HELLO AGAIN! 
I want to try posting daily about what silly little things I try + the small study sessions I get through will help keep me on track and on top of things! This will be SUPER SCUFFED as I’ve never done this sorta thing before, but like everything it is a learning experience! I think it’ll also be good to list the variety of resources I use to study so people can give me some pointers and/or show me some better options if the things I’m using are not up to par since I am still INCREDIBLY new to this and I don’t want to pretend that I know what I’m doing lol
My main resources are:
- WaniKani (ofc)
- Tae Kim’s guide to Japanese grammar
- KanjiKana and their JLPT flashcards
- JapanDict
Having two dictionary sites on my “study list” is a little bit odd, but I have cooked up my own way to incorporate things I love into learning new Kanji, and I have now dubbed it:
Homebrew Otaku study!!
(+ some insight on how my silly brain works)
SOME BACKGROUND INFO!! I grew up with a mom who was a speech pathologist, had an audio processing disorder and was hard of hearing. One key way I remember learning and growing my proficiency in English as a kid was by watching shows, sing-a-longs, and schoolhouse rock with her. Because of her audio processing disorder, we always watched with subtitles! Reading the words as they were said helped cement the association between the spellings, characters, and sounds even deeper into my mind as a child, and even helped me with pronouncing unknown words. It also added an extra layer of reading and study into something I did for fun and to relax!
With that info on me, I hope it gives some insight into my silly ritual lol. I mainly use JapanDict and KanjiKana for one specific type of exposure learning, where I look up the terms I don’t know and try to add them to my memory through things I like? It sounds odd, and I have no clue how much sense it makes or how helpful it is but here is what I do:
- Every week or so I’ll pick a Vocaloid or idol song I really like and look up the lyrics on the wiki, or any site that has the lyrics written down in the original Kanji and Kana in one tab, and have the song open in another.
- I’ll either watch through the MV and/or lyric video while trying to read alongside the words in the video, or have the song playing as I read through the lyrics page and try to follow along. (Watching lyric MVs also helps with learning how to read characters in highly stylized fonts, so it can be helpful in it’s own unique ways too!)
- After my first listen through, I’ll go through the lines one by one, trying to pick out the things I recognize (particles, conjugations and SOME Kanji), before looking up the terms I don’t know. One at a time! Even if a term is Jukugo, I’ll look them up one by one, looking at their Onyomi, Kunyomi, and common Jukugo in an attempt to understand each part of the word and how they interact!
I hope this makes a little sense to anyone who reads this. It’s a kinda dumb way to expose myself to unknown Kanji, but it gets me to associate them with things that mean a lot to me! The first time I ever attempted to use this form of study was with one of my long-time favorite songs: Cat Food by Doriko!
It was a genuinely amazing experience, going through this song bit by bit, getting emotional as I went through the song, feeling a much deeper connection to a song that already felt like a warm blanket, as I started to understand the characters used in the piece. I felt like it gave me a deeper peek into the specific words that were used for the song, and a better understanding of the lyrics instead of just reading translations and taking their interpretation at face value. It’s almost like the feeling of hearing a story secondhand versus seeing it for yourself, it’s truly a wonderful, all encompassing feeling that drives me to want to learn even more!
This form of “studying” is more of a way for me to see new characters and be introduced to new Kanji through exposure, rather than memorizing through flash cards and things like WaniKani, but I thought it could be a fun thing to share, and will give context if/when I post links to songs and lyrics when I go over things I studied for the day!
Dennis what did you even do bro? [12/13/25]
At 12:50 PM EST, I am still waiting for my WaniKani daily lesson reset, but I did go through my reviews flawlessly (yay!)! It’s very small and simple right now, only learning radicals, but I’m excited to take a step up into more difficult territory eventually!! Learning is an uphill hike, not a sprint!! I also went through JLPT N5 flashcards from KanjiKana (on Recall.card) for about 30 minutes! I’ve started to recognize a handful of them, and the small steps in progress make me super hyped to get even the smallest step closer to my dreams!
I do have one question for people on here, do you have any youtube channels or podcasts you’d recommend for listening practice and study? I’d love to find some grammar and language lectures I can listen to while drawing! Multitasking is a requirement in my soul and I’ve been struggling to find some good longform lectures to have on while I work on my other hobbies </3
一と八! I have been absolutely SPEEDING through the bits I’ve been given so far on WaniKani, I know it’ll get to be a LOT more intense the more I learn and the more I need to keep in my brain, but right now it has not yet reached Sisyphus levels yet LOL. I also did another day of practicing with 
Feel free to ask questions about anything in the learning process, and keep it up!
