Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220118 
Tanuki Scroll XVIII: ニンジンの始まり 
Read today’s Hyakumonogatari from Miyagi Prefecture!
About a man who keeps getting his bags of rice stolen by a ghost. One day he follows the ghost to confront it and find out exactly why does a ghost need so much rice? Because the ghost likes to takes baths in the rice. He traps the ghost and boils it in the bath into ghost-stew. All that’s left in the morning is a little floating muddy thing which he throws outside.
Problem sorted, no more ghost, he can now travel the road safely. But after a few days his horse runs back to the ghost house and starts munching on some weird plants that have grown there. It’s that little thing he threw into the grass! The horse seems to really like the vegetable so he tries one too and feels all energised, so he takes some back to grow them in his fields.
And this is where carrots come from. Magical ghost vegetable.
☆ Learnings ☆
New Words
馬引「うまひき」ー Horse driver, the person who’s in charge of leading the horses (for carrying cargo and goods for example).
ものの ー Although; Though; Despite that (feels like I should have come across this before but don’t recognise it)
グツグツ ー Simmering; Boiling gently (onomatopoeia)
ドロドロ「泥々」ー Muddy
Forgotten Readings
真っ青 「まっさお」 (Deep Blue; Bright Blue)
Forgotten Meanings
うちわ 「団扇」(Traditional Handheld fan)
I had no idea what this was until I looked it up and saw the kanji, it’s on WK!
Rikai Reply (it got long)
Sorry it took me awhile to get back to you, I went to do so last night but ran out of time. 
Me going on about Nioh
Nioh is pretty similar to Soulsbourne (Soulsekirobourne?) - you die a lot, you leave your XP at a grave - but it’s very different at the same time. I prefer Nioh gameplay over Souls but I recommended Nioh to my friend who’s a big Souls fan and he prefers Souls gameplay. I guess it’s what you’re used to, I played Nioh before Souls. I do feel Nioh offers more variety in playstyle though.
Nioh does have a high learning curve, there’s just so much stuff, it’s a bit of a time investment There’s an insane amount of things to keep track of it’s rather overwhelming at first, but if you put the time in the game does reward you. The combat is really satisfying once you get it down and it’s fun slowly getting better perks on your armour and weapons until you are an unstoppable force of destruction.
(Currently I’ve put most points in Strength and Dexterity with fists as weapons, RP’ing as a monk sent by Buddha to destroy the demon invasion, so I’m basically pummelling demons into pulp with my fists of divine retribution 
)
Nioh 2 feels like Nioh but with everything that wasn’t so good improved upon and generally the whole package improved tenfold. It really feels like it’s the game they wanted to release first but didn’t have the know-how or funds. It’s nice to see the story intertwine with the first game but if you don’t want to invest heavily in time to both games Nioh 2 is by far the better game. Also the story, since it’s a alt-reality history makes sense without needing the first game.
Sorry, this was only supposed to be a few sentences recommending the game 
I feel the difficultly with learning anything, especially now, is just how much info is out there. There’s so many things telling you “this is the wrong way” “this is the right way” “you don’t learn like this” “this is the proper way to learn” - it’s all pretty hard to know exactly how to go about learning anything when there’s so much contradicting information.
Especially with time. It’s hard not to feel you’re doing something wrong when you see people advance miles ahead of you in really short spaces of time. The key (to me anyway) is perseverance, it’s not a race, go about it at your own pace - be the turtle and not the rabbit kinda thing. But really, be the tanuki, because tanuki is best, the tanuki can choose to be the rabbit or the turtle when it sees fit.
Honestly, WK is such a great tool. I find it hard to learn from textbooks and basically anything telling you about how language works, I have to be actively doing it to learn it. I could read how は works no end of times but it just doesn’t sink in, I have to use it. I really wish there was something for grammar like WK because everything I’ve looked into just doesn’t seem to work for me (even similar SRS stuff). I’ve found taking these hukumusume stories and rewriting them myself helps a lot, but it’s pretty time consuming so I don’t always get chance to do it.
It took me just over two years (literally by like a day or 2) to get to lv. 60 on here, I feel I learnt a lot but was at a loss of what to do next, since I couldn’t find anything that’d help with my grammar. My average review accuracy is at about 65-75% so not greatly high and I started to wonder if I’d just wasted two years to get nowhere, then these challenge threads came along and suddenly everything I learnt on here started clicking. Feel like I’ve learnt more in the six months of these threads than those two whole years. Which…
Yes! This! I think sometimes it’s not you that isn’t learning it’s the approach that isn’t working anymore, sometimes it’s important to change your perspective and suddenly everything makes much more sense.
I try not to think too much about how I could of done things better, otherwise I beat myself up too much Thinking back on things it’s always obvious how you could have done things better, but that just shows that you have learnt. It feels too that sometimes you just need to do something else and pause the studying, get other life lessons and skills from things that are irrelevant to what you’re studying, it helps give you a new outlook.
I was pretty anxious about coming to the community part of WK at first, I was worried it’d be full of gatekeepers and people one-upping each other all the time. But it’s like the exact opposite, it’s really supportive here, it feels like being in a huge university group or something, everyone is doing their own thing but helping each other along the way.
I’m sure I had more to say but it’s gone (probably for the best before this gets even longer, but I really appreciate your reply, thank you!).
I suppose there’s just one last thing, and that’s a Tanukiganbarre!
≪ ☆ 頑張って！！☆ ≫
Oh yeah, thanks for the video! I’ll stick it in my ‘Watch Later’, always looking for stuff to listen to while doing all the chores.
).
But I think you are quite a bit ahead of me (so I will not read your reflections yet, sorry!) 
It’s been fun so far!
) in the first couple days I was reading the book, when I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of lookups. But then I sped up by starting to ignore (or trying to guess) any unimportant words that I didn’t know. This turned deciphering into reading, even if I’m missing out on some details, and I’m finding this way more enjoyable so far. I guess it also made my current approach not very compatible with the book club format, which, as far as I understand, is slower-paced and perhaps more detail-oriented?
Book clubs were actually the primary factor that drove me to WaniKani 
) but as you are reading on your own pace you need not care about it at all (you just need to find the right threads or starting points for each week’s assignment).
Reading together and discussing stuff is even more fun 
). I’m sure you could chime in every now and again as a 先生!