A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & Languages Usage Arc 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

GolyBidoof · August 5, 2025, 11:35pm

grrr I WAS PACING THEM OUT I DIDNT WANT TO REVEAL EVERYTHING IN A SINGLE DAyes i missed them xdd

I had 21 minutes in the city center on Monday, so that was a very quick foray, today I had just about an hour, here are all of the Bremer Stadtmusikanten I could find today, 5/5 ^^

The final one is the exact same statue as you have taken the picture of, in the city center ^^

August 5th, 2025

166 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
36 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Manga: ささやくように恋を唄う第７話

6h of a seminar in German
6h of getting along with a German group of people

I read the 7th chapter of ささこい today and I was so surprised by the fact how quick it went, and how good the understanding of the chapter went as well
Some of the sentences in the chapter struck me as pretty formal and slightly silly written, but aside from that, I did really well

But today German definitely took a bigger part of my attention span, so I didn’t overextend and go crazy with language study ^^

Though, when I was reading Satori Reader, I stumbled upon this:

I love this false friend lmao xddd

Also, me, a meat expert:

There’s food every two hours at this seminar but I mostly eat vegetarian because the names of the vegetarian dishes are the things I’ve never heard of, so I’m such a meat expert now xddd

Life

Yep, Seminar Day 2!

The C1.1 course I did in German improved my stamina significantly, but the acoustics of the room where the seminar is taking place aren’t the best, so you have to extra keep focusing on the sound and removing echo from what is being said. The topics are pretty interesting and today we dug into both Maternity Leave and Parental Leaves, protections from layoffs for pregnant people and part-time work ^^

After the seminar, the we, the group of people having the seminar went to a local brewery (Bremer Braumanufaktur) at the Kellogg Pier, where the original corn flakes were being made ^^

There was an entire guided tour of how the beers are being made and we were able to look at all sorts of different variations in recipes, but me as a non-drinker, had to make do with a Paulaner Spezi xdddd

One of the town musician of Bremen pictures above is from the Kellogg’s original factory/storehouse ^^

Then, afterwards, I went to the city center by myself and looked for musicians everywhere xddd
Bremen is much bigger than I expected, and definitely invested much more money in infrastructure than I expected, so I could be walking around here for a while… well, tomorrow will be the last evening to do so xddd

There’s this really cool windmill in the strict city center:

And a sushi restaurant that has stories over it in Japanese… though written with the Chinese font of Windows xddd

Also, topic, love:

Also, topic, red flag love:

Yes, this poem of having found your place in the world is for an insurance company xdddd

My analog camera is working over time xdd

“IT WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPEN WITH GLASSES” xdddd

Anyway, it’s really late and I have a Day 3 of the seminar tomorrow, so I’ll just leave you be for today and absolutely not yearn and not be envious for the productivity levels that somehow akashelia was able to achieve

Though that again plays into the idea of finding a language learning goal, so, eee, tomorrow. Or any other day xddd

See you tomorrow!

Akashelia · August 6, 2025, 4:33am

well played with the pictures, you win!

This is hilarious coming from you because I’m so envious of the 1000 things a day you a manage to achieve is the grass always greener on the other side I wonder

GolyBidoof · August 6, 2025, 11:27pm

August 6th, 2025

136 reviews on WaniKani
17 lessons on WaniKani
38 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Manga: ささやくように恋を唄う第８話

6h of a seminar in German
2h of a tour of Bremen with a guide
4h of getting along with a German group of people

Ahh, a new story on Satori reader

And it’s based on Ted Chiang’s story, one that I’ve even read, so that should be fun, but I will NOT stay subscribed for 96 weeks to read it all xddd

The story uses many honorifics and I vibed my way through the first chapter understanding the vibe but not necessarily the words by themselves xddd

ALSO, THE MOST IMPORTANT WORD TODAY

ALSO, THE SECOND BUT MOST IMPORTANT WORD TODAY

NANAAAA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NAAAA

Also, guess who got promoted to LEVEL 45 TODAY :DDDD

the fast levels are really weird, when i think that the next level up will be next Tuesday, I’m like, huh? xddd

But yeah, 197 reviews on WaniKani tomorrow and not looking forward to that

Life

Today’s topic of the seminar was holidays and sick leaves, and a big takeaway from today, an employer in Germany has hardly any resources to say “no” if anyone wanted to go to Thailand and waste their five weeks of vacation in a single blow, which is an interesting piece of information xddd

After six weeks of sick leave, employer is obligated to provide an employee with a plan how to gently ease yourself back to work (BEM) and the responsibility is on the employer to get them 100% back to speed, because “low performance” is not grounds to lay off a person in Germany, which is really interesting ^^

Then, we've had a guide around the old city of Bremen, and would you look at that, there was a demo! The black building behind is the parliament, and according to the tour guide, it was built with big windows so that the politicians needed to do politics transparently and people needed to see what the politicians are working on to rebuild their trust after WW2:

As you can see, the windows were behind curtains today xdd

Love the slogan, “yesterday Hiroshima, tomorrow EUROSHIMA???” xddd

It felt pretty hippies from the 70s when it was taking place, but hey, apparently those have been the biggest types of demos Bremen has been having lately

…I’m like 80% sure those are not the correct street musicians xddd

Here’s the Japanese high school fanfics of the street musicians of Bremen though, love the 制服s xddd

Also, HALAL fanfics of the street musicians of Bremen??? xdddd

OH NO XDDDD

And yeah, I’m glad the street artists in Bremen are all on the same page, we’re not free until everyone is free, let’s keep lifting everyone up for as long as we can ^^

Also, Bremen had a 謎巡り and I missed it, aaaa! That sounded cool though, I wish I could’ve participated ^^

And yeah, whoops, Frederick March came after all xdddd

And imagine living in Casablanca… (…block of flats) xddd

So here’s a short round of various pictures I liked today ^^

Aaaand tomorrow is the last (half)-day of the seminar, take care everyone and I’ll try to catch up on the forums tomorrow, it’s really late today again

Take care and until tomorrow! ^^

SpiderWeb · August 7, 2025, 1:39am

I’ve heard of this before but never got around to reading the original. It’s interesting that they got the author’s permission to change the setting, I would still want to read the original if I were interested. Do you remember if it was good?

Oh no it’ll be in my head again now.

taiyousea · August 7, 2025, 1:46am

Ted Chiang is my absolute favorite author of all time, please read his books if you like science fiction!!!

Malinkal · August 7, 2025, 2:01am

Overtaken me

GolyBidoof · August 7, 2025, 10:58pm

i’m pretty peculiar about the kind of scifi that i read because hard scifi is just too out there for me and very much focusing on facts and logic and not on feelings of characters, so I am pleased to inform that Ted Chiang does indeed make his stories with a huge focus on emotions of people in worlds where one thing has been changed compared to our current world xdd

I’m on a similar boat as taiyousea:

that Ted Chiang is probably my favorite scifi book writer I know, but that’s mostly because I haven’t dug into the genre in books all that much, so just take it as I LIKED TED CHIANG BOOKS FROM A GENRE I DONT TEND TO READ MUCH xddd

This story specifically is very much aimed towards yearning and wanting for things to be different, so if you’re into those things, you’ll have a ball ^^

five years ago, i’m level 105 already after all
and just look at how little it means, i barely know what does

金融市場調節の主たる操作目標を、無担保コール翌日物金利から日本銀行当座預金残高に変更し、民間金融機関の日本銀行当座預金残高を積み増す政策である。
平時であれば金利を下げていけば、経済刺激効果が出て景気は回復するが、深刻なデフレーションに陥ってしまうと、中央銀行が政策金利をゼロにまで持っていっても十分な景気刺激効果を発揮することができなかった。そこで政策目標を金利だけでなく、資金供給量を増やすことで対応した金融政策が量的金融緩和政策である。

mean :sob: xddd

Even attempting to read this paragraph is painful, I remember a while back stumbling upon this wikipedia page and going like NOPE NOPE NOPE xddd
I actually can tell separate words apart, but when it comes to the actual context, aaa xdd

But man, the level 45 badge just goes to prove how little it means to be any specific level on WaniKani, I’m nowhere close to where I’d like to be eight hours in, but only one thing can take me there and it’s not resetting WaniKani for the second time

Keep going Malinkal, you’re doing the right things ^^

August 7th, 2025

197 reviews on WaniKani
17 lessons on WaniKani
26 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Manga: ささやくように恋を唄う第９話

3h of a seminar in German

There’s a new-old radical introduced for kanji at level 45, 家, which shouldn’t cause that much of an issue, you’ve seen it many times before;

the problem is that the both kanji that use it here are something that just does NOT stick with me xdd

I’m almost tempted to watch 魔法使いの嫁 just so that i’d drill that kanji into my head xddd

When I saw the review curve for Bunpro earlier today being:

a feeling of immense joy at the fact that I can allow myself to fail filled my heart, and so I did, the worst daily review session on Bunpro so far, the most freeing one yet xdd

につき and につけ are ones that always blend in my head into one, I wonder if I can grammar drill them both somehow. They should be fairly easy to differentiate, right?

Life

Seminar is over, they gave us those big bagpacks to pack all of the materials and let me tell you, my W.A.F material bagpack was heavier than all of the clothes I brought in there xdd

I had a quick glance around Bremen for the last time for a while:

I wonder who Lorenz is, maybe we should give him justice or something xdd

Also… christian church… with a Star of David…

From what I can tell from the guidance yesterday and the wikipedia article, architects simply hated empty space and wanted to put ANYTHING and didn’t give it a second thought and until 1930s, almost nobody did, and then people were like “wowowow”

xdd

I found a manga store in Bremen and since I had some time, decided to give it a visit, and look, they host DIY artists and sell their works of art in there!

They also had a rack for magazines and hardcover limited editions of manga, we stan ^^

I keep repeating this but I’m a huge fan of the idea of magazines overall, they’re just so fun

And then, train to Berlin and OMG LING LING 40 HOURS THEY GOT HIM FOR BERLIN

In the new issue of a popular German magazine, the cover is taken by “10 years after the German we can do it”, what Germany did and what Germany didn’t, and despite all the complaining and the stagflation and the markets not growing as fast as they should… I’m kinda happy about the direction Germany took over the last 10 years??? I might have caught the socialist and the anti-market bug though, but I like it here in Germany so far xdd

Tomorrow, I’m taking a regional train to Szczecin in Poland for a day trip… to do some paperwork xdd

I should be back to Berlin in the evening though, but look forward to the pics from Szczecin too!
Waking up early tomorrow though, so I’m probably jumping off already and holding off on catching up on WaniKani forums until tomorrow

SpiderWeb · August 8, 2025, 12:26am

I think I will read that story this weekend with the good reviews it’s gotten here. I thought it was a whole novel but it looks pretty short. I agree that depending on the sci fi it can get bogged down by physics or stuff I just haven’t read enough to know which authors are better about that than others. I also kind of like OSC as an author even though he’s a trash person because his books have very interesting aspirations and themes about acceptance and living in harmony and then he’s like that. Ender’s Game had a big influence on my perception of sci fi as a genre and I didn’t read the sequels until earlier this year.

Do it! I really liked the show. I read a little of the manga when it finished but I think with its publishing schedule new chapters didn’t come out frequently enough for my liking at the time and I didn’t stay current. I wonder if it finished since then. It’s very pretty and I like the characters. It’s been a while so I don’t remember how well I can vouch for the whole series but I like the way the magic feels in that setting, it’s very faerie inspired where the magic is tied to nature but you don’t know the exact rules it operates by so there’s a sense of mystery to it.

The opening is really good though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuZbmLLv1vM (Here’s the OP with animation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNUOYgeuwso (and here’s the music video of the song)

My peers in real life never get this joke when I encourage them to put 40 hours a day into their hobbies. They must not be driven enough

Malinkal · August 8, 2025, 2:30am

Thousands of hours spent on Japanese and an economics degree with a dissertation on Japanese economic stagnation and I only just about managed to get through that
This is the kind of stuff I want to spend more time reading though

I saw Cezar post some very chemistry-ish-extract the other day as well which no way I could parse, but when it gets into this kind of stuff, there’s natives who wouldn’t be able to understand it, it’s not really a language thing as a background knowledge of the area thing

GolyBidoof · August 9, 2025, 12:28am

August 8th, 2025

144 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
45 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Manga: ささやくように恋を唄う第１０話
Manga: ささやくように恋を唄うおまけ１＋２＋あとがき
Book: 響け！ユーフォニアム北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ: first 62 pages (complete 第１章)

Yes, I am reading a book xdd
No pictures or anything, just walls of text:

As usual, it took me like 25 minutes to get into the flow, and after that I was flying through expressions and then I kept 素直に頷いている whether I was understanding an expression or just vibing through it xdd

Surprisingly enough, because I was reading it on a train, it felt pretty calm and I was able to focus on the contents and I got a lot of reading comprehension from that book, but that’s probably because I watched the anime as well and the events were just playing out in my head when the next sentences were being brought up. There was a part where the teacher was trying to read Midori’s name as 川嶋りょくき but her parents subjected her to a lifetime of suffering by giving the words 緑輝 a reading of サファイア and the poor girl is just like “PLEASE CALL ME 緑” and this one lands a bit better in Japanese than in English subtitles xddd

So I checked the novel on Natively and WHOAWOAOAO

it’s like “uuu why is japanese so hard”, also me:

WHAT CAN I DO THAT THE MOST DIFFICULT STUFF IS THE MOST INTERESTING

But yeah, considering the amount of things I have open, I’m not considering finishing the novel anytime soon, I have different things in Japanese to read as well ^^

Anyway, I filled my mini-profile of just the physical manga things I read in 2025 so far on Natively, go follow me if you feel like it!

Aside from that, finished volume 2 of ささこい, still good, I don’t have volume 3, I might assemble a shopping cart of things from Japan over this weekend because I’m out of the things I read (I still have a ton to read in Japanese overall anyway xddd)

Also, uuu, you can blow out a candle, you can’t blow in the candle, what a silly word!

Tornado be like:

poor candle

And finally someone tells me what “hepatitis” actually means xddd

LIVER INFLAMMATION, thank you japanese ^^

Life

Day trip to Szczecin! You don’t even realize how close Szczecin is from Berlin until you jump on a train and realize it took you almost the same amount of time as going to Potsdam instead xddd

And Szczecin has 400k people living in it, so yeah, it’s a proper experience of a Polish city with all of the things characteristic of Poland, shopping malls, chains, brands, etc.

LOOK the registry office is SO pimped up I don’t understand why xddd

Szczecin is a weird city that’s been trading hands between Germans and Polish people and Soviet occupation and you can definitely see the influences of everything in the architecture:

But since we’re talking about Poland, you can’t not speak about those wild flower booths in random parts around the cities everywhere xddd

I went to Empik and got myself the usual things I always get where I go there, a nifty girls’ magazine named Kosmos I just never grew out of and a manga volume in Polish, I wonder how difficult would it be to read this one in Japanese considering I just learned the word 賭ける on WaniKani again

Also, LOOK, JAGODZIANKA FLAVORED KITKAT CLONE
Jagodziankas are like a special Poland-originated type of sweet roll with blueberries inside of them, and WW, which is indeed a KitKat clone, decided to have a flavor reminiscent of that one ^^

Speaking of fun foods you can get in Poland…
…a new chain of supermarkets opened up, Ukraïnoczka, that sells products made by Ukrainian companies

And since I feel so behind Ukrainian culture, I just decided to buy a few things:

Lyuks chips, Zhivchik Apfelschorle (without the bubbles xdd) and 7 Days, I mean, “Lukas Croissant” xdd
I got to taste Ukraine, woo!

Speaking of food, I went over to a potato restaurant for my breakfast (epic decor)

and I got so pissed off when I saw the sudoku on their tables, because they said it’d be easy…

…this sudoku was broken at this exact spot. Let me demonstrate it to you xdddd

I WAS SO ANGRY WHEN I SAW THAT WHY WOULD YOU SELL A BROKEN SUDOKU WHY WOULD YOU GIVE A MULTIPLE CHOICE PUZZLE WTF XDDD

So, took a train back to Germany, I wanted to go for a Lesbian meeting night at a legendary cafe called Sonntags-Club, recently the German government cut funding to them, so I wanted to see if I could boost their numbers somehow… and nobody came except for me xdddd

The prices of drinks are really, REALLY good though, even cheaper than in Poland

And also Labubu update, they still exist, mostly as Lafufus though xddd

So yeah, today was GREAT and I went back home with a wide smile on my face, and then my friend on Discord went really vulnerable and shared a really personal story where I wouldn’t even alt-tab the window and I was reading every next message and going like “GIRL…”, then got back to Japanese reviews aaand it’s really late

So, see you tomorrow, hopefully it’ll be fun too!

YandrosTheSane · August 9, 2025, 7:19am

Reading the 響け！novel like a champ… awesome ! Do you plan to listen to the pieces they practice as you read ?

Malinkal · August 9, 2025, 7:32am

I see page 58

Novel and manga ratings on natively are pretty bad for comparing between the two types, like a lv30 manga and lv30 novel are quite different levels. Within just novels or just manga they’re usually better

And then anime/tv ratings are a whole nother thing

Any novel between like 28-33 is quite often not that far apart (within the range of error of like a level 30), the range is a bit narrower in that area for novels than for manga I think because it’s where most simpler adult novels sit

mitrac · August 9, 2025, 4:11pm

Woah you’ve seen way more of bremen than me now sorry I missed you!! I’m still on my rotating reading here and not managing everyone’s logs daily. PM me on Natively next time you’re nearby, I’m not far away. I’m still flaky about committing to stuff and planning things, unexpectedly flattened today after a couple months feeling great, but you never know, I’ll do my best

I think seeing positive aspects of where we live when possible tooting that horn is a big part of community building. I don’t mean to avoid critique and change, but stepping back and recognising that things are objectively pretty great on many fronts deflates extreme political movements.

Here, have a sticker!

pembon · August 9, 2025, 6:00pm

I need to get some coloured tape like you

GolyBidoof · August 10, 2025, 12:38am

get pink, we’ll make u a cute princess C:

That assumes I’ll get to those parts in reading, I’ve already been through the anime though so I know the pieces already xdd

So funny thing, last year when I went to Japan, I took a day trip to Fukuoka and saw a parade going through the city with a school orchestra playing RYDEEN, and I was like “I KNOW THIS ONE”

Here’s the pic btw, I’ve blurred all of the faces of people just in case xdd

October 24, 2024, we doing retroactive study logs now ^^ xddd

With a grand total of like, 5 hours in the city center, unlikely xddd

I most likely won’t be to Bremen out of my own volition any time soon, but I’ve said this before and I still stand by it, if at any point you wanted to meet up, sag mir Bescheid two weeks in advance and I’m booking a Deutsche Bahn and I’m there, just let me know you’d be interested in that ^^

Yeah, I saw the post today, hope you manage to recover and get back to usual before soon
That’s the sad thing about mental health and keeping commitments and improving and so on, you always relapse sooner or later, and it gets easier over time to not relapse as often, but you probably will regardless

I’ve been relapsing quite a lot with different things and I’ve learned to be suspicious of my own energy levels and study capacity and so on, so my thoughts on improving the amount of study or finding new friend circles are always held back by “IS IT SUSTAINABLE” and sometimes I burn myself out on the fact that I could do something but I ended up not doing it because it wouldn’t be sustainable and I missed out on things

still struggling with some elements of that in Poland, working on it overtime xddd
berlin is GREAT though xdddd

that doesn’t stop me from being a far leftist and criticizing monetary politics and geopolitics from stances that none of the parties of the German government even considers to be legitimate xddd

Being a radical is cool join us for a Palestine march one day xdd

ok i jest, i actually posted about 魔法使いの嫁 because I’ve seen the openings roll through my YouTube recommendations like a decade ago and I was like “huh, that looks cool”, then read a few volumes of the manga and then never followed up on that, maybe I should actually commit to watch it, because today I made the wrong decision by prioritizing…

August 9th, 2025

i put my sticker from mitrac-san here its so pretty aaa C:

154 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
45 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Manga: 不器用な先輩第1話
Anime: four episodes of よふかしのうた in Japanese

…yeah what the heck xddd

On one hand, I’m relieved that the anime culture doesn’t change and is the same whether it’s before or now, on the other, WHY is an older woman grooming a 14-year old boy with solicit sexual advances and the boy enjoying being sexually abused by her something that’s a norm in the Japanese society xdddd

There’s a website that’s called anikore.jp that gave me the idea to check the series because I was curious what anime is the most popular in Japan now, and it’s 鬼滅の刃 and this one, it’s at number #2 now xdd
The crazy thing is that this show is rated higher than Frieren, Violet Evergarden or 薬屋のひとりごと on that website and I’m like, HOW xddd

I imagine a part of it is that this might be a diehard otaku guys community that prefer specific fanservice behaviors over the other ones, but I feel like I’m so distant and so removed from the 少女/女性 anime scene that it’s not even funny xdddd

Anyway, that site has tags similar to Steam tags for games, and one of the tags is called… 群馬県, we stan xddd

Also, really happy to see 宇宙よりも遠い場所 as the highest rated, eee, 群馬県 anime, maybe it’s not all diehard otaku guys xddddd

And going through that website I found a streaming service called

that looks GREAT and they even have manga in there and I could even give them some money iffff not for the fact that…

…yeah xdd
I probably should invest in a VPN eventually

Anyway though, I was thinking about something tangentially related, but since I’m gonna be in Japan in exactly a month for three days, I was thinking, @Malinkal, do you have any recommendations of Japanese digital things you can buy only when you’re in Japan and then can bring back to the rest of the civilization?
I don’t even know how to start thinking of them, the only thing that comes to my mind is either Affinity Designer or Clip Studio Paint

Anyway, one other Japanese tangent today: I started looking at Bookwalker and Kindle store for Japanese novels/mangas you can buy, because I wanted to give them a shot with Yomitan, and it wouldn’t matter if they are just a single volume that’s free, there’s a thread on WaniKani forums about them and it’d be cool to build up a tiny library to consume native content
It’s pretty neat that they have their own app to read stuff, but like…
…hot take…
…what if I wanted to use Yomitan to look up a word that I don’t understand xddd

(also, really pretty illustrations in that manga! I won’t read it after this chapter! )

I checked over githubs for different OCR solutions, I could run them in the background, but most of them work on screenshots and not the actual live screen display, so maybe I’ll have to check out that S-Pen Android Tablet method that @mitrac recommended a while back ^^

Life

Oh God that was a long Japanese rant xdd

It was 28 degrees today for the first time since early July! The weather was great! C:
I ended up cycling over 30 kilometers today for the first time in a while, I didn’t even realize how much my mental wellbeing is dependent on the weather being nice xdd

I ended up cycling to Ikea for a very important mission (eating Swedish meatballs because I haven’t had them in a while xdd), and then I got completely distracted and started looking at all of the unrelated things ^^

Apparently they have sun in Tokyo and the food is MEGA, thank you auntie Maria xdd

Also, plushies AAAAAA C:
They had the Ikea BLÅHAJ sharkies in different sizes and colors, here’s one for the trans crew ^^

Aaand, mission complete ^^

I wonder what food do they have in Japanese Ikeas

EDIT: I regret to inform, it’s pretty similar xdd

I ended up buying a ton of unrelated things regardless, so sigh xdd

And then carried all of them on a bike through this WONDERFUL CLEAR SKIES SUNSET IT WAS SO PRETTY TODAY AAA xdd

Some fun art from the city from today, look, it’s 3D ^^

And this mural in front of Espresso House in Prenzlauer Berg ^^

And yeah, there is this ad that keeps haunting me in the city for a while, being like WRITE YOUR BOOK, one of those subliminal messages that are attempting to make you JUST DO IT

the fact i’ve never written a story longer than 30 pages is one of those things that makes my tummy sink over time and it’s one of those things I wish I was better at, but I can never fit it into my daily calendar, so I’m considering writing here a manifestation practice and I hope that I’ll eventually get around to it in 2040 one day

xdd

Anyway, see you tomorrow!

This post took me over an hour to write today. I really need to trim them down from now on, I memed myself into writing Slowly letters on WaniKani forums xddd

mitrac · August 10, 2025, 6:58am

I like your combination of activism and optimism Very inspiring

Am I brave enough for a protest? if I’m very honest with myself, at this moment probably not. But I aspire to be strong enough and secure enough to do that

That will be so fun, thank you ! When I start planning things 2 weeks in advance I’ll push go on this. And I will give you another sticker irl this time

I’ve seen this repeat in so many manga and it’s creeping me out as well

Ok in addition t to my Samsung s pen option that I seen to be rather alone in my undying love for, look on the forums for mokuro, there’s a thread and people will help you set it up. there are ways to download the manga from bookwalker, ocr and get the tap to translate. For novels, though, you can do tap to translate with Google from the app, or I saw recently someone said you can long press for yomitan (maybe browser version? I don’t use it). In the bookwalker freebies thread I posted links to a free short story, so maybe test on there to try different options on the browser vs app.

There’s always a nanowrimo event here not that I’m at all suggesting you should add more to your plate

YandrosTheSane · August 10, 2025, 7:06am

GolyBidoof:

Anyway, one other Japanese tangent today: I started looking at Bookwalker and Kindle store for Japanese novels/mangas you can buy, because I wanted to give them a shot with Yomitan, and it wouldn’t matter if they are just a single volume that’s free, there’s a thread on WaniKani forums about them and it’d be cool to build up a tiny library to consume native content
It’s pretty neat that they have their own app to read stuff, but like…
…hot take…
…what if I wanted to use Yomitan to look up a word that I don’t understand xddd

image1204×632 98.7 KB

(also, really pretty illustrations in that manga! I won’t read it after this chapter! )

I checked over githubs for different OCR solutions, I could run them in the background, but most of them work on screenshots and not the actual live screen display, so maybe I’ll have to check out that S-Pen Android Tablet method that @mitrac

recommended a while back ^^

I’m interested if you have a good way to extract the text from Kindle or Bookwalker (seems to be two of the most popular stores for natively links), the easiest method I’ve found because I do not have a Win (and the kindle cloud reader does not work for JP content on the browser) is to have scrcpy running to stream the phone screen at a high resolution on the desktop and to then screen and extract the raw text with ChatGPT.
A few years ago you could get the .azw3 and find creative ways to convert them but I did not find how to get those recently.

Malinkal · August 10, 2025, 3:04pm

分からん..

most digital stuff is cheaper here, but also most of it from what i’ve seen, you can use vpns to buy from abroad - stuff like unext, japanese amazon books, japanese netflix, nintendo store stuff - so not sure what would be something you can only get here soz

GolyBidoof · August 10, 2025, 11:31pm

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was to have friends directly affected by a specific thing, and them wanting to manifest for themselves, and me going with them to support them as well, and it just… ended up being wholesome and thoughtful and encouraging

People don’t go to marches to hate on things, they go to connect with other people, give a free sticker to somebody else, praise somebody else’s poster, sing the same songs as everyone else, so I hope that one day you’ll be able to raise to that level os stability and security to go in there ^^

I specifically precisely said 30 pages, been there, done that in 2020 ^^
Ahh, Wintersportorte, what a concept
I just read the story again and even though the writing is a little stiff and the dialogues are meh, she was up to something back in 2020 xdddd

Actually, I didn’t have in the morning, but I do have now xdddd
Take a screenshot to your clipboard and cmd+v it to Google Translate, and within a second it’ll spit out the translation, plus if you select “show the original”, it will create html text on top of the image that you can highlight using Yomitan

it works better than I expected

Also, just taking pictures using Google Translate on Android and having translations in real time and an option to click the button to send the translations to the translator ^^

i’m team わかんない xddd

But yeah, time to invest in VPN one day, sigh…

August 10th, 2025

170 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
34 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Book: 響け！ユーフォニアム北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ: until page 77
Manga: サボりなら保健室でどうぞ？第１１話
Eeee.. watched Japanese TV for like an hour+?

So there is this GitHub repository that rhymes with optv-jp, except that the first letter is “i” xddd
I’m covering the tracks, please dont take it down xdd

but like, AAA, every stream from every Japanese TV in real time in native-level quality, that’s just WILD

I clicked from one channel to another being like “I wonder what do they have in there” xddd
So listen up;

Lycoris Recoil plays on Disney Channel xddd
There is a Cartoon Network dub of the Powerpuff Girls…
しあわせ気分のイタリア語 is a program about learning Italian language for Japanese people that exists (its really cool xddd
tagging @WeepingWeeb xddd)

and eee, on a bit more serious note, there is a flood in 熊本県 today and I watched the material about that…

Either way, THIS REPOSITORY IS SOMETHING I WOULD’VE LOVED BACK IN 2018 OR SOMETHING
since then, a lot of fandom and culture discourse moved away from the tv into the internet and i don’t know how relevant is watching things like, eee…

but it was a novelty thing nonetheless xddd

And on the same note, I picked up the next コミック百合姫 magazine, this time it’s ５月号 and there’s an promo art for an anime adaptation of a manga called きみが死ぬまで恋をしたい and the promo artwork (a little nsfw) is great, we stan:

I’d love to find out more about this, but it takes one scroll of a wheel to find out that they’re all middle schoolers or something, and then it’s like

EHH JAPAN xdddd

Life

Went to the Silent Book Club today again and kept on reading Hibike ^^
My ex-WaniKani friend was there as well and I showed him my physical copy of ちはやふる, we might swap a book or two at the next Book Swap that we’re going to ^^

Then, the bouldering friend of mine invited me to help him provide emotional support as he unpacks his furniture at the new place of his, the deal was that I’d both keep him company by terribly playing scales and contribute to the musical thread here, so I downloaded FL Studio and soundfont from Pokemon Emerald and took out my MIDI keyboard to his place xddd

…but as I went in, it turned out that the friend had a full sized electric piano by an ADORABL company xdd

So I added “Jingle Bells”, “Happy Birthday”, “Old McDonald Had A Farm” and “Mary Had A Little Lamb” to my repertoire of right handed bangers, and I tried playing Undertale’s Once Upon A Time with both hands, so wooo, first steps at piano xddd

Going to Ikea, of course I refilled my supply of Dumle and parked by Karl’s strawberries on the way there ^^

I also helped him assemble and clean up some furniture and got invited for a very romantic dinner off the floor inside of a pizza box, those always are the most intimate ones xddd

Ahh, fun day today again C:
Gonna be so sad to go back to work tomorrow, but alas xxddd

mitrac · August 11, 2025, 8:56am

Your thoughts on protest are super inspiring, thank you

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