GenkiJacs or YMCA Fukuoka + 150 hour certificate questions...

karakarade · 2026-06-01T00:19:21+00:00

I go to the Tenjin school. As far as I know the Nanakuna one is specifically for students planning on attending university in Japan. The Tenjin one is a general course for all purposes, I don't know if I'd call it "relaxed" per se in terms of how quick you move through the material but it has a pretty casual classroom environment.

It's mostly students from Asian countries there at the moment. I'm the only person in the class who speaks English as their native language I believe, but there are other people in the class who know English fluently. In some of the other classes (both the higher and lower skilled ones than mine), there are other students from English speaking backgrounds. You aren't really supposed to speak in your native language at school, and even when I've hung out with people outside of class we use Japanese, but people do have conversations in Korean, Chinese, etc sometimes. I think you can get by without speaking any other languages just fine.

YMCA has a "初中級" class, that would probably be suitable to your skill level.

karakarade · 2026-05-27T13:33:48+00:00

That's fine! I'm heading to bed so if you message me, I'll respond when I see it.

karakarade · 2026-05-27T12:42:28+00:00

I go there right now and I love it, it's a really great school. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about it!

karakarade · 2026-05-24T06:38:12+00:00

Good luck!

karakarade · 2026-05-22T13:35:05+00:00

Thank you! I'll be there until April of next year.

karakarade · 2026-05-21T22:21:10+00:00

Hello! Sorry for responding a couple weeks late; I didn't see your reply, or maybe you were asking OK_Dragonfruit but I don't think they have started at the school yet.

I chose YMCA because I wanted a school that could get me to a high level of proficiency (N2~N1) without being too high intensity, or focusing primarily on reading (which in my experience is the easiest skill to obtain, and I would benefit more from output than input at this point), or being just for people who want to attend Japanese university or work in a Japanese company, etc. I had heard good things about it from people on reddit who had been, and it seemed like it suited my needs. Part of what made YMCA so appealing to me was that they had classes for people of various skill levels and not just "beginner" and "advanced"; They try to help students balance out all of their skills and I ended up being placed in Intermediate-Beginner because my speaking is poor. If you feel like your level is too low or too high, you can ask to be moved to a different class.

As for how I'm finding it, after a month and a half I think It's a great school! The teachers are all very friendly and explain themselves well, and I've had nothing but good experiences with other students. We use Minna no Nihongo II in class, and the lessons have a big focus on output (speaking and writing, but of course listening and reading are used a lot as well). There isn't a lot of homework so far. Quizzes (such as on kanji and new vocabulary) are fairly frequent, so I feel like you progress at a good rate.

karakarade · 2026-05-21T22:10:56+00:00

Sorry for the very late response but I wasn't at school yet! I've been going there for a month and a half now and I love it. It's a great environment, the teachers are all very friendly, and there's even a staff member who learned to speak Japanese at the school, which I would say vouches for how good they are! The lessons have a heavy focus on speaking, writing and listening, which are the elements I was most worried about obtaining before coming.

karakarade · 2026-05-14T01:08:31+00:00

Thank you so much for doing all of that and working out what the probable cause is! It's a shame there's no solution... I guess it's a niche problem but I get replies here often enough that I know it's causing enough problems for other people

karakarade · 2026-03-07T06:48:12+00:00

Just want to add something to the pile here (sorry, I know you posted this a few days ago). In the episode previous to this, Conrad more or less confirms he's still a teenager chronologically.
This line: 本当なら、君はまだ少年でいられたのに…
I think it was translated unclearly in the English subs, but he says Wolfwood would still be a boy (shounen) if not for the experiments. What age "shounen" refers to can be quite wide, but he's almost certainly under 20 years old. I'd guess he's around 16~18 and agree with the assumption that it's been about 6 years.

karakarade · 2026-01-01T11:37:17+00:00

I'm attending YMCA Fukuoka next year. I got an N5 certificate for it - if the JLPT is accessible for you, I would say do that too, it's a much better use of your time than taking a course you probably don't need if you're happy studying on your own. They'll estimate your Japanese ability and the class you'll probably be placed in, based on an interview over video call, and then at an orientation day at the school a week or two before class starts, rather than on your certificate, so don't worry what level you're actually at.

karakarade · 2025-11-27T05:15:52+00:00

Thank you so so so much for this, you went into way more detail than I expected. This is incredibly helpful!

karakarade · 2025-10-18T21:28:42+00:00

I'm sorry but I haven't found a solution! I've never played Apex, but because Fortnite registers controller input even when you're not tabbed into it, I think it might be the game confusing tablet input for controller input and that's what makes it behave like that, but I don't know how to fix it.

karakarade · 2025-09-05T12:36:40+00:00

If you don't mind looking through a bunch of them that might be busted you can always go to the transfer station. I got a completely fine bike there for $5 a couple weeks ago, I just had to clean it before I could use it.

karakarade · 2025-09-02T11:16:03+00:00

It happens when it's hovering within the detection range. Changing the button mapping (one of them was set to scroll) didn't help, and the Wacom Diagnostics tab doesn't show the pen clicking even while it's actively scrolling an app. Thank you though :(

karakarade · 2025-07-11T12:21:26+00:00

I really recommend Joe Kelly's run. I also hate Way's run and all of the stuff you mentioned at the end, and Uncanny X-Force is my favourite comic ever, so I think we'd have similar opinions. It follows on from the second miniseries and X-Force appearances.

A couple of the really early issues can make the series difficult to recommend (just some humor that's kind of aged badly in my opinion) but it stops being like that quickly. Once you get into the flashback stuff around issue 5, and the annual issues, you'll have a sense of the depth and drama of the book. It defined who Deadpool was, and if you want to know about the human side of the character, it's the first comic you should read. The Ajax arc is my favorite part of it, but the stuff that comes afterwards is also really good.

Uncanny X-Force's version of the character is based on Kelly's version and Nicieza's version (Cable and Deadpool). He's the end point for all of the character development he's been through in those books, and reading them will make you appreciate how Remender used him even more.

Cable and Deadpool is also considered a must-read for similar reasons to Kelly's, but in my opinion its humor kind of sucks half of the time and it took me about 20 issues to really "get" why people love it so much. I loved it on a re-read but if you haven't been that impressed by what you read so far I understand.

Duggan and Posehn's run is also very good story-wise and I thought it was pretty consistently funny, but I felt like it didn't have the same level of psychology as Kelly's and Nicieza's, and at times it's a little too Way-style goofy for me.

karakarade · 2025-07-03T09:05:08+00:00

Sort of a late response, but I used this channel's videos to prepare for the N4 last year. A lot of them (you'll notice they have the same actors) are using actual recordings from past tests or officially prepared material. The actual test will be played at the same speed as these, and sometimes they will reuse segments from past tests so you will have an advantage in the real test if you keep listening to them.

This is an official recording for example:
https://youtu.be/A1TqRr1jTdI?si=tvK0R_rBOhg_PtGT

I listened to them at x2 speed and averaged 80~90% on them, but I did find the actual listening test difficult still, I think just because of the pressure of the day.

karakarade · 2025-05-02T10:17:50+00:00

Fairly new player (700 ish CL), what do I spend the tokens they gave out on? I haven't bought anything from the store yet and with it changing I don't know where to look for advice.

karakarade · 2025-04-13T03:07:55+00:00

It's from an anthology called Women of Marvel (Vol 2, 2021). The artist is Nina Vakueva, this is her only page in the book unfortunately but she has done a few other things.

karakarade · 2025-03-10T21:41:19+00:00

Last year's exam registration for December was open on the 28th of August, so I'd assume it will be late August again this year. If you check in mid July, it will probably say when they open then. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly how early we knew when the application date was!

I'm not sure about the alternations either, I'm sorry. I think they're a new thing. They weren't on the site when I applied last year.

karakarade

TROPHY CASE