A Pineapple Learns a Language (And Talks About Roller Coasters)

Japanese Language Study Logs (Public)
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Hello everyone! My name is Pypeapple (or Pineapple if I could ever get to a platform early enough to snipe the username (or pype if you’re short on time)), and this is going to be my spot for cataloging my progress!

Longer Introduction/why I'm here

woooooaaahh, you clicked on this? Good luck!

I live in the United States and have only spoken one language my entire life. As of writing, I am in the middle of my college education for things that have very little to do with language; I am out of my depth the instant I start learning anything related to communication, even in English.

“So pineapple, why in the world are you trying to learn Japanese?” I hear no one ask (my computer volume is very low). I have a silly answer, a much sillier answer, and unfortunately, no real answer to speak of.

Silly reason: I got bored. I’ve always liked anime and manga and have wondered just how hard it would be to learn to read/listen to another language. About two weeks ago, as of writing, I didn’t have anything better to do, so I sat down and memorized all of the kana and immediately got hooked on Wanikani. I’m now determined to see this all the way through because…

…Sillier reason: I love roller coasters! It’s a genuine obsession! I’ve ridden over 250 different coasters all over the US and soon to be Canada, and Japan has some of the most unique rides ever built. A Japan trip for me was inevitable even before I got into anything related to Japanese media, but now I have a chance to be more than prepared for a coaster tour in the far future.

My goal is to give weekly (or at the very least twice a month) updates on my studies. Right now, it’s simple, Wanikani/bunpro, and what Genki 1 I can understand for the foundation, but who knows where I’ll end up. I’ve just finished my second week of wanikani and can feel the grind start to set in, so why not leverage some peer pressure to spark some motivation?

As mentioned previously, I love roller coasters, so I’ll end each of these with a coaster fact that will sometimes also be Japan-related!
Thanks for stopping by!

Hollywood Dream: The Ride at Universal Studios Japan is a massive 144-foot-tall coaster that’s packed with swooping hills and features a second train that faces backwards. You’ll never see the first drop coming!

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Welcome! There are a lot of us here who love to read people’s logs and encourage your learning! I think your reason for learning Japanese is a great reason. Why not?

I also love roller coasters, but have never gotten my fill. Hollywood Dream likes like my kind of ride. I’m eager to see more roller coaster fun facts.

Please keep posting.

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Welcome! So, what happens when you run out of coaster facts?

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Welcome!

Honestly I love your “sillier” reason for learning Japanese! I feel like having an intense and niche interest is quite common in Japan, so when you visit you should be ready to tell people about it. I think you’ll find it’ll be a fantastic conversation starter! :roller_coaster:

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By that point, I’ll be fluent so it won’t be much of a problem :wink:

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Welcome to the club, that’s a very common reason around here, mine at least xdddd

Ahhh, come to Europe, Mirabilandia in Italy is great!

Looking forward to following your coaster journey then C:

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Welcome to the study log gang!

What a rollercoaster of a study reason
Roller coasters are pretty great though, I hope you live your dreams and go on every coaster in the world :raising_hands:

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Hello everyone! A week ago I knew less japanese than I know now.

I started this log whiout giving any thought to format, structure, or content (a solid parallel to my decision to learn japanese in the first place but I digress). I’m sure I’ll end up with a pretty consistent pattern for how these get put together, but for now it’s slightly better than haphazard.

What I am sure of is that I like to hide walls of rambling text, so my thoughts are usually in the dropdowns.

The bit that matters:

Current numbers:

WaniKani Level: 4

Grammar: Lesson 4 Genki

Vocab: idk how to put a value to this

Goals for this week:

Clear WK reviews as they come in

Get a functional understanding on adjective and verb conjugation

Clear the daily anki study every day

Thoughts/analysis

I made it to level 4, and with that officially paid to burn turtles! At this rate I’m slightly over one week per level, so it’ll be a sad day when it lines up just right and I don’t get to celebrate a level up in a week’s log.

From what I was able to gather from a few people around the fourms/on YouTube, There’s three parts to learning Japanese at the stage I’m at. Memorizing kanji, learning grammar, and memorizing vocab. With that in mind I’m using Wanikani for kanji and a little bit of vocab, genki to learn grammar and bunpro (for now) to practice it, and an Anki deck for more vocab. I think it’s a good way to start but I feel like there’s definitely better systems out there. (If anyone knows a good way to practice grammer other than bunpro I’m all ears)

random thoughts

This section is reserved for whatever I want to say, I’ll usually drop something I’m thinking about over the week here.

It’s insane to me how… simple this is. From a finding recourses standpoint at least. Every piece of material Ive seen is readily available or even optimized for being used on a phone. It’s crazy that I can wake up and decide to learn Japanese on a whim and immediately start using incredibly useful tools like wanikani. The internet sucks for a lot of reasons, but you have to admit this is pretty cool

That’s all for this week! Thanks for stopping by!

The first roller coasters to attempt a vertical loop were built in the 1800s. They were so poorly designed that parks had to staff nurses at the exits of the ride to treat inevitable injuries.

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We’re back with another week! This marks the one-month mark of my studies!

Over the last week, I hit a few personal milestones. Level 5, my first items in the master category, and over 120 kanji learned on WK. I also made it through the first 9 lessons in remembering the kanji. This was also the first week when the review and lesson pile got a little intimidating, but I used the ancient forum knowledge “don’t try to do everything in one go,” and it was all a lot more manageable.

My goals for next week:
10 lessons in RTK
WK Level 6

ramblings

I spent a lot of time this week finding out about the infinite ways people have come up with to learn languages. Luckily, no one agrees on anything, and they’re extremely adamant that everyone else is not only wrong but maliciously trying to trick you. I realize I started that last sentence with “luckily,” that was my mistake.

What I gathered is (big shock), studying Japanese is the best way to learn Japanese. Everyone tries to make their system new, shiny, and different, but it all boils down to putting stuff into an SRS as you learn it, and then reviewing it as you add other stuff into an SRS. It just takes a lot of time with constant effort, and that’s something people are (read “I am”) bad at dealing with.

I’m extremely impatient, one of the reasons I started RTK on the side. WK’s system is great for preventing burnout, but sometimes I have a lot of free time to burn and I want to keep learning about Kanji. Eventually, I can get to grammar and sentence mining and all that junk, but for now, I need to get familiar with these funny little pictographs and that’s my plan moving forward.

The longest roller coaster in the world (for the next year or so) is Steel Dragon 2000 in Nagashima Spa Land. This coaster is so unique that I could talk about it for the next few months, but I’ll start with the numbers. It’s a massive 318 feet tall, reaches 95 miles per hour, and travels over 8,133 feet of track!

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Yep, it’s the end of week 5 of learning Japanese. yep, end of the week, the weekend, some would say, not a day later, that would be absurd.

I had a bit of a busy week that didn’t let me spend a lot of time doing reviews or RTK. I’m not super happy about it, but it makes sense that a project of several years can’t always be in good spirits and pace. All I can do is get back to it and enjoy the process. Still made it to lvl 6

Last week’s goals
10 lessons in RTK
WK Level 6

*shhhh* there's a paragraph hiding in here

I only did about 5 lessons in RTK, and I have two almost-good reasons: I essentially started over because my flashcards were backwards, and I played in a two-day ultimate frisbee tournament, which left me deeply needing sleep. Looking back, I’m not that broken up about it, it was a rough week to juggle everything I care about.

Next week’s goals:
10 lessons in RTK
WK Level 7

ramblings

The more I even dip my toes in Japanese, the more I notice about english and the more I realize language is friggin impossible.

Like, how do people even know one language? We have the same sound to mean “falling over” and “going somewhere for a weekend or so” and just expect everyone to know what sort of “trip” we mean? What in the world? How has the world not devolved into anarchy, fires, and other things people associate with Detroit?

At this point, I usually remember that it’s actually easy and comes down to time in the language and just being used to the patterns that people use, just like every other skill. Something I’ll work up to and eventually understand with time. It’s not impossible, people do it every day.

November 10th, 2024 was the first time in history where the record for “world’s tallest roller coaster” went down in height, after the previous tallest coaster, Kingda Ka, was suddenly closed without warning. It was imploded about two months later

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I never got a chance to ride it :sob:

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Tragic :sob:
I was lucky enough to get several rides on it over a couple years and it (along with the original top thrill dragster) was truly special

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Alllllllrighty, I don’t want to spend too much time on this week because it wasn’t a good one, Japanese-wise, at least.

My goals were a bit ambitious for going into finals week (and maybe in general) so I’m scaling back a tad for this week and we’re going to get right back on track.

Last week’s goals:
10 lessons in RTK
WK Level 7

Nope, I didn’t complete either. That’s fine, we’ll get them next time

Next week’s goals:
Complete 5 lessons in RTK
WK Level 7

I don’t have a lot to say here, I wasn’t able to get a lot done this week.

Flying Dinosaur at Universal Studios Japan is widely regarded as the best flying coaster ever built. not a very interesting fact but oh my gosh I want to ride it so badly you have no idea

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Whew! Another week has blown by. I wasn’t very efficient with my WK reviews but I still feel like I made solid progress on everything I’m working on. All in all, a good week.

Last week’s goals
WK level 7
5 lessons in RTK

This week’s goals
0 vocab lessons
350 frames in RTK

why the change in goals?

Short answer: fine tuning my motivation

Long answer: I realized that Im less motivated to do WK if I’m trying to blitz through it as fast as possible. (Some call it burn out, others call it “remembering you have other things to do in life as well so juggling everything at the same pace can be difficult”… tomato/potato.

This lack of motivation came to a head when I reached level 7 and saw my lesson queue

IMG_4328
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Horrifying

So, in order to get back to top of things and set a pace for myself throughout the summer, this next week is 100% dedicated to clearing out the Level 5 and 6 lessons that I did a great job of ignoring.

…
Oh and going by lesson is a terrible way to track progress with how I’m going through RTK

Japanese manufacturer TOGO has only one operating coaster left standing in the united states, the big apple coaster. It’s also widely regarded as one of the worst coasters of all time

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I forget what number week it is and I’m not checking! Hello everyone, welcome back. I hit a couple milestones this week, first items in enlightened and halfway through RTK (that’s 1100 kanji!), Boy are my arms tired. Anyway there’s more yapping in the dropdown but for now thats my week.

Last week’s goals
0 vocab lessons (I got close though!)
350 frames in RTK

This week’s goals
Guru lvl 8 starting kanji and radicals
300 frames in RTK
Setup Sentence mining

yapping

Last I posted I had a disgusting lesson queue ~250 some deep. Today that number is down to…

Image.heic

Ok I’ll admit that’s not a great look, but once you account for level 7 making up 83 of those you can see that I did moderately better than you’d expect!

On another note I’m not entirely sure if I want to keep going with RTK and/or WK and just switch entirely to sentence mining. It seems like doing i+1 type stuff could be really effective for learning everything at once. In a week when I get clear of an obligation I’m currently involved in Im thinking of dropping WK for a bit and see if that method works better for me. The only thing that I’m concerned with is that if it doesn’t work, I’ve burned time. But I guess any study is good study so nothings truly “wasted”. I’ll keep posting updates so… food for thought I guess

I was overly harsh on TOGO last week, bringing up their worst coaster, so today’s fact is just informing you that the ultra twister exists and it’s very cool. I’ll talk more about TOGO’s groundbreaking coasters eventually

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Interesting to see quite an unusual motivation for learning Japanese, but very cool :smiley: sometimes the unusual reasons can be the best.

One of my friends has worked in a big theme park in the UK for a couple years now, and has probably a few hundreds creds from coasters around all of the UK and half of Europe. He keeps half-planning to come to Japan and visit all the unique ones here, but hasn’t committed to it yet. I’m hoping that he manages to come here so I can take him around some theme parks at some point before I eventually leave Japan.
(However, despite being forced to go on several coasters in several parks in several countries with him, I in fact hate rollercoasters with a passion, so plan on being a passive observer and enjoying the rest of the parks).

Anyway, good luck with your Japanese journey!

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That’s awesome! I hope you get the chance to show him around (and I hope he gets to ride ejanaika one day, supposedly it’s one of the best coasters ever built)

I in fact hate rollercoasters with a passion, so plan on being a passive observer and enjoying the rest of the parks

I’ll never understand some people :sob:. There’s still fun to be had in taking in the atmosphere of a park, especially the immersive themeing of universal and Disney. Although, If you ever make your way to disneysea the journey to the center of the earth ride might be up your alley :wink:

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This one’s late by a record breaking (checks watch) eight days ( ﾟヮﾟ)/ really cashing in on that twice a month minimum I gave myself in the first post ig

おはようございます and all that, this language is really fun to study I’m not going to lie. I put A LOT of words in the drop-down to simply say I’ve switched up my study methods and I’m starting to see the results I’m aiming for. That’s really about it for the past two weeks, thanks for stopping by.

what happened to the goals?

Short answer: they were dumb

Reeeeally long answer: like I said before, I’ve changed up how I’m approaching studying. Things like wanikani and RTK were working for what they set out to accomplish, getting me familiar with the kanji… But my goal isn’t to learn about kanji or vocabulary, it’s to understand japanese. I wasn’t satisfied with what I felt was only learning about things tangential to japanese, and not actual japanese. So I tried going all in on “the Moe way” for the last two weeks or so. In short, along with the JLab Anki deck that a friend recommended to me, this approach gave me so much more satisfaction in studying, srsing, and immersing. (Also some silly moments where I surprised people at my work by telling them what their shirts said).

All that to say the slightly awkward bit further down in the paragraph where people won’t read it: I’ve dropped wanikani. Again I think WK does exactly what it says it does, and it does it well. I just found out that what I wanted and what WK did were two separate things. The issue lies in the fact that I don’t have anywhere else log my progress and I really enjoy the fourms, so here’s my solution: I’m just going to assume no one actually reads these and no one will notice that I’m not doing the thing this site was made for. If you are reading this, shhhhhhhh don’t tell anyone, it’ll be our secret :wink:

Wildfire at Kolmården is probably one of the best wooden roller coasters ever built… What’s odd is that Kolmården isn’t an amusement park… It’s a zoo

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Secret 😉

You’re not the only one on here not using wanikani, so there is not a need to worry :slightly_smiling_face:

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It is my personal belief that WaniKani works the best at least a year into Japanese study already, when you know what an on’yomi and kun’yomi are, you have written a few kanji by hand and you know what the stroke order is, and then yes, the progress from wanikani will be exponential, because there is a ton of source material without any furigana at all, but yeah, for a person just starting with the language, you will not know the language thanks to it ^^

i swear my study log was supposed to be about studying but now i feel like both people and i would be disappointed if it went back to just studying xddddd

OH OK I ALMOST LEAKED TO EVERYONE THAT THERE’S A SECRET MESSAGE IN THERE BUT LUCKILY I DIDNT WHEWWWW

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