Entry the eleventh - July 29th, 2025
It’s a Tuesday once again! Can you believe it?
Today was an extremely productive day for my Japanese! I added one grammar point and did 8 reviews! That has to be the most I have done since starting this journey of journeys.
It only took one billion and five days to reach my stride, but better late than never!
Now, once a week I will do what I call Mailbag Mayhem! That’s right, I will read private messages sent by readers like you. Alright, let’s take a look inside the mailbag.
Well, that’s all for Mailbag Mayhem! Let’s see what wacky letters I get next week.
Now this post will be my most controversial post probably in the history of controversial posts. Remember how I did a deep dive on Bunpro’s Terms of Service written by the ever affable and potentially fictional Bunpro lawyer, Ben Goshi?
Well, today I will do a deep dive on: The Bunpro Referral page! Now, you may ask, why is this controversial? Well, I haven’t gotten that far yet, but let’s spin the wheel/click the button to see what happens!
Immediately, we are greeted with this beautiful image of:
…wait, Mt. Bunji? Interesting pun, but before I read the text…just…what the heck is this thing?
You see that, right? What is that? A marshmallow hugging Mt. Bunji? Interesting lore that we’re developing off the bat, eh?
Reading the text, I immediately get flashbacks of when I was in my twenties and I would have foolish friends try to convince me to join their MLM scheme. Ben Goshi is telling me rather incessantly that this doesn’t fit the legal definition of an MLM or a Ponzi scheme. But it doesn’t change the vibes that it feels like one.
I can climb stations, unlock BunBux (formerly B-Points), bonus subscription time, and unique goodies? Wowzers? You know what? I take back that MLM thing, this feels like a Battle Pass! I want little trinkets!
Actually, it mentions we can earn subscription time. For us, the person we’re referring to, both? Hmm, hard to tell. Maybe there’s a nifty FAQ at the bottom of the page with a laundry list of legal mumbo jumbo nobody reads!
But before we move on, is anyone excited about the “unique goodies”? What can it mean? I mean, a boat’s a boat, but the mystery box can be anything! Even a boat!
Scrolling right along, we see this! Boy, that’s a lot to unpack here and I do mean a lot, so let me discuss the more interesting quirk of this page. Clicking Full List at the bottom causes the page to slightly scroll down. I find it mildly amusing that this is even here. Didn’t I have to already scroll slightly to see this part? Is it a fair assumption I would scroll more to see the rest of this?
Maybe I am just going crazy but I would love to know the reason why this ever-enigmatic “Full List” button is here and why it does this. At least it isn’t a wheel!
But let’s look at the steps! This is how we get points or something.
First step, use the referral link. Oh wait? I have to scroll up? I just slightly scrolled down. Okay, let’s scroll back up and get my link. Look, here’s my referral link! rdennison7 has invited you to join Bunpro! | Bunpro
Wow, look at that. The BunBux are already rolling in!
But something fascinating about the wording on this step. Just by getting people to sign up with a free trial, I can earn BunBux?
Well…let’s make dummy accounts and break things to see if that’s true.
Now, why is my sock puppet learning Japanese? Sadly, to exploit the Bunpro referral system isn’t on this list, so I chose fun!
Actually, let’s take a look at the onboarding for new learners when I make the next sockpuppet account. There’s a whole process and considering we’re already deep in a deep dive, we can have an even deeper dive!
But for now, let’s see if sockpuppet number one gets any BunBux.
Scrolling through my sockpuppet and doing a basic review doesn’t immediately give notification that this account earned BunBux, but scrolling to the profile store and we have: 
That’s right! 4,110 BunBux after creating an account and doing the first grammar point. Now, did I get anything from this? Let’s check!
In hindsight, I probably should’ve recorded how many BunBux I had before starting this. But that’s okay! This is how the scientific method starts. Very messy, and only slightly more competent.
Okay, let’s make another sockpuppet and this time, do a deep dive on the onboarding process!
I admit, I should’ve read this before going headlong into obtaining points by exploiting the system. Lookie there, a 6 week trial and 2,000 BunBux (formerly B-Points). I dunno about you, but I am ready to transform my learning.
Noooow, I don’t mean to be completely pedantic, but I feel like if I am making an account and being referred by my good friend to learn Japanese and I saw this, I would be a lil confused:
Cool that I don’t need a credit card, but I thought it was 6 weeks! Not a month. What’s the rub?
Anyway, my account name is going to be the OfficiallyUnofficialBunproSockpuppetAccountToGetBunBux oh, wait…the character limit is only 20 characters long. Eh, how about BunproSockpuppet? That’s better!
A quick five minute process? Oh no! Is this gonna be one of those boring tutorials that you see in games where you have to read a lot and not learn by doing? (Spoilers: yes) But let’s press on!
Alright, this is kinda cool. I won’t try to spam you with images, but the Absolute Zero (my nickname) has a picture of a sprout, right? Well, if you click on down, the images change and if you click the bottom tier, it will have an entire tree showing.
This is pretty cool, right? Remember when you played Halo and selected the difficulty and the image would change? Well, don’t select Master (N1), as I don’t think video game difficulty and language learning website difficulty have a one to one comparison. But as I did famously click on the magic button @Jake made in a previous thread, I will select it for this sockpuppet.
Moving right along we are told we can link a textbook?
Usually I would just skip this as reading is for nerds, but I will click the Link Textbook button and see what happens.
Holy moly, I am so overwhelmed by the wall of textbooks! Which should I pick? I need to go with my heart on this one. I chose “Yookoso! Continuing With Contemporary Japanese” as my spirit animal. What did you guys choose?
After that another difficulty selection screen:
I guess if we’re keeping up with the Halo metaphor, I guess this is like selecting the skulls you want to play with as modifiers?
Personally, I am a huge fan of the warning screen. It’s almost like a thinly-veiled threat letting me know that Yokoso! Continuing With Contemporary Japanese will be the man in this relationship.
This looks inviting, eh? We have all the title cards and the book I chose. We’re going into the Bunpro-verse! Buckle up, buttercups.
Oh…uh. Nevermind. Unbuckle your seatbelts, everyone, I am being asked why I am learning Japanese.
Uh, I chose fun last time. Why is a Japanese master learning Japanese? I would say he’s doing this for Japanese Media. I am feeling that in the context of our character, BunproSockpuppet, he is the type that has learned Japanese in an abstract manner --mainly from talking to natives from a young age.
So, let’s just build up the fictional demographic for our sockpuppet a bit. So we have BunproSockpuppet, a HVAC worker in his early 40s, who went to Kobe, Japan during his teenage years because his father worked for the US Navy. He’s currently single after being widowed from his wife tragically slipping on a banana peel and leaving him to rear three kids on a single salary.
Fortunately, because he runs his own HVAC company, he has lately had more time to dust off his Japanese skills. He hasn’t used them since leaving Japan in his early twenties, but just like riding a bike, some things don’t go away. Maybe BunproSockpuppet wants to translate his “street knowledge” of Japanese into something more formal?
Oh, boy! Do you think Bunpro will work for him? Let’s press on.
Uh…yeah, let’s answer this question. Uh…he’s learning for…travel? Maybe he wants to go back to Kobe later this year. Maybe rekindle old flames from his youthful days?
After establishing BunproSockpuppet’s lore and clicking next, a modal box with a wall of text manifests upon my screen:
Look at that wall of text! If I just made this account and had to take a survey and then had to read not just one but TEN boxes of this, I would close off the webpage immediately or just not read it.
This is dumb, like really dumb. I am not reading this. Too many words, too many things I would have to click next on. I am here to learn Japanese after my wife slipped on a banana peel! Can’t you see that I am grieving loss? Why do this to me?
But alas, I am not the fictional BunproSockpuppet, and will thus read all of this painfully.
Oh, am I going to be mean today? I don’t wanna be mean, but I will definitely be the critic.
You can get rid of this box, it’s already obvious to me what the top of the screen is. Too much friction! I hate it in games, and apparently in Japanese learning sites!
Did you know that Structure means Structure? I didn’t know that? But I am glad a handy modal box was there to point that out to me! Thank you, modal box, I wouldn’t know what to think without you!
Oh, jeez, this is gonna be a reoccurring thing, eh? Did you know Details mean Details? Okay, realistically, how many people got hung up on the Details box of the site enough where they had to reach out to Bunpro staff to understand this?
Is this worth the amount of friction for new users? A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I worked at a startup that was trying their darnedest to work on new customer acquisition. After spending millions on countless hours on research, they stumbled across the obvious: make it as easy as possible to get the ball rolling.
This, at least so far is PAINFUL!!! Yes, four exclamation points! I was okay with the little survey thing? It was a bit wordy for my tastes, but it wasn’t inherently insulting, but jeez, we’re still not done! I was told this would take five minutes!
Sometimes, I just get the impression that companies think I eat paste. Maybe I did that in the past, and every now and then, but this is just spelling out the obvious. Like, if I had working eyes and saw the about section, I can infer using my intuition that it does what it says it does. Maybe the best tutorial is something that explains itself without explanation. This is too much.
One modal box, fine, just cut out half the words and make it two sentences long, but this?!
Several paragraphs and we have to click click click through it.
Actually, I want to pause for a bit. Don’t you find it ironic that I am complaining about this and you are reading one of the longest posts in this forum’s history? That’s pretty ironic in a way, eh?
Moving on!
Did you know example sentences are example sentences? Like I get it, you have to scroll down to see it, but this is a UX issue here. Everything the user should need should be easily noticeable! It needs to pass the glance test. If you give me a ten-modal crash course on how your site works, I don’t think it passes the glance test.
Gosh, it feels like I am ranting, eh? Maybe I should tell more jokes. Okay, the next one, I will be more quirky with Millennial-style humor no matter how ridiculous or insightful it will be.
Okay, I am trying to force the post-post modern/post irony humor and just nothing is coming out. I guess you can’t really force things, can you?
Actually, this segment has always bothered me about Bunpro, there’s too much the box can be tiny with a link to the forum post! Also, I love that a user named “EbonyMidget” is prominently featured on an official Bunpro modal box crash course. Might wanna edit that one to impress shareholders!
For those who regularly use the note function, what juicy secrets have you put on there? Is it related to the grammar point? Or maybe you just have long-winded tangents like these hidden from view? I wonder if Bunpro staff can view them? Maybe it’s a secret pact between you and them.
Wait…is that it? Did we survive? Do I get a badge for going through each of these horrifically verbose modal boxes?
Okay, the boxes are gone. I am on the grammar point page. What if I didn’t want to answer this? What if I just wanted to go back to the home page? How…do I do…that?
That’s the best part! You can’t! At least not on anything that you can easily click. See that lil arrow on the upper left hand corner? Can’t click that sucker. Not even a home icon. You gotta answer it or just manually type in the URL to get back!
This is the most important stage! This is a failure! When you get a new user, you gotta wine and dine them a bit. Treat the experience with care and love. If I cannot easily find the homepage and I have used this site since 2018, then this is a bomb.
I don’t want to be forced to do a quiz. That’s ridiculous!
But for the sake of the exploited referral BunBux, I must.
Oh…no…oh…oh no. I thought we were done with the modal boxes! Why is there more?! In fact more than double what I had to endure the first time!
If you are a new user, did you ever read all of this? Did you skip it? Most people just skip this. But we won’t! I feel like this post is turning into an unintentional parable for bloated tutorials. Art is weird.
“This is a Question”. Pardon my French, but duh? Why is this here!?
We must soldier on. Just you and me, intrepid truth seeker.
Actually, no no no. We’re stopping this. This tangent is getting too complicated. Too many moving parts and we’re doing something different. We’re doing a different tangent.
So, I was playing Ninja Gaiden 2 Black…or is it Ninja Gaiden Black 2? Either way, I was playing the game and found this rather curious sign.
The text is it a code? A cipher? Surely it’s more than just mere gibberish that the developer typed up. I mean, look at the frame, the image --really everything. It’s a pretty nice picture frame, don’t you think? But the text is at odds with what I am seeing.
Maybe it’s nothing? Maybe it’s everything? But why would a developer put so much effort into one aspect but be completely lazy and stop with another aspect.
Unlike lazy Ninja Gaiden Black 2 or…Ninja Gaiden 2 Black developers, I finish what I started.
Stay crunchy in milk, everyone!
Fukuoka” title. Now, I have never been to Fukuoka, and I’m ashamed to admit I chose it solely because my maturity level hasn’t surpassed that of a schoolboy, but man did saying “Fukuoka” put a smile on my face followed by a short chuckle.
So please keep it up! 
