January 20th 
Dear language diary…
Korean Update
I’ve been in a big fat funk for the last two weeks and haven’t felt like touching Korean very much. It’s January and it’s dark outside. My energy levels have been low and I just want to curl up with a good Japanese book and enjoy not studying.
During my commute when I usually get good listening or vocabulary review in, I also haven’t felt like engaging with Korean either. Instead, I’ve been using the time to listen to old favorite albums or discover new artists and it’s been quite restorative! I feel good being productive everyday and using my time well, but I don’t need to be productive all the time. 
So, that is an update that is nearly a non-update so far! For an actual progress update: I said I didn’t feel like touching Korean, but I did a tiny bit of study. I kept my anki reviews going and I finished an entire “study loop” (as I call them - vocab, reading/dictation/shadowing) with the first 3 sections of the chapter I was working on in 本気で学ぶ韓国語上級 + made anki cards out of the unknown words. I will most likely keep textbook studies a bit lower touch than I was doing in November/early December, but keep going consistently each week to keep my Korean “warm”.
Korean Reading
Part of the reason I haven’t felt as interested in Korean lately is because I am in the mood to read some challenging literature that is dense and makes me think and stop to appreciate the writing. The Korean web novels I usually read are basically the opposite of that and actual Korean literature feels very hard, but what’s really stopping me? Nothing I guess! I will go see what I can find on RIDI that seems accessible after typing up this post. Sometimes you crave salad too, even though you normally eat nothing but potato chips. 
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Japanese Literature
I am instead fulfilling that craving for something challenging in Japanese right now with 死者の奢り・飼育 | L30??. I always heard 大江健三郎 mentioned as a great writer or saw translations of his works in bookstores, but put off reading him for “when my Japanese was better”. Well, I guess my Japanese is better now because I’m reading him with minimal problems! Yay! Talk about living the dream!
He was mentioned in two recent reads of mine: Contemporary Japanese Literature and 越境者が読んだ近代日本文学―境界をつくるもの、こわすもの | L36?? (still reading this and have written plenty about it on the forums recently). It’s been very valuable reading about his background and the typical themes he writes about first - now that I’m actually reading his writing, I’m able to identify the themes myself and am getting much more out of the experience.
The stories I’ve read so far are set during or right after WWII and are quite dark with heavy themes of betrayal. The word I’d use to describe them is 生々しい. There is an informal book club thread for the book now so I will probably share more of my thoughts there!
I did want to talk about the process of reading a challenging book, though! So far, my reading pace has been very slow because the type of sentences that 大江 writes are very long and meandering and require a lot of focus to follow. The vocabulary overall isn’t hard, but there are some antiquated words that pop up here and there (like with most older novels) that I can sometimes find in my dictionary, or sometimes not. Sometimes even if I find it, I don’t know what the thing is or what it looks like, so I find myself on google looking it up. Sometimes I stop to admire the writing or think about what it means. Then, time passes and suddenly it took me 3 hours split over multiple days to read 50 pages! But, I was having fun and in the zone the whole time.
I mention this because I sometimes see people feeling sad or upset about how long it takes them to read things. I remember feeling like that too when I first started reading - it felt really unbelievable that struggling through a book could somehow be beneficial to me or that I’d remember any of the words I looked up. Having to consult the dictionary was a bother and I was in a big hurry to become 上手。
However, when I read challenging books at a slow pace now, my mindset is completely different. I would still love to become 上手 one day
, but I feel confident and happy now in the moment that I’m taking on the books I really want to read and actively working improving my skills so that I can read the next difficult book with just a little bit more ease.
I remember it took me almost two weeks to finish 午後の曳航 | L45, the first really challenging book I ever attempted, and I saved nearly 500 vocabulary words while doing it. Since then, I’ve read many other books around a similar level at a much, much faster pace and with fewer lookups due to the experience of struggling with that first challenging book - just like I struggled and then grew as a beginner and later on, intermediate, reader with all the other hard books I ever read.
I guess what I’m trying to say is nothing in the process of becoming able to read ever changes. There will always be another difficult book that will need to be navigated with a good dictionary and patience, but there will also always be growth on the other side (luckily things do become more and more entertaining as you go and gain access to all kinds of wonderful books!). So, when I read a challenging book these days I feel grateful for the chance to get in touch with my beginner self and that slow process, and to appreciate how things are different but also still the same.
…bungakushoujo try to write a study log update without it turning into some kind of weird inspirational blog post challenge 