As much as it’s thought provoking to keep involved enough in major cultural things to participate and I will at least make an effort on a few points, I feel like this sentiment re pushing back against monoculture is still important - that we preserve a diversity of everything from views to products, because humanity generally loses and gets hurt when we build monopolies or destroy diversity.
The idea of having a purpose behind monoculture was new to me in last week’s discussion, and I can see how one can go too far in individuality (youneekliegh named children a case in point). I guess balance is best…
So I just watched the monoculture video and now I have Opinions. For one thing, as someone who has always been pop-culture-illiterate I can confidently say that pop culture references are Not the Only Way to connect with other people. Are they the easiest way? For some, maybe, if they don’t mind consuming hours upon hours of white heteronormativity. Okay, maybe that’s a cheap dig, but the point stands that monoculture was thriving for people who didn’t mind the status quo, which was notoriously not ideal for anyone not white and straight.
Honestly, this kind of seems like a problem that guy in the video is having, not a societal problem. Like, what is his issue with talking to other people about things they’re interested in even if he doesn’t know anything about them? That seems like more of a root issue than the fact that his friends don’t know everything he knows.
Hard agree with these thoughts:
I think this is actually a huge improvement on the whole concept of monoculture.
I’m pretty sure everyone I have tried to tell about the Tiny Chef Bad Guy video already knows about it. (If you don’t know, google it, it’s cute. )
Running one week behind on the discussion here, as always haha.
I’ve been wanting to read this one! It sounds pretty silly, but in a sort of satirical way?
shannon thats so sweet and i appreciate this note so much (and my mom did as well) and aaa your backstory is so sweet your daughter is blessed xddd
thanks for being the historic 1000th post, that’s one of the best ones one can wish for, you’re the real ones C:
I have a feeling we might have hit an A-Level writing essay dissertation or something to that extent, remember to put in your arguments for and against this thesis xddd
Just a preface that you’re talking to a neurodivergent asexual lesbian who reads basketball manga about delinquents beating the crap out of one another, so i most likely speak from the angle where i’m not very much concerned with either listening to or overtaking status quo, i just exist somewhere in the current framework of this world xddd
There’s a vague thought floating in my head that this argument is a bit like a metal spring observed from above, that you may be on different height layers of the spring, but the current loop at a different height might still take you to the same conclusion and then you might drift away from the same point on the spring as you keep on spinning around to go up xddd
I think I agree with him because we’re on similar heights of the spring in similar radial directions of it, that we’ve been through “omg mainstream things! yayyy!” and “i don’t like mainstream things, i am so different than everyone else”, and then back to “damn, everyone has a unique experience and it’s the easiest to fish them out if you have a thread of connection with them”, he might have a different journey, but ultimately I have a feeling that you should watch Sword Art Online even if just to challenge people about how dreadful Fairy Dance was, and also to be able to connect with them over how great Crossing Field was
(and flood them with 100 recommendations of niche songs so that they’d get into your niche as well, that’s my favorite way of friending people xdd)
i personally do not think that anyone in this study log has many issues with things like “status quo” or “white heteronormativity”, so it’s nice to have a conversation and meet forum people where they’re at ^^
as an expat i can tell you that one of the easiest ways to bind with people from different countries is to have a set of common experiences originated by media, that slowly evolve over time, that everyone has that very easily lead to inside jokes within the community even if you’ve just met a person
like if i scream out “21:37” and somebody smirks on the side, i already know i have a lot of things in common with that person, or if i put my towel on a beach chair and another person understands the message, then that thread of connection grows even stronger xdd
I don’t think it’s just about media as a product, it’s media as a set of ideas and preconceptions that one starts with and builds on top of them into a completely different direction
plus, really often you will find out that even if you absolutely hate something mainstream, like me with Dandadan, it’s not completely irredeemable and can find something you won’t dislike about it and will make you go regardless when you think about this series, like scrolling short through the list of songs and playing the opening on a taiko drum with my mom in an arcade in Shinjuku ^^
I think in vacuum I strongly agree with you and I definitely do live this thought, not just think about it, but man it’s hard for me to argue about wanting to push back against monoculture further if my learnnatively (which is already super niche) has literally at least 1/3 of positions that have been read by three people or less
tl;dr: everything in life is a balance, even the balance between the lack of balance and balance being upheld
i have a feeling i am unconsciously unknowingly on the side of the balance where it wouldn’t hurt for me to watch one episode of breaking bad at least and the world wouldn’t end xdd
anyway, feel free to challenge my thought, i didn’t expect just that one video would start so much conversation on the topic!
omg thats 500k views WE MONOCULTURE ALREADY (congrats tiny chef bad guy you made it )
can’t wait for another person like enigmaxprincex to jump into my study log and scroll up to my bangkok post from september or something and go like “ACTUALLY YOU HAVENT SEEN ONE OF THE COOLEST BUILDINGS IN THERE, I THOUGHT YOU’D SEE IT, NOW YOU HAVE TO GO BACK AND SEE IT AGAIN”
late posters are very welcome C:
Sardonic way I’d say? It’s like, pretty grim, but then it takes a silly turn, and it’s a combination of mismatches of tone in a way that makes you
It confronts the gray fabric of reality I’d say ^^
Today was a bit of a weird day in terms of Japanese, because there were a lot of downtimes and waiting for things to happen, so I would take out my physical Slam Dunk or tablet, read 10 pages and then hide it again
i’m sure I can’t sustain it universally, but hey, JLPT, I’ll loosen it up in a while ^^
so, おとなになっても, I found the premise to be pretty sweet, even though the story by itself is grim and involves cheating and emotional detachment, it is a toxic yuri story wrapped in a blanket of being calm and composed and caring, which makes it pretty weird to wrap your head around, still, we stan ^^
Slam Dunk, volumes easy to read, but I haven’t felt as much oomph from those volumes as from the previous one, volume 7 was just a long fight with delinquents, and volume 8 felt like a start of a villain story and rooting for an underdog, I am starting to like the original cast with 流川 and 赤木, but the story is getting a little dilated to me, so I’ll probably stop here for a while ^^
Aaaand Natively is broken again, sigh, what a service xddd
Anyway, up to 93 series out of 100, 16.968 pages read!
We saw the Chinatown region of Paris today! It was a bit cleaner than the Chinatowns of most of the places I’ve seen, had a lot of Vietnamese cuisine, didn’t have any egg coffees though, it took us a long time to find one, probably worries about salmonella ^^
We were really lucky today to have some really pretty weather, that made the sightseeing a bit more enjoyable, lots of chocolates and advent calendars in the shops today
And also, a FIRE in the middle of a city, we heard both the fire trucks and the police officers wail their sirens for like half an hour walking, this did look like just the beginning of the fire extinguishing action
And this mural is from the same artist who did the 2024 art in Petit Palais yesterday, I thought she was holding a can at first, but it looks like a black apple? I’m not attempting any symbolism ^^
Gare de Lyon and a cafe right in front of it!
Look at how huge and fancy this station is, they really went the extra mile
We’ll be there properly tomorrow~
And also, someone at this bazaar was selling a STREET LIGHT with their own small circuit board so that you could flip the light and turn on the lights at will, that’s just insane xdd
We’ve (me, my mom, and two extra people who tagged along for the meal) had some raclette today, it’s a cheese that’s supposed to be pretty liquidy and would work great if you were to just spam it over pizza, unless they’d shut me down by saying that it’s sacrilegious ^^
And hey, the second-hand bookstores around Paris have both great prices and great wares, I just wish they were in a language I could understand, plan for 2030 xddd
To be honest it was so engaging coming from you in particular, otherwise I would have probably ignored it. I pushed back in my comment a bit because I was surprised I hadn’t seen much discussion on the other side. But not because I disagreed really, more for balance. For sure it’s about balance as you say - we can go too far in both directions.
and the whole discussion made me realise although I generally tend to enjoy more niche entertainment, of course the big hitters give you a bit more leverage for wider connection and I could use that more strategically, especially to ask people what they’re into and try it out.
I love how you gave Slam Dunk a chance after a few of us hyping it. It is fun to connect on things like that!
I’ll also say, Slam Dunk is an amazing manga. I remember reading it 8 years ago or something and I was really amazed by it.
They recently made a movie (anime) telling the story of the last match if I’m not mistaken and it’s magnificent. I went through all the motions I experienced 8 years ago, once again
I could recommend you giving the movie a shot, when you finish the manga
I’ve been trying to reconcile the Japanese media I know and the Japanese media that most people around me here in Japan know, because it does make a difference having shared things to talk about which 90% of people know specifically when trying to communicate with people through language barriers etc. Football is I think the best example of just having knowledge about something opening up chances to talk to people literally anywhere in the world about a shared interest. But having just some big monoculture stuff like Slam Dunk for middle-aged people and things like Spy x Family for younger people which can act as a bridge is very useful, and then means I can spend the rest of my time reading niche stuff
Attempts to make WaniKani forums a Slam Dunk monoculture moving well
よく進んでます
Definitely after finishing the manga! The movie is obviously great by itself but it’s even better when it’s reliving the best match ever written in sports manga again
I didn’t know what the movie was about when I started watching and thought they were doing something extra or so, but when I realised what they animated, the rollercoaster of emotions had to start again
But, as said, finish the manga first
A point I have to say about the manga. At that time, I was more of an anime watcher than a manga reader, as I couldn’t comprehend how would they be able to include all movements, reactions and everything done in the anime, in a couple of pages of “pictures”. This has changed since and I learnt to enjoy manga too. This case can be used extremely for Slam Dunk, as it’s a basketball anime per se. How would you be able to capture such things in a couple of pages of manga. Boy was I glad to be proven wrong and had my mind blown, by how good the manga is and especially how they were able to capture everything. This was what made Slam Dunk a favorite of mine (due to nostalgia too ). Long live Slam Dunk
OKAY I DID
(yes, they are the stairs from john wick chapter 4 ^^)
it does feel like its a week too old or something, but you will not stop me from having a fusion foods headcanon regardless, time to insult the Italian cuisine once again!
POLL TO KOICHI TO CHANGE THE FORUM NAME TO SLAMDUNKKANI im taking part
I tried the first story of Aozora calendar and let me rant to you about it for a bit: when Aozora calendar was conceived, this story was rated as Level 30 on it
I finally got around to 薬屋のひとりごと, I really enjoyed reading it, it was really challenging, I set my mind to it and was looking up words and some of the words would stick and it was exhausting in a fun way, probably a bit easier than Saturn Return, but Level 33 I can take.
I’ll quote a few people on WaniKani:
“It was a short and pleasant read,”
“A very pleasant read, I enjoyed the descriptions and the mood of the story overall. Once I got used to the old kana style, it became also quite fluid.”
…I have a feeling this short story triggered the worst level of existential crisis I’ve had in Japanese in a while xdd
Of course, because of the broken gradings, you shouldn’t be comparing levels of manga to novels (or short stories), but I might have been the vote that tipped the difficulty of this short story from level 33 to level 34 and I rate it as the second hardest thing I’ve read in my life after ふつつかな悪女, and somebody out there thought it’s the same difficulty level as the absolute page turner 「推しのこ」 for level 30 xddd
I wonder how many stories are there where somebody goes like ‘oh yeah that’s early n2 level’ and then you read the story and you use Yomitan three times every sentence and somebody goes like “well it’s straightforward what don’t you get” xddd
The silver lining is that it did become a bit more decipherable once the words started making something of a sense, as opposed to ふつつかな悪女 which still uses sentences that just feel obfuscated on purpose xdd
I went out of it feeling deflated and a bit sad an…
自転車屋さんの高橋くん第４巻: a little rambly and not much happened, but we stan the 岐阜県 king ^^
おとなになっても: even more rambly than 自転車屋さんの高橋くん, a decent few idioms in the volume I enjoyed and was stumped by until looking at Yomitan and going like “oooOooOoOohhh” xdd
Paradise Kiss: I was already upset by ピアノ, so as soon as I realized I can’t read Japanese language, I was defeatist and gave up after a single chapter xdddd
Anyway, progress with manga reading, 96/100, four volumes to go before JLPT!
I did say hi to Akashelia’s parents but i dont know if they heard me from Part-Dieu (Akashelia ask your parents if they heard a random person scream in the middle of the city xddd)
We started off in the east of the town, though most of the things were closed today, apparently Mondays are the days when most of the things are off, except for supermarkets selling mustard chips and Christmas decorations ^^
It’s hard for me to compare Lyon to anything, because it’s its own being: a city that even behaves differently from what I’m used to, as you’d expect some fancy restaurants to be on the main street: not here, you’d expect for old town to be where all the people are, not here
Also, concept shops always are great as they introduce you to the weirdest things you’ve never heard of, like a digital coach that uses keys that keep you motivated in specific categories or LE GRAND QUIZ MANGA 460 QUESTIONS ET DÉFIS xddddd
The hike to it is really exhausting, and there is a regular religious school for the kids something like 60% in, which makes the warnings about the hike in Vietnam even funnier, because some people do the Vietnam hike EVERY DAY just going to school or picking up their kids xddd
And yeah, we ended up eating today at Le Paradis du Fruit, which is a really neat chain of restautants: you get to pick your own dishes and they just load them on a plate and serve them in a way where two people can eat ^^
The food quality was ehhh, but the experience of getting so much personalized food was amazing C:
So weird to see pictures of so many familiar places in your blog!
Seems like you have enjoyed it (or didn’t dare write it if not xD), nice! I forgot to tell you about the best place in town though It’s called Terre adélice and you can get icecream of every flavor there. I didn’t like wasabi but goat cheese is my favorite one.
So now you have to come back, maybe when it’s warmer next time! Ping me a bit ahead of time next time you go and I’ll come too (and no my parents haven’t told me about meeting or hearing a wild bidoof unfortunately!)
100/100 mangas read
pre-JLPT goal hit, though it doesn’t map very cleanly onto my actual N2 study at all xddd
The graphs don’t really work well on Natively and they index weeks as in every week has to start with a Monday and not 7 days ago, so this is how mine look like regardless:
In November and December alone I read 62 manga titles, which is funny considering it’s the second of December and I’ve read 100 volumes of manga in Japanese…
…ever. xdddd
It’s really funny to compare it to November 5th, 2025, with my level 120 post:
I have solidly more than doubled my lifetime consumption of Japanese language in a single month
So to make a full circle to what I meant a month ago:
i think a big part of it is spite having the right priorities and thinking how behavioral changes could influence the study: the current velocity is not sustainable really cool and I’m happy that I’m able to spend so much on Japanese, but I have a feeling that it most likely won’t stay this way for a very long time.
I haven’t made big progress on this, even though I noticed I’m reading much, MUCH faster, and funnily enough, Paradise Kiss is one of those mangas that’s almost like a small book by itself: the volume I read today has been formatted to have four volumes for the whole story, and I read the second one, it was 200+ pages, at the same time, the five-volume release has the second volume (only 170 pages) be almost 30k characters:
which is six times volume 7 of Slam Dunk and over two times volume 7 of Frieren, just the 170 pages alone
Reading it today (physically, without Mokuro) did feel like an endurance test that did go for MULTIPLE HOURS and I felt my attention zooming in and out, but crazy enough, even without furigana, I was able to read 99% of the words I found just fine ^^
There were a lot of idioms, I could try to make sense from the context though, and the story was really fun, Yukari was going modeling
…at the same time though, if the story were in English, I’d probably enjoy it even more, because I’d be able to spend less brain resources deciphering what was going through my head xddd
Anyway, after yesterday’s jumpscare with ピアノ, which luckily people collectively agreed was an N1 story after all, I still was really scared of my Japanese not keeping up with what’s expected of me, so I burned myself out incentivized myself to go to Junkudo once again with podcasts on my ears and get a different manga, 姉の親友、私の恋人。
Very yearning, a lot of long stares, I appreciated it C:
ルックバック was a friend recommendation from a while back, I saw the movie, I was wondering how the manga would look like: plenty of difficult words tied with multiple pages of nothing showing up at all, it’s the ハピネス scenario once again ^^
アンダーク 新しい透明な力のすべて was something I scraped a while back and wanted to give it a shot and after reading the more difficult mangas today I was like “whew, this one is so simple to read”, and then a new character, a nerd, joined the party and started speaking detective speech and I was like “COME ONNNN” xddd
but yeah, updated my script to make use of the hidden difficulty property settings that dont appear on natively’s profile page but still are returned with the endpoint (because natively is broken once again xdd) and made a copy of my current data, so now even when the backend server i hosted on a trial goes down in two weeks, it’ll have the stats of me having read 100 mangas C:
…tl;dr, my Japanese study is doing objectively well and I’m not feeling very well about it xdddd
I’m doing a human experiment on myself to find out how long can under-the-hood-burnout be sustained and it’s extra scary because that experiment is taking place 5 days before JLPT xdddd
Though I genuinely do have a feeling that traveling and doing things around and talking to people and having adventures does help not get the burnout to get the best out of me, so if there’s any conclusions of the human experiment, being in the real world does regenerate your batteries (slightly) xddd
Since I mentioned a few months ago how there’s much more Japan in Paris than even in Düsseldorf, check out those trip listings for Japanese tourists, and a sumo competition held in Paris as well xddd
In the cafe I showed the pic of in my Japanese section, I chatted with the shopkeepers and they were interested in the fact I was reading manga in Japanese, told them about JLPT, Düsseldorf, and they were interested in hearing, they told me that there was an Asian museum really close by that was doing an exhibition on manga and I was like, SAY NO MORE
Took public transit, made it there, and here’s one for enigmaxprincex: of course the museum was closed only on Tuesday and no other day of the week, of course it would be xddd
So, backup strategy, I ended up following my favorite destination in some places that I go to: the Goethe-Institut, a German-culture entity in France C:
And what really caught my eye was that they had a magazine about Taiwan and how similar German and Taiwanese thinking about freedom is, they baited me with the cover, “Ein bisschen Frieden”, that was the title of a Eurovision song Germany won with a while back ^^
THIS IS EXACTLY the kind of content I’d be so down to read in Japanese if I were to find it, but I can’t think of anything else than Brutus, maybe Brutus is what I should indulge in xddd
Anyway, made it safe to Berlin! Was a fun distraction and I really enjoyed it C:
Next journey: Saturday, to Düsseldorf! Hope I’ll have a few adventures by then too!
Coincidentially, I had a similar experience in Paris, although in my case it was Louvre. When me and my mother visited Paris, there was one day we could visit Louvre – and it was exactly that day that the staff of Louvre chose to go on a strike
(If you don’t know, google it, it’s cute. 
)
xddd
regardless when you think about this series, like scrolling short through the list of songs and playing the opening on a taiko drum with my mom in an arcade in Shinjuku ^^
)
I don’t mind it at all 
it overpowers quite a bit.
again
It’s called Terre adélice and you can get icecream of every flavor there. I didn’t like wasabi but goat cheese is my favorite one.
(and no my parents haven’t told me about meeting or hearing a wild bidoof unfortunately!)
