Based on the streak, the OP is at least 2,737,908.5 years old.
Meaning, they got to see:
If I were you, I would listen very closely to any words of wisdom from such a species.
Entry the fifteenth - August 2nd, 2025
It’s a Saturday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was another memorable Japanese learning experience with only 3 reviews destroyed by my sheer willpower alone. I can now just look at reviews and complete them. No typing needed!
Remember when I mentioned I X, formerly Twitter, about two posts ago? Yes, yes controversial platform…but this bothered me a lot.
For better or for worse, the little bird is dead and buried. But…what does Bunpro post on Twitter? Is it good? Do they go for spicy political takes? Casual posting of mundanity? Let’s find out!
Immediately, I noticed that Bunpro isn’t verified. I don’t see the checkmark of officialness. How am I supposed to know they pay around $8 a month to be official? Yes, I know it’s linked from the official Bunpro website, but I don’t trust easy! Especially when it’s painfully obvious!!
But look at that, 1,410 followers. That’s a pretty decently-sized neighborhood worth of people following Bunpro. Really puts things into perspective, eh?
With that many followers, surely there’s a ton of engagement, right? (Spoilers, I looked ahead before typing this.)
Instead of emotionally reactive “hot takes” we have…something unique?
Aww, cute! They still use hashtags. But pay no attention to the engagement at the bottom! I will get to that momentarily.
So many posts are just these little content drops teaching Japanese. Which is cool, I suppose. Who…who makes these? I never seen these on the forums or the website proper. There’s little cartoons that look to be taken from some repository.
Clearly there’s effort put into these but look:
The engagement on these posts are ridiculously bad! Despite the effort put into them, which is respectable, there’s something to say where a man posting an image of a soda each day is getting more engagement than this.
There is something so sad about a call to action that is fallen upon deaf ears. You know what? I won’t reply to the Twitter thread, but I will give an example sentence just for you, unknown Bunpro social media poster:
トイレしてる間にドアを開けておいたら、義母に見られて心臓止まりかけたらしい…まじで死にたい。
I encourage you all to come up with your own sentence and make tribute to the social media engagement gods.
Screaming into the void again? I know that feeling all too well. Notice its use of emojis telling us to think. Alas nobody dropped anything in the comments. But I shall drop one more sentence just to pay tribute:
ズボンのチャックが開いていたようだ…会社のかわいい受付さんと話してた時に。見られたかも…？
Who are you, Bunpro social media poster? What’s your day to day like? Hobbies? Favorite food? I would like to know this person and write a minimum 100-page biography on them. Unironically. If I ever get the chance to do so, I will make it a special thread just to give them the kudos they deserve.
Remember to tip your waitresses, everyone!
You made me think of this song with those words 
Impressive strategy skipping n5 and finishing n1, you’re going places.
Entry the sixteenth - August 3rd, 2025
It’s a Sunday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was exactly the same, mind-melting, philosophically-driven Japanese learning experience you’ve all come to know and love by now. Three reviews were obliterated with my mind’s eye and another grammar point bit the dust.
This leaves my body craving for a reward, and I dunno about you, but one of my favorite snacks is Saku Saku Panda.
If you never had these pandas before, then you are missing out. Every single time I go to Japan, I crave just two things: Saku Saku Panda and Mister Donut. Historical or linguistic nonsense? Nah. Authentic sushi or ramen? Throw that in the trash! To me, Mister Donut and those pandas are my world.
Curiously, it’s stylized as “Sakusakupanda” on the bag, which while an accurate translation…is weird to see in English. Let’s check their official webpage just to see if we can find anything interesting.
Going to the company’s official webpage is…Wowzers! That’s one TOUGH GUMMY…but what’s that on the upper-right hand corner?
English you say? But, Cure Dolly sensei told me I would never amount to anything in my Japanese learning life if I stepped outside of my immersion bubble, but Cure Dolly sensei never met a man with an unreasonable sense of curiosity, wit, and dashing good looks. Let’s click to see the English site.
Well, the English site doesn’t look too different, eh?
Maybe all this nonstop immersion 25/8 is causing a bleeding effect where everything seems one of the same.So let’s scroll down just to test out my new superpowers.
When feel ease at home. When chat with your friends. When take a break…
With your heart, 70 pandas.
I think that’s absolutely beautiful. Personally, I love really bad Engrish. Sometimes, it’s unintentionally philosophical.
There are 70 expressive face. you can find the one, matching your feeling.
Which panda is your soul animal? I will choose the rare koala creature that is on one of the faces. Fun fact! Bet you didn’t know that about Sakusakupanda.
Maybe one day I will rant about the majesties of Mister Donut, maybe I will rant about something in a ridiculous amount of precision tomorrow. Truly you never know, and that’s the best part. It’s a mystery for you as it is for me!
Until next time, stay sakusaku, everyone!
Came here for the new panda title and was not disappointed!
I now know of another snack that I have to try! Thank you for your wise recommendation.
Here, I got my family addicted to all kinds of Pocky haha…
Can’t believe you highlighted Shenmue but didn’t tell everyone about the amazing gachapon minigame. One of my favorite games btw.
I typically step out of my immersion hyperbolic time chamber when I read these posts. Sometimes it’s hard to be a Kanji warrior when I’m not binging anime and reading documents from the National Diet Library for fun.
But reading about Saku Saku Panda, worth it.
Entry the seventeenth - August 4th, 2025
It’s a Monday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was ex–Okay, we’re skipping right to the tangent today. You know what really weirds me about Japanese culture? I have to warn you, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. If you wish to stop now, I don’t blame you.
Well, how can I say it without saying it. The Japanese seem to have a mild fascination with, well, this:
You may be thinking to yourself, “Pompompurin is life. Pompompurin is god. What’s weird about that?” And while you are right that this dog is more popular that some religions, look at what I had to censor? Yes, that’s right, his little backside beauty mark.
I noticed this when looking at stickers on LINE that many of them have the beauty mark on them and I started seeing it everywhere for cute Japanese creatures.
I have to ask why?
This started creeping into video games too!
Oh my goodness, not Okami! I love that game. But why? Why must there be such painstaking attention to detail about this area of cute characters?
Stunned, and lost for words, I gathered what little vocabulary I had and asked ChatGPT for any potential culprits for its origin point. One stuck out at me:
Shiri-tantei, eh? Is that the cheese?
Well, shucks I guess generative AI fails again, eh? Despite the fact this character looks like a rosey-cheeked Adolf Hitler, this still doesn’t help me answer the question of who started this.
But I realized that it was all Pompompurin all along. I mean, it had to be right? He’s just so proud of it.
I searched high and low for answers until I stumbled across this:
This caused several riots in Japan. Just when you think that one backside beauty mark enamored the Japanese, it was a genetic oddity from a McDonald’s toy that truly did them in.
But once you start seeing it, you can’t unsee it.
Look, it’s in Mario Party 2!
That’s…that’s not even an animal! That’s a bobsled! And then it started spreading! You started --oh god, it found Walmart?
Walmart’s not even Japanese! No, this…everything is falling apart. Let me ask ChatGPT and --oh dear lord, not them too!
This Pompompurin is a trojan horse planted by the Japanese. Enamor the world with a cute dog with a quirky little marking. Then slowly it takes over the world where even multi-billion dollar companies are embracing Pompom’s rule.
Maybe Pompompurin was playing 4D chess while we were all too busy with our reviews to pay attention. Maybe we spent too much time immersing ourselves in mind-numbing Japanese media while this cute Sanrio character plots world domination.
Personally, I have always been a team Pompom kind of guy, so I am okay with it. But I fear. I fear so much for those who are on team Cinnamonroll. May god have mercy on their souls.
Be sure to check under your beds, everyone!
Entry the eighteenth - August 5th, 2025
It’s a Tuesday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was a crazy and magical journey into the world of Japanese learning. The reviews put up a struggle, but after a tense fight, I used my blade (I am one with the blade, btw) to vanquish five reviews. Once it was known the reviews perished during the onslaught, a GRAMMAR POINT appeared before me. I stared into its soul and immediately found its weakness.
With the power of my ancestors locked away in my right arm, I unleashed 10% of my power and that brings me closer to collecting all the JLPT balls. I am told once I collect all five, I am granted eternal happiness and $10,000 in cash.
This battle was exhausting. So of course it led me to thinking about relaxing, potentially even mind-numbing methods of cooling off. This led me to thinking about a certain game developer I had such a strong fondness for that you don’t really see anymore.
I bring to you:
PopCap Games! Now that was a mighty brave developer before it traded its soul to the dark shogunate in exchange for paltry monetary gains.
This developer was firing on all cylinders! They were the masters of making games with simple-to-learn mechanics but with deep gameplay mixed in with charm oozing out of every orifice. OOZES! This combination led them to having mainstream success with the casuals and some rather fun experiences.
I truly struggle to think about how many other developers constantly made new IPs with such consistently high quality and charm. Sure you have Double Fine (but I think their games play like poo, but don’t tell Tim Schafer that. I wouldn’t dare to hurt that man.)
But…Pop Cap just stopped being interesting! It’s so sad. I loved Plants Vs. Zombies, Peggle, and even that darn Zuma game! A shame that a developer with so much creativity and charm got churned away into a brand of seemingly irrelevancy.
You know that a developer is special when each intro movie showing the company logo is unique. Totally unnecessary but it’s a secret coded message that tells to me that the devs care.
I always check a company from top to bottom to see if there’s a soul. There’s something to it when you can tell if the development team is having fun. Culture is important. Fun culture leads to a fun work environment, which leads to (hopefully) fun games!
Do yourselves a favor, everyone. Have an ice cream sandwich, go onto the app store on your device of preference, and just observe the games on the platform.
Things didn’t used to be this way. But maybe things can change if we embrace silliness and charm…and fart jokes.
Be kind and rewind, everyone!
I just noticed your streak which might just make you the oldest person in existence. It’s no wonder you can pass N1 in one fell swoop, but take your time with N5.
That means you lived through the era when we only had learning tapes, books, and dictionaries. When Japanese content was rare, and educational materials lackluster. When the dawn of a new era came with Anki revolutionizing flashcards. Then the Ajatt cult enlightenment. To the birth of Bunpro and Migaku. To where we are now with the gamification of language learning and 20 something language grifting influencers who became fluent in a week, and you can too.
Oh wait, I went through all those things. Oh god, how old am I?
Entry the nineteenth - August 6th, 2025
It’s a Wednesday once again! Can you believe it?
Today blah blah blah, I -INSERT REVIEW COUNT- and backflips, explosions, and various shenanigans. I whispered to the Bunpro gods and they whispered back in a language I couldn’t understand. Symbols from a forgotten time, forgotten place. I close my eyes and see things indescribable by my meager brain’s comprehension. Let me tell you a tale.
Candy. Candy never changes.
In the year 1979, my great great grandfather was a soldier during the great Meiji-sponsored candy wars in Japan.
He held his box of Kinoko no yama closely wondering if he will ever taste it again. It was that time when the separatists of Takenoko no sato destroyed his village and the age of the chocolate mushroom changed from a prosperous people to a tiny minority.
Yes, that’s right. Sit down everyone, it’s time I told you about the great candy wars of Japan.
These candy wars are serious business. It has ended friendships, lives, and even put my own relationship in jeopardy. Yes, sweetie, if you read this, I am calling you out and telling you that your opinion is wrong.
We have two contenders: The absolutely and amazing Takenoko no Sato (たけのこの里) and the disgusting and potentially smelly Kinoko no Yama (きのこの山). Hopefully by the time you read this, you will understand why those mushrooms are disgusting and horrible.
From what I know of Japanese people, beauty and balance plays an important role in everyday life. Look at the beautiful bamboo shoots and marvel at how it displays elegance only seen from Japanese candies.
Wow, look at that. Puts you to tears, right? You see, mushrooms. They grow in poo. That’s not beautiful nor elegant. In fact, I would argue that’s gross. Also, notice the shape of the mushrooms. There’s no balance at all.
Gross! You have something that grows in questionable environments plus it’s top heavy. I am not telling you that if you like this candy you have the wrong opinion, I am telling you if you like this candy, I truly wish you the best in recovery from faulty taste buds.
If you think that I am exaggerating about this candy war, there’s even a Wikipedia page about it!
My favorite part is this paragraph:
Conflict runs deep in modern Japan. Even though they celebrate peace, there’s still wounds from those lost in the great candy war.
This video is very NSFW and might be traumatizing as you’re witnessing true candy-on-candy violence. If you have a weak stomach, you may wish to stop entirely.
But in my deepest and sincerest opinion, the best candy ever made by man is without a doubt Saku Saku Panda, but pandas are peace. They are silent observers. When the candy wars are over, it’s the pandas that shall inherit the Earth.
Candy, candy never changes, everyone.
Not to get too serious on your not so serious thread but it is obvious that たけのこ are better. The quality of chocolate is pretty bad so the best part of these snacks is the 食感, meaning that the far more crunchy たけのこ will win every time. Even the occasional matcha flavoured きのこ are pretty poor in the flavour department.
Anyway, we all must choose a side, as evidenced below.
先日彼女とデート中彼女に「きのこの山とたけのこの里」どっち派？と聞かれました。 ので、マジで本心で何も考えず僕は「どっちでも無いなぁ。2つとも美味しいし、きのこ買ったら次たけのこって感じやから。強いて言うならどっちも好きやな！」と言いました。
すると彼女がイライラした様子で「どっちか決めて！どちらかというとどっちが好きなん！？」と急かしてきました。
何故ですか？？笑
僕はその質問に関しては誰に聞かれても良いように決めて練習していたぐらいなのに。。
Entry the twentieth - August 7th, 2025
It’s a Thursday once again! Can you believe it?
Today I did two --wait, just two reviews? …seriously? Ahem, yes, two reviews were accomplished today, and I didn’t even know it! That really shows that the power of Japanese fluency is already coursing through my veins.
@Asher mentioned the gachapon elements in Shenmue a few days prior and it led me to thinking about that deeper than a normal person thought possible.
It reminded me of the last time I went to Japan. I was obsessed with these little proto-loot boxes.
But, as predicted, not the way you probably thought.
I want you to look at this:
That’s right, if you so desired, you can have entrance gate turnstile toys for 300 yen each! Or, if you look to your left, you can have one of four different barcode scanners for 400 yen each.
Now, I thought about this for a while --why on God’s green Earth would anyone want to buy this?
Then…I realized something…I would be the one who would buy this! Why would I buy it? Because I am a simple man who would laugh really hard telling people a wonderful tale over the existence of entrance gate turnstile toys and how I would be the proud owner of one.
But that’s just me. Certainly there is a trend, an audience beyond just me wanting to buy things for the lulz.
Here’s another one:
Thats right, your eyes shan’t deceive you. This is a Denny’s capsule machine! I don’t even like Denny’s, I can’t imagine anyone with their head screwed on straight would pay 400 yen for a Denny’s capsule toy.
But that’s the magic behind it. That’s a story I want to know. Someone out there is probably a huge Denny’s otaku or an entrance gate turnstile otaku. I would love to know why they feel such a way to drop approximately $3 USD on a toy that is more or less a meme to my monkey brain.
Each time I see one of these curious machines in Japan, I will pay closer attention and observe each one. See how many toys are left, see if I can find anything on X, formerly Twitter, if there’s any mention of its existence.
Consumerism, in excess, can be vapid, meaningless and even harmful. But even God’s lowliest of creatures, the gachapon, we can still learn about ourselves.
Why did I spend my entire allowance in Shenmue for figures that do…well, nothing in the game?
Maybe I just wanted to live out a fantasy where Sonic the Hedgehog existed in Japan five years before he came out. Maybe I just think they’re neat!
Spend all your money frivolously, everyone!
Entry the twenty-first - August 8th, 2025
It’s a Friday once again! Can you believe it?
In addition to three grammar reviews, I started fooling around with Bunpro’s vocabulary decks. Maybe something interesting will come of it. But as of now, grammar is the main villain in this story arc! Maybe there will be a tournament arc between the various points of Japanese learning? Maybe one day I will collect all five of the JLPT balls.
I think I will need a JLPT ball radar because I have quite a journey before I reach the first one.
Speaking of anime tropes, I bought the game Enchanted Arms a few years ago and recently finished it. It was quite a game! You have wonderful creatures such as this:
And fun fact! This game has an early model of the The Vanguard Demon from Demon’s Souls as a character you can summon/fight with. Boy, those Japanese sure love reusing assets!
But I didn’t want to talk about Enchanted Arms, you see --I wanted to chat about what came in the box of my game. I purchased this game used from eBay. Now, as a curious creature, I love to open the box and see the contents --usually it’s just manuals and on rare occasions the receipt/cheat codes left behind by the previous owner.
This time, I received something extra curious in my box of Enchanted Arms.
This is…interesting and NOT in Japanese, so sadly I cannot attempt to read this. But it looks like it’s in French and the card is in German. All of this stuffed into my North American box of Enchanted Arms! What a well traveled game box, eh?
Now, I put this through ChatGPT 5 (Wow a new model!) and this is what it gave me:
“Dear Sébastien,
I always think a lot, a lot about you! And when I saw this card, it was exactly what I wanted to wish you!
Confidence in yourself! You are surrounded by the affectionate thoughts of the whole family who love you very much!! Yes indeed!!
Big kisses from Grandma, and may God keep you!”
This deeply saddens me! Was this game a gift to Sébastien from gram gram? Did Sébastien not like the game and sell it on eBay? Is this even the first owner of this game?
It is a mystery! I feel it is my duty to give Sébastien back his card…not the game tho, it’s mine, so I struggled to find out anything that I can use to identify this man. The other side of the card had no personal identifying material, so I turned to eBay to help me out.
I looked at the seller name for Enchanted Arms that I purchased years ago and searched online to find anything that I could that could link to Sébastien to give him grammy’s card.
Enchanted Arms, you see, released on August 29, 2006 in the US. This might’ve been a present to Sébastien nearly twenty years ago. I fear that if that is the case, grams may have crossed the rainbow bridge.
I searched high and low for Sébastien’s information based on what little I had to go on, and sadly nothing.
Sébastien, by any chance you are learning Japanese and you are reading a thread that is 40+ posts deep, I have your grandmother’s card and it’s in safe hands. I’ve cherished it deeply like you would have while it awaits its return to its proper owner.
I will send this to you at no cost to ensure that you have this back in your possession.
Also, uh, thanks for Enchanted Arms. It’s kinda a dumb game with shounen anime tropes. There’s a character in the game who is wildly a product of its time, so much so that my next image of it will be in a spoiler tag to shield the eyes of the most sensitive of readers:
All in all, I would give Enchanted Arms an 11 out of 17 hats. It has decent gameplay saved only by a random French-speaking grandmother.
Be brave, everyone!
Half-way through, I was expecting some dragon candy to appear 
I think I watched my husband play Skyrim too many times to count.
Entry the twenty-second - August 9th, 2025
It’s a Saturday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was a monumental day for my Japanese reviews and overall Japanese progress. Five reviews. They underestimated my power level… and paid the price. One grammar point. The prophecy spoke of this, the day I would defeat a grammar point just by the power of friendship.
But also, I decided to work on a new Vocab deck for Bunpro! I took a look at the N5 vocab list and was largely disappointed by how at odds it is for users who know zero Japanese and are learning the grammar and vocab for the first time.
Essentially, this deck introduces vocab as you see it in the grammar lessons and the example sentences.
Nooooow, I know Bunpro can be sneaky and change the example sentences on a whim, so think of this as a proof of concept. I want to finish at least all vocab seen in N5 grammar points, and I am about halfway there.
It would be interesting to see how much N5 vocab is in this deck when you finish the N5 grammar, as if there is at least 90% overlap, it may be worth looking into for the Bunpro team.
Here’s a link to those that are interested (note, I may make decks that are grouped by JLPT level in the future): Decks out for vocab learning
Now for something tangentially related!
I learned about something utterly fascinating today called Shouryuuma (精霊馬).
“What on Earth is that?! This wasn’t in any of my manga training!” Now, settle down theoretical person. This is a Buddhist thing where families honor the spirits of their ancestors…but most importantly, there’s this weird thing that I noticed that I thought was cool:
Wow! What is that? Those, my friends, are Japanese horses and oxen. Am I being sliiiiightly misleading? Possibly, but these little creatures are offered to the spirits of gram gram… I am not exactly sure why, but I prefer to let my imagination fill in the gaps. Let’s go on a journey.
Behold! A pale…green horse?
Imagine the spirit realm! A world beyond our comprehension. On occasion, there is a bridge between their world and ours.
You, yes you, are a young child in modern Japan. One day, you are visited by the spirit of your ancestor from 1000 years ago. Your ancestor teaches you about life, harmony and wisdom. You pay close attention and absorb each word the kind spirit says.
The spirit asks merely in return to provide a great horse to provide to him in the spirit realm. You wish to honor the noble spirit, and you get to work.
When the time comes, you bring your animal, the most firm and ripe eggplant you could find. The legs are adorned with the sturdiest toothpicks money could buy. You lay the humble creature to journey to the spirit realm where your ancestor awaits.
A world…beyond comprehension? Your ancestor…he’s in trouble and has been for a while. Horse races are a common issue among the spirits and his gambling debts are piling up.
You see, he only buttered you up to get you to make a great horse so he can pay off his debts. That stuff about love, kindness, and respecting your elders? All garbage. Pointless platitudes to get you to do his bidding.
The races are about to start, and your animal is about to appear at the starting gate. Your ancestor feels confident. You were a good child after all, you listened and made the best offering you could. Much better than that neighbor kid’s.
There’s…just a slight problem. That eggplant? I didn’t mention this, but that resembles an ox. Uh, oops? Maybe your ancestor should’ve spelled out the need for a cucumber. Oh well, maybe in another life.
The race starts and the horses are off! But…yours, casually grazing as best an eggplant could. Your ancestor felt as if he died --er, well a second time.
That’s it, his last chance. As the crowds clear from the arena, he is greeted by spirit Yakuza that would humbly like to meet his spirit kneecaps…
Be sure not to listen to your elders, everyone!
Entry the twenty-third - August 10th, 2025
It’s a Sunday once again! Can you believe it?
Today I added more N5 vocab to my First Principle vocab deck and along the way, I noticed that…well, the vocab is hmm, half baked? Let’s be kind and go with that!
As I am entering the vocab into this deck, I am testing it to see how Japanese learners going from zero would fare, and you would be SHOCKED by the results.
Well, perhaps not, but my finding is that the onboarding process is grosser than the smell of Natto.
From a pedagogical standpoint, I find it hard to convince me that filling in the blank using context sentences for beginners is the right way to approach this. Warning gross light mode ahead!
Look at this sentence. You probably got it right instantly. Book is highlighted in red and the rest of the sentence? Easy peasy!
But for someone who is just learning Japanese and has never even seen ten Japanese words out in the wild, this is overwhelming! They don’t know most of this sentence!
This is the second vocab word they are learning using the N5 Vocab deck.
Context-based learning has merit and is useful for the upper-beginner/intermediate phase of learning. But Bunpro’s default method of learning is quite horrible for new learners.
BUT Bunpro has a fix…well, kinda. You see, it’s messy and unreliable.
In my First Principle deck, I added a nice all-cap disclaimer in the description: “FOR NEW JAPANESE LEARNERS: Go to Settings → Reviews. Scroll down until you see the setting “Default Vocab Review Type”. For Question Type, select: Translate. For Answer Type, select: Reveal & Grade.”
Essentially what this does is recommends new learners to go into the settings and change the vocab to give you a Japanese word and use the trusty ol’ honor system to judge if you got it right or not.
Ideally it would look like this (warning gross light mode ahead, again!):
But in reality, its reliability is…well, poo. I updated the vocab settings to reflect such, but when adding new vocab or reviewing some still reflect this:
At least I don’t have to type the answer! But this is bad and doesn’t reflect what settings were changed.
Jonathan Blow, despite being a cranky and miserly old programmer, has a lot of wisdom on the topic of teaching new players how games work. But…games and learning apps aren’t the same!..right?
Well, shockingly enough, there’s a great amount of overlap between the two.
Blow’s take, based on the numerous talks and presentations he has given through the years, is that complexity can naturally arise from mastering simple fundamentals. Now, how does that reflect on what I am saying? Well, if I learn the word for book, let me test my knowledge on book. Give me context for what I know for book and everything else I already know.
The “Reveal & Grade” setting should be default for those who choose zero Japanese as their baseline for learning Japanese. Maybe as their knowledge and experience grows that can change into context-based learning and beyond.
Overall, I think the current setting and UX for Bunpro’s site for absolutely new Japanese learners is bad. Not in an exaggeration bad, but in terms of a lacking a core philosophy and caring for new learners kind of bad.
It’s so bad, that I would completely overhaul the system and rethink the model from scratch.
If you may recall from a bunch of posts ago, I did a deep dive on the referral system and then one on the onboarding process for new users. I tapped out like a chump! So embarrassing.
Sadly, I did that intentionally as if I kept going the way I analyze games, I would’ve torn this to shreds, which wouldn’t have been fun to read as I would’ve repeated myself a lot, and I think the overall point was made early on: it’s bad.
I will merely say this: If you need to give paragraphs of text to the user of the app or player of a game, you have offloaded the UX/designer’s job onto that user/player. That’s really, really bad.
I was playing Resonance Of Fate last week. If you haven’t played it, please do so, it’s weird. In fact, here’s a funny video with Nolan North in it as a palette cleanser:
Great, eh? The combat is quite quirky too! You can play it as a typical turn-based RPG, but you’re doing a great disservice as it’s quite a chaotic and deep game.
…but sadly that beauty in the complexity is hidden in dozens of pages of tutorial text. You have to not only read a ton of text, but you have to remember what all of that does and it sucks! Learning from doing is beauty. Learning from reading is boring.
The onboarding process for Bunpro has me reading paragraphs of text, needing to juggle all of that, and the process can and should be eliminated in favor of a user-centric philosophy.
Think of the user in Bunpro as the main character of the story the Bunpro developers are telling. The onus is on Bunpro to make that story as interesting and engaging as possible. Currently, at least for new users, it fails completely on that goal and it deeply saddens me.
It’s very easy to pay attention to what users on this forum are saying. We are the survivors and we have data points that can be valuable. But from what I have learned through my experience in data science is that the best data is usually the data you don’t see.
What do the kids call this? Survivorship bias! Did you ever see the plane picture? Oh, boy, if you haven’t, I will show you the plane picture:
To understand the context of the classic plane picture, Wikipedia sensei has you covered.
Perhaps understanding the desires and feelings of those who haven’t made it very far in their Japanese journey is worth exploring.
Gosh, this was a rant, eh? Hardly any jokes, but that Resonance of Fate video? That was something. Bunker busters? Did that put a smile on your face and make your eyes roll at the same time? Me too!
Anyway, food for thought for a post deep in a thread where I ramble a lot.
Appreciate raisins, everyone!
Entry the twenty-fourth - August 11th, 2025
It’s a Monday once again! Can you believe it?
The First Principle deck now has all of the N5 vocab in the order in which you see them. Here’s some interesting data from using one of my good ol’ sockpuppet accounts.
This…doesn’t look impressive, right? I mean, this deck has less than half of the total N5 vocab than the official Bunpro deck! Well, that’s a valid comment.
When perusing through the N5 vocab deck from Bunpro, I noticed considerable overlap of them using grammar words and variations of words used in the First Principle deck.
After a painstaking amount of time comparing each word to this deck, I estimated that, if excluding redundancies and filler words, that the First Principle deck has about 750-800 out of the 1100 words from the Bunpro vocab deck.
What does this mean? Well, if Bunpro took a more user-focused take on learning, that they can use a First Principle approach to vocab learning and use the missing words from the First Principle deck as additional example sentences in N5 grammar.
That would be a pragmatic approach that would work, but ultimately I think it would be a band-aid but an approach that would correct the ship for new Japanese learners in the long term.
If I have time, I could consider making an N4 variant of the First Principle deck, but it was of great importance that newbies can get a better foothold on learning Japanese without being overwhelmed.
Japanese is hard!
Anyway, that’s all for today, hopefully my Japanese focus will be more minimal tomorrow, as admittedly, it was a pain in the ass making this deck as I had to go through every single word through every single sentence and use the Bunpro vocab search (btw, you guys should just copy how jisho.org handles search).
Hopefully tomorrow will be mundane!
Stay sane, everyone!
