A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & I'm A German Citizen Arc 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱 🇨🇳

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
1141

Whew, I’d like to think I caught up on the study logs of everyone that I follow, it took a while because yall have a lot of mindful look backs on 2025 and goals for 2026, but me being stuck in the traffic threw those things for a loop ^^

Anyway, here’s the:

BIDOOF LOOKING BACK AT THE YEAR 2025

Inspired by WeepingWeeb, I’ll start with some checkboxes ^^

  • :woman_walking: 3.682.562 steps (avg 10.144 a day)
  • :woman_biking: 4.546,6km on a bike (avg 12,45km a day)
  • :flexed_biceps: Average of 905 calories burned through physical activity every day (total avg: 2621)
  • :bookmark: 24.176 pages of reading in Japanese (avg 66 pages a day, but I only started around July)
  • :keyboard: 55.146 reviews on WaniKani (avg 151 a day) and going to level 60
  • :writing_hand: 13.741 reviews on Bunpro (avg 37,6 a day) and finishing N2, 94h of study
  • :airplane: Visited 26 countries and hundreds of cities (almost all in the study log above)
  • :germany: Spent 4 weeks doing intense political Works Council seminars
  • :100: Got 0 reputation karma on Reddit, I’m 100% free from participating in social media xddd

It was the single best year of my life and I ended up doing so many things over the course of it! I definitely do have this scary feeling that I might have peaked in life in October 2025 and it’s downhill from then on xddd

But you be the judge, and you hold me accountable of things!

I’ve been journaling extensively over the course of the last few days, and there aren’t that many areas in my life that I could complain about, I structured my life in a way that I personally really enjoy and hedonism has been a huge part of my 2025, even though I was pushing myself to be structured and do new things as well

One outcome of the journaling is that I realized that I’m either a 0 or a 1, so as I was flaunting with the reading challenge and having read 5 books and all… I might have read 10 books overall this year, across all languages, because I was a zero in those areas ^^

Themes of life in 2025

It’s not a big surprise that this started as a study log, and then drifted off into a completely different direction

I’m really happy about the direction it took, but it makes me look back and identify some trends easier than the others

Positive:

  • :train: Travelling! It was the single biggest year of my life in terms of traveling, I saw so many different places and I was really happy about it! Just 16 months ago I’ve never been outside of Europe, and suddenly I’ve seen 12 countries outside of the continent, travelled across the East Coast, travelled through Pacifiic Asia, it was great C:

  • :heart_with_ribbon: Health, though maybe “physical activity” would be a better metric. I’m the most elastic, the most fit that I’ve ever been: I also eat a lot, so my weight went up a bit, but looking at myself, I have a feeling it definitely went into muscles, either through bouldering, hiking, riding a bike, or the things like it. I feel physically strong and even if a flu comes to destroy me, it gives in after just a few hours instead of making me trip over for a week xddd

  • :chains: Being connected to environments I’m in, which has been my ambition for the longest time! I do exist in the society now, I am the society. I hike a lot, I go to conventions in cities a few hundred kilometers away, I have my favorite things in multiple countries, I read multiple languages, if I have a few hours of time, I take a random train and I try to enjoy the climate and unique things about the place, posters, murals, local communities, going to cinemas in that place and so on.

  • :bow_and_arrow: Ambition. Less so about work, and more about hobbies, I’m so into doing things right now and I want to achieve more and more things in life, and except for JLPT I haven’t been failing my ambitions that much. It’s something I was always looking forward to and the only downside I can think of is the inability to sleep for very long, knowing that I have 150 reviews on WaniKani and 10 reviews on Bunpro to do before falling asleep. I love having hobbies though xddd

Areas of improvement:

  • :people_hugging: Intense interpersonal attachment. In the previous years, I spent a lot of effort in forging friend groups, making people like me and like one another, but because I lean heavily anxious attachment, this year I turned a bit more avoidant and stopped intensively feeling as if I need to be friends with other people, and… the friendships I currently have have great boundaries and I get a lot of energy from them, people care about me, I care about them, but I really wish I could make myself a bit more dependent on people, and that people could be a little bit more dependent on me. I just don’t know how to do something about this though. Maybe I forgot how to have a bestie/partner, and I miss that feeling, but I know that the older you get, the harder it is to have a relationship like that.

  • :lipstick: Skin-and-self-care. This year was the year where I started getting red spots over my face, started wearing the least amount of makeup in a while, same with the cosmetics, a part of me says that I don’t care, and my relationships with people feel a little more genuine as a result, but everyone wants to be pretty sometimes and I’m ever so envious of people that can do it. The group of people I relate to the most are probably butch lesbians and autistic nerds, but sometimes there are moments where I look at a person who’s beautiful and I struggle to maintain an eye contact with them because I feel like they’ve been putting much more effort into their looks putting them in a completely different class of a person than me. I kinda wish I did more research on things like how to be a “subaru lesbian” or something similar to that

  • :eye: Patience. I’m on a hedonic treadmill and I do so many fun things that the hedonic treadmill can never catch up with me and my life is a ton of fun and I love it, but I noticed that the harder the challenge, the less incentivized I get to do it, and also things that require consistency and doing things over and over again are really difficult for me to follow on through, because I get really invested in a new ADHD hobby I just invented and I find the consistency part to be an anchor to the kind of a person I no longer want to be a week later. I genuinely have troubles with sticking to things I’m not passionate about, even if I know they will lead to something I would be passionate about, things like reading books in Japanese, having a language learning course, being a regular of a meetup where I would go in every week, the fear of commitment is taking over my life in a lot of places.

  • :thinking: Empathy? This might be a weird one, but because my life has been so much fun recently, I’ve started growing really impatient with people that struggle to achieve a life that they would like to have, and when people come to me with the same problems over and over again, and we’ve already talked about ways how someone could get over them, then I get upset and angry with them for not being able to achieve their goals, even if they’re just not feeling like fixing it that day or there’s external circumstances that are not easy to verbalize. In other words, I find it really hard to support people through their low points, and a part of me doesn’t even want to, and it’s a weird place to be in.

If anyone has any hints on how to improve in any of those areas, please do let me know!

As by CGP Grey, I’m not setting that many resolutions for 2026, because all of them will be woefully outdated by the end of January, I’d like to set up some themes though:

My themes for 2026 will involve:

  • :flag_jp: Japanese language! What a big surprise ^^
    But I really want to get to the level where I have “B2” written all over my diploma somewhere, I still don’t think I’m N2, but I think I’m getting ever closer to that one;
  • :flag_de: Getting a German citizenship, I already have all of the necessary steps done, it’s just a matter of collecting the documents and sending them over to apply for things;
  • :busts_in_silhouette: Having a strong network of friends! As much as my group of friends is really strong in 2025, I’ve almost completely rotated my friend circles away in comparison to 2024, so if it were possible to either maintain the same friend circles, or strengthen them further, I’d be really happy about this;
  • :train: Visiting friends from the internet! I’ve seen plenty in 2025 already, but I really want to see somebody like Mitrac or Akashelia any chance that I get, so I’ll definitely try to prioritize this ^^
  • :heart: Being in touch with my emotions. This is something I’m really proud of in general, that I am assertive because I know what kind of a person I am, but being able to push myself in areas that won’t strain me much and knowing what my limits are is definitely going to make the year easier.

And one goal I’ll see if I can follow through:
Ten books in Japanese, ten books in German.
I’ll be so freaking happy if I make this happen in 2026 xddd

So, that’s it. My wrap-up of 2025. I’m probably not doing any bingos, because I might clear them in the month of January already or I might completely pivot away, but if any of you thinks of themselves as being my friend, let’s keep on being friends and achieving all of our goals in life together, I’m curious to see where my life takes me in 2026 C:

See you later today!

1142

Wow, for once I surpassed your accomplishments by being thrown for a much bigger loop catching up over about two months. (And this explains, among other things, why this is going to be a rushed response, hopefully I can improve this year so I can enjoy this thread for the wonder that it is).

I find it’s helpful to mentally frame your horizon as short term when things are on an upward trajectory, to enjoy those highs, and then long-term when it’s starting to be downward so you don’t wallow in those lows. I can’t imagine you’ve peaked just yet, you silly Bidoof, maybe a localized peak but I’m sure you’re still going to continue to thrive.

I think empathy and assertion may be two ends of a continuum, just having read this and thought about it a little (as quickly as the last few minutes of my lunch break allows). I am absolutely the opposite in nearly every way on the empathy/assertiveness spectrum as I’m going to refer to it as long as I remember, and I am acutely aware of it. Like I’ve noticed some weird almost certainly neuro-atypical tics like I would reflexively yawn at the office when I was approaching or being approached by people, even those who I’d known and liked (and considered friends!) for almost a decade at times. I really had difficulty not feeling completely overwhelmed if I was in a conversation with exactly four other people, something about being hyperaware of being a fifth wheel and not knowing how to compensate.

I’ll make a deal, if you ever need help with empathy, just assert that I should help you and I’ll be too non-assertive and too empathetic not to. (Fortunately, I did also learn that the first two letters in empathetic are totally important, because I used to have times where I’d feel just pathetic and now not so much). :slight_smile: But seriously, if you’re in touch with your emotions and really understand yourself and your limits and limitations, and IMPORTANTLY your many many strengths, I think you’ll be in outstanding shape.

1143
Gdańsk arc

Gorgeous. :sob: sorry to hear about 17 hrs in car, and so glad to see you made it out OK. :flexed_biceps:

Happy New Year 🎉🤩✨️

:star_struck: love that with the tablet on top!

You, my friend, have not peaked. Keep going, we got your back :sparkles:

I admire you so much for this.

Patience, just thoughts...

I’m not sure the following is advice, more like, life experience observation.

Think of it like this - something you already know - we all have such different inner worlds and needs, and we experience things differently. So I might grow up thinking the way I experience hunger is how everyone does, and then later realise - I’m almost never hungry and eating is more for pleasure and utility, but some people have hunger constantly and think about food a lot. Now extrapolate that to any experience someone has. They might be experiencing a low that you can’t know how deep it goes.

It’s easy to fall into a trap and not realise we’re making assumptions. I think one for you to look out for might be with energy levels. Most telling is what you wrote above “even if they’re just fatigued.” FYI just that sentence could alienate some people. For some people it’s not just fatigue, it’s disability level, can’t push past this with real physical limitations that can’t be pushed past with positive thinking. Or it’s a deeper overwhelm that doesn’t get put into words because that would be terrifying and they are stuck. Etc etc

There’s a fine line, and you can’t know if someone needs a kick or if they need someone to listen. I guess my advice if I had to give some is, generally choose listening over advice and they will feel soooo supported. You don’t generally have to do anything and don’t expect change, maybe that’s why it feels tough. Experiencing things together is a big gift, and when we’re low or in pain, that experience is so often lonely that if someone chooses to share it with us that is a big statement.

Yes! :tram::sauropod:

1144

The first book won the 本屋大賞 which is a pretty big thing here (not necessarily prestigious in terms of writing quality award, but more representative of something being pretty broadly popular and in the zeitgeist). I think I was slightly propagandised by 成瀬 too, someone to try and be like. Also had similar thoughts about visiting 大津 because it ties in nicely with the northern 中部 area around 金沢 etc, which is now the main area of Japan I haven’t been to and want to go to, so some point this year, hopefully…

Haven’t read the last book yet, didn’t enjoy the second one quite as much as the first one but I’ll definitely get around to the last one for that feeling of 完結 at some point.
Congrats on finishing! Reading like 2/3rds of a novel in about 2 days when you’re only on novel 2 or something like that in Japanese is frankly quite ridiculous and very impressive. No way I could have done that when starting out

And thank you for allowing lots of us to vicariously live through you! It’s been a very busy and interesting year to read along with. Best of luck next year with citizenship and N2 (although you never know, might have passed it last time!) and all the life stuff which is more important than Japanese

1145

CHECK BOXES :heart_eyes:

That’s so cool too

Your reflections and the types of things you have listed as high points of the year are really great, and your honesty is refreshing

Hope you have a great new year :saluting_face: :tada:

1146

Hmm, I think I get what you mean, but having been through some low points with long term problems myself, let me throw in my two cents (thoughts, do they have that expression in places with no cents for money?). I think it’s easy to assume that the things we find easy should be easy for other people and it can be surprising to recognize those gaps when you run into them. You’re probably better than most people at having high levels of energy and a lot of things to manage at once. Lots of irons in the fire. Not everyone is going to have that level of personal engagement and drive to fix and change things in their lives. Depending on the person and the problem, sometimes it’s laziness and sometimes that change is easier said than done.

Some of my long term goals involve becoming better at art and music. I recognize that I don’t put much effort into those compared to language learning. While I have friends with talents in those areas, I don’t think I would go to them for advice on the very earliest stages of starting out, because that’s something they got good at a long time ago. To them the perceived effort of learning basic chords or drawing anatomy practice is low ish because they’ve already put in the hundreds of hours to be okay or even good at it. It’d be like if someone came to me for advice on learning Japanese and I told them to try learning hiragana first. It’s not bad advice, but because I’m already above that level, I’m not going to properly appreciate the amount of effort it takes to make those first steps.

1147

I’m a bit surprised at the empathy dot getting the most attention, but I’m grateful to you all for providing your extra thoughts on the empathy bit. That’s something I’ll probably have to work with a mental health specialist and some worksheets, I just made a point to highlight that me feeling better in life feels inversely proportional to me being able to extend empathy to people, and I wanted to highlight that as a thing I’m actively monitoring and feeling like something should be done about it :thinking:

You did inspire me to think about it on a bike today, I think there’s something to it and I didn’t connect the dots myself, but I do see where you’re coming from and I know people on both sides of the spectrum and they indeed seem mutually exclusive to me in empathy/assertion charts :thinking:

You are 100% correct and I did edit the sentence because it didn’t feel like the message I wanted to convey and indeed it does alienate people going through chronic conditions, that I also do know a few of.

I think this is a pretty good rule of thumb and I should internalize it and adhere to it even more than I already do, though I do have a fun neurodivergent tangent about this ^^

Neurodivergent tangent

I used to have a friend in the past who, when somebody was complaining about something and going through a bad thing, she would go like ‘damn… that sucks… that reminds me of <overly passionate trauma dumping her similar experience>’, and a few other people that knew her considered her to be arrogant and not listening to others. But when she was pulling this one on me, it was immediately taking me out of my own head and feeling better because we would bond over our similar traumas and just bounce off of each other’s pains to feel a bit better

We had exactly one other shared friend in common who both interpreted her remarks in the same way and also was doing the same to me, and she was neurodivergent, neurotypical people really hated asking them for help with things :sob:

So yep, someone needs a kick, someone needs a listen, someone needs a “LISTEN, ITS NOTHING, THE OTHER DAY I HAD A SIMILAR WORST THING HAPPEN TO ME” ^^

I absolutely agree with this one and I have a feeling that this is critical in order to develop more intense interpersonal attachments with people, but I used to prioritize sitting on a voice chat on Discord with a friend going through their mental health perils at 1am over reading even more pages of ハルタ more often, and I feel like there’s an ever-growing insecurity in “OOO I FINALLY FOUND A PERSON I CAN RELATE TO ON SPECIFIC THINGS, oh no they aren’t as high functioning as i’d like for them to be, why can’t i relate to them anymore” there somewhere that I might bring to a coach/therapist one day :sob:

Part of it is this, part of it is when you’re acutely aware of the scope of a problem that somebody is attempting to solve, you attempt to give them the hints that they aren’t aware of the scope of the problem, then they ignore those and take their own long time to realize that the the 10% of scope they saw is not the full picture, they grow to the 25% of the scope of the problem, and then they give up, and those are the things that just run me wild.

it’s a bit hard to talk without a specific example, but an equivalent example i can think of is somebody thinking they’ll read adult novels in Japanese by learning romaji, and you go like “listen, i know what you’re trying to do, but if you want to read adult novels, you’re gonna have to learn hiragana, katakana and kanji” and they go like “you’re such a hater”, and then a week later you see them saying “ah yeah, i gave up because i have to learn hiragana to read Japanese and it’s too difficult”, and im just seething in there being “I TOLD YOU SO, ALSO, THAT’S NOT JUST IT” xdd

And I know that they probably spent a lot of time over that week over that time doing a lot of research of “what measures can you use in order to read Japanese novels if you only know romaji” and they were convinced they were on the right track, so this is what I empathize with, but this is where my empathy stops and despair begins.

though, the actual most recent example of this has been with “”“helping”“” a friend with the dating apps ^^

That’s the empathy-patience bit that I’m struggling with, I conditioned myself to disconnect myself from conversations when I notice those patterns being present… and I realized they’re a bit more present than people like to admit, because sometimes short-circuiting your brain feels better than standing in place.

I am 100% aware of this.

…i have no idea what to make of this thought and it might consume me one day :sob:

plsplspls dont shave your head to count months from your anniversaries xddd

thank you! i’ll probably rest for a bit before attempting a new one, but yes, it still feels really hard to keep track of the context, there is a bigger story behind the page number and you of all people probably know it pretty well :smiling_face_with_tear: xddd

Thank you very much for the kind words! I very much appreciate those!

January 1st, 2026

  • 136 reviews on WaniKani
  • 15 lessons on WaniKani
  • 11 reviews on Bunpro
  • 3 stories on Satori Reader
  • Magazine: ハルタ２０２５年６月p0>p200
  • Podcast: 45m of JELLY JELLY RADIO

Just saying that some of the double-page illustrations go incredibly hard in this volume ^^

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珍獣のお医者さん goes really hard too, there was a full on CT scan of a bird with an explanation of how eggs are produced by a bird, and it introduced a lot of very random, very specific vocabulary, but I was eating it all up :eyes:

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I made a small web tool to visualize contributions of people to the WaniKani Readathons, if anyone wanted to give the tool a look, shoot away ^^

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And also, updated my OP for 2026! Links should be up to date now!

Life

It’s been snowing really intensively in Warsaw today…

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…and a lot of trains were getting delayed as a result of this, but luckily, not ours!

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The closer away you’d get to Berlin, the less snow there would be, and it’s 3 degrees in Berlin right now and absolutely no snow at all, a lot of fireworks and boxes with them laying around :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I finally could jump on the bike today and visit the places that weren’t closed down because of January 1st today, Oggi’s Gemüse Kebab is always a safe bet to have a long line behind it regardless of the day ^^

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Oh, and European Parlament…

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…ON PUBLIC TRANSIT AND TRAINS ^^

Something something, Rocket League (but with bikes ^^)

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Tomorrow, things should be back to normal, so looking forward to hitting a few places finally back in Germany now :relieved_face: :folded_hands:

See you tomorrow!

1148

OMG
I never realized…
Thank you for bringing this up in your discussion…
I thought that I was displaying deep empathy,
but one friend’s frustrated-with-me response was “you always have to make everything all about you!”

And… Even though I am stupidly old
I have just learned something important about myself. :sparkles: magic sparkles

Bidoofさん
Wow I thought maybe you traveled like that all the time, you’re so comfortable going around places

Anyway HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
It’s been so awesome touring “with” you…

1149

OMG yeah sometimes I like it when people do that and I try to be conscious not to do it, but yeah, I wish I knew when it would be helpful

One thing I forgot to say (maybe it’s obvious? But I have fallen in this trap before and some people get stuck in it so worth saying) is it’s a big gift as well because you gotta put guardrails on it. Too much empathy and too many late nights living in someone’s low isn’t a good path either…

You gave me a peek and now I’m like (going to make it about me :face_with_hand_over_mouth:)

MUST READ FASTER. I have this unholy desire to ingest all of Harta all at once. o where does this come from? No one who knows me pre Japanese learning arc would have ever seen this coming

1150

gosh this is amazing! so happy for youu

what can you not do??

Let’s gooo! I’m sure you can do it :flexed_biceps:

1151

Funny enough, it stuck with me a bit and sometime overnight I guess I realized that they’re not really mutually exclusive like a spectrum is - there are probably people who are very passive and still hate everyone - but it’s still a useful enough way of thinking about it and it does seem like a pretty strong negative correlation between the two.

Too bad, delightfully abnormal is much better than normal. But enjoy it nonetheless and your presence might make it just that little bit better. :slight_smile:

1152

Man, if only there was a kind of an end of a year break that people could use to unwind and learn how to speed up reading Japanese in, I’d love if it were the case :sob: :sob: :sob: xddd

For real though, you’re doing a great job by structuring your reading for a long haul by getting interested in all sorts of things Japanese and not just manga, so I’m confident that your rate of improvement of reading will at least be constant or maybe even speed up as the time goes on ^^

dress up pretty and do skincare, apparently xddd
there is a niche for unique styles too though, is what i keep telling myself :sob: :sob: :sob: xddd

THANK UUU AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TOO C:

I WILL DO IT (eventually) xddd

Somebody’s growing into an adventure junkie, aww, how adorable :relieved_face: :folded_hands:
it’s more fun on the junkie side of the adventure fence though xdd

January 2nd, 2026

Yes, it’s just as cute as you imagine it is C:
with 北国ゆらゆら紀行 I’ve already revealed myself as a fan of travel manga and ながらりょうこ in the first place, and it’s her manga about moving to Germany and the some of the things she finds in there, and as a person who also immigrated to Berlin, it’s just so, UGGHHHH

there’s a tag on Natively called “Iyashikei”, which means something like “healing the soul”, it doesn’t go that far away for me, but it turns on the curiosity machine really well C:
LOOK, SHE’S MAKING BAKED NECTARINED WITH GERMAN PRODUCTS :sob:

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come to think of it, it does feel like a ハルタ manga ^^

And there was also one panel just explaining the stoves with the oven with the perfect setting and im like “THATS MY STOVES WITH THE OVEN”, aaaaa C:

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The intensity of those observations is spread out really often, there’s a thing that makes me go Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen every two pages or something, like when the Rewe cheap brand called “JA!” is called “OH!” in this manga, but the rest of the packaging is kept, or when she draws what obviously looks like Pankow right next to the Berlin wall, and I’m like AAAAaaaAAAAaaaAAAA xddd

Anyway, amazing manga xdddd

3 days until the end of WaniKani lessons :eyes:

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Life

DINOSAUR FANS WHERE YOU AT

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The Naturkundemuseum in Berlin has its own podcast right now, and they spent a decent budget marketing it, if you were looking for some cool German immersion (somebody like @WeepingWeeb? xddd), this is the best that it gets ^^

First Miniso opened up in Germany and how cute are they C:
In the same place I wrote about a month ago, Alexa ^^

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Also, Japanese magazines, in MY BERLIN???

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One part I really like about Berlin is how much of a texture everything is in here ^^

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And my lessons for life, I always wear too many layers xddd

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So bit of a story about me, I used to be a part of a photography club at the University! I’ve only been to a few outings, but there are the times where I do genuinely miss this and I wonder if photography is something I’d still be able to connect over with other people :thinking:

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Either way though, great to be back and looking forward to what 2026 brings now ^^

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Also, have been ABSOLUTELY BLESSED by YouTube algorithm today, check this out ^^

See you tomorrow!

1153

You’re about 2 days late for 謹賀新年 unfortunately, so now you have to wait until next year January 1st to learn it, sorry

1154

I had heard that in Norwegian the name was kropkondom (condom for the body) but now I wanted to double check online and I didn’t find anything saying, that so whoever told me that was probably making fun of me xD (maybe @Redglare can confirm!)

The snow adventure sounded crazy! We only just had the first snow here in Denmark yesterday, but I have a feeling that it will be here for a while.

Love the stats! There was a year where I tracked all my hobbies, running, piano and a few others, was super satisfying to look back at the numbers at the end of the year!
Nowadays I don’t spend time tracking anymore because it takes a bit of time away from doing the thing. But once I got asked “what do you wish would happen when you died?”, and my answer was “SEE ALL MY LIFE STATS!!” :joy:

Oooh :heart_eyes: me too! Maybe we should meet in “the middle”, Hamburg or Lübeck? I’m super ready to make it happen!

1155

nice tip :+1::+1:
I’m not a natural podcast listener, but maybe now and then this will help with my eternal journey to learn the gender of EVERYTHING.

everything makes sense now, sounds like an interesting one to explore with other people :thinking:

:face_with_hand_over_mouth:

omg I was going to ask you both what you thought about exactly those two cities! I was gazing at a map yesterday and trying to work out connections

1156

Heyyyy I’ve been there :index_pointing_at_the_viewer: thank you for the ping

1157

WHAT :rofl: :rofl: I’ve never heard that before xD Whoever told you that, they cannot be trusted

We call it sovepose = sleep + bag

1158

A really quick one, because it’s super late today xddd

@mitrac, @Akashelia, DMs on Natively :eyes:

January 3rd, 2026

Not often that I watch movies from Japan and in Japanese, but today was the day ^^

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Very touching movie, found it through the playlist of Befriending the lyrical loneliness on Letterboxd which is my favorite movie list and it didn’t disappoint ^^

A story about not fitting in anywhere, about making the most out of the dealt cards, newfound family, the existential dread hiding deep within and chasing happiness, I think the sound design and the photography were absolutely gorgeous, so it is super fitting of the list ^^

Japanese was pretty simple, because it’s one of those movies that just leaves long meandering shots after every word, should I start logging Japanese movies on Learnnatively? xddd

Also, today my final day of Satori Reader, how fitting of a title for today’s final episode ^^

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But yeah, also didn’t have that much listening comprehension today at all

And two more days of lessons on WaniKani left ^^

Life

Snow came to Berlin today!

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Not much, but there’s an orange warning for snowfall around the region right now ^^

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Walking today full of lights reflected from the snow was really fun C:

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Also, I absolutely adore German bakeries and I missed them so much, extra context for ねこと私とドイッチュラント, this is some of the best bread I’ve ever tried, eeever ^^

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And yeah, crazy amouts of revenge bedtime procrastination today because I ran out of time to do research around things I’d like to be doing in January, so I’ll be dead tomorrow ^^

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My mom had her first lessons of Spanish on Italki today! She already booked another classes and changed Duolingo to Spanish, proud of her C:

Also, really cool incentive in my local library today!

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Anyway, I’m restarting my cinema unlimited card tomorrow, this wILL BE A MOVIE REVIEW BLOG REALLY SOON, get ready for the pretentious takes xddd

See you tomorrow!

1159

Central eastern western southern and northern European bread is so so good, you guys really have amazing baked goods while, we & I, meanwhile

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; You guys have generations on generations on generations of bakers

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he’s so… he’s so!
I just scrolled and then stopped for 5 seconds straight
he stopped me

1160

OOH I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE AN AUSSIE
Are you? Where even is it available outside of Australia? The Wikipedia page isn’t saying anything xdd

But I’ve never tried it and it looks pretty interesting, maybe there is a foods-of-the-world market in Berlin here somewhere ^^

January 4th, 2026

I finally used some of my free Bunpro coins to customize the interface ^^

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Here’s the winter theme as well ^^

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And yeah, I’m free from Satori Reader now, WaniKani is exactly one day away from being over in terms of lessons:

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i’d love to eventually transition to what Akashelia and trunklayer are doing with just reading every day and not studying, but I’ll probably do some Kanji Learner’s Course for N2 kanji when for a week my WaniKani reviews are going to be below 100

Also, soggy is calling this year, the year of reading novels, and im screaming and hiding in my plastic bag so that nobody can see my face, screaming from the sidelines xdd

And hi to the guy from Jelly Jelly Radio today who plays Yu-Gi-Oh and his favorite food is 担々麺 from 池袋 xdddd
I’m slowly starting to filter out when the important parts of the conversation are highlighted by さきこ and I’m listening in more detail to understand everything for 30 seconds folllowing those cues ^^

I need to get around to listening Japanese one day.

Life

There is a phatic expression in Poland that’s called “winter surprised the travellers” that means absolutely nothing but because of lazy journalism needs to be a part of a heading of every news story around the winter xddd

So today, “winter surprised the travelers” in Berlin, everything crazy delayed ^^

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Outside of the train station though, everyone was having a great time ^^

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Street performers in Mauerpark? Their moods never seem to be down ^^

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Also, since everything will melt inevitably in a week, here’s a snowman xdddd

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Only the regular exhibitors were out in Mauerpark today, but it was still a considerable group of booths ^^

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I renewed my Yorck Unlimited card, which gives me access to 13 cinemas across Berlin and a different movie every two hour, which I might or might not be making an intense use out of ^^

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Today, I went and saw a 4k remaster of a Taiwanese movie called “Yi Yi”, my first time seeing it

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I don’t necessarily understand what inherent quality makes this movie into a cult classic, but there were a lot of nice photos of Taipei and Tokyo, and especially seeing things like public transit in Tokyo, the same jingles played out, the same train tracks and trains going in 1999, my heart did skip a bit and I felt catered to ^^

The Japanese expressions in the film were really easy to understand with one exception, of a room staff that was speaking in keigo to the protagonist, but they repeated themselves without keigo and i was like “whew” :sob:

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Either way, great movie and I’ll be going to Neues Off more often because they regularly screen Asian movies and they have special events for Asian films, so I’m already seated for both of those C:

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Tomorrow, back to work and hopefully, will get my library card at a Japanese-German center at the south of the city, it will be a decent cycle, today the roads were crazy slippery, and the road to jdzb is a lot of thinner roads, so I hope I won’t kill myself over the 20km that it’d take to get there xddd

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See you tomorrow!