This is the most seen I’ve felt by a comment in a while. Where I struggle the most is very “how come this hasn’t already happened?!” I’m also not good at looking back over my progress. Natively levels and study logs help by being a lot more objective than just my feelings. But yeah, an ADHD brain can be really nice sometimes when it decides it’s happy to binge 8 hours of a TV show. But it rarely cooperates for me, and I have to do a lot of setting myself up for success in my good times bc I know that I will have bad times…
I just calculated and there are 1632 hours before the next readathon, come on, don’t tell me you can’t find 700 hours of listening in there 
OMG…
I’m glad you typed it the title… Comparing it to the written-out title on the book cover…I wouldn’t have been able to read decipher that stylish font!
Oh, Jintor, I didn’t even think about loading times with difficult Internet… I must endeavor to make my pix as small as possible in my posts. I’m glad you mentioned it. Bidoof’s stuff loads great on my phone on l while I’m on WiFi…
Oh reading the posts isn’t an issue… it’s writing the posts where my browser seems to explode for some reason
nope, flying on my side, i use ms edge on mac os, but i do have a lot of RAM on this laptop
…somehow Chromium out of all of the engines is still the one that uses the least amount of RAM 
I used to have tabs in triple digits open at one time, but then I got an extension called Tab Wrangler which after 10 minutes of inactivity of a tab, if it sees more than x tabs be present (15 for me?), closest down the oldest tab, so maybe this is an ADHD trick???
I specifically set the resolutions of the images so that they look nice right next to one another when viewed on a desktop browser, mrrgrgrggrg xddd
January 12th, 2026
- 104 reviews on WaniKani
- 17 reviews on Bunpro
- Book: プロローグ of トワイライト
- Game: 3h of Hades 2
- Conjugation training: Kaijugation
Well unfortunately, today wasn’t the biggest day of Japanese for me, but maybe that’s okay, chatted a lot with Discord friends ^^
On A Durtle’s Refuge today, the conversation for some reason drifted to Stephanie Meyer and Twilight and it’s rated Level 25 on Natively… Also, the availability of it is terrible ^^
But all of the books in the series are split into two 300-page books each, and even the covers are split in half ^^
Unfortunately, there might not be any ebooks available at all, the only things on the internet I could find, including the less legal sources, are scans of the books, and here’s a free scan sample from Amazon ^^
(the difficulty does drop a bit after the prologue, I went like 1.5 pages beyond the prologue too xddd)
And Twilight in Japan does have a light novelish adaptation as well! Look, it’s so pretty!
Here are some of the illustrations you can expect to find in it ^^
Eeee, so, yeah, that’s the really weird tangent for today, it was fun to look into it xddd
Also, Bunpro released their conjugation game today!
I played it for a few minutes and I had fun for a while, but then stopped having fun pretty quickly ^^
blblbllblb
BLLBLBLBLLBLB
LBLBLBLLBLBLLBLBLBLBLLBLB
…i don’t like conjugation games ^^
Life
DOGGO VS KAPYBARA WHO WOULD WIN
Unfortunately, it was the doggo, you see this apple on top of the capybara? it no longer has it, i will probably have to sew it by myself now
I did try to wash the capybara afterwards and omg the way how the fur went wet is just so amusing xddd
Anyway, I saw someone in the town today returning on a bike… from skis… apparently because of the snow, you can ski in Berlin now 
…I should’ve gone for the winter wonderlands when I still had the chance to do so ^^
Also, you might have spotted it in the picture above, but I got myself a nice little set of gradient nails, a bit of a confidence booster, purple is the color of the season this time around ^^
VIOLET TWILIGHT MEMED ME INTO PICKING NAIL COLORS
Ooh! They are like the Aomori mountain/lake violets!!
ONE YEN YOU HAVE TO GET IT
January 13th, 2026
- 53 reviews on WaniKani
- 7 reviews on Bunpro
- Game: 2h of Hades 2
- Book Club: 君に届け第１巻
- Podcast: 40m of Jelly Jelly Radio
Big updates: I’m getting better at understanding Jelly Jelly Radio at least! I was able to follow a decent chunk of the podcast today even on a bike, and they had some letters from people that listen to their podcast and leave updates, it was pretty wholesome C:
In terms of 君に届け, I don’t think I’ve seen a manga before that had so, SO many scribbles all on the text at the same time
i understand why would someone grade this manga as Level 21 on Natively, but I decided to just grade it as “harder than everything around level 21/22” and thanks to me and Malinkal, it’s up to Level 23.
There was a person who was grading the manga before and eee:
…i mean Kurichan could be onto something xdd
But yes, the first volume of the speed run book club finished!
クロノスに死を!
Life
Went to the big bookstore, Dussmann today, because they have a new fun event going around!
Dussmann is already opened until midnight on most of the days, but they want to make it so that people can spend the whole night at the bookstore and ask people to present how they would pack things to spend the night there, what would they bring overnight, and brought this bed to imply that the best use of your time after midnight by yourself in the store would be to, eee, sleep. I disagree xdd
Anyway, the submissions will take a few weeks at least and one friend on our Whatsapp group is thinking about participating seriously, so I sent her a few pics from it today ^^
Also, first poster from the Berlinale film festival! They always try to spice up the film posters, so it’s just a month to go now ^^
Sphinx for some reason
And yeah, I know how popular Rumiko Takahashi is, but I’ve never consumed a single work of art of hers, outside of passive consumption on things like Tumblr and Twitter, so that’s also on my bucket list to catch up on!
And to make fun of Germans, I think it’s “on ZE left you ZEE ZE ZIEGEZZÄULE”, but maybe Germans interpret their accent differently xdd
Can’t wait to start applying for the citizenship ^^
See you tomorrow!
It’s funny because it’s a complete different type of difficulty to Spy x Family, like the vocab spread in Spy x Family is so much wider and harder, but it’s not got little scribbles everywhere.. always feels weird judging difficulty between things which are difficult in very different and subjective ways
I don’t usually pay attention to manga gradings much anyway since they seem to all be conglomerated around a couple levels in the lvl 20s like Javerend pointed out
No no they have exactly hit it if you read the title of the book with a German pronunciation.
If the book was targeting an English speaker I would agree with you, but the book is in German so read the title as a German would and I think you’ll see it hits it comically well
pedantic explanation that is probably unnecessary
Se… in German is pronounced like an English Ze.
If an English speaker hears “on ZE left you…" → That’s how a German would pronounce something written “on se left …”.
If the book title had written it like “on Ze left…” then the pronunciation of the title when read by a German would not match their accent, because, a German would read that aloud “on tse left…”
Think how die Zeit is pronounced: “dee tsite”
Think how Sein is pronounced: ザイン
In other words, this title is meant to be funny for German speakers, not English speakers
I agree
Impressions will depend so much on how that person studied and what else they read until this point in their journey. What tools they use to read etc
It is definitely intentional that Brandon chose to hide the Natively levels when grading so that the focus is on your own personal battle with the question “is this book harder than this one?” Rather than a strategic “am I trying to push this reading up or down”. I find it interesting and sometimes amusing to see other people’s choices, but I generally ignore them, and that is a lot easier since reading so many study logs and understanding the huge variety in what is perceived easy or difficult.
Now I’m wondering if some confusing gradings are actually from past strategic grading to push a rating a certain way… some are genuinely baffling but the end result normally comes out in the wash plus minus a few levels
Thank you for the kind wishes from before 
I only got to see them now
I like the summary you did for 2025 and how you went through each part of it It’s really fascinating what one could achieve in a year 
Your reflections are amazing and your goals for 2026 are inspiring. May you achieve all of those goals and more 
and we shall be here to cheer you on
January 14th, 2026
- 138 reviews on WaniKani
- 7 reviews on Bunpro
- Manga: Like 10 pages of 君に届け第２巻
- Game: 1h of あつまれどうぶつの森
- Podcast: 25m of にじシバラジオ
- Podcast: 25m of Bite size Japanese
So today I’ve hit both the easiest podcast I listen to and the hardest podcast I listen to, Bite size Japanese is one of those that I always appreciate the ability to understand, and にじシバラジオ has both hosts and the equipment sounding in a way where even finding individual words is a bit difficult. Today にじシバラジオ was trying to talk about transgender people and their laws, but because of the not picking up on things, I didn’t hear whether it was in America or in Japan, and then the laws I didn’t hear much of either 
In terms of Bite size Japanese though, Layla is still excited about her move to Australia and does talk about the anecdotes related to her friends ^^
But big story for today, the long-awaited content patch for Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out! This was the first game I actually was trying to push through in Japanese in 2020, and it makes me really happy to see that I’ve gone so far and am able to understand so much of it now, and look, THEY EVEN 上手’D ME WHEN I STARTED PLAYING :DDDDD
I’m very creative when it comes to the names of the islands, took this one from 響け series~
And yeah, did the tutorial, realized it’s really late today and started doing SRS reviews, I’m probably more likely to play Hades 2 than Animal Crossing, but let’s see ^^
Life
very duk very scary yees
I just find it so adorable how places in Berlin sometimes are trying to be accommodating to the point where they will write eveeeery siiingle allergen of a product on a price tag, like you’re actively obstructing the visibility of the product for accessibility, that’s worth celebrating ^^
But yeah, I’ve finally made it to the queer book club again! Trying to pick up inertia and going to places, we had a loooot of snacks C:
duks not scary they dont exist i todl you earlier in this post >:[[[[[
Today, I was able to get some people to talk about yuri and a person, NOT ME, brought up Erica L. Friedman, that I found through 暁月のルナ’s recommendation a while back ^^
And since it was the first meeting after Christmas, and queer people have weird experiences with Christmas in general, we had a roundtable complaining oversharing about what went wrong for everyone this Christmas season ^^
Glad to be back with people and doing things, but my inertia will need a lot longer to be able to start doing things properly again, I worry ^^
Also, fun stuff in the city today, someone was advertizing a history walk around Berlin with those two arrows, pointing that, yeah, maybe you could be in the West Berlin right now in 1982, but no matter where you look, you’re surrounded with Eastern Germany at al times ^^
Anyway, see you tomorrow!
O.My.G!!!
squee!!!
I see that got the max 5 D’s from you, as well.
I hope you find your energy again soon…
I think you’re maybe not giving yourself enough credit for how good you are. But also I can totally relate lol
I find this particularly hard with audiobooks. Reading a long with text kinda helps I think. But even then I space off a lot more. Stamina isn’t a huge issue for me at this point, unless I’m already having trouble with focus that day, outside of Japanese. Depends what I’m engaging with of course (interest and difficulty)
Imo the written lines in a JP video game are the more valuable parts anyway. Does Hades 2 not have JP audio, or you’re just playing it in EN anyway?
I agree with this, and my listening still has room for improvement
If you ever wanna chat ADHD stuff, feel free to msg btw
The anime super frustrated me (tho it was cute), so I’m a little curious lol. I’m also in the middle of 8-9 books already, 2 of which are novels… So I probably shouldn’t join this round 
What a fun title
That’s amazing!
Damn, no ebook version… Was gonna add to Natively cuz that sounds cool, but no idea which to add
I really need to read this still! Thx for the reminder
I use https://www.one-tab.com/ … The thing I discovered: after closing those tabs, I almost never even look at them again.
Tab Wrangler would probably make me scream personally, but if it works for you then great
They’re torture, aren’t they? But also I do mess this stuff up when speaking sometimes… So I should probably do those
Artistically - and story wise - I recommend Inuyasha. If you’re not already aware, she pretty much only writes dysfunctional, bickering couples who you maybe kinda wanna root for anyway. Also that book looks beautiful! I should do more drawing soon
Ironically I sometimes check the level still, just to see if I’m actually remembering the work correctly
I mostly forget they’re there, and only look if I’m trying to get a very specific idea of things or work out how the hell something got to its current level
I’m inclined to say there’s just that much variability in people’s linguistic development and comprehension. Personally even when I strategic grade, I’m not putting in anything that isn’t already true. I’m just being selective about what I grade against
Gotta imagine it’s Japan. Maybe I’ll look it up, or not 
And of course there’s no unity or consistency to laws in the US (especially with the current hell administration)
Unfortunately, I feel the same, so that’s why I’ll try to watch anime with Japanese subs for a while and find out whether it’s something that would come to me naturally ^^
It only has English dubbing as the only option, but that’s because it’s an absolutely gigantic game in terms of voice acting and they would have to dub not just the dialogues, but all of the SONGS as well, so I don’t imagine they would ever be adding those ^^
ITS SO GOOD it’s one of those that ups the stakes up to 11 and you go like “OH NO OH FRICK OH SHIT OH NO” xddd
January 15th, 2026
As much as I’d like to think of myself as a bubbly and outgoing person most of the time, the character of 槙生 from 違国日記 resonated with me strongly
(and the advice to go and open a diary, oh hey, this is here ^^)
Maybe because she’s also messy and doesn’t know how to prepare food well, maybe because she disappears in front of a desk and just disappears in front of the computer, there’s something about her that makes her feel really relatable, so hey, I might be checking out anime once again ^^
I know that the first episode of フリーレンS3 comes out tomorrow, so before that, I wanted to watch something different and find out if there would be something I’d like, and both of the shows I’ve watched today had something, 推しの子 was adapting one of my favorite exposition episodes of the whole manga and 違国日記 is just something to reflect my soul against ^^
I’m also starting to log first watching series on Natively as well, because I haven’t watched anything from Netflix or any anime in a longer while, I hope that with this I’ll become a little more consistent.
So, with 推しの子, Yomitan saved me a ton of times, but I tried not to pause and read the translations as quickly as I could, and with 違国日記, there were a lot of pauses and time to try to process the dialogues, and that made it a bit easier for me to understand
I’m still far away from comfortably listening to Japanese, but Akashelia wanted for me to put in a few hundred hours of listening, so, sigh xdddd
Anyway, guess who became besties with a snowman today!
Life
What’s the deal with this arm
I technically never wondered how is it possible that some construction workers do renovations on the rooftops of the buildings, but it appears the answer is just having a really long retractable arm, so today I learned ^^
I was talking with my German friends earlier today and I brought up that there seems to be plenty of marketing for a thing called “Veganuary” this year:
and my friend was like:
I’ve NEVER SEEN Veganuary being a thing until this year, but then I started looking in the internet, and apparently it is a German campaign
So if you subscribe to them, you will get a promo cookbook, a German meal recipe and “31 emails”, probably something reminding you to participate in Veganuary ^^
Well, speaking of animals, wHATS THE DEAL WITH THIS ONE WHY IS IT NAKED xdddd
anyway, i wanted to make a big tangent, and that’s a really weird combination of pings, but @Italy, @Akashelia, I dedicate this video to you both xdddd
My biggest reaction to finding this video was literally this comment:
But I found it really insightful and well researched, and it did have a socio-cultural angle to it and I did feel like a thing that is so OBVIOUS to me was well celebrated over the course of this video xddd
Apparently “XD” completely died out in the US 20 years ago, which it might have, but definitely not on my international Discord servers and I worry I might have directly contributed to it as well xddddddd
Man, I feel so weird thinking that my experience is that unique on the international scale, but when Nick’s girlfriend started talking about “dzieci Neostrady”, that literally was me something like 20 years ago, and it’s stuck all the way since xddddd
Ahhh man C:
Anyway, see you tomorrow! ^^
czy to jest w ogóle słowo hahahaha xD
Nice, thanks for sharing, I can use some practice and this seems like a very interesting topic 
Funny because I didn’t know consciously about it, but just the other day I was writing a message to the mom of the friend of one of my kid (somehow this sentence feels more complicated than it should be), and I wrote something funny like that “something funny xD” and then I just thought to myself, hm will she even know what “xD” is, so I changed it to "something funny 
".
So yeah, times change! But I think here on Wanikani it’s still perfectly OK to have some XD!
Have a nice day XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
… So you mean this is the reason why noboby at work react to my text emojis ?! ;_; I got ten years in a few seconds…
XD
She’s also voiced by Sawashiro Miyuki!! (Don’t mind me I get really excited about VAs, and she’s a favorite)
Mood… Tho I’m not quite as intense as her anymore
It’s out!!! I’m watching it in a few
It made very good use of those
That’s how ya get there. Maybe join January 2026 Listening Challenge - All Languages - Natively Forums if it might help motivate you. I haven’t been doing one this month, but I did for a year and a half, and it was cool seeing the hours stack (and listening improve)
Maybe I should keep doing it 
I wouldn’t know cuz I’m no longer young and hip (not sure I was ever hip), but I’ve been rereading https://rain.thecomicseries.com/ and the author uses it a lot in her commentary (we’re the same generation tho). I imagine I have friends who still do too… But I talk to like 3 ppl on the regular, so
That’s exactly how the “xD” emoji lasted in the public consciousness of Polish people, that writing “xD” felt weird, but writing felt like your soul was being ripped away from you, and in Poland right now is considered as the enemy of the writing register, while “Xdddd” feels like a perfect answer to every mood that you’re going through ^^
I rewound a few panels, it’s funny how the last post-Rain panels is basically anniversaries, thanks and the games she enjoyed in 2024 ^^
I read all of the post-rains and went to a random chapter (40, the content warning really attracted me) and read the comics from there, it does seem like it’s something that comes with a strong emotional payoff C:
Might be similar to the “XD” in Poland, because I subconsciously know that “=3” is an emoji that existed but for the love of GOD I can’t even imagine using that one unironically in any scenario out there =3
And Internet Comment Etiquette kind of ruined the “=” and “3” characters for me too ^^
January 16th, 2026
- 74 reviews on WaniKani
- 22 (!) reviews on Bunpro
- Anime: 葬送のフリーレンS2第１話
- Podcast: 25m of Bite size Japanese
- Magazine: コミック百合姫２０２６年１月号p０→p３６６/６６８
I got nostalgic for the times when I still read manga two weeks ago xddd
I absolutely adore the cover of this issue:
But man, ハルタ kind of moved what I consider to be “much” in context of a manga magazine, I feel like in those 366 pages I didn’t read that much, new ささこい, new 百合はお仕事, new 全部壊して, new 推しは悪役令嬢, and then you’re 360 pages ahead. A few series in this edition focused on graduating and thinking what’s next. And this time, because I caught up on some of the series separately, I had the context on what was happening in them, even if not the latest updates. It did feel like I was inside of the stories and not just read the individual characters, so, hey, that’s a win ^^
And, man, the artstyle of villainess always gets me ^^
And yeah, some new Frieren, of course people would immediately start overrating it xddd
(though, I did tear up when they blasted Evan Call at me within the first few seconds!)
SO GOOOOD
Layla went to a 美容院 (and not 病院) and had a great experience in there, didn’t really listen to much today, but at least it’s something ^^
I absolutely empathize with the mission, but aside from weekly Jelly Jelly Radio, I still haven’t found the listening material that I could listen to each day and go like “uUUuUuUuUuuUUU”, so I’ll join one if I find something that will really make me want to catch up on it regularly, hopefully ^^
Life
Oh hey, flags from 1975 ^^
In a task to get myself out of the rut (difficulty level: impossible!!!), I made it back at the book swap today, and found a couple of people to talk to, though I felt like today the connection bit was a little difficult to establish with people, even the most interesting person I spoke with, I felt like I was interviewing her and asking her questions that were longer than her answers, so it wasn’t as great as I would’ve liked to ^^
But she did tell me where to find her outside of the book swap, so if I ever commit to, maybe in a different environment we would have more fun. That being said, didn’t help me much with the rut though ^^
You knOW WHAT DID? THE URANIA MAGAZINE
That’s the one with the flags on the top ^^
Someone had their neighbors throw them out in front of the flat, and that person brought them to the book swap. This is a historical magazine that mixes in topics of sociology, politics, technology, and because it’s a bit outdated by now, all of the what-ifs are just a bit of a “WOOOOW” moment when you read them ^^
The person who brought them had like 10? And three different people ended up taking some, I did take the one with the 1975 map of Poland including big cities that LITERALLY NOBODY TALKS ABOUT now, hi Pszów, hi Zawiercie ^^
Somebody also brought a rose to the book swap, but nobody was brave enough to say who it was, and nobody wanted to take it either, so we just left it in the cafe xddd
Fun environment, though pretty short, I brought more books than I took back, because I already have 10 BOOKS IN GERMAN, 10 BOOKS IN JAPANESE to do ^^
Then we went for an afterparty for some Japanese…
And look how cool the toilets are there ^^
Calling the resident DATTEBAYO expert, @taiyousea xdd
I’m not planning on having many adventures tomorrow, trying to go to sleep a little earlier than today and maybe making way so that I can have a small adventure on Sunday, but I really, really want to start doing things physically again because my digital self is canibalizing my physical self and the physical self will have troubles retaliating if I don’t ^^
So see you tomorrow!