Yomichan has spoiled me, I know what you mean. If you’re on windows I would recommend the program Capture2Text - takes 5 seconds to capture the on screen text and then copy paste that into jisho or ichi.moe
Dunno if that will entice ya to do more of the sessions but at least you can use the program for other things! I might make a post about this program later, a lot of people get great use out of it.
I think there are few mixed reasons for not participating. Mostly I’m a typically top A procrastinator, easily distracted with many other things (work, chores, pet projects, etc.) while running my regular scheduled Japanese learning through SRS.
But all of that are excuses as many people have so much more on their plates than I do. Nonetheless, I really enjoy being able to skim through the posts as additional Reading practice.
I know trying to write something won’t hurt and would take less time than replying to forum posts but I guess a lot of it has to do with my low confidence level as well.
Regardless, I try not to be hard on myself and just enjoy reading the Grammar In The Wild posts, as well as many of the insightful replies from the community members.
I also think the levels are wonderfully balanced and having manga resources alternating with the other ones would be a nice pace.
Adding resources from everyday items like food packaging instructions, guide on how to use a machines / gadgets and signs seen in shops or restaurants would be great. I guess basically stuff that would be useful for travellers.
Last but not least, CONGRATULATIONS to the winners! 
Aozora bunko is a great suggestion, and I love those books! We would have to do it a little bit differently if it were a longer passage though. As far as copyright goes, so long as we are copying less than 20% of the original work it is fair game, and there are even extra statutes regarding content that is used for educational purposes (which we thankfully are). I am definitely not against it!
Shokugeki no soma is actually on my list of things to buy (we purchase all the manga we use here, just to be safe). You are correct, they do have great food descriptions, and I will definitely include some in the future. One of the other ones that we already have (Toriko) also has really good food and ‘food porn’ descriptions. So something like that is not off the table!
Thankyou for asking! We would love to know this too 
Rewriting the sentence if there are any really difficult parts is also a good idea!
Good point! We may not include it as part of the picture, but if I did a ‘hidden’ section with any difficult words displayed, would that help?
If this is your primary reason, please think of it as an opportunity to help us at Bunpro! If you are not confident in something, we personally feel responsible as a platform, because out primary goal is to give you confidence!
If you get something wrong, don’t worry about it at all! The day will come that I translate something incorrectly as part of Grammar In The Wild myself! Seeing common mistakes that people make will help us know what we need to teach better! Even for things that you have not learned yet, if you just add a note saying ‘I haven’t actually learned this grammar yet, but wanted to give it a shot’, everybody will appreciate it! We are all in the same boat, and things that seem like small realizations can actually be massive steps for some people.
Irregardless of that, please feel free to take part!
P.S food packaging is a great idea! (and I have a lot of it) I will include some!
It might also be a good idea to have the same sentence just as text in the hidden area, makes it possible to just copy-paste into jisho or the like if someone is unsure. I don’t mind re-typing the sentence myself, but if it is indeed a hurdle for some people, that might be of some help.
While personally I think I would be fine with what @mathijsdm is suggesting, providing translations for difficult words might make it more accessible since it is cutting out an extra step. I think these challenges are more supposed to be about seeing how grammar is applied in practice, so giving away what vocabulary isn’t such a big deal. I do like the tidbits of information we get along with the answer image though.
As an aside, are there any plans for archiving these in the long term? I still think one of the more underrated aspects of this site is having thousands of translated example sentences which GitW really plays into.
I was thinking about the difficulty issue, but one thing I think I would be neat in the far-far future is a sort of learnnatively style rating and browsing system. Maybe not necessarily taking in user evaluations, but even just having the admins weigh in on the sample difficulty and having some more robust search options would be a great compliment to Bunpro’s current content.
I certainly felt this way even when I was participating. There’s definitely freedom in the approach to learning Japanese, but my instincts definitely screams stupid things like “4 is a prerequisite to 3, don’t even try it!”
I also think it kind of feels bad to get N5/N4 point which is beginner territory and struggle to make sense of sentence. I pushed myself through some of these early on because of the encouragement I’ve read from other users, but it definitely would have been frustrating enough to make me give up if I was on my own.
This is how I felt as well. I’m so new that I’ve had to do looks up on all but one of the examples so far anyway. Today’s example also ended being one of those annoying examples where I missed something simple and got super lost with the point. Like someone else said I’ll often chuck a line in jisho and most of the time it will parse it well enough, but today I was little too brain dead to coax this into
what it was actually supposed to be. If I had put in the ファンデ separately it would have come up, but it was one of those annoying pain points that comes up from just being inexperienced. As soon as I read the other responses I did one of these
(Well, I also thought the foundation was a top down photograph of a tea cup next to a saucer at first glance so I felt extra stupid)
For what it’s worth, there are a lot of times that N5/N4 stuff here is not a true difficulty when it takes into consideration slang, nuances, etc. You can see how the example sentences in the grammar points work vs stuff in this thread, just slightly tougher! I think what a lot of us can do is foster an environment where even if someone gets a sentence 90% wrong we can help out to point them in the right direction. Someone not understanding vocab words is something they can look on jisho, etc. about but stuff like conjugation, grammar points, etc. are things that we can help explain outside of what Asher does.
My Japanese is ass and when I first started I felt the same way, it’s tough to go over that uncomfortable feeling and feel vulnerable knowing someone will ace it and you’ll flop. I’ll continue to think on it, but there’s certainly ways to help out starters a bit more to make them feel more comfortable and having a strong support group for everyone. We’ll all suffer together as one! 
Will likely archive all my own sentences, ask a native to double check, and have that as my archive or make a deck. I usually lock in grammar best on a favorite sentence and the memory is even better if I produce it myself, successfully that is…then there are all sorts of degrees of freedom that can happen.
For the daily challenges, the manga is out of context and sometimes I’m not sure who is saying what to whom or what the scenario is unless you know the manga already, that is helpful and can change the nuance. So sometimes would be great to get pre/post text that is surrounding the sentence in question …I understand why they can’t post the whole panel w/ pictures without permission. The signs are usually solid but there is usually an environment that surrounds the sign to help out, so extra challenge, haha. But would be nice to have flip cards to practice with the nice graphics, either as a personal deck or native to the site since it’s their intellectual property. They are a good memory device since we discuss in depth so nice to look back on for reference and really lock in the grammar point we all already practiced!
Anyways, it must take effort to put together each daily challenge together, find a sentence, have pretty graphics put together so thank you for the BP team for organizing so we can practice daily. Plus it’s fun to do as a community and discuss as such. Much appreciated! 
Meep! I’ll try once a week at least starting next week, so I won’t have extra guilt from procrastinating my Japanese homework nearing to the weekend class 
But I know it’s part of Japanese learning so I should not feel bad. Really appreciate the encouragement!
We have them all archived, and will possibly make them available at some point for download or something similar. There is no specific plan for that yet, but I would say that it will definitely happen at some point!
In regard to the massive amount of sentences, we also 100% see the vaule in that, and are currently working on something that should scratch that itch perfectly! (watch this space) 
Thinking about how GitW has only been around a few weeks/months and we’re already up to ~600 posts… Have you thought about breaking up the thread every now and then? Maybe start a new GitW thread with each season? That way it stays fresh, gives new people a kinda clean slate to jump in on, and you don’t end up with a thread that has an unwieldy amount of posts. (I don’t know about others, but I like to read through old threads start-to-finish.)
Good point, we are already well into the month, but starting next month I will do them monthly.
For me, it’s not an issue of difficulty - I’ve not struggled too much with any of them so far. I just have that mental roadblock of “Oh my god, what if I post and I’m stupid”, which is completely unfounded because I’ll read everyone else’s replies and people translated it the same way. Anxiety do be like that though.
Oh, and usually because I read through and do them in my downtime at work, and my laptop at school is running an IE so old that the forums ask me to update so I can even log in
Though I’ve been quiet and haven’t been joining in, I would like to say I really do enjoy this feature!
That mindset is 10000000% understandable! All I can say is that even if you get something 90% wrong, there’s not going to be anyone in there looking down on your attempts. I’ve royally butchered some guesses but I’ve realized said failure and asked others to help guide me in the right direction. It’s beyond awesome having others helping you out with sincerity instead of someone helping but coming off like they’ve got better things to do.
Even if you do them to yourself it’s still great practice and that’s all that matters! 
This is honestly what I like best about the Bunpro community, to be honest! Everyone tends to be super helpful and understanding, which isn’t super common in language learning circles. Not to blow our own trumpets, but 
Though you have been quiet, please feel free to give us feedback about it in the same way anyone else would! I understand the anxiety hahaha, I will probably post something with a very glaring mistake sooner or later myself! 
Glad to hear that you have been enjoying it though! It’s always fun to try stuff out in real life, especially if it is from a resource we wouldn’t personally use regularly!
It pretty awesome right! I hope more people start participating soon! We are really lucky to have a great community that is super ready to help anyone at any level!
I really understand how you feel and was pretty much doing the same thing (with excuses of procrastination) until Asher pressured me to join, lol. And true to form and my level, of course I made mistakes when I tried but once I’ve passed the initial feeling of extreme embarrassment, it has that oddly freeing relief. Felt that after doing my second attempt.
What helps with knowing my character is that as long I don’t give myself too much pressure, like participating only once a week or trying when I saw sentences that I understood more than the others, I’ll be able to at least give myself a nudge to do translation.
Now that I have participated, it made me notice even more of people’s different ways of translating and that’s totally fine in my opinion. Reminded me of the times when reading English subtitles and thinking, “That’s not really what they mean in Japanese” but understanding that a lot of times they were trying to hit the closest nuance in short dialogue time slots and other constraints.
So I could see my translations as robotic and direct for now, but I know over time it will improve since I’m still a beginner. Plus, I’m using my procrastination habit when doing most of the Grammar in the Wild translations too, so it’s a win-win situation for me 
We also think this is one of the best things! In translation, there really is no 100% correct answer, and a ‘correct’ answer could potentially be written 50 different ways.
Unfortunately we only have one translation for each sentence on the site, but we also think that it is important for people to recognize that learning a language is based on your understanding of what you’re reading in the target language, not your ability to translate it in the exact same way as another person. 
How/where do I join?
It’s kinda the same for me, but “what if I post and it’s completely unreadable garbage”, because English isn’t my native language. So I have to check everything I write with context.reverso.net or something
