Hello! I’m Bug, welcome to my 2025 study log. For some background, I’ve been interested in learning Japanese, as well as a dozen other languages, ever since I was a wee child. However, I have made ever little progress over that time. In 2024 I decided it was time to get serious and oh how it’s been lovely. Although joyful to be learning and retaining I’m not happy with my speed and the “gaps” I take in my learning - that’s where I thought a study log would be useful. To hold myself accountable I will be logging something every single day. I don’t care how small or large of a task I complete - anything is better than nothing.
Surpass N5 Be able to start reading, even just children’s books Keep up with log and blog Find a consistent study routine
My Japanese blog on my personal website that I’ll be updating every Friday with my weekly thoughts and goals
My Natively profile where I’ll be updating the books I read when I get to that point. For now it’s a lot of browsing and wishing
I’m excited to start daily blogging on here and hope to connect with some of you! The WaniKani community seems so caring <3 If anyone has any suggestions or just wants to say hi feel free to below v v v
Oh, no, I think I found a bug – need to report it to the dev team!
On a meowre serious note, welcome to WaniKani and this community!
We have a very nyaaaaaaaaaaaice commeownity and I really hope you’d like it here!
Best of luck with your studies!
Yep, probably should have done some testing to confirm that a triple dose of magic is within the safety zone but you’re clearly responding so I’m 93.4% certain that I didn’t cause some sort of fatal catastrophe.
You’re welcome for the warm… welcome. I learned not to repeat the word three times.
And thank you for the comment on the Senior Beagle Emeritus, I’m sure that he’s looking down and caught the smile on my face as I read that and hopefully he knows what part he played.
Well! first day of my daily log and I’m late by an hour… great start :^D
hahaha no but in all seriousness it’s storming like crazy here! and I don’t care much about the specific times. I didn’t do much today,
Did some reviews, not many but more than I have the past few days! Brainstorming what my goals for my first month of “serious” learning will be
That’s all! and you know what? I’m proud of myself for doing SOMETHING and blogging it! Motivation isn’t easy to come by so celebrating the small victories is important ^u^
Since summer is just around the corner, (June 20th) this is more of my “first month back learning goals.” - also trying to make them as simple as possible! As I’ve explained before, I tend to go through “bursts” with my learning and though its fun for a time, it’s not fun to come back to and forget most of what you’ve learned. So, by keeping it simple for myself I’ll build my confidence AND stay consistent. :)) Of course, I’d like to speed up the pace eventually but I really do like the process of learning languages so I’m not in any rush.
If anyone has any opinions about the websites Iisted above (or genki I) I’d love to hear them. Happy learning everyone
I think that’s absolutely the right attitude. Unless you have a specific goal that would prioritize focusing on specifically one part of the language, being able to function effectively will require building a foundation of listening, speaking, and reading (though I hope not writing since I’m choosing to ignore that avenue). It’s possible to try to cram as much info as possible as soon as possible, and that can work for a very short time, but building up each layer upon each other will help you achieve your final goals in an appropriate time.
The good news is you’ve found yourself in a great place here! (At least, based on my expertise based on almost 60 days on WaniKani, which surely makes me the subject matter expert ). I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of support for the N5 goal for the year, too.
If you ever start to think you’re going to slow, or it’s too hard, just think forward five years or so and think about how good you’ll feel when you’ve accomplished your specific goals for learning Japanese. Whether it’s narrow like watching anime without subtitles, or playing games in Japanese, or a huge goal like being able to live and work in Japan, when you get there you’ll remember the effort and the accomplishment, and it won’t matter in the least if it takes two years or four once you’re there!
You’re exactly right - in a few years I’ll be happy I decided to push myself a little everyday. My bursts will still come and go but truly, doing something everyday, changes the game hahaha. Just listening to music helps so even on bad days, I can “learn.”
Also I’m trying to have shorter term goals this time round, that way I can get a little “boost” every time I accomplish one of my goals
It seems simple now that I’m typing it out but seriously - it’s taken a while for me to get here! The small things mean everything
Got through 64 reviews, may not be alot for everyone but it is for me right now, so yay!
Decided to reset my bunpro and got through my first 3 lessons as well as my first set of reviews!
When I had originally started using bunpro I could not comprehend Japanese sentence structure so it left me very confused and made it almost impossible to understand. Luckily, during my learning “hiatus” I did watch a bunch of videos all about it! So I feel like I’m more well prepared now - though I still expect it to be challenging
Yeah, it’s the ‘bad days’ that are my biggest obstacle in general - if it’s something I am really personally invested in like learning Japanese, I think I get through it okay, but if it’s something I just think I should do like exercise, a bad day or two and I tend to drop off. Having related interests like music that count toward studying for you gives a great outlet to deal with those days.
Yup! It took me a long while to come to that realization - my natural tendency was always to just have a big goal and then trust myself to correct course along the way. And if I stay active, I could make that work - but it’s a lot harder when you don’t have something that you can use to validate the progress other than “Well, I think I went from 0.5% of the way there to 0.55% this week, lets go!”.
I’ve learned and really like the idea of working backward from my goal, figuring out natural subgoals for important things to accomplish toward that goal as the sort of ‘outline’, and then in the short term trying to find specific measurable steps toward that to give that progress. Levels in WK are a nice one for that.
[quote=“unicornmagic, post:16, topic:70202”]
I had a great day today :DD [/quote]
Looks like it! Whether 64 reviews is a lot or a little for someone else isn’t important, if that’s a lot for you right now it means you’re really putting the effort in. And that’s the other part of short-term goals, the numbers are nice things to motivate and reinforce us, but they’re just milestones to mark progress - if a number is lower than someone else’s or there’s a bad day, just think of it as getting there a day later.
Ooohhh I really like the WK level goals! I’m totally going to incorporate that once I get through my reviews
Thank you for always having kind words for me
If that aligns with your longer term goals, definitely! For me, it wouldn’t be motivating on its own as a goal because gamification for the sake of points/streaks/etc. doesn’t really work, but I can say things like “if I want to be able to read Japanese, I need vocab, and WK is vocab, so if I get to level 10, I’ve learned this amount of vocab”.
Always happy to do so! There’s way too much negativity out there and that stuff seems to be on blast, so anything we can do to counterbalance that is a good and sometimes necessary thing.
Surpass N5
Good luck on your Japanese journey 
Get through the remaining 153 WankiKani reviews
). I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of support for the N5 goal for the year, too.
