I got a confirmation email but no product, so maybe there were other criteria than just inputting the password?
Well of course they didn’t say anything, it was said to be a Secret Santa.
I’m imagining a situation where KyokaJiro asked the Tofugu staff to buy for others a present and when they heard that Kyoka had ~20 different people in mind they set up that site. In my opinion this is about the most possible explanation. I remember Kyoka also stating once
“If everything turns out, you’ll see soon”
after someone asked about their “survey”.
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I am very sad now
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I read this, then about 30 posts later it finally hit me and I got the answer. I would hardly call this a “deducible” hint. You really do have to just guess a few different things until you get it.
Edit: and it sold out in the time I had to actually go teach a class. What a farce.
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Oh. I was leaning towards trying “kuroichi”, but yeah, I guess that’s not the word. There’s literally nothing about the page which suggests that should be the password - it’s reading numbers off the walls.
I guess we’re doing another “behind closed doors” ARG this year.
My password starts with the letter “why?”
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I really don’t know the reason myself, I just took the only connection people with an email had and drawed a conclusion. As to why and how and don’t know any more than you.
As insane as it sounds, it’s plausible, considering the fact that the email specially said “a super kind WaniKani Community member wants to give you a holiday gift.”
If some WK member did try to arrange this, it sucks that we screwed it up, but there should’ve been more information in the email to tell us to keep it a secret or something. Despite receiving the email, I didn’t order the prize, so somebody else must’ve gotten it. 
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Oh, if this was really something paid for by a member I’d feel bad. I don’t need whatever it is, I just wanted to solve the riddle. If this is the case and someone from the Tofugu team reads this, please invalidate my order…
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Durtle black market >
Google translate into japanese >
“ダートルブラックマーケット” >
select other translation of “闇市場durtle”
but it’s actually just “闇市, Yamiichi” or black market
after i bashed my head against a wall for an hour and 3 different translation apps
I don’t think it’d be anything like that. They wouldn’t be naive enough to just open “orders” to anyone if they were supposed to be sent exclusively to certain people.
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Maybe they thought they’d be in the clear by making the page password-locked? They should’ve just sent an email saying “yo, user X has a gift for you, reply to this email for more information”, or something…
Everyone please calm down. I just got back to the thread.
Let me type.
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Well, if what you say is true I’m sure the Tofugu staff will do something about it (or hope so because otherwise I would feel extremely bad).
Personally I thought it was a Christmas riddle of some sort. I remember someone noted during last year’s game that there was an empty tab called durtle (if I remember correctly, the durtle-black-market link was already there), so I just thought it was some continuity to that.
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THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED
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Why was this all publicly available? Why was this tread created by @Jirachi (could be Koichi for all I know)? Why was the password just a short word-translation of the URL? Why use the password at all and not just the link to the page?
I mean if it’s indeed intended only for a select few people then it’s a screw up on Tofugu’s side.
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I didn’t realize that password hunting was going on.
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I was checking that page periodically to see if there was a message from the church as I noticed it a while ago when I bought some things, and came across this thread.
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If this were the case I would’ve expected individual passwords for each user, and none of them to be a translation of a word from the page but typed in romaji.
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I truly apologize if this upset others.
I was on work after checking the thread. I thought people were joking around when I commented on the post. So I went back to working.
I just came back to check in and found this
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I’m sorry, Kyoka. I didn’t claim the gift, but I did try… only because it appeared to be a treasure hunt, and not what it actually was. 
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