Shinobis' Study Log🥷

[ShinobiMaster556]

🌃Shinobis' Study Log🌃

ようこそ to my Japanese study log!
This is my first study log ever, and it might be a bit messy, but I’ll try to keep it as neat as possible.
This first part was inspired by NeoArcturus’ Study Log. I started this study blog to share my overall progress, to maybe even inspire other people, and also so that other people can make fun of my study routine. I also love having discussions about Japanese with other people! I’ll list most details about my Japanese journey so far, but I’ll warn you ahead—it’s very long and detailed!

Who I am

I live in Germany and go to the 10th class in Gymnasium (german equivalent to high school), my hobbies are learning japanese as well as learning game development and programming with C#.
I also love watching netflix and movies in general. That's about it

Why I started learning japanese

Most people learning Japanese had a lifelong dream of learning it, but I never did. I wouldn’t have even thought of learning it half a year ago. I started learning Japanese on the 17th of July, 2024.
It was shortly before the end of the school year, and I was really bored because I didn’t have much to do since gaming wasn’t as fun as it used to be. I was binge-watching a Netflix series called House of Ninjas. I usually don’t watch Japanese movies or anime, but this series really inspired me. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and story. It’s also the reason for my name on WaniKani since 忍び (shinobi) means “ninja” and is mentioned several times in the series.
Then, a couple of days later, I became literally obsessed with Japanese. It’s quite funny that a single series on Netflix made me start learning Japanese.

My journey so far

I started out with Duolingo but noticed two days later that it doesn’t really teach kanji, just some vocabulary. I then found Tofugu’s Beginner Guide and learned all of hiragana and katakana in about four days. After that, I signed up on WaniKani and started learning kanji about four months ago.

I was looking for Japanese learning resources for several days. I tried BunPro, but it didn’t really stick with me. Then, I bought the Genki textbook and finished it 2 months later, including all the vocabulary and stroke orders of the kanji in the back. I moved on to Genki II, and I’m currently at the last chapter. I’ve also supplemented Genki I and II with the Tokini Andy videos, which have been really helpful.

I ordered myself two physical mangas from Japan: ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん and ルリドラゴン. I read through ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん in about three weeks, studying all the unknown vocabulary in a separate Anki deck. However, things got really slow because I had to do 400+ Anki reviews every day on top of WaniKani and studying grammar in Genki. It all became very messy, and it still is!

Recently, I’ve started using Migaku to watch some shows like Komi Can’t Communicate and have also started rewatching Alice in Borderland (still desperately waiting for season 3!) in Japanese. It’s not as hard as I thought—it turns out I can understand about 70% of the sentence structures, I still have to look up a lot of words and create many flashcards though. I’m also going through the Migaku Japanese Level 1 course to revise all of my N4 and N5 grammar so far.

In total, I’ve learned about 3,000 words using Genki, WaniKani, and Migaku so far, and I’m not slowing down. I really have to be careful about burnout, though, since I spend more than 1.5 hours on flashcard reviews daily, which is starting to drain my motivation.

I’ve already bought Quartet I but haven’t started it yet, as I still need to study some N4 kanji first. I’ve learned all the stroke orders for N5 kanji and some N4 kanji, but I had to stop learning stroke orders because it was taking up too much time that I needed for grammar and vocabulary studies.

I’m hardcore studying as many hours as possible per day. I’ve also started leveling up very quickly on WaniKani; I now need only about 7–8 days per level, way faster than my previous 10–15 days. In general, learning Japanese has become pretty expensive with all these subscriptions and textbooks.

My Goals

• Finish Genki 2 and Quartet 1 and 2
• Reach WaniKani Level 60 in a year
• Maybe take the N3 or N2 early next year
• Reaching 6000 words through immersion with Migaku
• Join the intermediate book club next year
• Staying consistent with japanese and not giving up
• Start playing games in Japanese🎮

[Exhausted breath] Well, this was a whole lot of text and details. As I already said, my studying routine is extremely messy, and I really need to find some sort of routine and order. I’m really bad when it comes to planning those. I’ve also noticed that learning Japanese has really been improving my memory overall—I can memorize details and facts in general way faster. I think balancing immersion, grammar/vocabulary, and kanji studies is very important. Sometimes, learning Japanese seems so hard and impossible, especially when stumbling across vocabulary like 避難訓練 (disaster drill), but then I just remember how difficult English seemed to me a couple of years ago, and now I’m already reading whole novels in English without looking any words up. I’ll try to give weekly updates about my progress in this study blog and stay consistent!

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Summary

Studying Methods:

(None of the links below are affiliated)

Grammar studies

• Genki and Quartet 1 + TokiniAndy

• Migaku Course

• JapaneseAmmowithMisa for Topics that are hard to grasp

• Bunpro for N3
  
  

Vocabulary and Kanji

• WaniKani

• Migaku decks from Immersion

• Genki and Quartet Anki Decks
  
  

Listening Practice

• NihongoConTeppei (Beginner Podcast)
  
  

Immersion

• ABBC (Absolute Beginnner Book Club)
• Netflix with Migaku
• NHK Easy Web News
• Easier N4 stuff on youtube like Nihongo-Learning

Additional

• Japanese Phonetics Course by Dogen
• Jisho for Dictionary lookups
• My Natively

Well i’ve already now wasted enough time writing this Log entry, and I haven’t done my daily WaniKani vocab lessons yet

読んでくれてありがとうございました！

[Akashelia]

As someone taking it slow (because of life being busy), I enjoy watching people who have the opportunity to use many hours for Japanese taking it! Hope you’ll enjoy the journey, looking forward to following your adventures!

[Redglare]

@ShinobiMaster556

• Join the intermediate book club next year

I like this goal. I did something similar. My JP learning journey started when I started a bachelor degree in uni where we went through genki 1 + 2 in a year (not the fastest pace, but we did all the workbook stuff, speaking/listening practice, wrote kanji and essays by hand). Meanwhile I went through WK in a year too. After my first year I joined the intermediate book club when they were reading 氷菓. Took a couple months, but eventually got through the book with the club.

Like Akashelia, I’m also looking forward to following your adventures!
頑張って！

[ShinobiMaster556]

Thx for answering, I think I’m actually going to read Chainsaw man by myself or maybe even skip absolute beginner book club for now, since I am already pretty confident with most N4 Grammar and I’ve also taken a look at the japanese subtitles of Chainsaw Man on Netflix (I use ProtonVPN to access Japan only content) and it doesn’t seem too difficult overall. I am probably gonna write more about this in a longer post later though. I will finally level up to Level 12 today, it doesn’t show the correct level in the Wanikani community for some reason

[ShinobiMaster556]

Also, thanks for checking in! I’ll try to update weekly. I also think that the Study Log might motivate me a bit since I can actually write down my results weekly.

[Redglare]

I think it’s a good idea to read manga, especially if it’s a series you’re familiar with already. That’s what I did - I had already watched Haikyuu and then I read the manga as my first native content.

@ShinobiMaster556

I will finally level up to Level 12 today, it doesn’t show the correct level in the Wanikani community for some reason

The system is a bit slow to update. If you log out of forum and log back in, it should sync up.

[ShinobiMaster556]

Logging out and back in worked, thx!

[ShinobiMaster556]

Weekly Update #1

Here we go with my weekly update. I think I made a lot of progress with Japanese this week. To start right off, I finally finished Genki 2, and I’ve also made a lot of progress in the Migaku Course, so I think I should now be theoretically ready to pass the N4.

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WaniKani

These are my WaniKani stats so far. I’ve now finally managed to finish levels in 7 or 8 days without too much of a hassle. I just finish the radical section on the first day and then rush through all kanji as fast as possible. The only problem is that there usually is a big vocab backlog because of that. Just this week, I had to get rid of that backlog again, and I did 80 lessons on a single day. Most vocab isn’t that hard, though, but reading all the example sentences takes most of the time. I should hopefully finish Level 12 on Tuesday. I will probably start Quartet 1 soon because I now know about 90% of N4 kanji.

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Migaku

Migaku has its own SRS system, and I’ve been keeping up with the reviews until now. Migaku is only recognition and not recall, though, since it’s been made for immersion in Netflix and native content. I really like the Migaku Japanese Course so far since it often has more in-depth explanations of grammar than Genki but still somehow manages to not make it too hard to understand. I’ve also reached the 3,300 word count now (also includes WaniKani + Genki).

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Immersion

I really didn’t do a lot of immersion this week. I watched two episodes of Komi Can’t Communicate, but I really don’t like it that much. I find it pretty boring, but I mainly watch it for listening practice, and there is also a whole lot of casual Japanese. I’ve also read a couple more pages of カードキャプターさくら.
I feel like I could read the whole manga in about an hour if I just look up every word since the more simple grammar patterns have become pretty clear by now. I’ve also ordered the first volume of チェンソーマン, but it didn’t arrive yet.

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I’ve also been thinking about buying a Nintendo Switch or a Japanese Nintendo 3DS from Amazon Japan or eBay since I want to start playing games in Japanese as early as possible. With N4, I probably already have the most common grammar patterns nailed down. I would preferably want to start with simpler games like あつまれ どうぶつの森 (Switch) or Tobidase Doubutsu No Mori (3DS). But I don’t know where to buy Japanese 3DS games other than Amazon.jp, and importing them every time seems a bit expensive. On the other hand, the Switch isn’t region-locked and gives you the ability to play more modern games.
It’s hard to decide whether to get a 3DS or a Switch. I feel like I’d rather go with a 3DS for now and then buy a Switch later because I always wanted to have a 3DS. But it’s really hard to decide. By next week, I’ll hopefully have finished reading at least カードキャプターさくら and maybe even started Quartet 1.

As always, 読んでくれてありがとう!

[Akashelia]

Nice progress! Wouldn’t expect any less from a ninja!

@ShinobiMaster556

I’ve also been thinking about buying a Nintendo Switch or a Japanese Nintendo 3DS from Amazon Japan or eBay since I want to start playing games in Japanese as early as possible.

I have a Switch that I have bought in Europe and before learning Japanese I got Animal Crossing and Pokemon Pikachu Go on it. I can change the language of the Switch to Japanese and play Animal Crossing in Japanese. I could also start a new game in Pokemon and choose Japanese as a language. I haven’t yet explored if there are more options for Japanese games but just wanted to let you know about that, maybe worth taking into consideration!

[ShinobiMaster556]

Yeah, I’ve already read somewhere that you can just change the region on the switch and that it’s also possible to get full access to the japanese eshop and even buy games from it, it’s so sad that 3DS and 2DS are region locked. I’ve also haven’t decided yet which switch to buy. I could buy a switch lite used for around 130€ now and then maybe buy a switch 2 next year or I could also buy a regular used switch or maybe even oled switch, but I would need to wait until next month for the oled

[ShinobiMaster556]

Weekly Update #2

I hope you all had a great week! Christmas is also just around the corner. I'm posting a bit later than usual since I wasn’t really in the mood to write yesterday, but let’s dive into what I’ve accomplished this week!

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WaniKani

WkStats has been incredibly useful for tracking my progress. While my accuracy isn’t perfect, I think it’s good enough. I’m also about to reach Level 14, and my vocabulary backlog is still manageable. I already knew some of the kanji through exposure, like the super common 僕 and 俺, which made things a bit easier.

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Migaku

I’ve been consistent with my daily reviews and managed to learn 300 new words this week! That brings my total to 3,600 known words. I’ve also noticed that watching Netflix in Japanese has become significantly easier, with my comprehension score improving a lot.

This week, I started adding Migaku flashcards for words I encounter in manga. Migaku makes it so much simpler, just input a single word, and it auto-generates audio, example sentences, and explanations. This saves so much time, especially since I’d normally be too lazy to add these details manually.

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Grammar

I didn't study a lot of grammar this week since I haven't started Quartet 1 yet, but I continued the Migaku japanese course and I've also begun using Bunpro for N3 grammar, although the Bunpro explanations are somewhat confusing at times.

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Immersion

Finally, this is going to be the most interesting part. I’ve heavily focused on immersion this week, I’ve only red 30 pages of カードキャプターさくら, but I’ve watched 3 episodes of Alice in Borderland and two episodes of Demon Slayer in Japanese and sentenced mined subtitles. Exposure has really improved my overall understanding, a couple weeks ago I had trouble understanding sentences in ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん, but now I can flawlessly read and understand way faster in カードキャプターさくら for example. I’m still having trouble understanding casual nuances like だっけ,もの to express some kind of emotion and なんか… What I really like about Alice in Borderland is that it isn’t an anime and that it therefore mostly uses more real life japanese and doesn’t have too many weird casual speech contractions. I’ve not bought a Nintendo console yet, but I’ve tried to play Nine Sols in Japanese and I feel like I can understand a bit of whats being said, but I’m still not quite there yet. For now I’ll keep immersing through netflix and manga, I’ve also ordered 3 new manga volumes, even though Chainsaw Man hasn’t even arrived yet.鬼滅の刃 1 , 鬼滅の刃 2 and 約束のネバーランド 1. As you might guess, I’m a big Demon Slayer fan! I’ve also joined the ダンジョン飯 - Delicious in Dungeon Anime Club but haven’t started the series yet as I’ve been pretty occupied with other immersion stuff.

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Japanese Phonetics

Out of curiosity I also started Dogens Japanese Phonetics Course as I also wanted to practice my pronunciation overall and also be able to recognize pitch patterns since I could theoretically passively pick them up with a lot of immersion in anime for example, but you have to train your ears first to really hear them all. I’ve also practiced a bit of shadowing and used Bunpros and Migakus audio sentences as a reference for example. I think my base proncunciation is pretty good since german and japanese have a lot of sounds in common, the あ for example sounds just like the german “a” and the う sound often sounds like the german “Ü”, but the られりろる sounds sometimes just randomly change into an “L” kind of sound and I’ve still not figured out that one. And Dogens course really goes in Depth about everything regarding pronunciation and phonetics. I usually watch the video last video lesson that I’ve already seen the day before and then watch the next one, just to be sure to not forget or miss any important stuff, especially at the beginning of the course.

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As for this week I’ll probably still keep immersing a lot and expanding my vocabulary again because I’m really not in the mood for grammar studies this month.

May the sacred Crabigator protect you all!

[ShinobiMaster556]

Ah I’ve forgotten to add that I found an adorable Japanese Youtube ad which uses easy Japanese, just wanted to add that, and I’ve also found a great Japanese song from a non-native speaker!

[ShinobiMaster556]

Weekly Update #3

Hello and welcome back, everyone! Hopefully, everyone enjoyed a wonderful Christmas week! I skipped last week because I felt like I didn’t make too much progress, and I was also pretty occupied with other stuff. I’ve slowed down a bit because my previous pace just isn’t maintainable for a normal human being, so I decided to take things a bit easier. My big MangaRepublic order finally arrived from Japan, but I’m still reading through ルリドラゴン. Anyways, I’ll give a quick sum-up of my progress now.

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WaniKani

I’ve not slowed down on WaniKani at all, and I’m going to hit Level 16 in about three days. The only thing I’m really struggling with is the WaniKani vocab backlog. It’s so tiring having to learn so much WaniKani vocab in such a short amount of time, and it’s even harder to balance. There are easy words where everything just makes sense, like in 芸能界: Art + Talent + World = show business. But then there’s stuff like 都合: Metropolis + Join/Fit = Convenience, where I feel like there is some logic behind the meaning and kanji composition, but it’s hard to get there and really connect these two. Sometimes the WaniKani mnemonics are also too complicated to remember for these words. Whatever, enough ranting about vocab. I’m really starting to feel the impact of WaniKani. Even at Level 15, I encounter so many kanji in manga and anime that I’ve only learned thanks to WaniKani. Without WaniKani, I would probably have already given up on Japanese, because the sheer amount of kanji out there seems just impossible to memorize without something like WaniKani. It really is like magic.

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Migaku

I’ve been staying consistant with my Migaku reviews and lessons, and I’ve finally hit the 4000 Words mark

I've also found out that Migaku has its own OCR for manga on mobile. This works great and almost always recognizes the font correctly. However, this only applies to the iOS version. I tested it on both my iPad and my S23, and the Android app's OCR is terrible, while the iOS version seems to be very good for physical manga. I’ve already heard of Mokuro for digital manga but haven’t figured out how to use it yet. Somehow, exporting BookWalker manga as images also seems pretty hard.

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Immersion

My manga collection has just expanded with these four new titles. I haven’t started any of them yet, as I’m still reading through ルリドラゴン. But I’ve already glanced at some of them, and they seem to perfectly fit my level—not too difficult but also not too easy. I’m really enjoying the ルリドラゴン manga so far. The story is really interesting, and I also really like the drawing style. I’ve read almost 60 pages in the last three days.

I’m also still trying to catch up with the ダンジョン飯 Beginner Anime Club. I’m currently two episodes behind. Immersion is, in my opinion, the most fun part of learning Japanese. After grinding Japanese for about five months now, I’ve come to hate theory like grammar, but I’m really starting to enjoy Japanese native material.

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Bunpro

As you can probably see here, I’m not really consistently using Bunpro, I just hate doing reviews because I get them wrong all the time, not necessarily because I don’t understand the grammar, but rather because I’ve got no idea which pattern to insert into these sentences if it isn’t super obvious. I’m thinking about dropping the reviewing part completely and just learning 3 grammar points per day.

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If you’ve read all the way until here, 読んでくれてありがとう! I hope to have caught up with the Anime Club by next week, and I might even finish ルリドラゴン. I wish you all a great week !

[Akashelia]

@ShinobiMaster556

my previous pace just isn’t maintainable for a normal human being

Wait, are ninja normal humain beings?

@ShinobiMaster556

Don’t know how easy it is to get this setup but looks nice!

@ShinobiMaster556

Somehow, exporting BookWalker manga as images also seems pretty hard.

Or is it

@ShinobiMaster556

If you’ve read all the way until here, 読んでくれてありがとう! I hope to have caught up with the Anime Club by next week, and I might even finish ルリドラゴン. I wish you all a great week !

Thank you! Have a great week too and a great year as well!

[ShinobiMaster556]

@Akashelia

Wait, are ninja normal humain beings

Maybe all this was just deceive you into believing that ninjas are normal human beings and underestimate them hehe. But I think in terms of progress, I haven’t really slowed down that much. I’ve just changed my approach and decided to drop textbooks.

@Akashelia

Don’t know how easy it is to get this setup but looks nice!

Pretty easy, just had to install the Migaku App and it has an option for Camera OCR, but only works on iOS, Android really is terrible. But sadly you also have to have a Migaku subscription to access the app

As you can see, on Android it doesn't even let you choose the sentence you want to look up, it will just scan the whole page once and it then converts everything at once, looks messy and I also feel like the OCR algorithm isn't as good.

@Akashelia

Or is it

That seems handy, I’ve found a really similar tool on github yesterday, but I didn’t trust it. That one seems to be legit though.

@Akashelia

Thank you! Have a great week too and a great year as well!

Thanks, I completely forgot that tomorrow is New Years Eve while writing the log entry xD

[hughlings]

Impressive pace, amazing achievements in half a year! I’m looking forward to seeing your progress. Happy new year

[ShinobiMaster556]

Thanks for reading! Happy new year🎉

[ShinobiMaster556]

Weekly Update #4

Yay! It's finally 2025! I didn't set myself any specific year goals because I never reach them anyways xD. Its kinda weird that 2019 was 6 years ago now, feels like a month ago. I've managed to stay consistent with my studies throughout the holidays and I've finally finished ルリドラゴン yesterday and I've also discovered another language learning app. There is a lot to talk about so let's just dive right in!

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SRS

I’ve managed to stay consistent again! Reached Level 16 and I’m looking forward to knowing 600 Kanji! But I have to do more reviews than I’m used to because I constantly have more than 100 items in the Apprentice level, but until now I managed to not let them pile up. ところで my Anki App is dying, I’ve not reviewed a single item out of the Genki 1 and Genki 2 deck in 2 months and there are probably more than 700 reviews which I will definetely not finish because Anki is so tiring for me, everytime I use Anki for my Genki decks I get bored after 2 minutes and just want to quit anki. Migaku has also become significantly more difficult to manage, because I’ve created 2 more decks for Manga and Online News and I have to do about 200 reviews and 40 Lessons there everyday. My vocab count has also increased to 4150 words, at this stage, most netflix series show me a migaku comprehension score of 70-80%.

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Fluyo

Yesterday I stumbled across a youtube video of a guy who created a language learning app, Its called Fluyo and released a couple days ago, so I gave it a try. It supports various languages, but its more like a Duolingo 2.0, it does have SRS and multiple pre-created decks for japanese, but everything is in kana, words are not being taught with Kanji which is a massive disappointment. The UI is pretty modern and the app is based on a game-like approach to language learning. Its basically playing pokemon but with vocab words, every user has their own dolphin and they grow bigger when you learn new vocab. Players can then engage in 1v1 pokemon inspired vocab battles in which you have to recall the learned words. There are social spaces called “Pods” in which users can gather and chat about a specific topic and even gain XP. I’ve chatted for a bit there yesterday and some people in there are Wanikani non-believers, they were argumenting that Kanji and readings cannot be learnt through mnemonics! I was absolutely terrified! But all that aside, its a very interesting way of learning languages, but it’s basically useless for me. It primarily teaches beginner vocab and it only uses kana, but it’s definitely worth trying for other languages!

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Immersion

I’ve finally finished ルリドラゴン, I really enjoyed the story so I went right ahead and bought the second one. I’ve set myself the goal to read 1 weeks book club worth of manga every day and it has been going pretty well so far, I will now start reading カードキャプターさくら with Mokuro and Migaku. I’ve also been actively listening to Japanese music while delivering newspapers every weekend (the way I finance my massive japanese expenses), I can catch some phrases, but I only get the meaning of the song after checking the lyrics
My favorite songs so far:

• Bansanka
• Suzume
• BON

I’ve also been able to keep up with the ダンジョン飯 Beginner Club, I really like the intro song, I’ve already watched it in english until episode 9 before so I expect it to get more difficult after episode 9. Netflix has finally released a new season of Squid Game, I watched the first one 2 years ago in english and I’m now watching the second season in Japanese with Japanese subs, really enjoying it so far! おすすめです!

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Other Stuff

3 months ago, I signed up for the Pirate Software Game Jam and it starts in 11 days! I am not entirely sure wether I can participate because I’ve basically forgotten most of the stuff due to Japanese already. So I’ll have to try catching up now, I don’t know how that’s going to influence my japanese studies as catching up on game development is really time consuming. But I think I’ll participate even if I don’t know a lot of stuff, because not participating because of being afraid of not knowing enough isn’t good either, otherwise I will probably never participate because I would just be afraid of not being prepared enough. I’ve also been thinking about doing an exchange year to Japan during the second half of 11th grade, but it is very expensive and Japan is one of the most popular exchange places and you really have to be early to get a spot.

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That was a lot of text and information! This log entry is probably the longest one yet, and also the most time consuming to write. I hope that I could give a good insight of the week without causing too much confusion! I’m looking forward to updating the log again next week! 読んでくれてありがとうね!