THIS RYUK CONSTANTLY STARING AT ME FROM EVERY ANGLE
And on the same note, CALL YOUR MOM
see you tomorrow, hopefully from Łódź ^^
Lol, I just guessed. Thanks for posting the whole sticker!
– I see you are still here, which means you haven’t yet solved all the puzzles and didn’t find the key for the final lock. You are not the first. Many people have tried to escape from this escape room, but only very few ever managed to do it! Muhahaha
– Oh, I’ve actually solved all the puzzles in the first 30 minutes! *shows the key to the final lock*
– What?! Then why are you still here?!
– I find that I quite like it here! Could you please let me stay here for a little bit more
In other words, as always, thank you fur sharing and best of luck with your studies! 
they kick you out after the time limit, unfortunately they’re trapped with me as much as I’m trapped with them xdddd
or you know, the next group, the next people that wanted to escape room could kick us out too ^^
October 5th, 2026
- 7 reviews on WaniKani
- 11 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第１５〜１７話
waking up at this hour… what is this circle of hell 
and me, already struggling to remember the names of the characters and now forced to keep track of their whole geneaological tree:
also, I did the にすぎない with Bunpro, but I don’t remember it being tied with い-adjectives, and now that you do, it looks so awkward to be here
多いにすぎない。高いだけにすぎない。Huh, interesting 
Didn’t have the time to play Fire Emblem today ^^
Life
Łódź! Ha, try to read the name of this town in the first place xddd
Fun fact, the train station Łódź Fabryczna got a huge stimulus of funding in order to make it look like a super modern train station, and it’s huge… but then they kind of forgot to have the trains run through it, and you might have a train an hour or something, that makes for a great liminal space there ^^
Łódź is known for its pedestrianized street that’s pretty wide, Piotrkowska, and here’s some of the things you can find along it C:
I found a manga shop along Piotrkowska street! And it had a 5% discount on all the mangas, so I did end up getting some more Polish volumes of 私の百合はお仕事です！
Traditional folk designs from Łódź, if anyone was curious!
Oh, and the Rose passage! How cute it is! They do smell really potent ^^
And aside from the train station, they’re also really proud of their bus terminals as well! You can see it often on postcards ^^
And the night roof of Manufaktura is really photogenic!
also, why is this cat doing knitting? what’s going on?
see you tomorrow ^^
October 6th, 2026
- 15 reviews on WaniKani
- 3 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: メダリスト第１巻→１７０p (50p today?)
The first volume of Medalist doesn’t have a table of contents, and stories don’t break easily into chapters. This one started because yesterday in Łódź I saw the Polish volume of Medalist and I was like “OOH I HAVE IT ON MOKURO”, started reading it and I remembered why I didn’t finish the first volume (yet), it’s very dense with text, and even though the culture references are tough by themselves, needing to understand why the double jump comparison to taiyaki works, is getting too hard for me to follow at times xddd
I’m glad at least I can identify quickly where the problems arive, like with the 完成度を上げた (improving to perfection) and 急がば回れ (slow and steady wins the race), it’s a weird manga to read
I really want to at least finish the first volume (300 pages long D:) to make my opinion on the series ^^
And on the MaruMori planet…
…is everyone doing fine? …does the person writing the sentences today need help?
Life
Uć!
…i mean…
to give you more context to the joke, the name of Łódź is not only unpronounceable to foreigners, it also is to Polish speakers as well. In phonetics, a lot of operations are taken to simplify a word to make it as easy to say it out loud as possible, and if you say “Łódź” out loud quickly, you’ll most likely say something closer to “uć” than “łódź”, only grammatical purists (and ones that could be overcorrecting too!) would say each sound out loud separately ^^
Oh, and łódź means a boat in Polish ^^
Today, I found out that there’s a Yatta in Manufaktura, it’s pretty well stocked, but unfortunately, because of how the Polish manga market looks like, the mangas are exclusively available in Polish ^^
At least they do encourage people to pick up foreign languages and on Piortkowska, there is this cute little banner looming from a distance ^^
Today, me and my mom ended up going to the Science City part of the town, EC1! It’s a pretty big complex, similar to the one in Valencia, although much, much smaller. It does look futuristic though and is still being worked on!
Inside of it, there are different museums, a heat/power plant similar to Zollverein, a comic museum, a Polish cinematography museum, a science museum and a planetarium, and today, me and my mom decided to check out the heat/power plant!
it’s aesthetic as frick, not gonna lie
call wes anderson or something
and a lot of interactive things you can play with!
plus, the terrace observational platform on the top floor is allowing for you to see the whole city from above
As a bit of trivia, the writings around the terrace were mentioning the distance from each respective buildings in meters in a space where you would expect the height of a building to be, so imagine the confusion when you see something like “Chimney (550m)” and you go like “WHOA, THAT’S ONE HECK OF A CHIMNEY” xddddd
You can lose an entire day in EC1, and after building some particles from quarks, some atoms from particles, some chemical formulas from atoms, learning how does a parallax work, where are the closest red dwarfs away from us, and so on, we ended up going back home C:
oh, and if you’re curious about how Polish gastronomy looks like, here’s something adjacent to a “milk bar”, a really popular restaurant substitute in Poland - different dishes every day, but there’s always “KOMPOT”, you can’t go a day without a kompot ^^
So yeah, what a fun day C:
And I wasn’t kidding about Łódź Fabryczna being a liminal space, by the way, it does it really well xddd
See you tomorrow!
October 7th, 2026
- 19 reviews on WaniKani
- 5 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: メダリスト第１巻終わりまで (120p)
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第２巻終わりまで(100p)
- Game: 2h of ファイアーエムブレム 万紫千紅
Okay, rant: Fortune’s Weave has actually become hard if you play it with just one lord in Act 3, so much so, I can no longer make the fights without proper strategizing, and even then I’m dying pretty often. I’m slowly thinking of giving up on actually being calculating in the game and just outfitting everyone with a drink at the start of the fight to make their stats go crazy, but I lost the chapter 2 fight a few times today >:[[[[
I wasn’t reading much in Japanese in the game, practically the only expression that stuck with me after the game today was:
めいかいのもん, the gate to the underworld, and that’s because it kind of feels like it might be the big Act 3 fetch quest, and if it is, I might be struggling to go through that
On the more positive news, I spent a lot of time in a car today and was able to read some manga, so I finished two volumes I had open:
…and read the whole 百合はお仕事 volume 4 in Polish.
ふつうの軽音部 has a bunch of explosive characters and it’s fun to see how they interact with one another ^^
And on planet MaruMori…
…what’s the deal with this difficulty like wtf xdddd
those were some of the hardest sentences I was trying to read on this platform so far D::::
Life
So because of family emergency today involving some neighbors and people you never want to be your neighbors, we made our way to Warsaw!
Look how cute, they have the seasonal letters for Fall too ^^
My brother recently bought an air frier, so to relieve us of needing to make the dinner, he put some salmon and fries into that one and made his brand new air frier salmon recipe by himself, so proud of him, tell him he did a good job xdddd
Warsaw is picking it’s own Warsaw Woman of the Year 2026 right now, and on one hand I appreciate just listing out the names of the people and having them explain themselves, on the other though, I have no idea who are any of those people
Found a Central Asian spice shop and those very cute residence card covers you can wrap your passport or residence card with C:
Oh, and because Warsaw still has a large Russian population, there are Russian bookstores in Warsaw too!
But yeah, Warsaw is still hoping to take the tourism crown in Poland away from Kraków, and they’re doing a good effort, but I think there should be a few more pretty churches in Warsaw to be able to steal that crown ^^
“Is it bad in Poland B?” (= east of Warsaw in Poland), and the answer is maybe-ish xddd
The coping strategies of Poland B end up making the regions crazy overcompensate for things that they didn’t use to have and in some regards they’re well ahead of Poland A, like in local communities, public services, and so on, but in some, like acceptance of immigrants or queer identities, they’re helplessly behind and might never be able to catch up.
OH AND I WENT ON THE TALLEST INDOOR SLIDE IN WARSAW APPARENTLY
didn’t beat any PBs, but you know, it was fun xdddd
and look, that’s a halloween themed bath bomb, and its eyes start bleeding if you put it in water and it starts dissolving
it even smelled pretty spooky ^^
One more day in Poland, and then on Friday going back to Berlin! Either way, see you tomorrow!
Just catching up with your log, yay, Polska! <3
yay, great job!!! XDD I’m going to try it out
tries to decide if this is good or not
October 8th, 2026
- 15 reviews on WaniKani
- 7 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第２２話
- Game: 1.5h of ファイアーエムブレム 万紫千紅
good expression, especially for tangents like this one ^^
ふつうの軽音部 is full of tangents and slang vocabulary, making it fun to mine words, less fun to attempt to understand what the story is about ^^
And this one is an actually important word!
Oh, and now in Part 3 of Fortune’s Weave, you can get three separate players to play your Mario Party on a big map with…
…which makes it really interesting because even if you have a limited amount of turns and shorter time, you end up doing more things than in Part 1…
…but that’s also a trap, because a lot of the map is covered by miasma and the only way to fix the locations and remove it is to already have a lot of rare resources from around the map, and if you don’t, you will not be able to enter towns to perform as Leda inside of them
I’m still mixed on if I like the Mario Party mode or not ^^
And MaruMori getting into a flexible grammar that can be written in all sorts of different ways retaining a similar grammar, now we’re learning thinking patterns, not the words to use as grammars ^^
Life
Aaand we’re in Ciechanów again ^^
Park Marii Konopnickiej in the city got a new investment stream to put animals around the park to seemingly look aesthetic, but would you be able to tell that this is a snail and a squirrel if I didn’t tell you? Something is very off about their proportions xddd
Here’s Maria Konopnicka as well, she’s a poet mostly writing poems similar to fairy tales for children, and she was raised in Ciechanów, that’s the reason for her popularity here ^^
Why they painted her pink though…?
Oh, and INSECTS CUUUTE C:
There’s a warehouse with DIY things and toys in Ciechanów called Sigma-Max, I don’t think there is an equivalent of anything like this in Berlin, the closest thing to it would be Smyths Toys if they merged with Idee, but, hey, always fun to see what new toys and books and DIY things they have in there ^^
And speaking of ice skating (IM YEARNING FOR IT AGAIN), Ciechanów is building an indoors ice rink! Just a seasonal one though, but I’m still curious how it’ll look like ^^
Autumn is here in full force already…
And the City Hall square has been seeing some investments into Polish culture and kicker as well, here’s the dispatch center for a ship named after the town that was delivering the shipments across the Baltic Sea, even though Ciechanów is nowhere close to the sea xddd
Oh, and at Sigma-Max I bought a tiny embroidery set, my first one in a decade or something, it was fun to learn as I went ^^
It’s such a cute capybara too!
Back to Germany tomorrow!
October 9th, 2026
- 7 reviews on WaniKani
- 4 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第２３話
we all might need a new god to admire, mine happens to be a river animal that likes to chew on trees randomly xddd
Actually, bit of a trivia, but around the Łydynia river, a lot of trees are chained with a chain-link around the bottom so that the beavers wouldn’t be able to topple those trees ^^
And on planet MaruMori, I rushed immediately to the explanati-
WOW THEY FOUND ME OUT FOR NOT HAVING READ THE INTRODUCTION
HOW DID THEY KNOW
The more interesting lesson on MaruMori today was about せいぜい, which doesn’t sound like it should be an N2 grammar, I mean how difficult would be “at most”…
…oooh.
If anyone is curious about the article… it seems like the sarcastic tone of せいぜい is an example of Gen Zs destroying the language! Aaand Millennials, and Gen X…
Basically people no longer take this word seriously, that was the finding, せいぜい面白かった xdddd
Life
Before I went back to Berlin though, I had a two hour stop near Warsaw Central, and color me surprised, but there’s an official Nikon camera shop in there
Apparently one of only two in the whole Europe, the second one being in Paris
I told them about my trip to Japan and all of the pics I took there, told them about the lens I bought in Osaka, that I might be interested in mirrorless cameras in the future, and they pointed me to a €300 adapter of DSLR to mirrorless lenses so that I wouldn’t have to buy a €3000 lens xdddd
The person selling in there told me she shoots with a D6 and showed me a few fun settings, and knowing that this camera is 30x the price of the D5200 that I bought off of an auction site earlier this year is enough to deter you from a purchase of a new camera xddd
I asked her what lens is her favorite and she responded with a 50mm one, and I was like “surely taking photos of food must be annoying”, and she was like
“i dont take photos of my food.”
damn. generational divide.
Still, they gave me a small cloth to clean your lenses (useful for phone lenses too!), a pen with Nikon logo and a business card to rate then 5 stars on Google Maps, which I still haven’t done xddd
Anyway, cool, nice to meet people who are really into Nikons ^^
I had a drożdżówka (yeast pastry) from a drożdżówkomat C:
…and set off on a cute ride with PKP Intercity all the way to Berlin Gesundbrunnen and read a Chinese book all the way with the train ^^
The book is called “Niedoskonałe”, “Imperfect” (你的孩子不是你的孩子), and that’s another example of a bizarre book that’s been translated to Polish, but not to any other language.
The translation seems to be a little stiff, the content matter is very strongly depressing though, it’s about a student who commits a suicide and her teacher who has an insane guilt-trip because f that, to the point where she spills and reveals every trauma that could’ve led her to make the same decision in the past, or even now…
something something, most chinese time of your life xddd
…and immediately got reminded how much I love Berlin school of posters, “just block your ex, but not our doors”, amazing xddd
it seems like there is a bit more of Halloween around the city than the last time I was here a week ago ^^
Two things came to me in mail, and one I hope you might get to see in this study log towards the end of this month, second one… maaaybe earlier? I’m thinking of also making a special about the second thing one day, just probably next week ^^
I’ll try to get to see the Festival of Lights tomorrow!
Me taking pictures for my cosy weekly food corner… 
what generation am I supposed to relate too ?!! Existential conundrum.
October 9th, 2026
- 9 reviews on WaniKani
- 5 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第２４〜２５話
so one really cool thing about the Ordinary Light Music Club is that sometimes they give you character cards for the band members:
and those cards contain their taste in different things, like the songs for example, 百八円の恋 as a song does exist and is a jrock banger from 2014 ^^
Brandy Senki does exist as well, and it’s a very aesthetic girls’ group:
they currently tour around Japan and they’ve launched their 8th single a few months ago:
Some of the songs mentioned also have a lot of covers and versions, like this one, which was released a year and a half after the volume came out, even if it didn’t know that the song would be remade then ^^
Either way though, this manga volume hasn’t been released in the west yet, it’s called Girl Meets Rock! and the volume I’m reading right now will only come in 2027 in the States: I wonder if they’ll localize song recommendations until then ^^
Life
LETS FREAKIN GOOO
My Japanese friend invited me today to her son’s 6th birthday! She invited the whole Japanese school and like, 100 people, to his birthday party xdddd
We’ve had way too much food and Japanese people were also bringing their own food as a favor, so the tables were overflowing with things xddd
In terms of activities, she’s prepared fishing for scary hollywood things, smashing a piñata…
AND A PROPER SUMO FIGHT IN THE COSTUMES, we even had salt and the changing and switching from one leg to another xddd
I didn’t get the sumo fight, but I participated in the other ones ^^
And yeah, that was a lot of fun, but my mom was due to be picked up from the train station, because now she came TO ME
And oh my LORD did I ever say that the first two weeks of October are my absolute favorite season of the year, every year? Because they absolutely are ^^
And we set off for the proper Festival of Lights together!
They had so many performers on the street and so many illuminated buildings… The main street, Unter den Linden, got completely exempt from car traffic and it got completely pedestrianized, and it was CROWDED
So yeah, mega fun day and I enjoyed my adventures today profoundly ^^
October 11th, 2026
- 14 reviews on WaniKani
- 6 reviews on Bunpro
- 2 lessons on MaruMori
- 11 min of Kanji Learner’s Course
- Manga: ふつうの軽音部第２６話
i wonder what banger names can we give to our light music club
okay, tortoiseshell cat isn’t it…
…calling it after the band members probably isn’t the best solution either xddd
They eventually settled on something fun, but that’d be a spoiler, so you’ll have to get there by yourselves to know what the band name was ^^
meanwhile, on the planet MaruMori…
hey, halloween is in a few weeks, not today xddd
(my halloween this year will probably suck, but it might make for a fun survival strory at least xdd)
Life
Rainy day today
bear with me though xddd
Me and a friend went over to a Queer Market in Berlin! It’s an annual thing, and this year it was only the two of us!
The market was full of DIY things, and made more special because of their queer undertone ^^
My friend already knew some of the artists at the market and introduced me to one of them, that was making really cool card illustrations C:
I ended up buying a few illustrations to decorate my walls and a new set of earrings, she went with rings
The moment we went out of the market, there was a huge line of people waiting and trying to get in, and that probably would’ve been half an hour easily ^^
But yeah, pretty hard to do not-closeup pictures with the DSLR lens, oh well xddd
Still, glad the camera is getting some use, and my friend also ended up getting a portrait of hers ^^
See you tomorrow!
gorgeous framing in your pictures!! thinking of you today 