A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & Sometimes Study Log 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

GolyBidoof · June 10, 2025, 10:48pm

June 10th, 2025

155 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
53 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Misc: a bit of ティアーズオブザキングダム in Japanese
Misc: a bit of マリオカートワールド in Japanese

So, no German classes today, because I bailed out last time, I missed the note that

and I went to the class where the classes were supposed to be taking place and made a silliest face in German trying to recall the words for “bUT BUT WE ALWAYS HAVE CLASSES IN THIS CLASSROOM”, well not today xdd

I looked briefly over the German materials from the last lessons and <inhales>

For those who aren’t into German, it’s “explain how clothing can be made in a sustainable way, argue using examples why you should buy sustainable clothing, name the reasons that would speak against the purchase of sustainable pieces of clothing, explain what are the alternatives to buying new clothes”

Unironically those are the kinds of discussions I would really like to do in Japanese classes one day, but because the topics are spicy, I’m feeling much more eager to mich auf Deutsch argumentieren xddd

On the note of Japanese though, look at this useless sentence xdd

~agreed with nobody ever xdd

Just kidding, it’s sweet that it showed up ^^

Tears of the Kingdom in Japanese on Switch 2 is really weird, because:

loading screens on Switch 2 are so quick there’s like NO CHANCE for you to read any hints, be it in English or in Japanese xddd
all dialogues have furigana in them, but the moment you start menuing, no furigana at all, only a wall of text ahead ^^

20250611002902-01JXDV4FKFKWPAGSYQWJ5X9HG11920×1080 227 KB
I find myself really positively surprised by the fact I can read most of the characters right now without that much trouble, but there is one skill I don’t know how to develop (other than just read more): the ability of being able what are the highlights of the text just by looking at the characters without actually reading it. It’s so weird how I can have two paragraphs of text in English (like プルア’s bio) and within a second all of the important information is recognized by my brain in English without reading them, but when it comes to Japanese, my attention drifts away to 王国直属 and I spend 0.8 seconds attempting to read those four kanji and 0.9 second later I realize that it was nowhere close to the most important part of those paragraphs and I need to read them left to right to understand what’s going on, which takes me like a minute xdddd

I think that’s a skill that will grow over time and I’m looking forward to the summer marathon this year, but also it’s so demeaning not to be able to click A for a bit because you haven’t found the most important information in the paragraph at first and you need to read everything start to finish xdd

This is a good example:

WHICH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS TEXT

WELL I READ IT ALL SO I CAN TELL YOU IT’S 隠れた書物 BUT THATS BECAUSE I SPENT TOO LONG ON THIS ONE xddd

Life

Yeah, today that leopards ate my face story went public and our office went from dull, harsh and empty laughter, to pointed argumentative tones, and it actually didn’t hit me all that much until after work when I started thinking about what is going to happen next.

I genuinely was hoping to use German classes to just flood myself with thoughts unrelated to that story, but then it didn’t happen and the only thing flooding me was the rain falling on my face on the way back xddd

Also, Deltarune chapter 3+4 are really growing on me, there’s a lot of community participation for the chapters on the internet: covers of songs, datamining files, comparisons of localizations between Japanese and English, Toby Fox really cooked after all ^^

Went back home, 毛布に包まった, turned on my Switch and fastforwarded some time.

I do realize that isolating myself might just lead to a few more negative thoughts, so since there’s Pride and tomorrow is just a regular boring Wednesday, there is a calendar in Berlin called Flinta* calendar that packs up a ton of events and I’m thinking of getting myself to one of their events tomorrow, even a low stakes one, just to have something out of Pride Month, but I’ll see tomorrow if I don’t dodge ^^

So see you tomorrow ^^

mitrac · June 11, 2025, 12:50pm

Wait what, like you just asked me for help to help you figure out how to ask for help? You already got this

What? How?

Thank you for revealing yourself and making us all feel better

I sure hope that leopard gets contained without eating any more faces or causing you more stomach aches

And thanks for the highlight on the Freedom Flotilla boat, I saw they got stopped but assumed that was the end, super surprised to hear they haven’t been released and that’s not a major headline?!

GolyBidoof · June 12, 2025, 1:36am

June 11th, 2025

171 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
52 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader

Really late today, but that’s spoilers for life, SRS tripped up once again xdd
Today Bunpro went really smoothly (surprisingly so), but WaniKani caused me some problems and there’s just this one kanji, 揮, that doesn’t stick in my head

All three words that use this kanji on WaniKani seem so random to me, and even if the explanations are supposed to bridge the gap from “brandish” to whichever three of those is, they don’t stick so well

And really long WaniKani today.

Also, fellow Americans in the chat

Also, one of my favorite N2 grammars (I didn’t know it was N2 xddd)

やがて君になる, pride month everyone C:

Anyway, I was wondering what will シークレット be about after the big realization from the few days ago and it seems like that story might not be perfectly paced and today both crammed the Crime and Punishment into just a few episodes and also didn’t do a really good job at conveying that, so I’ll be a hater here xdd

Life

yes, i did use the Flinta* calendar xdd
I needed it to lift myself up after yesterday, but it worked up really well ^^

Went to a book club where everyone was supposed to be reading different books, plenty of queer people in there, mostly trans girls, but as it quickly turned out, it wasn’t a silent book club xdd

We talked about queer(platonic) experiences a bit with different books and I brought over 気になってる人 volumes 2 and 3 in the hopes of reading them today, but as it turns out, the conversation after an hour went from the topic books into topic life…
…and stayed that way for an hour…

…for two…
…actually I spent 6.5 hours there today xddd

Only came back home at 2:20am because one of the girls in there was into learning Japanese and video games and yuri manga and so on, and also she did use WaniKani and Bunpro in the past, so I showed her this thread and we ended up chatting life, everything Japanese, queerness, it was great xdd

One of the people who apparently is a regular there, extended over an invitation to me to come for a pancake-making breakfast late next week, and I was like “I literally came in the first time. sure.” xddd

We’ll see if it works out, it’s still a bit unofficial, and even though this club is optional, next week I won’t be able to come on Wednesday because I’ll be on a Lucy Dacus concert

But man, this time of the day when it’s 11pm and everyone’s cheeks start flushing and everyone becomes drunk with tiredness and atmosphere and they start oversharing and speak faster, girls night out, that was a lot of fun to come xddd

It’s almost as if a whole arc of getting to know those people, hanging out with those people, and also going back home and moving on with my life, happened in a single day, but also I have a feeling I would be interested in bringing more Japanese manga and yapping more with that girl in there, apparently she’s a regular too ^^

So, we’ll see if my trajectory of my life is Pride Month Queer Spaces After Pride Month, but I really enjoyed myself today and I felt very, very accommodated ^^

So see you tomorrow! Hopefully after German classes, but I messed up my sleep schedule once again, exactly a week after I did it the last time xddd

GolyBidoof · June 12, 2025, 10:32pm

June 12th, 2025

148 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
39 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader

3.5 hours of German classes

So weird to be doing reviews 20 hours later, and also, already having a day full of reviews packed up anyway

Today’s two grammars that somehow didn’t connect in my head but they feels obvious are どうせ and に渡り, I feel like I already know them and it’s like this Spongebob Patrick meme

where I go like “yeah yeah yeah, it means ‘anyhow’, ‘at any rate’, ‘no doubt’, easy one”

…and then they end up being ghosts anyway xdd

There’s something inherent about N2 grammars that makes the concepts sound simple on a surface, but my brain doesn’t connect the wires so quickly, maybe because they’re supposed to be difficult grammars, grrr xdd

Had 31 burns today, haven’t had this many burns in a while, but I’m no longer looking at the WaniKani stats before “burns” because I used to have everything in Apprentice and Guru and they didn’t stick with me, so Burns are the only ones that I trust right now… 大体、およそ ^^

Aside from that, nothing groundbreaking today in the study session ^^

German

We’ve had discussions today on the topic of one’s own personal taste, which is funny because I have the best taste so what is the discussion even about

I was still really tired after yesterday, but after like 30 minutes in my head was producing formal sentences today with pretty complicated grammar, so I’m really proud of myself regardless, even though I’m ways off ^^

To see what’s the gap between my current Japanese and my current German, and it still widens, we’ve had a 6-minute long listening session from an interview with a professor on the topic of personal taste and actual taste buds, and not only I could follow, I understood every sentence he was saying and I didn’t even feel very strained by it, so, man, Japanese, I’m losing touch with you even though I study every day

To quote a classic,

xdddd

But yeah, I spoke with the queer group yesterday about what the reasons to use German could be, and we only had two German girls in there and their English was really advanced academic in there and we exclusively wanted to speak English to be precise in terms of using advanced terms, so that might be close to as good as my German gets, there’s just no reason to improve it beyond a specific point

I still might try though xddd

I’m really glad this whole Japanese study is making my German study easier and that this whole German study is also getting my Japanese study easier ^^

Life

There was a project at work I was worried about I’d have to crunch for at least one day to get to the finish line, so I put in a full focus mode today being like “oh noo, I hope I finish before my German classes”… so I finished by 4:45pm and I was like :DDDDDDD

Now if my reward for having done it is getting more work, I’ll probably gladly decline and instead pick another story at my secretary position at the Works Council xdd

By the way, I’m going to have a training in early August in Bremen C:

Found this one in the city today, which, hmm, not a huge fan of generative AI, but this definitely wasn’t generated with AI (unfortunately, Apple’s AI sucks and they needed to correct it manually I’m sure xdd) and looks like the person in charge of this banner was pretty familar with the culture of Berlin, so if somebody is asking you how should they think about Berlin like, show them this ad, pretty accurate xdd

I don’t do clubbing though, I know many people that do xdd

So at the German classes today we also talked about Verhüllter Reichstag, an art project from 1995 where the whole Reichstag in Berlin was just, eee, covered with a fabric, looking something like this ^^

For comparison, it looks like this right now:

Apparently there is a light installation right now in Berlin whose main goal is to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of that installation, and hey, I decided to cycle to it at 10pm today to see it after the sunset ^^

Suuuper overexposed HDR picture just to show how many people were waiting for the light installation to start xddd

And yep, it was pretty C:

I imagine if I were to stay longer, it’d get even prettier, but sighh, I had Japanese reviews to do, what can a girl do xddd

Anyway, I’m taking a looong, hot shower today, because my hair devolved to being hay straws, so see you tomorrow and take care ^^

GolyBidoof · June 13, 2025, 11:16pm

June 13th, 2025

134 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
53 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Misc: A lot of マリオカートワールド in Japanese today ^^

…what???

…REALLY???

COME ON

NOOO THATS THE WRONG ONE XDDDD

somebody wrote this sentence just to piss me off, i swear xdddd

Also, Bunpro has public themes now! They’re actively working on… gamifying the platform…

So far it looks reasonable, and I already have a toooon of points, more than I can spend, but knowing what’s currently happening with Discord I’m slowly starting to be like “ooh… oOoOoOoooh…”

Also, I’m finishing Secret story on Satori Reader really soon, 7 episodes to go, I find it really interesting how the male narrator is imitating 未希’s voice nonetheless ^^

aaand today’s antagonist of the day is crotch:

股, こ, また, it sounds like one of those funny characters, so it should be simple to imitate, and yet, it isn’t ;___; xdd

Life

Right next to my library, there was a cultural festival today, themed after Langer Tag der Stadtnatur ^^

Couple stands you can talk to people at, I just was a little like “meh” today and didn’t engage with it much xdd

what i DID engage with however was KOREAN FOOD
There is a new Korean restaurant in Berlin, and I wanted to give it a shot:

I’ve said in the past that I love Korean Fried Chicken, so what’s my review??? Well, it’s okay, the sauce was pretty tasty, though my favorite variation of the chicken is with a spicy one ^^
I like that the fries are free and cucumbers are a nice addition too ^^

What doesn’t work in favor of this restaurant is that my actual favorite Korean Fried Chicken is right next to it (SO SO ANGRY) and they have really nice stickers all around in it ^^

But yeah, most of the time I operate with the notion that Germany is economically stagnant so this is probably the best Berlin is ever going to be, but then there’s a new Korean restaurant and a culture festival and I go like

In a way, I kinda forgot that the Berlin wall was the first time ever that Berlin saw prosperity and that it’s grown so freaking much over the last 30 years and that me and my friends are gentrifying the city together, so it’s nice to keep track of the inbetween spots of Berlin already being crazy cool, but also having a possibility of becoming even cooler before too long

…though I also found this diagram on the internet from last year:

that claims that Poland’s Warsaw has been growing much, MUCH faster than Germany’s Berlin, and as a person who sometimes goes back to Warsaw, my head hurts to learn of this fact xddd

For as long as I still have a my job here, I’ll stay though, there are still dozens of adventures awaiting me in Berlin though ^^

Politics contamination zone

Woke up today to the nastiest news from Iran and I was immediately like uh-oh. Started looking for any demo in Berlin, but I heard that the embassy of the aggressor state got immediately locked up earlier today, and I haven’t found anything in the town in the form of a demonstration, so just letting you know I’m definitely fed up with things happening in the world, whether it’s Los Angeles or Iran or something, I might not do anything in the short term, but I feel like the world is attempting to send me a message, and the message is:

why is so much happening recently, i just don’t get it
how do i channel my anger xddd

mitrac · June 14, 2025, 12:12pm

Demo: coincidentally I learned there is a no kings demo in Berlin right now

Not on the same theme you’re after, but related to the same root cause

nerdqueen666 · June 14, 2025, 1:54pm

Ahhhh there are so many parts of this post I want to reply to because this just sounds like the most magical, wholesome, life-affirming experience. I am feeling lifted up just reading about it!!

Also meeting another WK user in the wild?!? I don’t even know what I would do. Definitely be way to excited and act super awkward, probably

The book you’re reading (or at least in the front of the pic - The Counter Sexual Manifesto) looks amazing – adding to library hold list!

GolyBidoof · June 14, 2025, 11:08pm

A few hours notice would’ve been great xdddd
When I arrived at the place where the demo was supposed to be taking place it looked like

But that was like 3.5 hours after the event concluded, so no luck there xdd

Ironically enough, from what I picked up, at the exact same time at the exact same place there was supposed to be a different demo, which would be great to take place in iF I KNEW IT WAS HAPPENING BEFORE IT WAS OVER xddd

It’s funny how I cycle a lot around Berlin, but didn’t see those posters any day before the event happened, so huh

politics contamination zone something something xdd

June 14th, 2025

138 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
41 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
7 stories on Satori Reader
Misc: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy sub: dub:

yes, I finally finished Secret C:
Decided not to hold on it for too long, and finally when I got there today, I was like

The final act was also pretty confusing mostly because of the final revelation that was communicated and I was like “........huh…” trying to imagine how the whole thing went down

I ended up giving it a

mostly because the story felt really disconnected and made my eyes roll a few times when I was lost and confused why was that sentence in the general scheme of the story, but also my Mitrac-seconds are probably a bit slower than 1x recording by the narrator, so sometimes when I’m caught up on a specific dialogue and the narrator just keeps going I go like “NOOO PLEASE GO BACK” xdd
But the final episodes either used a bit easier Japanese, or I was already in the Japanese headspace because…

(not my screenshots xdd)
Ah yeah, I’m finally finding some time to dig into the game, it SRSes the word 常通 in my head because the word just appears every day in the game xdd

Same with cafeteria and the kanji in there:

There are some really stylish kanji that appear in battles as well, but 1: they are spoilers, 2: hard to quickly look up, so yeah, it’s a fun game regardless ^^

As you might have noticed from this thread, I really thrive from having a Persona-like calendar in real life, and with almost every day counting in Last Defense Academy, it reminds me of just me and my friends in a Discord server every day coming up with a new silly thing to latch onto, so calendars me likey ^^

I’m currently day 44, there was a really funny arc for the last couple of in-game days so it tripped my SRS timings again, but ehh, I’m used to xdd

Also, this grammar is really cool, I’m Seasoned 3 on it already
But it just sounds nice, there’s the hard consonants with DeTaToTanni and it just feels fun to pronounce ^^

Life

Book swap today! The OG ones, the ones I’ve been mentioning throughout this thread!

Didn’t come back with any great books of my own, but I put Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop into circulation, my review: it’s better than シークレット at Satori Reader xdddddd

After the Book Swap we went for a short walk around Hackescher Markt

And then went to a Spanish restaurant together for a super tiny, super small paella, like what is this supposed to be xddd

But yeah, two Russian people at the afterparty today: they were the ambitious and hard-working types so I again needed to act as if I’m being smart in order to keep up the conversation with them, we stan xddd

The sun was up for very long, and the temperature was at 29 degrees today, would’ve been really great if not for the fact that I think the last couple of days have been really stressful and I’ve developed a really good system never to be sick: I don’t let myself be sick

It works most of the time, but today I allowed myself to start being sick juust a little after going back home aaaand my head radiates heat and my cognitive abilities have been affected, so whoops xddd

But as I’ve said, good Japanese today, I’m just really, really worn out, feveriisshh and in mostly a mindless mode today.

…so I’m going bouldering with the book swap friend tomorrow at 11am, 31 degrees outside tomorrow, should be great xddddd

See you tomorrow!

mitrac · June 15, 2025, 10:17am

Verzeihung!

yay it’s officially a thing !

Shannon-8 · June 15, 2025, 1:34pm

Someone!
Please tie down GolyBidoof until over 90% Health regeneration!

GolyBidoof · June 15, 2025, 10:31pm

Your wish was granted, 37.6C, 99.6F xddd

Protagonists of Persona series never catch cold, grrr xddd

June 15th, 2025

159 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
47 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Misc: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy sub: dub:
Misc: マリオカートワールド online with friends ^^

LEVEL 39 WOOO C:

this word:

is getting in the way of my Bunpro reviews, because there’s a grammar point that means something similar:

and when I see it on Bunpro, I always go like “haha explosive laughter ばくしょう wait Bunpro doesnt accept it ;_;” xddd

Also, today caught up on the new self-care readout on Satori Reader by YUYU and:

(it’s engagement bait, isn’t it? i feel successfully baited xdd)

there are two words in Polish:

praca, the more standard-polish one, apparently coming from old czech from the 14th century
robota, the more casual/working class/manual-laborish one, yep, that’s the czech word from which a “robot” is derived from ^^

I’m going to my praca tomorrow to do robota there and I definitely don’t feel ready for it xddd

I like the German word “arbeiten” for obvious reasons though ^^

Also, I started reading 枯れた木 on Satori Reader and…

they really do love their first person singular neutral/feminine pronouns, don’t they? that’s what happens when you go from Secret onto something that has a lower difficulty level (but also something doesn’t feel right xdd)

Life

man…

The first hour and a half of bouldering were great, I was complaining that there was a huge gap in difficulty levels between yellow and green courses, and the bouldering hall did something about them and reworked the difficulty level classification to add a level inbetween, the pink one. Though, luckily enough, I found out that I can do greens if I set my mind to it, and I had a bunch of success at them today, so hey, am I becoming a better climber?

Green is where the harder motions with thrusting your hips and getting your body into a space program begins, and I can do them maybe once over the course of a climb, but the moment you get to the blue difficulty, this is a standard feature into your feature set, so I’ll have to grind the motions of yeeting myself upwards by my body weight to be able to do the harder ones.

This one (the yellow) might be my favorite green difficulty one, because it’s difficult to start with, but you can also customize the difficulty of how far away you end up thrusting yourself, and overcorrect if you don’t do it

But yeah xddd

The bouldering friend managed to casually strike up a conversation with a German student who came to the bouldering gym alone and she didn’t know how to climb too much, while the bouldering friend has years of experience, so he showed her the ropes and I was holding my thumb up from the sidelines being like “Y O U R D O I N G R E A T B U D D Y” xdd

I think the most difficult part of getting to know people is the first part of trying to find things in common with a person and committing to doing things together, and I know he’s really good at advanced friendships, it’s just having the initial thrust of making a new friend is something that’s not so obvious to him, and a lot of other people, maybe even me xdd

On the way back, I got threatened in berlin, tHREATENED im telling you
THEY WAITED 65 MILLION YEARS JUST TO COME ON APRIL 18th

Also, since we’re documenting Berlin already, one of my favorite places across Berlin are Karls Strawberry Booths, they appear in many places throughout Berlin and sell organic strawberries from local farms ^^

One really interesting thing about them is their opening hours: it’s from the opening until the last box of strawberries is sold, so this one closed at 14:20 today ^^

Had 500g of strawberries and they were great, really sweet, really sunny and really smooth ^^

And yeah, went back home, measured my temperature and wooo, into the world of drugging myself, strawberries, tissues and Kotaro Uchikoshi I went ^^

I said before that I really like it when people lie to me (affectionately) and there’s nobody who does it as well as Kotaro Uchikoshi xdd
It’s really funny how this game screams KAZUTAKA KODAKA but as soon as a story development happens, I always go like “KOTARO UCHIKOSHI YOU SLY DOG YOU GOT ME AGAIN” xdddd

999, AI, and especially Virtue’s Last Reward are some of my favorite stories of all time, not just video games, and Kotaro Uchikoshi knows what story elements he already burnt and can’t use again, so he baits you into believing that this is the correct explanation and then goes like “actually sorry i lied to you, but it’s your fault you fell for it because I was hinting towards it” and I’m like xdddd

I’m Day 61 right now but I have a theory towards the setting already based on the fact it’s Kotaro Uchikoshi xddd

It’s not the Earth’s surface. Of course it’s not. That moon is fake and I don’t trust you buddy xddd

And then, at 8pm, had a power nap, felt a little healthier after that, played some Mario Kart World with friends online in Japanese and then started doing reviews.
And I’m already feeling worse again, so finishing this post, brushing teeth, pjs on, and back to the world of Kotaro Uchikoshi and Kazutaka Kodaka xdd

I come from a terminally online background, so it’s refreshing in a way to spend such a long time at home in front of a gaming console, but I also feel like I should be doing that on like, January 15th, and not June 15th, ehhh xdd

Japanese classes tomorrow, see you tomorrow!

GolyBidoof · June 16, 2025, 11:34pm

June 16th, 2025

138 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
65 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
4 stories on Satori Reader
2h of Japanese classes today
Misc: マリオカートワールド online with friends C:

<attempting to organize my thoughts after a めちゃくちゃ day> xddd

In today’s Japanese classes, we talked about the founder of judo, 嘉納治五郎, and the underlying principles of a sport, and then we made fun of the tryhards who do sport to be competitive (me! me!) because judo wasn’t created with the idea of competing to be the best in the first place xdd

We had the らしい grammar and we were talking about 愛らしい色、ピンク (not 桜らしい、that’s 桜色) xddd
One of the people in the class made a presentation about the city of Palermo and you could tell he wrote a presentation all by himself because the vocabulary and the grammar were easy to follow and the text was easy to read ^^

…which I can’t say about the listening text we’ve had in the classes today, because even though it didn’t have any tongue twisters, the amount of hard consonants right next to one another when talking about Okinawa vs Hokkaido as recommendations was making it hard not just to read out loud as quickly as the speedy recording, even as quick as Satori Reader xdd

On today’s Satori Reader, I finished all the current episodes of 枯れた木, that’s why there’s 4 stories today ^^

Rating:

I find it weird when you have a recording like those ones, because I’m getting into the flow state listening to those, but you can tell that it could benefit from an N3 grammar where a N4 grammar is forced in to improve readability xddd

I started doing Bunpro today and was shocked to see this pop up:

well i’m sorry but i’ll still be allowing myself to cheat because i do recollect some of the grammars if i type them a sufficient amount of times

xddd

Then had another shock, because after something like 3-4 months, the Expert 1 items came back again

Luckily, the first grammars I did, stuff like でできている are things I have a solid grip on, but there might be a few Experts 1 I have a worse retention on

Anyway, today’s Bunpro was long and ehhh xdd

But I’m 200 days into the app, so woo, yay for me C:

Life

So funny story: there is a chain of burrito restaurants in Berlin called Chupenga and the construction of Amazon Tower in Berlin had just been finished.

There is a Chupenga at the Spree river right next to Uber Platz, but because Amazon employees would have it too long to walk, Amazon Tower has a new location for the restaurant on the ground floor of the power.

The owners of Chupenga franchise started cold calli…mailing some employees at our company to let them know that a new Chupenga is open and for today and tomorrow there is a 50% off and they could be interested in visiting the new place, even though it’s a ton of walking, so yeah, today over the lunch break we had an excursion walking forever to go to a new Chupenga xdd

There was a 30-minute long line inside of it because everyone else got the same cold mails from the company and wanted to get the discount, but the burrito bowl good would recommend xdd

One really cool thing about them is that their salsa roja really is spicy, and they also have some habanero sauces on the side you can season your burritos with in any amount depending on how much you like them, so since I’m addicted to spicy things at this point, I was pretty happy with my purchase, even though the lunch break was much MUCH longer than usual today xddd

ittadakimaaasu C:

Soo, on the note of gentrification however xdddd

Gentrification, politics contamination zone

Amazon bad, something something, we don’t need more skyscrapers, something something xddd

The really funny thing is that this pro-Palestine protest had a decent few people over it and people were throwing their fists in the air and the people from the office that went to Chupenga did so too, but by the time we left the restaurant, there was no longer any protest, so they set it up quickly and quickly wrap it up xddd

Actually, because of what was happening this weekend, one person came to work in a pro-Palestine shirt, his wife is an omni-activist, so he also wanted to represent some of her ideas too.

But yeah, in addition to Palestine, Berliners are very much not happy with the corporate culture being everywhere and justified so, because Berlin is trying to sanitize its own image right now (thank you corporate interest), Warschauer Straße, where the East Side Mall and Amazon Tower are in, are closing down night clubs and bars, so

And played some Worldwide races in MK World today with friends, first time I took Worldwide seriously in the game and you can’t take Worldwide seriously in this game because defensive play in this game is heavily dependent on RNG and it’s really frustrating how much more fun the game would be if they allowed for me to play Mario Kart instead of getting hit with items all the time xdd

Well, I’m still a scrub in this game, so hoping to get better, but went from ~4000VR to 7130VR today, so really good progress ^^

People are REALLY not fond of the open world intermission courses, and neither am I as well, so lobbies these days look something like this:

Not my pic, but yeah, nobody picks courses anymore, everyone just wants to avoid intermissions as much as they can

xdd

Anyway, German classes tomorrow, wonder what adventures I’ll end up having tomorrow ^^

mitrac · June 17, 2025, 1:50pm

Fun facts about judo, food pictures, cultural and political chat, you got it all

It’s all fun and games until you get annoyed, then you gotta think about graduating… or smile inwardly and just keep going

GolyBidoof · June 17, 2025, 10:31pm

June 17th, 2025

157 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
45 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Misc: マリオカートワールド online alone D: xdd

3.5h of German classes
A few German Tiktoks on YouTube shorts from wayamayafey, very adhd, would recommend xdd

Those damn Gen Zers, ruining Japanese language, grrr!

I heard a statement somewhere that everyone hates mistakes except for linguists who are always like “UuUuUUu, how did this come to be”, well, you removed ら from your sentence xddd

Bunpro today was really, really not fun, even when allowing myself to cheat I just needed to fail myself a decent few grammars because I just had no clue, no idea what the grammar could’ve even been in the first place. I’m glad the review today wasn’t so long, but still, <sigh>.

WaniKani on the other hand was really quick and I had 19 clean burns, including a word that at every step of the review I was like “uh oh, i dont know this one that well but I guess its duty…?”

…pass xdd

On the topic of trees on Satori Reader, I’m subscribing to 幸せの木 now, and compared to 枯れた木 it feels it doesn’t use that much more sophisticated grammar, but it loves to sprinkle in a very weird word every other sentence that makes me go like, “huh”? xdd
And the office conversations are pretty kanji heavy, like:

But we’re here to study kanji, so let’s goo 漢文s C:

I think I like the grammar of it though, relatively in the flow state.

German

Now that’s a bit more interesting ^^

Today we’ve talked about investing in infrastructure across the city and the fact that for all building projects in Germany there is a project called “Kunst am Bau”, art for buildings, where a small part of a fund used to build needs to be spent on the art-related purposes as well.

In Berlin, this is still a fairly new addition, and compared to some other cities, it still lags behind, but the fundamental difference between Poland and Germany when it comes to buildings is that Poland, whenever it has the budget, immediately spends it to keep things squeaky clean and sterile, and when it doesn’t have a budget, just leaves everything obscure and visibly underfunded, while Germany seems to be investing into making things look interesting as opposed to them looking clean.

Aside from this topic, a C1.2 opening opened up for the same course to keep going with it from September, and it sounds great, but there is a deecent likelihood I might not be in Berlin over that month, so I don’t know if signing up is a good investment, but alas. I’m still thinking about the crazy amounts of catching up xdd

And in terms of grammar, I have a feeling we’ve made a pretty clean map of all of the things German-language related one must keep track of, but I’m nowhere good at it. Today’s bestimmte und unbestimmte Artikel grammar drill left me with a score of 50%, so I might need to just keep grinding grammar drills and the N-Deklinations and the Genitivs, so ehhh.

Life

Kunst am Bau, huh?

Berlin is an interesting city in a way where the game called The World Ends With You (すばらしきこのせかい) is trying to make you go like “YESS THIS EXACTLY ONE CAT STREET IN THE WHOLE 渋谷 IS SO COOL AND SO STYLISH AND ITS A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN PUT GRAFFITI AND ALL”, so in Berlin those walls are out there every few hundred meters xddd

There’s place for both graffiti and proper high class art, like I wonder how long did it take to paint this mural. It’s been secured and protected since and it’s been around for a while now ^^

Though, not everyone is content with the idea of street art everywhere,

this poor person feels irritated by the art xddd

That’s not mural exactly, it’s on the East Side Gallery, but one of my favorite installations there is:

It’s a quote from the African wisdom, turned into a kids religious song, or a poem, but its message feels so universal. It might be one of my favorite quotes, period.

Many small people who in many small places do many small things that can alter the face of the world.

Can I change the world?
Can you change the world?
Should we change the world?
We do change the world, even when we don’t notice that exactly. Sometimes the world being changed takes time, but the seed has been planted already ^^

Heavy spoilers for NieR Automata, But the truth is that I’m only one girl. Maybe if I keep believing, my dreams will come to life. Come to life. ^^

OKAY ENOUGH INTRAVENOUS HOPE FOR TODAY

LUCY DACUS TOMORORW (i’ve only heard her new album like once please dont beat me up xddd)

See you tomorrow!

Shannon-8 · June 18, 2025, 12:55pm

Ah!!! That’s a great quote

And great related musings

Roaring with laughter about HOPIUM

Edit later: Political commentary about SO tells me that the US connotation of “HOPIUM” is negative, because the Trumpets used it as an insulting way to categorize Obama supporters who hoped there might be an end to systematic racism, to imply that they were not of right mind, instead they had too much of this drug…

GolyBidoof · June 19, 2025, 12:23am

Hope

Yup, being terminally online does leak out sometimes

It isn’t necessarily tied to Obama politics per se, but the connotation is to make fun of people by using the word to describe delusional states, similar to how “copium” is being used to make fun of people that cope. It still might be too early to attempt to reclaim that word, so I’ll just change it to “inject hope in the veins” in the previous post and leave it at that

June 18th, 2025

119 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
64 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader

Kinda brat frfr, even with cheating grows pretty fast ^^

One thing that makes Japanese really difficult compared to English to me is that short sentences have long meanings, and when the narrator reads out a sentence that is shorter in Japanese than in English, I can’t manage to imagine the sentences fast enough before the next one comes, so I’m feeling a bit tempted to finally click that speed setting on Satori Reader and slow down the recording a bit until I can understand what the sentence is saying

also,

THATS ME THATS ME C:
I was wondering how was secretary in Japanese, and 秘書 seems to be the winning ticket, nice to finally get to know it ^^

also,

pretending I didn’t read this one xdd
On the topic of summer vacation though, I heard the new Phineas and Ferb are really good, but I haven’t watched them yet. I need to make my summer really brat, but I don’t really have that great of a time to do a summer if I want to do a September, so stay tuned ^^

Today’s new grammars on Bunpro were all familiar and all related, so maybe they won’t have to add to the pool of ghosts ^^

Life

I promised Lucy Dacus, here’s Lucy Dacus ^^

Unfortunately, for those who tend to avoid my political contamination zone spoilers, the whole post will have bits and pieces of politics today, so content warning: skip over to the next one if those topics do trigger you, I promise, I’ll get less political in the future as well ^^

…maybe except for this one xdd
There is a service with rental cars in Berlin that’s called MILES, but as a rite of passage, as soon as a new car joins the service force, it is customary in Berlin to rub off the last dash from E on the sticker to give it the name it deserves ^^

And also, Tommy Cash is coming to Berlin! I’m probably not going, but he’s still pretty cool ^^

And yeah, everything in GolyBidoof universe builds on top of each other, so yeah, the concert did take place on Warschauer Straße I just mentioned a few days ago xddd

Anyway anyway, before we go to Lucy Dacus, the supporting act that Lucy selected was a British trans woman going by her stage name Jasmine.4.T, and she was pretty fire ^^

In this case, .4.T is a reference to “T4T” - dating which involves two trans people, (trans for trans), so she wanted to make a reference for being there for the trans girlies ^^

Her genre of music is called rAISING AWARENESS AND LETTING PEOPLE KNOW THAT SOCIAL ISSUES EXIST AND IT WOULD BE NICE TO FIX THINGS and she makes it loud and has fun with music, the audience was banging their heads even more than most of the acts of Lucy xddd

Her whole band was composed of at least queer people, so that was really neat to see on the stage, she dedicated one song to homeless people, there was an interval where she was screaming “FREE FREE” and people in the audience were screaming “PALESTINE”, she was making a fundraiser for her British woman friend who got detained for allegedly smashing Israeli drones in the UK and she brought up the point that in her country, trans rights have been eroded significantly and she no longer would count as a woman on official documents, which also was an inspiration for one of her songs, where she was singing her soul out singing that she feels like she has a woman soul.

So with me, trans women are women trans rights are human rights thank you ^^

Apparently Jasmine performed as a supporting act for Lucy Dacus before she transitioned a few years ago, so, hey, building a network of connections that last, gj Lucy ^^

After her act finished, she went off to sell off her CDs, and I was like “heck yeah i’m sponsoring this one” and got it signed immediately ^^

And then, here she is, in flesh and blood, Lucy Dacus.

For those who don’t know who Lucy is, I found her years ago thanks to her album called Historian (me! me!) and the most popular song on it called Night Shift, which has hundreds of millions of listens on Spotify now. After her breakout album, she was 1/3rd of an act called Boygenius together with Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker (who she is dating right now) and this tour is inspired by her new album called Forever is a Feeling.

Lucy is doing sung poetry with all sorts of backing music, she’s very romantic in her work, her work also often is interpreted as queer and a part of lesbian representation. She knows how to play different types of guitars and she was switching them over the course of the performance, sometimes whispering a poem acapella, sometimes there’s a violin in, sometimes shredding an electric guitar to express how upset she is. I’ll be posting some quotes from songs as I get to them ^^

If I stay busy, maybe I’ll forget how I feel and go on living life as I planned it

Her setlist went through all of her hits across the years, even though it was focusing mostly on the new album, it didn’t skimp on the previous ones either ^^

What if we don’t touch?
What if we only talk
About what we want and cannot have?
And I’ll throw a fit

There is one track on the new album that’s her and Hozier, and today Hozier wouldn’t come, but that didn’t stop Lucy from using a part of her staging crew to come and play Hozier’s part for the Bullseye song ^^

In many European cities, there’s a bridge
Where lovers put locks on the rails
And throw their keys into the river beneath
We were two such suckers
But the metal weighs down the bearings and the city has to cut thе bolts
If our spell wore off, maybe it’s all thеir fault

Also, relevant to this one:

^^

At the end of her performance, Lucy sang “Forever is a Feeling” and went through the gap in the door to fake out the end of the concert. But then she came back for an encore ^^

The encore was her Boygenius song, True Blue, and then I was like, “whew, what a great concert, I only wish she would sing Night Shi-”

The first time I tasted somebody else’s spit, I had a coughing fit
I mistakenly called them by your name
I was let down, it wasn’t the same

What a banger concert xdddd

After the concert, credits started rolling…

…sadly, Lucy only had vinyls and not CDs, so I ended up getting a sticker…

…and then rushed back home after the concert ^^

I was surprised how many songs I knew and how dedicated people were to her performances, there was something like a 1000 people in the venue, but it felt very intimate and everyone was on the exact same page. I love concerts like those, because you develop a thread of connection with a performer as well, but I’m sad Lucy didn’t stay for autographs. She has a concert tomorrow, so, ehhh, understandable ^^

Also, tag your Polish friend to give them a heart attack, Kunst am Bau ^^

What a day. What a concert ^^
I was so happy I managed to come and I enjoyed myself so much at it, went back with her songs on my headphones and arrived home with notes ringing in my ears C:

I don’t know what would be the other performers I’d enjoy as much as I did Lucy Dacus today, so having something as rare as her definitely is novelty ^^

Either way, German tomorrow and it’s really late already, so take care everyone and see you tomorrow!

GolyBidoof · June 19, 2025, 10:21pm

June 19th, 2025

171 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
46 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader

3.5h of German classes

HEY

I JUST HAD THAT WORD ON BUNPRO

those concidences when the same word appears between platforms are really funny, and I could say that they usually make me remember that word better, but I both struggled with the on-yomi grammar for 伴 today and what the grammar for “along with” was xdd

I also listened to YUYU telling me to be kind to myself again because some jobs require emotional labor and he’s buying my graces more and more with passing episodes ^^

Episode 8 of 枯れた木 is supposed to be about building anxiety, but my anxiety significantly dropped when I finally found something in Japanese I was able to understand, then it went back again when 勝 was about to go to sleep in episode 9 in 幸せの木, funny how it works ^^

German

I’m realizing as the time goes on two separate things

One, that I’m already on an exponential learning curve and not speeding it up at my course would be both disappointing and also hard to do if I want to keep up with the course

Two, that C1 lessons is no longer messing around and in order to pass it I’ll have to write an equivalent of an Abi in German xdddd
It’s both really impressive to me to know that I’m almost at that level already, and really scary to know that the responsibilities only keep climbing up.

Today we’ve had a presentation assignment, where we were brainstorming how does one prepare a presentation, write notes, arrive at a thesis of a specific topic, and I really enjoyed the theory behind it

The practice is a bit more difficult, because I find it hard to even prioritize doing homework from German, yet alone doing a presentation, knowing all well I would benefit SO, SO HARD from delivering a presentation, so it’s adding a

on my mental health xdd

And in the topics of today’s lesson, we talked about Bauhaus today! No, it’s not the Baumarkt Bauhaus, it’s the artstyle that brings art to the working aesthetic, and brings working aesthetic to the art. The name was based after a school that unified like-minded artists that lived and BREATHED design, the description we got in the book sounded a bit culty, but we stan ^^

Here’s an example of a few pieces of furniture:

One of the most impressive things about this style is that it’s dated at over 100 years now, and yet it still looks fairly modern, a bit futuristic even ^^

Bauhaus was relocated to Berlin a year before NSDAP disbanded it, and its archival location is going through a renovation that keeps going on forever right now

There is a temporary museum though that everyone can visit!

I most likely will not however ^^

Now thinking back I realize that the German textbook that we’re using right now has SO many cool topics and things inside of it that I find myself always surprised by each next topic we discuss in the classes

Life

I’m so, so, SO drained. I haven’t slept 8 hours in a night since, hm, longer than when I felt ill xddd
And I absolutely need, crave those 8 hours on average, which means there’s a non-zero chance I’ll just wake up at 1 or 2pm tomorrow

I don’t work tomorrow, and I don’t have any plans for tomorrow, so my first intuition was to do my Summer Solstice marathon early, but then I realized I really don’t want to push the activation cost for tomorrow not to be able to rest up over the course of June at all.

So I most likely will not start my marathon tomorrow morning, but I can at least gauge which source material should be good to read over that time.

Problem is, I already have an adventure or two scheduled for Saturday, so that might hamper my chances of doing really well in the marathon, but I need my oonga boonga day for tomorrow and I’ll see how oonga boonga works as I mentally turn on the Japanese gear

With the German today and my head staying in German on the way back home from the language school, I started being a little sad with the fact that my Japanese is not improving as fast as German, but see, the only way how to speed it up is to actually put in conscious effort and study.

So my goal for tomorrow is not to start a marathon yet, but at least read something that’s not my 5-part study regiment, in Japanese: maybe to catch up on Frieren or something, because

rel.

Anyway, maybe related, maybe not related ^^

I am attempting to REST UP TOMORROW
WICHTIG
重要

see you tomorrow ^^

mitrac · June 20, 2025, 3:28pm

This seems to be a feature of German language learning materials I haven’t come across at least as commonly in other language’s teaching materials. It’s incredibly common in my experience that there is an agenda aside from language learning - learning about the environment, or learning practical skills. Most other language’s materials focus just on the daily conversions like restaurants and hotels, and use travel vocab as a way to introduce something cultural a bit superficially.

Anyway, I always think about that when you post about German because it reminds me of books I used donkey’s years ago

pembo · June 20, 2025, 3:48pm

Bauhaus is so slick

GolyBidoof · June 21, 2025, 12:18am

June 20th, 2025

158 reviews on WaniKani
15 lessons on WaniKani
68 reviews on Bunpro
3 lessons on Bunpro
3 stories on Satori Reader
Book Club: 葬送のフリーレン第４9話
Misc: マリオカートワールド friend birthday party ^^ xdd

Well, not many good news on the Japanese front, I spent over an hour and a half doing reviews today… after midnight… in a mindless mode xddd

Glad I at least did Satori Reader before midnight and could more or less follow 幸せの木, but I’m feeling really, really upset with Bunpro today.

Even by allowing myself to cheat,

I still struggled extensively, and this “next review in 6 minutes” was just rubbing the salt into the wound xdd

It’s already after 2, so I don’t want to spend too much on the retrospective of what goes wrong, but 振りに never connects, つつも sounds like a made up grammar (xddd) and どころではなくなった really sounds like it could benefit from those Gen Zs cutting down on “ら” in られる xddd

I really do not think that reviews that are this long, and this incorrect, are working in my favor, I only have 61 grammar points from N2 left to go (I’ll finish Bunpro N2 on July 1st probably), but after that, I’m done with Bunpro lessons for a loooong time, maybe even a month, maybe even longer.
I don’t see how doing N1 would do me any favors if I don’t remember N2 and I’m sleepwalking through the N2 prompts regardless xddd

I’m not smart enough for Bunpro, I swear xddd

幸せの木 also has an interesting tendency to start sentences with 勝は, it takes me a bit out of the story, but makes it easier to follow, so at least there’s that ^^

Life

Today was trying to get myself in the Japanese mood to prepare myself for the marathon tomorrow, and goal somewhatttt achieved?

I had a breakfast at a general-east-asian cafe that had some reeeeally cute decor C:

This was where I ended up reading Frieren, btw

That queer/trans book club I attended a while back had a girl who sent me an invitation today to go to a proper demo tomorrow and I was like “YEES THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW” so I was zooming in and out of a chapter and checking messages from her xddd

Funny how they think that 乾杯 isn’t Japanese, and also, using katakana for it, but oh well xdd

The moments of celebration and sharing happiness ^^

Obligatory lore:

i wasn’t making it up xdddd

And yeah, westaboos shaking my head xddd

Koreaboos shaking my head (I’d eat this one tho, let’s go capitalism and reappropriation of korean working class stories!!! C:)

Went to a bookstore and they had a display on Japanese books, two years ago or something I’d be like “WOW THATS SO COOL” but now I’ve seen a few too many of those and it’s like “cool, i’ll get to them in 2030” xddd

And met up with a French/Londonese friend visiting Berlin for this weekend, he travelled to Japan in May and here’s his shirt from GU xddd

He had plenty of stories to share, that was really sweet of him, but also to make the plane today he had to pull crazy early morning, so an hour in he started slooowly loosing track of the conversation xddd

He went to lay down on his bed in the hotel and I went back home to celebrate my friend’s birthday, I mentioned him in the log before, we had a few hours of Mario Kart World together ^^
There is a specific Toadette set in the game that looks like Raidou Kuzunoha, so I think I’m going to be maining that one C:

So plan for tomorrow, bouldering at 11, Rotes Rathaus open doors at 2, demo at 3, chinese noodles afterwards, and then I’m going back home (6? 7? 8?) and starting my WaniKani summer solstice marathon, I might do really at it but at least I’ll do something different than mashing grammar and kanji for hours xddd

See you tomorrow!

Topic		Replies	Views
Have you been studying Japanese for 2-3 years? Japanese Language	40	5470	April 29, 2018
A certain Bidoof's acquired cake, confessions of a Level 60! WaniKani	16	1609	February 4, 2022
Reflections from an unconventional learner( lv20, 7 years in) Japanese Language	32	3328	May 19, 2021
How long do you study a day and what do you accomplish in that time? Japanese Language	25	10308	November 8, 2018
雨ニモマケズ風ニモマケズ (Just turned Level 60!) Level 60 Celebration	64	3364	October 26, 2020

A Certain Bidoof's Multi-Language Travel & Friends & Sometimes Study Log 🇯🇵 🇩🇪 🇨🇦 🇵🇱

June 10th, 2025

Life

June 11th, 2025

Life

June 12th, 2025

German

Life

June 13th, 2025

Life

June 14th, 2025

Life

June 15th, 2025

Life

June 16th, 2025

Life

June 17th, 2025

German

Life

June 18th, 2025

Life

June 19th, 2025

German

Life

June 20th, 2025

Life

Related topics