ymmv, but I have an under desk treadmill and walking an absurd amount (~20k steps/daily) has really helped keep this under control for me this year. Not something I’d wanna keep up all year necessarily, but if it works for Jan/Feb I’m down. Happy lights do nothing for me. 
I’m ready for spring myself; I want to go walking in the sunshine again and not freeze my butt off. 
I’d say so. I’ve watched, like 15 hours of stuff in Japanese my whole language-learning career, so you’ve got me beat.
They make me irrationally angry, so that kinda defeats the purpose…
I just had to temporarily relocate to my hometown further South because crappy weather means pollution spikes in my city and apparently my lungs don’t like that. And now, seeing the sun, the sky actually not foggy/cloudy, I can’t believe it. Even the temperature shift is crazy, and that changes everything. It’s like a whole new world, where people still have motivation do do things.
So after a few weeks of not being able to do anything except watch TV, the winter blues seem to have passed for this year (fingers crossed). January wasn’t a total washout, though - 100+ hours of German TV (see, I was still “studying”! 
) and 1k+ pages of Japanese (mostly manga). 
Although I like the idea of having a fixed study schedule and reading one book at a time, I think I have to accept that’s just not how my brain works. I like the freedom of just pinging around like a pinball, reading a chapter of this, watching an episode of that; whenever I try to limit my focus, I just end up procrastinating and nothing is accomplished. 
So I’m gonna embrace the fact that my “currently reading/watching” numbers are just going to keep increasing… 
I recently noticed ttsu has a timer function; while I hate the feeling of being timed while reading, this is pretty unobtrusive, so I might be persuaded to use it regularly. 
I tried it with 今日からマのつく自由業! | L32 - my 2k character/hour reading rate means I should finish the book in no more than 50 hours!
February  |
Book  Week  |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
소리를 보는 소년 | ||||||||||
 |
美しい彼 아름다운 그 |
||||||||||
|
今日からマ王! | ||||||||||
|
Christmas Tina ‐泡沫冬景‐ | ||||||||||
|
후궁의 까마귀 | ||||||||||
|
ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 이상한 과자 가게 전천당 |
||||||||||
|
また、同じ夢を見ていた 또다시 같은 꿈을 꾸었어 |
||||||||||
|
흥부전 |
Legend
includes a written review
read along with audiobook
audiobook only
podcast
drama CD
condensed audio
re-read/watch/listen
만화경 webtoon
waiting to be added to Natively
adult content; not currently on Natively
There are a lot of items that aren’t on Natively for various reasons (unsupported language / format, not listed on Amazon / Yes24, etc). Rather than mark them individually, anything that doesn’t have a Natively link (which includes the level) can be assumed to be excluded from Natively.
Textbook · 교과서 · 教科書 · 课本 · หนังสือเรียน
Graded Reader · 수준별 독본 · 語彙制限本 · 分级读物
Children’s Book · 동화책 · 児童書 · 儿童书 · หนังสือเด็ก
https://learnnatively.com/book/c335191d20/
https://learnnatively.com/book/54881069c6/
할머니의 비밀 일기 | L18
너의 유니버스 | L24
이 세상에서 제일 예쁜 못난이 | L18
어른 세계에 온 걸 환영해 | L20
하멜른의 아이들 | L18
이게 뭘까? | L15
눈 오는 날 | L23
파벨 아저씨의 개 | L19
세상을 비추는 아이들 | L11
https://learnnatively.com/book/e568b4c7a2/
https://learnnatively.com/book/63d9687978/
우리 집 의자 | L4
이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | L24
일 퍼센트 | L26
간니닌니 마법의 도서관 1 | L22
아저씨와 고양이 1 | L17
명 바꾸기 | L27
Comics · 만화 · 漫画 · 漫画 · การ์ตูน
https://learnnatively.com/book/b3b0bd71df/
어느 날, 문득
Novel · 소설 · 小説 · 小说 · นวนิยาย
Non-fiction · 논픽션 · ノンフィクション · 非小说类 · หนังสือสารคดี
Other Books · 다른 책 · 他書 · 别的书 · หนังสืออื่นๆ
TV Show · 텔레비전 프로그램 · テレビ番組 · 电视节目 · รายการโทรทัศน์
Movie · 영화 · 映画 · 电影 · ภาพยนตร์
Listening · 듣기 · 聞く · 听力 · การฟัง
Visual Novel · 비주얼 노벨 · ビジュアルノベル · 视觉小说 · วิชวลโนเวล
| Feb 1 | Feb 29 | Diff | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
12,531 | 14,009 | 1,478 |
|
14,837 | 14,972 | 135 |
 |
531 | 531 | - |
That’s just like 2 days of reading; easy-peasy.
Got my haul from mandarake today! I’m too lazy to take a photo (also don’t have any surfaces free of books to lay them out ), but I’ve added them to my owned books if anyone wants to take a look.
The majority of the books were only 10 yen, and I’m just amazed how secondhand books from Japan that cost almost nothing are in better condition than new, full-price books from Amazon, 100% of the time. 
Hard agree. It’s a bit of a generalization, but used Japanese books have just about always been almost indistinguishable from new in my experience.
Buying a used English book, marked as “Good” condition: dog chewed on it, owner stomped on book until the book was dry.
Buying a used Japanese book, marked as “Good” condition: owner breathed in same room as book. Opened it once.
I’ve never ordered books from Amazon (I use cdjapan for my physical buys mostly) but I’ve heard they don’t package them well and can arrive horribly banged up 
There was a time before I knew where to buy books from though so I just used ebay, though, and that was…interesting. I got one book that looked fine but smelled horribly of mildew. I ended up freezing it for a few weeks in order to kill off the pores or whatever else was causing that 
I’m curious: did you only buy volumes 1 and 3? Or just forgot to mark #2?
I think I’ve gotten lucky with eBay; haven’t found a corpse in a book yet.
I’ve also found a dead spider pressed in a book I was looking at (in a secondhand store)
Still has obi, bookmark, and promo materials.
#2 wasn’t in stock, but there are other volumes for 10 yen - I might just buy all the cheap random volumes and try to fill in the missing books later. 
I love finding things in old books, but usually it’s old train tickets, notes, letters… Not insect potpourri. 
Ah, the fun “long series shopping roulette”. Good luck, soldier. o7
Probably the best thing I’ve found was a handwritten note from the previous owner (in a copy of 1984) saying how they had to read it for school and hated it, but hoped the next person to pick up that book enjoyed it more. It was very sweet!
I’ve been buying my Korean books mostly from Amazon, and they all arrive slightly damaged I thought it was me the first time, but then I opened the package directly at the post office, and yep, the cover was already partially torn 
Plus they weren’t even used books
The sad corollary is that when I try to sell stuff in near pristine condition to book off, they tell me it’s unsalable crap; best they can do is throw it away for me 
Geez, haha. The hidden price to pay that we don’t get to see.
Korean 
I’ve been focusing a bit more on Korean recently, so just a quick update!
Looking at my finished books, there was a 3-month period (Nov-Jan) when I didn’t finish a single Korean book. Although I did read during that time, it was definitely less consistent than before (for various reasons), but thankfully I’ve become motivated to dive back into Korean again.
I’ve finished a few childrens books and some 만화 (been dipping into various series like Goldilocks! 
). I’ve just finished 너의 유니버스 | L22, and as I was reading, I realised that with this particular book the reading experience has been so smooth and enjoyable. I didn’t need to look up many words (I got a little annoyed any time I did, because it broke my reading flow), and most of the time I was reading (and understanding) relatively quickly and easily.
It’s nice to come across a book (that’s not a picture book or graded reader) that doesn’t take much effort to read. Obviously looking stuff up is just a part of learning, and it’s going to continue for a long time, but it’s nice to have a break and just read read.
I don’t know why I always have to write huge essays on short books, though.
The topic of hanja came up the other day, and it’s been rolling around in the back of my mind, since it’s something I think would be useful. After a bit of consideration, I think I’ve found a learning method that I’m happy with, so I’ll try it out and see if I like it.
I’m using this anki deck, which has just under 2k cards (I’m guessing the ones learned in school). I’m planning to learn them by grade, as specified on 한자사전, and adding examples from the hanja app. I’ve edited the cards, so the front just has the hanja, and the back looks like this:
I think if you weren’t bothered about the actual Chinese characters (understandable if you’re not planning on reading academic/archaic/high-brow stuff), it would still be useful to learn the meaning/reading (사람 인 in this example), as it can help with memorisation and guessing the meaning of new words you come across.
I’m not sure if I’ll learn all the ones in the deck - I’ve come across some already that don’t have any examples on the hanja app, and naver doesn’t seem particularly good at finding words if you only search individual hanja. Just gonna suspend them for now, I might have a look to see if there are other Korean dictionaries that do better with their results.
I’m also gonna make an effort to add hanja to my vocab notes. I might just display the hanja on the vocab cards, or add a hanja card type… We’ll see.
I might just try to use this deck as well! I’ve tried to use ttmik’s hanja guide, but I don’t have the motivation to make an Anki deck and the only deck that’s been made is on memrise. So the one you shared might be a good alternative!
Interestingly, I hadn’t realized that there were two different words for soldier.
군인 → 軍 (military, soldier) + 人 (person)
병사 → 兵 (soldier) + 士 (scholar, soldier)
I’m actually not certain about the difference between these two. Looking at the Hanja makes me think that 병사 would be a higher rank than 군인, but from what I could find 병사 actually specifically refers to lower ranked soldiers.
