I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate Bunpro. I have been dabbling with Japanese on and off for a while now. I have tried all kinds of study methods, from text books and private tutors to flashcards and apps. They’ve all had their place in my learning journey, but none of them really clicked the way Bunpro has.
A little background: I live in Japan, am married to a Japanese national, work at a Japanese company, have Japanese friends. But despite this I found my skills dropping, because I didn’t have a way to fit in quality study. Although Bunpro is arguably similar to using something like anki, I found its flexible approach to reviews (making you use different conjugations and different meanings of words) to be a great way to break the complacency I found with flashcards. Anki became pattern repetition rather than learning. Sometimes the prompts aren’t always great, but I love the attempts to nudge you when you are close, and the fact you can undo if you really have to - finally a cure for sausage fingers.
I think the app and website are both visually quite nice - easy to see how I’m doing and find what I’m looking for etc, so kudos on that.
Within 2 weeks of using Bunpro my wife was shocked at how much Japanese I was able to understand. A month on, she is equally impressed by my output. This is more me unlocking dormant memories and consolidating things I sort of knew, but without Bunpro I personally wouldn’t be making so much progress.
I feel so much more confident in Japanese, and I know the road ahead is still long (and really never-ending) but I really feel like this is the best resource for how I learn and as such, I’ve just treated myself to a lifetime membership.
So TL;DR: big thanks to the Bunpro team for your amazing tools and I look forward to spending many more hours (likely years) grinding through your content. You’ve literally changed my life.
