The final month of lessons - a certain Bidoof's study log!

How many lessons are you doing per day?

I can so much relate to this. And it keeps becoming a very unique experience every time a change like this is happening. Take it as it is and I heartily encourage you do what ever comes up once you’re in Dublin.

As for WK, it seems it will be the stable part for you until end of the month. I remember reading a little bit of your journey in the Diary of a mad level 50’er. Are you still going with the same pace posted over there?

@Saida

How many lessons are you doing per day?

118 today, 0 yesterday, 0 two days ago, 121 three days ago:

@tls

Are you still going with the same pace posted over there?

Yup, I’m still stuck in a perpetual loop of having only a handful hours for myself each Sunday and Thursday xd

It’s absolutely, completely unsustainable and it leaves me so insanely exhausted, but I’m well aware that if I were to stop doing it right now I’d probably spend all day reading about the c-disease-cursed-word or some other injustice in the world, so I’ll have to devise a strategy on what to do after I’m done with WaniKani xd

January 3, 2021
Level: 52
Streak day: 333
Level up: January 7, 2021
Reviews: 604 (+ self study)
Apprentice items: 242

Each Sunday and Thursday I feel like giving up, I’m so overwhelmed by the reviews and the lessons that I just want to scream. And then I do them anyway xd

I couldn’t keep up with self-study today making the same mistakes over and over again, so I’ll have to review them tomorrow, but I’ve spent around six hours today mulling reviews, new lessons and self study.

Kanji are starting to become more obscure and when I saw the word “auspicious” today with an empty “synonyms” section I wanted to end it all at that exact moment :relaxed:

But I’m so close now, there’s only 8 levels to go. I’ll struggle through it, January 31 is this month already xd

And I’m absolutely not burning all of the items, no chance in hell xd

Today’s mental breakdown was sponsored by Life is Strange soundtrack Episode 3 - Track 4 :grin:

I realized we haven’t had a day when the sun would be out since December 26. The weather stays the same every day - cloudy, with humid air, no sunrises nor sunsets xd
I spent the first part of the day waiting for the reviews to come and doomscrolling, but luckily I managed to take a break in-between and go for a bike again. Today was probably my last trip around the town, I caught up on the last few spots of Christmas decorations around I haven’t seen before. The decorations will probably be taken down last week anyway, so it’s cool that my last memories of the town for the time being will be of it being decorated for the Christmas.

Speaking of the last times, I had a coffee with my dad before he goes to work tomorrow for the week.
I do realize I’m eating too much, drinking too much caffeine and completely messing up my sleep schedule when I’m home, but hey, I’m home, I can afford to spoil myself every once in a while xd

I’ll have to start packing up tomorrow DDD:::

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January 4, 2021
Level: 52
Streak day: 334
Level up: January 7, 2021
Reviews: 206 (+ self study)
Apprentice items: 239

I had a very nice day today in terms of my reviews, even though I wasn’t very convinced about some of the words when I saw them, most of the stuff would come up to my head after a few seconds. A few items dropped down to Apprentice 2 though, will have to self-study them a little bit more if I don’t pick up.

I’ve played a bit of Hades today, so here comes Lightning Chariot Base from Kid Icarus Uprising because I have an attachment to this track and I missed it :grin:

Of course I’m not ready for the trip, but the time is not playing in my favor, all I can say is that I’ve had some physical exercise walking for a long time today and it felt good :relaxed:

The same time tomorrow, I’ll be out of this continent on an island somewhere to the left :sweat_smile:

No caffeine today, which is good news, because for some reason I’m incredibly sleepy right now and it’ll be easy to fall asleep now :thinking:

And would you look at it, I saw the bears dine today in a restaurant! It’s a shame they wouldn’t let people in, but I’m glad they at least put the bears in, at least someone could benefit from the lockdown xd

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January 5, 2021
Level: 52
Streak day: 335
Level up: January 7, 2021
Reviews: 334
Apprentice items: 196

I had like 10 separate review sessions today, cause at first I couldn’t focus on anything but WaniKani and then I was just wasting time making reviews as soon as they became available xd

勘定, damn you!

Minecraft’s Mice on Venus, thanks for lifting me up today <3

They say that home is where your mobile provider doesn’t text you about roaming fees, if that were the case then I’m finally home :blush:

But who knows where your home is if you’re living in two different places xd

All I know is that I was very glad to finally arrive in Dublin and I feel like I can finally rest for a minute or two here, no deadlines, other than level 53 on Thursday <3

And you know what? I was worried nobody would be waiting for me here, but as soon as I entered my room and saw all the plushies there, I realized how wrong I was too :grin:

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January 6, 2021
Level: 52
Streak day: 336
Level up: January 7, 2021
Reviews: 202
Apprentice items: 174

Yep, that’s it, a few hours left until level 53 xd
A few burns today, including one of my favorite words: 吸血鬼.

Coolstory: around when I was level 10 I was playing Code;Realize on my Vita and listening to the background actors and I was like, “whoa, i understand quite a few things”. And those that I did not understand, I’d cross-reference them with my phone and WaniKani’s database. And one of the words I heard and tried transcribing, 吸血鬼, was there on level 23, and I was like “whoa, I’ll learn that word in a few months :OOO”

And I have learned indeed!
Level 23’s vampire, burned :sunglasses:

Fire Emblem Awakening OST - Conquest. Won’t say much, I’ll leave the track to do the talking for me xd

But truth to be told, I went out to the town to do some essential groceries and I realized that it’s not just me who’s self-isolating here in Ireland… Everything is shut down. I knew the situation was a bit funny, but just for reference, there is a country in Europe where McDonalds as a business is not operational at all, including takeaways, grocery shops are the only ones that stay open and even they have non-food items fenced off and even click and collect businesses are not allowed to be open. Good thing I learned how to cook over the first wave xd

I didn’t get too many exciting pictures today, but I did take one of my breakfast: what’s supposed to be hummus spread on bread, cheese curd, some salmon, chia seeds and beef jerky sticks. And some jelly to that. We’re getting to the vegan diet, eventually, maybe in 2030 xd

Tho it’d be hard to survive without dairy products, not gonna lie.

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January 7, 2021
Level: 53
Streak day: 337
Level up: January 10, 2021
Reviews: 725
Apprentice items: 260

The reviews number is not a drill. 725.
I’ve literally spent like 6 hours doing Japanese today. And I did the usual 9 to 5 working hours too. Lord, my ears are falling out of the orbits.

When I saw 152 lessons today, my hands just dropped. And the worst part is that I see level 54 on the horizon that has 115 vocabulary items, I’m worried that when items from level 54 come, be it on January 10th or January 14th, this number of lessons will go up even higher. Whee!

I was curious how difficult is WaniKani right now compared to the previous weeks so I put up a quick script and would you look at that!

Yep, don’t speedrun WaniKani. Seriously. Please. I can’t take it any harder, but according to my math about 750 is the hardest it might get if I keep up the accuracy.

There was a point in time where 150 reviews would take me an hour, but I’ve become more ruthless since, if I can’t remember a kanji or vocab in less than 10 seconds I immediately discard it and move to the next one xd
But going by that standard, just the reviews would take 2.5 hours each day of the week on average for me. That estimate might not be that far off factoring in the lessons as well :thinking:

Torigoth! I wasn’t very fond of the soundtrack of Xenoblade 2 when it came out, but a few tracks have always stood out to me, and Torigoth is definitely one of those. I can never have enough of it, the vocals are perfect in this one :grin:

I woke up at 6.15am to do reviews today and I had to pause for a few minutes, because… it started snowing! By the lunch break the snow had already melted, but I managed to take a few pictures nonetheless.

But what’s interesting about the weather here is that while back at home it would be foggy and gloomy pretty much every day, the sun is out pretty much all the time while I’m here! I mean, not counting the evenings. Anyway, here’s the snow around Clontarf today :grin:


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:see_no_evil: you made you choice. But I cheer for you. You can do it!

:yellow_heart: :green_heart: :orange_heart: I so much would love to experience snow.

As for your graphic: I’m not sure what your y-axis is about. Is it the reviews per week broken down as a daily average? (Sorry, for me being slow to get it…)

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Yikes! Even at the very worst, I never got close to 700 reviews in one day. I think my absolute worst review time was a little over three hours in one day, and even then, Wanikani was basically dominating my life for a while and I was constantly exhausted. I can’t imagine trying to do six hours.

Also, those are some great photos you’ve posted.

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Ooh, I’m sorry, I mislabeled the chart, the improved version of the chart is in the post from yesterday now, I hope that’s more readable now :sweat_smile:

January 8, 2021
Level: 53
Streak day: 338
Level up: January 10, 2021
Reviews: 278
Apprentice items: 221

I autopiloted through most of the reviews today, so I haven’t really learned that much. That being said, a lot of Apprentice items went to Guru today, I’ll have to do a self-study bootcamp someday but lord, I feel so tired and so lazy that I don’t know if I’ll do it within the next 24 hours.

I’ll have to do it before the level up though xd

Route 119, I’ve been on a Pokemon Ruby soundtrack high lately. It wasn’t my favorite Pokemon game growing up, but the more I get into music theory the more appreciation I get for how incredible this score is. There’s layers upon layers of complexity and it’s a sum of so many parts that it really feels like a miracle that something with so many seemingly disjointed elements sounds so fantastic in a harmony.

So, a while back I bought an audiobook for Nekomonogatari Shiro which I deemed to be a weak arc at that time, but I’ve forgotten most of the anime and simply moved on with my life. I got around to start it a while ago because I couldn’t stand the news about how many fantastic events did year 2020 bring and, whoa.

Not only was I blown away by the quality of the text, the recording gives so much justice to this book that I simply go for walks now with the audiobook in my ears, imagining all sorts of things Hanekawa Tsubasa must have had in her mind when she was going through the hardships in her life.

I thought I was over the phase where I would be taking life lessons from anime, but as it seems I’m back to being 12 :sweat_smile:

(for real, the book is much better than i remembered the anime being, the person that reads the book gives a lot of justice to the source material too)

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January 9, 2021
Level: 53
Streak day: 339
Level up: January 10, 2021
Reviews: 159
Apprentice items: 198

A liminal day - absolutely nothing new happened on WaniKani, which I was very glad for. As the time goes by, I begin to yearn for the times WaniKani felt like I was mostly reviewing stuff that I knew instead of the times when my lessons became unreasonably high xd
I still struggle heavily with the stuff I learned on Thursday, but I’m leaving this until tomorrow morning, I want to have as much of freedom I can.

aaand I’m using it to play Monster Hunter Rise demo in Japanese xd
I’m surprised to find out how much do I understand there, literally up to 95% of the kanji without having to look it up, and a few kanji from level 53 are there too, including 搭 for 搭乗 :grin:
But it’s very, VERY tiring to actually have to remind yourself “wait what was the reading for this on-AH SOO, IT WAS そう wait is it rendakud, ぞう?” xd

Give it up for Tsukihime Track 1! Still remains the most important reason why I’m studying Japanese right now.

I overdosed on coffee today and my brain unleashed the creative potential I never knew it had. I think one of my New Year’s resolutions after I’m done with WaniKani this year might be to start making… art. In a vague sense, any sort of art. It can be a meme in a specific format. It can be a Blender model. It can be a guitar song. I still have a month or so to look into different avenues :sweat_smile:

Either way, I’ll try to find something specific to keep myself motivated in that goal, but we’ll see how it goes.

My brain entertained a fun thought exercise today, what if the world we live in turned out to actually have divagated in 2016 and we got transferred to a parallel universe where all sorts of revolutions happened, the Note 7 being an explosive device, Nintendo Switch being so different from Nintendo 3DS, Bluetooth headphones became adopted, USB-C became a global standard, people started getting obsessed about Fortnite, a lot of sociopolitical changes have occurred, when you think of it, an awful lot of things changed since 2016, but what if the true universe we should all be living in had none of those things happen and not a single revolution happened since 2016, all of things that have changed have been merely evolutions instead?

The newest 2021 smartphones would have three physical keys. Wired headphones! Windows 20 would launch following a middling reception to Windows 10. Amazon would never become so influential, but it would rise in popularity. Star Wars The Last Jedi would be a middling remake of The Empire Strikes Back. Playstation 5 would look like Playstation 4 Pro. Galaxy Note 7 would be a trendsetter for the phones for years to come, with Galaxy Note 11 looking very similar to Note 7, but with a bigger screen.

It’s fun to think of really.

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January 10, 2021
Level: 54
Streak day: 340
Level up: January 14, 2021
Reviews: 715 (+ a couple hundred self-study)
Apprentice items: 309

My lord, today was a massacre. Started off pretty innocent, but I saw the apprentice 4->guru 1 promotion on the horizon and as soon as it came out, i just kept writing “a” to any answer and pressing enter between shedding tears. I hardly remembered any of the 152 words I learned on Thursday at all.

And then I thought I’d take my time and devote two entire hours for the level up kanji and vocab, felt pretty satisfied, went for a jog…

…and when I returned back I hardly remembered anything.

I think I spent 8 hours on WaniKani today, doing reviews, self-study, lessons, and the worst part is that I ended this day with more than 300 apprentice items, something that will jeopardise my rest days and make me not have any work/life balance over the next three weeks at all.

It feels horrible, but I know I can’t stop because then the days that would otherwise be lighter will stop being so, and I want to be done with the level ups in 21 days, gotta grind those last three weeks xd
And I am working full time too, so I can’t devote 8 hours to Japanese every day, I simply can’t handle it.

And I’m like 10-15 hours behind on content until next Thursday.

I don’t know if I can cheat this way in music links, but here’s a track that isn’t from a game, it’s associated with a game regardless - Nintendo Anti Piracy Self Reporter from Mario Party DS. I live for this meme. That’s the only sort of relief I get between review sessions on WaniKani xd

Didn’t do much today, studied a lot and went for my first jog while I’m in Ireland again. Tried not overdoing it, because I know you’re more prone to injuries if you haven’t run for a while and then you started again, but let me tell you, it felt goooooood.

I found a light academia music playlist on YouTube, got pretty deep into recommendations under that video too, cool times xd

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January 11, 2021
Level: 54
Streak day: 341
Level up: January 14, 2021
Reviews: 276
Apprentice items: 306

A bit of meditating while doing reviews today as well, I guess that’s one great thing I got from WaniKani, other than the Japanese knowledge obviously xd
But being able to meditate by guessing what’s the reading of a specific word, you don’t need to have the right answer, you only need to have to reach out to the depths of your brain to figure out what the reading is :grin:

The first review session today was well before the sunrise, I was waiting for the sun to rise, but it ultimately never did - the streak of amazing weather while I’m still here was broken by the cloudy skies today, which would’ve normally decimated my productivity, but I haven’t seen it for a while, so I got the lofi beats to relax studying boost xd

Since I’m playing the Monster Hunter demo quite a bit, here’s my earworm, Mitsuzune theme from Rise! Or should I say, タマミツネ? :blush:

To add to what I’ve written above, I went for another energy lying-in-bed before work after the first review session today. In order to keep myself awake, I put up the lofi hiphop radio on the speaker above my bed and I kept lying in bed thinking about, things

You know, it’s a good realization to have that the things that you have in your head are not facts, they’re just thoughts xd
I know how silly it sounds, but how liberating it is to be able to realize that whatever you’re feeling is not the absolute truth of what is going on, it’s simply how far did you run yourself in a specific direction when thinking :sweat_smile:

I still need to work on my optimism a bit, but today’s been very healthy for me in many regards: sleep length, work ethic, japanese review ethic, physical exercise (an hour’s walk, it’s always sustainable xd), things are looking up compared to the January 3 session :blush:

shoutouts to light academia playlists on youtube

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January 12, 2021
Level: 54
Streak day: 342
Level up: January 14, 2021
Reviews: 352
Apprentice items: 269

Meh, I wasn’t in the mood to do any reviews today at all, good thing it wasn’t Thursday or Sunday xd
But we survived, and luckily I remembered a lot of Master items, so a lot of stuff went straight to Enlightened.

The Apprentice count shrunk significantly too, but there’s still ways to go.

And those ways are tomorrow, ouch xd

Susato Mikotoba ~ Flower Blooming in the New World. I just signed the papers, I’m starting a new contract for a remote work from any place in Germany on February 1st! Wow, I’m so glad this happened xd

I’m a bit worried about the translocation process over this pandemic and VERY worried about accommodation, but it isn’t my first time going to a different country, in fact it’s the second time within 12 months, so we’ll see what I can do about it :sweat_smile:

I went to eat a donut to celebrate that, there’s not too many donuts left for me in Ireland before I have to go, so gotta appreciate every single one!

Time to hunt some more monsters now :sunglasses:

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January 13, 2021
Level: 54
Streak day: 343
Level up: January 14, 2021
Reviews: 310 (+ self-study)
Apprentice items: 186

Speaking of not being in the mood to keep on doing reviews…
image
the start of the self-study regimen was rather tough today xd

Ehh, everything will work out somehow, despite tomorrow probably being the hardest lesson cycle in the entirety of my WaniKani experience! A-at least probably. 348 reviews and probably around 160 new lessons before work, setting up alarm clock to 6:30, should work out xd

Snowball Park! It actually started snowing at home. Pretty hard. I’m so envious, we’ve had 11 degrees in Ireland today, good enough for a bike, but you aren’t getting any one horse open sleigh with that weather.

You can get some holiday Pringles though!

I’m too tired to keep on writing today, I’m going to bed and I’m waking up in less than 7 hours now xd

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Congrats for signing the contract. Sounds like there are already new adventures awaiting you once you’ve reached level 60.

…and since tomorrow will be level up day for you and sounds rather tough here is some more cheer-up. :muscle: :four_leaf_clover: show no mercy fearless kanji (monster) hunter :slight_smile:

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You have no idea how true is that statement. The whole relocation plan is pretty much fixed in place now, but the tl;dr is there’s no way from Ireland to get to Germany if you’re ending accommodation on one day and starting living in Germany the next day.

Which isn’t to say that I can’t go there!
I’ll try to share the details of my plan in the following days, we’ll see how it goes :grin:

January 14, 2021
Level: 55
Streak day: 344
Level up: January 17, 2021
Reviews: 677
Apprentice items: 242

Yep, that was another one of those soul-crushing level-up days. Or was it?

I’m feeling way less drained than the same time last Thursday or Sunday, even though I’m not very familiar with the new items yet, I feel as if the morning review was very peaceful and put me in a meditative state. The most difficult review was the Apprentice 3->Apprentice 2/4 items at the end of the day and there weren’t much of those, either way some of those unfortunately went down.

I just wish WaniKani wasn’t taking up so long of my day, but it really wasn’t as terrible as I worried it would have been today xd

I know I went with another Mario track yesterday, but I can’t stop thinking of Caves from Super Mario Odyssey today. SUCH A GOOD TRACK. I just love how it flows :blush:

My company expended me a meal today, which was really nice of them! I got a bigger allowance than I needed, which allowed me to go super extra fancy and basically order all the meals of the day xd

The sandwich alone had 6 slices of bread in it and then mac and cheese inside of it, my lord i love cheese so much.

And yeah, a salmon salad and a greek yoghurt with granola too. I felt like a king, not gonna lie xd

Will have to go on a bike after work tomorrow to burn those meals tho, those are pretty much the only things i ate today and im still swollen :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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January 15, 2021
Level: 55
Streak day: 345
Level up: January 17, 2021
Reviews: 270
Apprentice items: 231

I was pretty glad that my reviews today aligned with the time when I finished work, so I could treat it as an extension of my work and I was done just after that xd

Since I haven’t slept well today either, I spent a lot of time going like “yyyy uuuhhh” though, I’m not sure I’m going to miss those much xd

But yeah, I hope I’ll get some rest tomorrow, as tomorrow’s forecast is less than 200, should be fairly relaxed. Comparatively, at least!

Garden of Hope from Pikmin 3, a track to which I owe a few of my level ups. I’m starting to realize that I really like mornings, I like the sun that goes up, the smell of the sea breeze early in the day, those things are among something I’d like to appreciate more.

YouTube lately is proposing me three types of videos that I wasn’t very much into, but for some reason the algorithm decided I might be into that, so I just keep on clicking to find out what this is about!

The first one is music compilations, often of lofi or music deemed inspirational. When I’m at work, I tend not to put up any music, but that’s mostly because I simply forget to do so xd
I use music to heal, so when I put up a playlist it’s usually because I want to escape to that fictional world. Despite me being very deep into social commentary videos, sometimes I just don’t want to keep up with whatever’s going on with the world, that’s why I’m glad those ones show up.

Speaking of keeping up with whatever’s going on with the world, the second type of videos is a direct antithesis to that - it’s videos that show people that live slowly and take their time to appreciate their life, either by studying, scrapbooking or simply having to live in the countryside. I’m so envious of those, I wish I was able to slow my life even just a bit, and there’s gonna be a chance to do so as soon as I’m done with WaniKani :stuck_out_tongue:

Or not, because there’s a third type of videos, and that’s… investment advice videos.
This category really puzzles me because I have no idea how did I even get there, but it reinforces some of my fears in regards to saving up money, that the inflation is chewing through them and even a lazy portfolio would be better than just having a current account where you’d be accumulating some money. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but the question is… why do I even get those videos in the first place? :thinking: xd

Special shoutouts to @Saida who liked 9 of my posts today, very grateful xd

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Mostly because of the pictures! Also mad respect for speed running the fast levels, I don’t think I could handle those review numbers. I’d rather keep mine under 200, doing about 20 lessons a day.

January 16, 2021
Level: 55
Streak day: 346
Level up: January 17, 2021
Reviews: 188
Apprentice items: 210

Usually on Saturdays I try to squish as much as I can into the first review session and then do just a handful on the second one, today that was the opposite. Wouldn’t say I was a fan of this, but I wanted to go out for a walk early and it kinda shifted over my timer xd

Either way, a few items after today are back to Apprentice, a few can’t leave it, I know I should probably focus more on them, but I really just can’t, the thought of 15 days being left fills me with indifference :stuck_out_tongue:

Menu 2, an absolute classic. Played some Smash Ultimate today and got both Ganondorf and Ridley to Elite Smash, I suppose it’s much easier when you need to hit your opponent like four times to steal a stock xd

As for me today, my parents woke me up to talk at 8. I was like blblbl before I got myself up, so I just asked them to call later, did the morning toilette, refreshed myself and it made me feel so good, so free…

And then I’ve made the biggest mistake of the day. As a Christmas gift, my bro gave me a special, condensed type of a coffee that has 5 times the regular caffeine count. I’m usually pretty shaky when it comes to coffee, but today I was like “why not” and I went with a cup full of it.

I was bipolar for the rest of the day xd
Soaking the sun filled me with immense joy, contemplating about my day drove my mind racing, and then at the end of it I had thoughts flying at unprecedented speeds through my head :thinking:

Right now I’m having shivers, but God only knows if it’s because I’m still under the effect of the coffee, I’m tired or I caught cold on a walk. Or you know, maybe the c- nope, that can’t be it xd

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