Made it to level 11! Officially out of the “pleasant” levels!
This level took me 15 and a half days. I slowed down a little bit on my studies for a few days because my brother was visiting for the first time in a year now that we’re all fully vaccinated, but I still managed to maintain my WK pace!
I think it’s been a really good idea to start tackling my leeches early. I try to run through the leech trainer once a day, and have also been going through and adding all of the words with similar meanings (which I keep confusing with each other in Kaniwani) to a giant document so that I can look at them side by side. It’s a lot of work, but it has been productive.
I finally started to burn items! It’ll be a while yet before my workload fully evens out, because my first three levels were very inconsistent. My burned item count as of this update: 40.
Fun encounters with Japanese outside of WaniKani:
I’m starting to get to a point where I’m recognizing too many words when I hear or see them in wrestling for me to individually point them out in these posts, haha! It’s a very cool feeling. I’m also getting much better at being able to transcribe Japanese audio. Sometimes I’ll look up random words that I hear in wrestling commentary, just to see if they mean what I think they mean from my kanji knowledge and the context of what is happening in the match.
I heard 新しい in the backstage comments after a NJPW show, and it took me a moment to connect the word that I heard to the word “new” in the subtitles, but then I realized I recognized it. Later that night, the word came up in my WK reviews, and I stared at it and knew that I should know the reading, and then I remembered hearing a wrestler say it, and sure enough, the reading came back to me!
A friend of mine asked another friend to translate a few rules for a match she was watching, and one of the rules contained the word 金的. My friend asked me if I could guess what this was (their hint was to think about Taichi), and I guessed that it referred to low blows, and sure enough, that was it, haha! 的 appears to be a level 14 kanji, so I should be learning it pretty soon! I’ll probably make an Anki deck of wrestling words, at some point, but I don’t think that’s especially helpful right now, when my level of kanji knowledge is so low.
I realized that I have learned all of the kanji that are in my header image! The image is a photo of Sanshiro Takagi, formerly the president of DDT Pro Wrestling, now the president of the whole CyberFight umbrella. I don’t know the exact context in which it was originally posted, but it’s one of my favorite wrestling images (if you decide to look for the full image, be aware that there’s a naked man in it, though nothing explicit is shown). It embodies wrestling perfectly, to me.
DDT wrestler Daisuke Sasaki tweeted an announcement for a match that looks super fun, and I was pleased to realize that I could read the entire caption without needing machine translation: “火曜日のお知らせ”. This absolutely helped me remember お知らせ when it came up in my reviews later.
I saw 入場曲 in a tweet on my twitter feed, and I realized that this was the word for wrestling entrance themes, which makes sense!
There was a fun moment in a recent NJPW show when Tetsuya Naito was trying to talk Zack Sabre Jr. (whose tag belt Naito wants) into signing a photo of him on the cover of a program, and Naito spoke to him in Spanish (Naito is fluent in Japanese and knows some Spanish, but not a lot of English. Zack is fluent in English and knows a bit of Japanese, but not much Spanish. Naito often likes to be difficult just for the pure joy of being a nuisance). At one point, Naito repeated the Spanish word “dinero” a few times, and the Japanese commentary team translated it into お金, and I was thrilled that I understand both, haha!
I finally learned 転送, which is the name of the forwarding service I use to get wrestling goods shipped from Japan to the US!
I saw 相手 in this tweet promoting a Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling match, and I wondered if the word could also mean tag team partner, since the meaning WK teaches is “partner,” but when I looked it up, it can mean partner, but many of the definitions listed it as opponent! This truly embodies wrestling, honestly. This word consists of the kanji meaning mutual or together, 相, and the kanji for hand, 手, and I love the fact that in wrestling, those concepts very much can refer both to a partner and an opponent.
This level, Pro Wrestling NOAH wrestlers really came through for me as mnemonics. I smiled (or maybe smirked, because 
is his favorite emoji) at 勝つ because of Katsuhiko Nakajima, who has that kanji in his name: 中嶋 勝彦. “Katsu” is a nickname that he often goes by (it’s what his ex-partner Go Shiozaki used to call him, before Katsu betrayed him). The meaning of 勝 is a very good fit for him. 進む was another fun one because of Yuya Susumu (進祐哉). I don’t know as much about him, but I’ll gladly take the mnemonic!
On the subject of wrestlers as mnemonics, Raku from TJPW has been a fantastic help. She just spells her name in hiragana, with no kanji, but several kanji have らく as an on’yomi reading, and it’s easy to incorporate the wrestler into a mnemonic! 楽 in particular makes me think of her, because she’s very sweet and calm, and her matches are fun and comforting to watch. I also realized that 楽 is one of the kanji used to spell Korakuen Hall: 後楽園ホール. I haven’t learned 園 yet (it’s a level 16 kanji meaning garden), but from the meanings of 後 and 楽園, I was wondering if it essentially translated to “after paradise.” But according to wikipedia, the term 後楽 refers to later pleasures and comes from 先憂後楽, which means “hardship now, pleasure later” and is derived from a poem by Fan Zhongyan. I think that’s honestly a very thematically appropriate name for one of the most famous wrestling venues in the world.
I heard Hiroshi Tanahashi say “だいじょうぶだ” during his post-match comments after a NJPW show. I could understand this sentence without needing the subtitles! But his use of だ stood out to me, considering what I read in that Tofugu article I linked in the last update. The article talked about だ sometimes being used to express inner thoughts and feelings that are self-directed. Before saying this, Tana talked about how Yuya Uemura and Yota Tsuji (current young lions, aka trainee wrestlers) reminded him of how he used to be, and because they’re not currently able to go on excursion, Tana knows that they’re questioning where they stand, and he understands their frustration. Then he finished with “だいじょうぶだ.” Of course, there is also a significant status difference between Tana and Uemura and Tsuji, so that is likely part of the reason he used だ here, but this example also seems to fit the usage described in that article.
Post-match comments exist in kind of an interesting space where they’re both reflective and directed at the public at the same time (and sometimes specifically directed at other wrestlers). Wrestlers often reflect on their own thoughts at the moment, or thoughts on their opponents, all while knowing that whatever they say is going to be reported on by the press and scrutinized by fans as well as their opponents. It’s a setting that sort of straddles the conceptual distinction between だ and です that Tofugu describes (though many wrestlers don’t exactly care about presenting information in a socially aware manner, haha). All of this is definitely way too advanced grammar analysis for me to be attempting at this point in my journey, but it’s fascinating to think about!
I vaguely remember seeing a post on the forums complaining about WK teaching the word 大作, which was, according to this poster, not actually useful in real life. I had to laugh when it proceeded to turn up on my twitter feed, of all places! It was in a comment left on a piece of beautifully illustrated wrestling fanart: “大作お疲れ様でした”. The rest of this sentence after 大作 seems to be a set phrase that roughly means “thank you for your hard work.” Yomichan translates it literally as “you’ve tired yourself (for something that all parties involved are (generally) grateful for).” I’m guessing in this instance, it means something along the lines of: “Thank you for this great masterpiece that you’ve worked very hard on.” But this grammar is currently beyond me, so I could very well be wrong!
みんなの日本語 Lesson 4 – Lesson 5
Lesson 4 gave me something else to struggle with: remembering which of the 分 minute counters rendaku and/or have slightly irregular readings, and which ones don’t. I ended up adding cards to my Anki deck for minutes 1-10 to help me remember. I actually have gotten some practice with a few numbers, because it’s very common in wrestling to hear “15 minutes passed” or “10 minutes remain” and the like, but some numbers are less common in that setting and I haven’t heard them much.
I then went on to fail a section in my workbook because it turns out that the 時 hours also have a few readings that are different from other counters, and I was not prepared for that! I added the tricky ones to my Anki deck, so hopefully I should be more prepared in the future! The lesson I’ve learned is that I should always pay attention to the readings for 4, 7, and 9 when learning new counters, and not just assume that the readings used are the ones that I think.
One thing that was a little confusing to me is that none of the times in the textbook were given in 24-hour notation. From my experience with wrestling at least, almost all times are given on a 24-hour clock and not a 12 hour one like we use in the US. 18時30分 is a very common start time, for example. I’m assuming that a 12-hour clock is also in use on some occasions, but I honestly can’t think of a time that I have personally seen it for any promoted wrestling shows.
I added up all the time I spent on lesson 4 in MNN, and here’s how long it took me, from start to finish, over 15 days of studying:
Here are some numbers and a chart:
Preparing Anki cards: 1 hour, 6 minutes
Preparing kanji spreadsheet: 50 minutes
Practicing writing kanji and taking vocab notes: 3 hours, 50 minutes
Taking grammar notes: 40 minutes
Studying the textbook and both workbooks: 3 hours, 52 minutes
Daily Anki reviews: 2 hours, 10 minutes
Total: 12 hours, 28 minutes
I never spent more than 20 minutes a day doing Anki reviews, and the majority of the time, it was less than 10 minutes a day. Here’s the daily breakdown of my Anki workload for the period of time I spent on this lesson (I added the bulk of the new vocabulary to my active deck on June 4):
Of the twelve and a half hours that I spent, roughly half of it is probably “optional.” The six hours I spent on my notes (including the kanji spreadsheet, writing kanji, and taking vocab and grammar notes) aren’t strictly necessary to get through the lesson, but I’ve found that it helps my retention a lot, and also helps me in other areas of Japanese, including WK, and including my experiences with Japanese outside of the textbook.
MNN estimates that each lesson should take most people 4-6 hours to get through. If you just count my Anki time and textbook study, it does fall within that window, haha! I’m not going to record this for every lesson, but I thought it could be interesting to conceptualize just how much time I’m sinking into this.
Lesson 5 of MNN has last/this/next week/month/year, as well as the day counters. As soon as I saw them in the vocab list, I was so glad that WK had me covered there! It made learning the vocabulary for this lesson a lot more relaxing, since I had already learned a good chunk of it.
I did notice that two of the words on the lesson 5 vocabulary list, 急行 and 特急, had definitions in the textbook that differed from the definitions given in online dictionaries. 急行 is defined as “rapid” (train) in MNN, but as “express” in other dictionaries. And 特急 is defined as “express” in MNN, but as “limited express” in other dictionaries! Just a tad confusing! I honestly don’t understand the Japanese train system well enough to know the differences between the different kinds of trains as it is, so I’m not too concerned with this right now. I figure it’s something I’ll either pick up through context eventually, or perhaps I’ll learn it through osmosis from following TJPW wrestler (and train enthusiast) Raku’s train account on twitter haha! (Raku also lists her train of the day at the beginning of every show, which Mr. Haku of ddpro_eng on twitter helpfully translates for us. Someday, I strive to be able to understand without requiring his translation).
I just so happened to learn 誕生日 on NJPW wrestler Tetsuya Naito’s birthday, and the day afterward, Taichi wrote the word on a birthday present (which was just an empty box) that he brought to their next match to give to Naito. The Japanese commentary team talked about the gift, and it was really helpful to have the reading for that word reinforced haha!
I also learned 大阪城 (Osaka Castle), and then I had the realization that this is the Osaka-jo in the name Osaka-jo Hall, which I’ve heard many times as a wrestling fan! 大阪城ホール is a famous venue that is often used for wrestling shows, and NJPW in particular regularly runs shows there. Some wrestlers, like Naito, have a very special relationship with the Osaka crowd (historically, they’ve hated him).
I haven’t started on lesson 5 beyond studying the vocab yet, but hopefully I’ll be able to start reading the lesson very soon.
I updated the MNN kanji by WK level spreadsheet with the lesson 5 kanji! (Just a reminder that it’s possible to sort the chart by WK level or MNN lesson number, whichever is most useful to you).
Reading in Spanish:
Box y Lucha No. 3475 (Tiger Mask and unexpected connections, Pasión Kristal and LGBTQ wrestlers in Mexico)
True to its name, Box y Lucha has both boxing and lucha libre content. I pretty much only care about the wrestling, so I’m just skimming the boxing articles for a little additional reading practice, then actually trying to read the wrestling articles.
A lucha libre magazine was not a place I expected to see the Golden Lovers (the wrestling tag team that got me into wrestling, who have spent very little of their careers in Mexico) mentioned, especially not in the year 2021, but the magazine has an article on the lineage of the Tiger Mask character, and sure enough, Kota Ibushi gets a small section about the brief time he spent as Tiger Mask W, and a summary of the rest of his career (including his tag team with Kenny Omega)! It made me smile to see it, as brief as it is. Everything in wrestling truly is connected.
The magazine also has several articles on Pasión Kristal, an exotico who tragically passed away recently. It’s interesting, because if I’m reading this correctly, he was a special education teacher before he was a wrestler, and he wasn’t really able to openly express his sexuality because of his job as a teacher (the article states the responsibility he had with his students and his ongoing relationship with their families). But when he stopped teaching and really embraced the exotico style and the Pasión Kristal character, it finally allowed him to freely be himself and be accepted by friends and strangers. I think he also had some role as a representative of the LGBTQ community?
I’m always interested in learning more about LGBTQ wrestlers and how they’re perceived in different cultures. I read a few articles in Spanish last year during pride month which talked about LGBTQ wrestlers in lucha libre and the history of the exotico style. From what I’ve read so far, it seems that the exotico style and role allows LGBTQ performers an outlet for expressing their sexuality that seems to be by and large accepted (though not every exotico is LGBTQ), but there’s not really precedent for luchadores who aren’t exoticos openly identifying as LGBTQ.
Learning more about LGBTQ people in wrestling around the world is honestly one of the main reasons I want to become fluent in both Spanish and Japanese, because there is so little published about it in English.
New resources:
I got a few more free manga from Bookwalker, thanks once again to @rodan’s recommendations! One is the first volume of ボーイズ・ラン・ザ・ライオット, which sounds really good if you’re looking for LGBTQ manga! The other manga I picked up is the first couple volumes of ふらいんぐうぃっち, which is a series that I have seen recommended for beginners many times on this forum.
I found a site for practicing listening comprehension of Japanese numbers! It’s here, and it’s extremely helpful. I’m going to try to remember to drill numbers on this every day until I’m able to hear them in native media and understand them.
I also discovered that it’s possible to set up Yomichan so that it automatically adds the surrounding sentence to the flash card for a vocabulary word. You just need to add a sentence field to the cards, then you can set it up in Yomichan’s settings, and add {{Sentence}} to the card template where you want it to display. I’m not SRS-ing any found vocab, at this point, but I’m planning on doing so in the future, and this looks like a great way to streamline that process.
Here’s an example card that I made to test this out
This is using a word pulled from a review of a deathmatch production of King Lear featuring Jun Kasai:
Next steps:
It’ll be a while yet until I reach another big milestone, so all that’s left to do now is keep going. I feel like these updates are getting longer and longer, sorry! I hope some of this is useful to other folks, or at least mildly interesting to read about. I have fun writing down things throughout the week that I want to include in these posts, and the desire to finally publish them helps motivate me to get through each level.
). I’m here first and foremost to learn Japanese for practical usage, but I don’t mind occasionally getting caught up in the beauty of it, too.
and I don’t expect to get used to it any time soon. 
. I’m happy that some of this gave you some insight into the word washi tape, though! I constantly worry about being too wordy here, but clearly worrying about it has not been enough to get me to stop.
