Uncommon Topics For Vocab Lists In Your Target Language:

my trick for getting through grad school is learning to navigate the quadrants with all their nuances

push yourself because no one else is going to do it for you.

Does anyone have any recommendations for free language learning apps? Particularly for Latin American Spanish? I used to use Duolingo before their AI garbage, and then switched to Busuu for a while but suddenly after nearly 200 consecutive days of using it, it's suddenly locking all of its lessons behind a subscription paywall.

Pine's Ridiculously Long List of Free Japanese Study Materials

First Month Edition

All my current study materials, because sharing found resources is caring. These are not JLPT-specific and are for pre-beginners to beginners like me. I can't believe I have been studying for a month. Comparison is truly the thief of joy. I am a slow learner, but that's okay. Find a community because it truly does make a difference. Shoutout to Seitokai's Nihongo Discord, and to @tokidokitokyo whose post let me know about it and is just overall a great person too.

Main study material: Marugoto Online A1 Self-Study Kastudoo and Rikai with downloaded PDF and Wordbook (my original post about it)

Supplemental references:

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar (The only NOT free resource in this list, sorry! The e-book sold on Amazon does not have good reviews as it's a scanned copy of the book, rather than a properly formatted e-book. A free alternative to this is JapBase which also contains Intermediate and Advanced content.)

Marugoto Plus which accompanies the Marugoto courses and includes videos, audio files, etc.

Apps: Anki, Renshuu

Anki decks:

Tatsumoto's Kana (Recognizing and Writing)

Tatsumoto's AnkiDrone Sentence Pack V7

Official KanjiDamage Deck (from the creator of KanjiDamage, crude language warning for both the deck and the site)

Marugoto A1 Rikai Katsudoo 2021

Dictionaries:

Rikaitan browser extension (installed JMDict English V4, JMExtra, 日本語文法辞典(全集), and Kanjium)

Takoboto app (with offline access)

Other resources:

Sukiruma for practice writing sheets

Reader Ttsu for reading Japanese materials on a browser (used in conjunction with Rikaitan, since I couldn't find an e-book reader that I can install a Japanese dictionary in)

Sousakuba for downloadable genkouyoushi without watermarks

Youtube:

Favorites marked with a ⭐️.

Comprehensible Input for what it says on the tin, in bite-size formats

Daily Japanese with Naoko for vlogs with Japanese subtitles

Dogen for the funny videos that you can learn from and/or relate to

Game Gengo because Japanese learning through games, and has JLPT geared content if you're looking for it

Gino Kei who has shorts teaching Japanese in a not so serious way

Hiro - Food in Japan for cooking videos, not in Japanese, but these make me crave for Japanese food anyway so that counts

⭐️ Japan Eat for Japanese food commentary in English and also makes me hungry. So, yeah, not in 日本語 but it's delicious so that also counts

Japanese Koro mostly for kana reading practice which actually helps you get short serotonin boosts for when you do actually get to read the words correctly

Japanese Quest which plays games in Japanese

⭐️ Japarrot! for fun, animated comprehensible input videos

Let's ask Shogo for culture content

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Matcha Samurai for delightfully unhinged culture content, debunking Japanese misconceptions one video at a time

Namba Tsuyoshi for no narration Japanese walk with me style vlogs, very chill and relaxing

⭐️ NihongoDekita with Sayaka for fun, short grammar content

ShekMatz Japan has videos/playlists where she teaches Japanese in Tagalog, so if you can't understand Tagalog, you'd better skip it

Sora The Troll because why not

⭐️ Takashii from Japan is honestly one of my favorites, even before I started learning Japanese. His interviews are just really good!

Taro's Sewing because my toxic trait is thinking I can sew the cool things they post. Also comes with short Japanese commentary on screen

Tokyo Lens counts as uh, immersion even if it's not in Japanese, but it's in Japan so that counts? Yeah, let's go with that

もしもしようすけ for Japan vlogs/walk with me with Japanese and English subtitles

Yomii Japan Piano if you like piano and the occasional trolling

Japanese Calligrapher Takumi because my other toxic trait is thinking I can write this beautifully

大草原不可避 : Keyboard smashing in Japanese

I explained how keyboard smashing in English expresses laughing really hard and she taught me the Japanese equivalent in return!!

As some of you might know, in Japanese, “w”  from the word “to laugh” 笑う 「わらう」 is basically like “lol” in Japanese so when there’s a bunch of “w”’s together it looks like this wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww 

and it looks like a bunch of grass so one slang word to show something is funny is 草 「くさ」 which is the word/kanji for grass so you don’t have to type out a bunch of w’s.

So the step up from 草 is 大草原　「だいそうげん」 which means prairie since there’s a lot more grass.

And if something leaves you laughing so much that you can’t hold it back you could say 大草原不可避　「だいそうげんふかひ」 which basically means “inevitable prairie”. 

The “inevitable part”, 不可避　「ふかひ」 in this phrase means laughter is inevitable and you can’t help but laugh.

It’s June 1st. Congratulations on wasting half of the year. Loser.

But wait! Progress does not live by the time constraints of the calendar! December 31st is not the last day to have it all together! January 1st isn’t the only day to start! Effort counts even when it’s not evenly spaced out across 365 days!

my #1 tip for school is to keep it simple and sustainable

don't get crazy with your bullet journal with the expectation you'll have that energy every week/month. sometimes its just gonna be a barebones checklist and that's okay! it is first and foremost to keep you organized, dont stress over consistency or aesthetic cohesion. same with your class notes; if you focus too much on the quality of your handwriting you'll forget what you were writing in the first place (ask me how i know)

dont go nuts color coding stuff bc eventually, inevitably, one of your highlighters will die, they wont carry folders in your Designated Color, etc. dont let that collapse your system

dont chunk up your time doing 15 minutes kf math 15 minutes of english 15 minutes of chemistry. you'll go crazy trying to be more efficient (ask me how i know!!! 😭) and retain less

basically dont spend so much time thinking about how you're gonna study that you don't focus on what you're studying. thats what made me have to drop out of my latin class in college; i was so sure that if i could just devise the perfect system the classwork would just flow and i'd be golden. well i never found the perfect system (bc it doesnt exist) and i went weeks without doing any work bc i was so petrified to start in suboptimal conditions. you know "do it scared"? do it sloppily. do it messily. do it on the back of a napkin. do it with so little fanfare that the anxiety doesn't have time to take hold before you're done.

"It took me TWO years to finish this sketch book!" Well that's cuz you're not fuckin sketching. Those are fully painted pieces dawg that's a renderedbook. I've gone through four sketchbooks in my off time this year alone I just draw stupid faces and shit for fun. pussy up like the rest of us and start drawing stick figures with guns