A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & Probably Mandarin Learning Arc (🇨🇳 🇰🇷) 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

GolyBidoof · September 4, 2025, 12:37am

September 3rd, 2025

103 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
37 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Book: 35% of the second chapter of 響け！ユーフォニアム北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ, 27% of the whole book

…yeah, I was trying to read a book xdd
https://reader.ttsu.app was really helpful and I didn’t have to look up that many words, but for those that I did, they were really useful, so thank you Akashelia <3

That being said though, activities that require a lot of my brain effort for a lower payoff, so for example reading novels in Japanese language right now, trigger a mechanism for me where I get so, SO lethargic, or even narcoleptic, at one point over the course of reading, which is great, because I get to sleep on a plane, but less great if you’re trying to immerse yourself in the story xddd

A lot of expressions carry over from manga to books, but there are a few really funky ones, likeそっと息を吐き出した, 笑みを浮かべた, 皺を寄せた, 違和感を弾き出し, or my favorite, 手繰り寄せる, to name a few, but there’s a completely different muscle to seeing an image (manga) and a story behind it, or seeing an animation (visual novel) and a story behind it, having just the text is turning on less senses to me, and something something mindfulness, something something boredom, reading in Japanese might take me a little longer ^^

Life

I’m writing this in a plane from Frankfurt to Bangkok, but I won’t hit Publish before I have a pic from Bangkok too ^^

Already trying to slowly get in the Asia mood, unfortunately it did not make it feel more Asian at home xddd

There is a cafe in Frankfurt that is called @malinkal, origin story, I’m telling you xddd

Here’s some shots from Frankfurt today!

And yeah, going to the airport, the most expensive alcohol I’ve ever seen and of course it’s Japanese xdd

I wonder is it like stocks or assets that you buy this alcohol, not drink it, and then it increases with value over time?

Also, my least favorite German trope, Germany = Bavaria xddd

We still might touch on Oktoberfest on the way back, so hey ^^

And I didn’t show them yet, but those are my nails for the trip this time around!

They should mooostly cover all the stops over the course of the month, it’s going to be:

Bangkok, Thailand
Seoul, South Korea
Tokyo, Japan
Taipei, Taiwan
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
(maybe? hopefully? optional?) Shenzhen, China
Hanoi, Vietnam
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Singapore, Singapore
eeee, Istambul, Turkey, but only for two hours xddd

And then we’re back to Frankfurt ^^
It’s going to be a loaded month!

But if you live in any of those cities, or maybe know any nice places to visit, or maybe would like to get a postcard (yes! i will be sending a ton of postcards, it doesn’t hurt to send one or two more!) then let me know and I can make something work ^^

Aaand, here’s Bangkok!

See you in ~18ish hours? I should be on my way to the Seoul by then ^^

TakeFlite · September 4, 2025, 7:27am

Wow you are packing them in! Hope you get some time to rest as well. There will be some fun contrasts between all those cities I think - Tokyo and Hanoi are like polar opposites in my head. I’m jealous of your Seoul and Taipei stops! Not visited either of them so look forward to hearing about them.

GolyBidoof · September 4, 2025, 3:19pm

September 4th, 2025

57 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
32 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader

ないではいられない was the only grammar on Bunpro I did wrong today, I even eliminated the 果たして ghost, as it turns out, complaining about something in the study log works, until the word shows up again and becomes a ghost again ^^

Not intending on making any reviews on a plane today and the reviews to level up will show up at something like 3am Korean in 27 hours, still contemplating on what to do about them to keep the pace of my reviews: most likely will just do some lessons on morning the next day and reviews immediately on the evening the next day ^^

Life

I switched over to a 2010 camera, I wanted to make the diary look a little bit more hipster, what better way to do so than having a series of blurry mess remember the whole trip xdd

If I’ll hate the pictures, I’ll go back to taking them with my phone ^^

As it turns out, Bangkok is about exactly what you would appear from the lower budget dramas and video games xddd

…including tons of not very healthy nature xddd

But there are a lot of adventures to be had! We were walking like you normally would in a city of this size, but scooters were really loud, and the smog made it hard to breathe on the main streets, so we let ourselves get caught by a TUK TUK :DDDDD

They’re like, motorbike rikshas, and they took us for a tour around the city for a low price of 100 baht, which is something like 2.5 euro!
Very shaky, very not health-and-safety compliant, very full of CO2 emissions, but also very fun ^^

And a boat,

And a boat #2,

Ahh, blurry pictures my love xddd

People in many places were asking us where are we from, and as soon as we would respond “Poland”, the people selling things were going like “oh, nice”, and not saying anything else xdd

Only one person, our best tour guide throughout today, said “LEWANDOWSKI” and we were like “yees yees Lewandowski” xdd
He recommended for us to get the tuk tuk, how to take it and gave us a few hints on how to pray for buddhist temples ^^

As for the reminder, at one shop they wanted to show us how expensive a piece of jewelry is, and they when we introduced ourselves from Poland, they wanted to give us the price in Euro, which I did get understand, but cmon xddd

Going to cute crocodile buddha temples with shoes off…

THERE IS AN ACTUAL DONKI IN BANGKOK AND THEY PLAY THE THEME SONG ON LOOP IN THERE OMG xddd

There’s a huuuuge amount of streetfood everywhere

Also, tons of cables, for the fanatics of cables in here xddd

Chinatown lookin very China,

very spicy food is actually very spicy (thank you Mr. Buddha ;___; <3)

(it’s because Buddha is doing cardio btw)

Oh, and look, it’s a kanji wall! C:

Also, where the public transit system works, it works really well, it’s reminiscent of the ones I saw in Japan, I love when lines use numbers to label the specific stop numbers

Ahhh, such a pretty city, but I really wonder if I could manage to live for longer in there, it’s really all over the place and the car/scooter dependency would probably kill me xddd

she chillin

On the way to the airport, we were briefly touched by a monsoon and we’re soaked to the bone, yeah, Berlin Monsoons have nothing to compare xddd

So yeah, another 40 thousand steps around the city, saw a ton of things, it was really fun! And now we’re on our way to Seoul, objective #1: try to fall asleep and finish the 60-hour long day xddd

See you from Seoul tomorrow! C:

Akashelia · September 4, 2025, 4:29pm

Thanks for the shootout!

And the street too :o

shitsurei · September 4, 2025, 5:24pm

Getting overstimulated just thinking about it

Both the aspect ratio and the haphazard focus reminds me of all my photos before I got a smart phone, so good job on nailing the vibe. Excited to see Korea just sliiiiiightly out of focus

Malinkal · September 4, 2025, 11:13pm

I’ll get the same with kids in Japan, there’ll be some of them who don’t understand any English, but they hear England and they’ll get all excited and yell “Marcus Rashford”, “Harry Kane”
Who needs shared language for mutual understanding when you have football eh

Mmm yes what could go wrong

Yes good photo vibes! Much more important than high quality, especially for somewhere like Bangkok it suits it

@GolyBidoof I think I sent you a message on natively but I’ll be honest I’m not that sure how the whole thing works so if you could have a check and see if it actually went through

mitrac · September 5, 2025, 9:32am

love the impressions and photos

hmmm, I wonder if anyone would believe me if I said I was from Argentina.

Malinkal · September 5, 2025, 11:41am

The M in Mitrac stands for Messi? You learn something new every day!

pembo · September 5, 2025, 12:18pm

I was out in Chile with work many years ago, we were all very drunk in a bar and a bunch of Chilean lads were out drinking too

I spoke very small amounts of Spanish and they basically no English so we just spent the night saying footballers names and doing tequila shots

10/10 night

GolyBidoof · September 5, 2025, 4:25pm

it’s like why VHS is nostalgic, people remember things in their head through static distortion, why not make something nostalgic on day 1

if you want to have 4k HDR footage all it takes is to follow a tag on Instagram xdd

just watch out because one person will pull out a super niche celebrity from Argentina and go like “have you heard of them because my daughter is a huge fanatic of this Instagrammer you must have heard of them everyone talks about them in Argentina right???”

it’s like when you show toddler a moving index finger and you go like “A GOO GOO” and the toddler is having the time of their lives being like “OMG A GOO GOO” and the finger, peak comedy, I’m still there somewhere xdd

September 5th, 2025

176 reviews on WaniKani
3 lessons on WaniKani (uhh )
32 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Book: 54% of the second chapter of 響け！ユーフォニアム北宇治高校吹奏楽部へようこそ, 33% of the whole book
Reading things in The Town (the town being Seoul) in Japanese xddd

In some places there genuinely is more stuff written in Japanese than in English here, especially if you factor in the fact they want to be inclusive to both simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and they do so by writing traditional Chinese… in Japanese xdd

Satori Reader: I finished 占い師・藤鬼! Definitely should’ve started with this one before きつねの
嫁入り, it makes more sense if you prioritize it this way. Was a bit easier to follow that I knew most of the things that were happening, justice for ミケ though ^^

I’ll start with 壁のあな now, I still haven’t listened to it

And on WaniKani… I should’ve been level 50 in like, 6 hours, but because of the timezone differences, it’s really awkward to coordinate things, my level 50 review is in 2 hours, I’ll do it this way that I did only 3 lessons today and I’ll do all of the level’s lessons tomorrow, some in the morning, some in the evening, and then proceed as usual: this will make my level 50 a bit faster than the other levels, but timezones with an SRS service, what a concept

https://reader.ttsu.app helped me to read the Hibike book on the airplane today, it still is a looong, loong read, but I already read about as fast as I speak, so it’s just an audiobook-length of time to finish this book, I advanced by this little over like, an hour of reading today at the airplane ;___; xdd

Life

South Korea!

An hour long wait at the immigration, I did the whole let’s learn Hangul from scratch waiting for the passport to be stamped. Now that I know the hangul characters, it doesn’t help me much because I read at a snaaaail’s pace, and on top of that, even if you manage to read a word, most of the time just the reading means nothing xddd

After immigrating though, I finally got to see it…

THE VENDING MACHINES!

Barely managed to make it to the hotel without passing out and me and my mom went very goodnight xddd

We’ve had a huge portion of Korean Fried Chicken today, I’m sorry I’m predictable xdd

Also, it’s really funny how you can have this be two separate views from the same square, I can just never get used to that with the German architecture styles

I wonder how the Gangnam Style guy is doin…

…THEY MADE HIM AN ENTIRE MONUMENT WTFFF XDD

Obligatory here’s one for the buddhist temple fanatics ^^

There was another woman in there with a retro digital camera taking similar shots to mine and I was like “YESS IM A TRENDSETTER NOW” xddd

One for the westaboos and one for the weaboos ^^

The train system had a quote by GOETHE on it for some reason, but I’m learning how to catch luck in my life, thank you Goethe ^^
Also, German bear in Korea ^^

And here’s Gangnam!

…including a HUUUUGE bookstore in the middle of a shopping mall

Shaun the Sheep got impaled, goodnight Shaun

And yeah, nightlife, streetfood at Myeongdong Night Market, Instagram cooks showing off

im soooooo behind on the korean popculture its not funny
i need to think of my favorite guy from BTS or girl from Blackpink or something, or is it over now xdd

Really hoping that by tomorrow the jetlag will be mostly gone ^^

We’re planning a more traditional Korean tour tomorrow, it’s supposed to be raining, but I hope it doesn’t ruin our plans. Three more days in Korea!

TakeFlite · September 5, 2025, 4:41pm

Loving the photos, especially the food. There’s something about wandering around foreign cities trying out food that is just so great. I love it. (Obv London has plenty of good food but it is just not the same when it’s your home).

Or maybe I’m just hungry right now. It might have to be Korean or Thai for dinner this evening…

akatsukinoluna · September 5, 2025, 5:36pm

狐の嫁入り is the sequel, after all (both story and difficulty)… I loved Fujiki, and what I got through of Kitsune

That was my first one, and I really loved it!!

shitsurei · September 5, 2025, 5:45pm

The thing I miss the most from when I lived in London is a kebab and fries with a liberal amount of vinegar on top. Still eat kebabs all the time, but I really miss the shop that was down the street from me

prath · September 6, 2025, 9:09am

omg, the coolest mom award my mom would watch something like GAP and very quietly leave the room after judging me loll

I can’t wait to drink coffee and read the 8th - 11th daily morning newspaper with special feature on two logs and a double ramble combo

Jealous that you get to step on the same land as my thai goddesses. I went to Bangkok 8 years ago but I was too young to explore at that time and ended up having meals at all the random Indian places because my dad had specific preferences lol. I’m down bad for spicy food and that was such a big miss

I can’t wait to see all the pics and the travel adventures!!! haffunnnnnn

wrote that and then scrolled down to see that you’ve already updated the thai & korea pics lol. Love them (and the nails)!!! glad you had fun <3

WeepingWeeb · September 6, 2025, 9:59am

Pics look great looks like a lot of fun
The gangam style monument is funny lolol

GolyBidoof · September 6, 2025, 4:24pm

Eyes glued to the September 10th update, just in case xdd

THEY USED TO COST 3,50 € WHEN I MOVED IN
THEY ARE 8 € NOW AAAAA

September 6th, 2025

192 reviews on WaniKani
34 lessons on WaniKani (ehehe, level 50 )
27 reviews on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Finding a ton of Japanese things in Seoul ^^

LEVEL 50! :DDDD

Aside from that, 壁のあな, クミコ is being scolded by her mom, 黄前久美子 has a bit more luck with her mom though, still, poor Kumiko B xddd

Really long lesson block on WaniKani today, tomorrow will also have a ton of reviews, but I’m getting much closer to level 60, at one point in time new kanji will stop coming in ^^

Life

ahhahaa xddd

Me and my mom ran into a nationalist demonstration today, and it was very screamy and very pro-USA xdd

We kinda wanted to move ourselves from it as quickly as we could, so right at the very perpendicular road to this one, literally just 100 meters away, at Cheonggyecheon, we saw a Thailand festival, so…

…I immediately thought of @prath when I saw this one C:

Check this guy out, what are those liquid-pouring moves xddd

Also, made a traditional incense that’s in a black container and will be going back to Europe with me C:

Aaanyway, we found a hUUUGE bookstore right next to that place, Kyobo Book Centre, it had everything, stationery, kpop albums, planners, beads, very Dussmann-coded place ^^

My mom is slowly warming herself up to the idea of iron-on patches on her clothes, because they’ve both been in Thailand and there’s a ton of them in Korea ^^

They also had a Japanese section…

…and a German section ^^

And since the main road with the nationalist demo, Sejong-daero, was very much an activist place, I even found people advocating for Palestine and exchanged understanding nods with them ^^

And then me and my mom went to Gyeongbokgung Palace and tell me I’m cute of course I’m cute xddd

We decided to rent hanboks together and people in hanboks get a free admission to the palace, so we did C:

In the palace library, they had this really cute poem in Japanese about a mother that I tried to translate to my mom C:

And then we’ve had a great Korean-style photoshoot, mom, daughter and, eee, Stuart the Minion xdd

We found a great foodmarket called Gwangjang Market and, MMMMmmmMMmmmM, the food there

Well here’s the section for you ^^

We also went to a robo cafe, where a robot was preparing the drinks ^^

And, flowers at metro stations, how much I wish we’ve had something like this in Berlin ^^

So we took an empty bus, just for us, to the Seoul Tower ^^

AND CHECK THIS VIEW OUT AAAA

SO TALL

I’ve been to Tokyo Skytree before, so I was wondering how would it differ, well they made a huge event out of the tower regardless ^^

PADLOCKS EVERYWHERE

Aaaand…

C:

Then we pulled by the town hall and walked from there ^^

PIZZA IS GONE GOODNIGHT AAAA

and then, Avenue of Youth, and dOESNT IT LOOK A LITTLE FAMILIAR???

C:

Also, the visit to the Seoul Tower gave us a 10k won discount for Olive Youth, so of course we went cosmetics hunting ^^

And then we just finished at DDP Dongdaemun Design Plaza and that was it for the day C:

Hoo, so many adventures for a single day ^^

Let’s see what tomorrow brings! C:
See you tomorrow!

trunklayer · September 6, 2025, 4:42pm

Yes, you are!

Such a sad and beautiful poem!

Of this – I understood only the last one! It means “OH!” and “O!” combined “O-OH!” – that or @trunklayer is meowing around again

Anyway, I’m very glad you are having such a cool time – may the rest of your journey be just as cool and, most importantly, safe!

prath · September 6, 2025, 4:43pm

omgggggg if I’m not wrong that’s Louis!! He was a side character in a lot of 2021-2022 bls that I enjoyed hehe (you should totally check out Only Boo if you want to watch something cuteeeeeee)

Not even looking at the cup or the liquid

yessss so cute!! love the fit!

Love the food pics, everything looks so delicious :')

shitsurei · September 6, 2025, 4:46pm

Ahh that’s such a good picture! Make sure you get that one printed out or something!

Shut up! This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen (I couldn’t get my mom to even take photos with me, let alone stage a whole 4 photo narrative )

mitrac · September 6, 2025, 4:49pm

In awe, best mom dot trip EVER!

CuTieee!!!

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A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & Probably Mandarin Learning Arc (🇨🇳 🇰🇷) 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

September 3rd, 2025

Life

September 4th, 2025

Life

September 5th, 2025

Life

September 6th, 2025

Life

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