hi! I only read your original post (saw your Korean bingo and followed the link over here 
) so maybe your opinion has changed since, but I just wanted to say that I don’t think reading with a pop-up dictionary is cheating at all! I probably read 30-40 Korean books with minimal or no lookups, most of those being paperbacks that I just powered through, and I genuinely don’t think I learned that much from it (or rather, as much as I could have had I had a pop-up dictionary). Of course, I got way better at reading, and I got better at composing sentences, and I did learn some vocab, but there are also words I must have seen a hundred times that I still didn’t pick up. Now I use kimchi reader, which has a popup dictionary like LingQ and mining support, and I feel like I’m getting so much more out of my books with the lookups haha. We learners have to take every advantage we can get! :')
- Hole in the wall
- Kona’s big adventure
- Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange (has easier version)
- Kiki-Mimi Radio (has easier version, probably hardest in general)
Fwiw I think Satori is aimed at a higher level than where you’re at right now (wrt vocab). So it’s probably going to be a challenge in any case
Spring Equinox Readathon
I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this recap for over a week now, but the time has come to finally review what I did during this reading challenge!
In the spirit of this being a Wanikani challenge, I initially thought that I would give my best effort to Japanese, and finish the day with Korean as I didn’t think my reading endurance for Japanese would be much. As it turns out however, I was wrong, and I actually got through almost 5 hours of reading! I am slightly disappointed that I didn’t notice I hadn’t passed the 5 hour mark, I definitely could’ve read for 5 more minutes, but well, that just means I’ll get the opportunity to do better for the summer solstice!
| Book name | Start page | Current page | Time spent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 蜘蛛の糸 | 12 | 35 / finished | 44 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石1 | 0 | 30 / finished | 1h 20 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石2 | 0 | 34 / finished | 1h 2 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石3 | 0 | 34 / finished | 41 mins |
| うくろう | 0 | 15 / finished | 7 mins |
| 手ぶくろを買いに | 0 | 4 | 30 mins |
| 子どもたちと池の鳥 | 0 | 10 / finished | 13 mins |
| ハピネス 1 | 0 | 17 | 18 min |
| Total | - | 163 | 4h 55mins |
Since I couldn’t read in Korean on the same day, I also did a mini readathon on Saturday for Korean. And I say mini because I was definitely still exhausted from the Japanese readathon, so I didn’t end up reading as much as I hoped I would, only two hours total. This did motivate me however to finish some books that I’d been neglecting, mainly https://learnnatively.com/book/5ecad37a6f/ from the book club that I really wanted to finish before we started our new book. So overall, I’m pretty happy about that, and about my reading speed as well, which ended up being rather high, although to be fair 뜻밖의 계절had a lot of dialogue.
Now I just need to finish https://learnnatively.com/book/d420fc9bc4/ from a previous book club I hadn’t really participated in but did buy, should be doable in the next 5 days 
| Book name | Start page | Current page | Time spent |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://learnnatively.com/book/5ecad37a6f/ | 141 | 280 / finished | 1h 7 min |
| https://learnnatively.com/book/c7719d777f/ | 53 | 136 / finished | 53 min |
| Total | - | 222 | 2h |
Overall, I’m super happy with this, I can’t wait to do it all again in June.
Congrats on doing the Korean readathon the next day, the 5 hours must have been draining!
If you managed to surpass your expectations this time, I’m sure your Summer Readathon will also be impressive 
Q1 recap (January - February - March)
For this quarter, I mostly focused on Korean, Japanese and Mandarin, with Mandarin more towards the beginning of this quarter, and Japanese towards the end.
January started out great, with a total of 7 non manga/webtoon books finished in Korean. That’s when I also crammed quite a bit of Mandarin, and kept up Wanikani as well. On February however, my health was already not great from January, so I figured that I’d stop most energy intensive activities, and try to see if that improved things. It did not, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing worse since, but it was worth a try. So I ended up only finishing the one novel in Korean, and dropping mostly everything else. And the came March! Most of my time was actually spent in the second half of March, as I was still attempting to rest during those first two weeks.
So, a bit of a focus on March. This month went pretty well, I went through those overdue reviews on Wanikani, and I’m currently almost done with level 7. Continuing with Japanese, I have gone back to review the Genki I grammar I’d already studied, and started studying the rest, so I am now up to unit 9, following Tokini Andy’s Genki I grammar made clear videos.
In Korean, I have managed to finish 12 prose type books, among which one audiobook, five children’s books, two short stories, two YA novels, one novel that isn’t YA and one nonfiction. Added to that are 9 mangas, mostly https://learnnatively.com/book/7efb8eb472/. So despite the setbacks due to my health, I ended up achieving a lot in this first quarter! In fact, my initial goal for the year was 20 books excluding mangas, 25 as a stretch goal because 25 books in 2025 would be more satisfying. With 12 books already, that means I’m three fifth of the way there, and almost halfway through for the stretch goal.
I am lowkey tempted to do 52 books as grand goal for the year, we’re in week 14 and I have a few books I should finish soon, so I’m not that far off . That is, as long as I can keep this rythm.
Goals for Q2 and beyond
Korean
5 non manga books
(stretch) 7 non manga books
(huge stretch) 13 non manga books
TOPIK II mock test
2 audiobooks
10 mangas
1 lightnovel
Japanese
Wanikani till L12
(stretch) Wanikani till L15
Finish B level Sakura graded readers
(stretch) Finish C level Sakura graded readers
1 manga
Finish Tokini Andy’s Genki I playlist
Finish Tokini Andy’s Genki II playlist
N5 mock test
N4 mock test
Mandarin Chinese
Find a good resource to follow for grammar, stick to it
10 podcasts from GraceMandarinChinese
(stretch) 20 podcasts
Anki
Italian
Finish the Caffè Italiano con Manu playlist
FInish a novel
(stretch) Finish two novels
Spanish
5 novels
(stretch) 10 novels
Also, and this is so ridiculous on my part it deserves its own post, I’d somehow forgotten about the existence of Yomitan 
. So I expect reading will actually be much smoother now, considering I won’t have to manually look everything up. Somehow, in the midst of switching to a new computer a while ago, I just never remembered to set up Yomitan again and just forgot about it.
And with this new found power of instant lookups, I’ve begun reading 私の夫は冷凍庫に眠っている | L28, aka freezer husband. I’m extremely slow, but that part doesn’t matter, as long as it keeps me hooked. My ability to parse through things above my level is surprisingly high, but then I reckon Korean actually helps me a lot here. Ironically, I can read through freezer husband faster better now than back when I tried joining the 소리를 보는 소년 | L29 book club when I was a high A2, even though I know vocab wise or even grammar wise, I’m definitely not there yet for Japanese.
I’m looking forward to updates and impressions 
Quick update for Spanish, I think I’m officially out of my Spanish reading slump! I started by rereading Yo no la maté | L26, which somehow I only vaguely remembered, but it was fun and got me going to try to read a few more short stories. I ended up picking up LA OTRA ORILLA FG (FORMATO GRANDE) | L42 by Julio Cortazar, somehow I mistakenly thought that I’d already read books from him, turns out I haven’t? I do own a physical copy of Rayuela | L45 though, so that’s probably where this confusion comes from. Which, this book is also absolutely massive and that’s half of the reason why I haven’t started it yet, it’s just ridiculously heavy, I wish I’d gotten the ebook instead 
Back to La otra orilla though, I just finished the first part of three, that is, 5 short stories, and wow was it fun. I enjoy magical realism and some of those short stories really hit the spot on that one. (If anyone has recs for novels/short stories in that genre, please share! ). One of those short stories in particular, Puzzle, was impressive. I read it, reread it and then went to read the analysis and I am now more confused than I was the second time I read it, there’s just so much depth to this. For anyone interested, here’s the analysis. The person that made this analysis also posted a poll so people can vote on whatever they think is going on in this story, and I love that all of them are equally possible options 
.
Adding a trigger warning, but also spoiler, for implied cannibalism , for Puzzle. Do with that what you will, and read at your own risk
It’s been a while since I’ve done an update here. I was thinking of what I could say, and then I just never got around to it. Didn’t have much to update language learning wise either, since I ended up (once again) doing the bare minimum for most of the summer, in hopes that my health would get better. And it did, but it also didn’t.
I do have some more answers though. I finally have an official diagnosis of ME/CFS, and, unexpectedly, MCAS. So these past few months, I’ve been trying out lots of meds, which helped some, and then I realized one of these meds was making my brain fog worse… Stopping that, I’ve got some of my brain back, but more symptoms aside from that, as the med was indeed working, just with a really crappy side-effect.
So that’s where I’m at now, picking everything back where I’d left it. The most I’d done is read a few webtoon chapters here and there, and watch a bunch of kdrdamas and jdramas, but with my brain at least partly back, I’ve been delving back into actual language learning.
Japanese
Somehow admist all of this, I hadn’t put Wanikani in vacation mode, which in hindsight I really should’ve done. But alas, not much I can do about it now, and I don’t want to reset everything once again, so I’m going to bite the bullet and go through those reviews. This is where it’s starting out, 1328 reviews. Minus the one hundred I just did (32% correct rate, but hey, at least I burned a few things !).
I’ll be looking back into grammar as well, and since I’ve finished Genki I already, I’ve been eyeing The Complete JLPT N5 Grammar Video(Game) Textbook, which I’ve heard is nice. Hopefully that should be enough of a recap that I’m not completely lost once I get back into reading, and I’ll be able to go through the beginning of Genki II again later on with a good base.
Korean
If there’s one thing I’ve watched that I can recommend, it’s 약한영웅 | L28. The drama is great, and the webtoon as well, although it has a somewhat different format. You can’t exactly read/watch both side by side, since the webtoon has lots of flashbacks while the kdrama has two seasons, one for the past and one for the present, but both are equally great. It’s just that I recommend finishing one or the other first, before shifting to the other media, to avoid accidental spoilers.
In terms of reading, I’ve also recently started https://learnnatively.com/book/b3f8fe7720/, which is really well written. It has a bad rating currently on Natively XD, but I swear it’s nice, just not everyone’s cup of tea. A few citations I’ve jotted down from the book:
그거 아세요? 벗꽃은 활짝 피어 있을 때도 물론 아름답지만 힘에 부쳐 바닥으로 떨어지는 그 순간이 훨씬 아름답다는 것을요.
지나간 일에 대한 미련이 대부분 가슴 아픈 이유는, 지금 자신의 상황에 비해 그때의 기억이 너무도 행복만 생각해, 지난 일은 지난 일이 뿐이야.
살아가면서 애잔해지는 순간 하나 없다면 정말 쓸쓸할 것만 같다.
또 다른 사람인 척 거짓말처럼 살아왔던 나를, 계절이 바뀌는 걸 기다린 줄 아는 사람으로 만들어줘서.
That should give a pretty good idea of what this is like. It’s half poetry, half the author’s ramblings on love and grief, half almost philosophy? I’m realizing my math isn’t mathing, but yeah, that’s what the book is about. It’s also surprisingly a great source for the more random TOPIK II vocab, like, I don’t recall ever ecountering 미련 or 설레다 before, but it comes up so frequently in this book that I’m sure I won’t forget those words anytime soon.
Besides that, I’m slowly finishing up books I’d already started, as I’d still like to get to at least 20 novels by the end of the year. Since I have a lot of already started stuff, I still think it’s doable, but we’ll see, it’ll depend on how my health goes for the rest of the year.
I’ve also been eyeing the book club. I might just DNF https://learnnatively.com/book/273933d3cb/ (I want to try to read a bit more of it first, give it a fair shot, but from what I remember so far it was not enjoyable) and I’m on my way to finishing https://learnnatively.com/book/d420fc9bc4/ bit by bit, but a thriller sounds nice, so I think I’m going to join. Probably won’t stick to the schedule lol, but that’s to be expected.
Also, looking back at my goals for the year, I was aiming for TOPIK 4. I’m obviously not actually going to be taking the test, life got in the way, but I’m planning to do a mock test in December, so we’ll see what level I end up getting. I’ll do the same for Japanese as well, N5, and maybe N4 if by then I’ve done enough of Genki II and my N5 mock test goes well.
It’s good to see you again! I’m sorry to hear about your health issues, although it sounds like you have a bit of clarity now. I have 모든 순간이 너였다 on my wish list, so it’s nice to hear your thoughts on it 
Good to have you back! I’m sorry to hear about the meds issues, I hope you find a treatment that works well.
We would be so happy to have you! The schedule is optional 
do not finish 기억술사. If you want to know how it turns out I can send you a vent. Hugs re: your diagnosis and cheering you on to reach 20 books! I just finished a book from the book club author and it was very addictive and fun, although not very well-written.
Guess who travelled an hour across town this morning, rushing to get to Uni on time, before realizing the class was not at 9am but 2pm? (I couldn’t even go to the library and read because it was full, at 9am 
)
Anyway, I’m slowly chipping away at my Wanikani reviews. This batch was painful, but rewarding, as I managed a 58% correct rate. I’ve noticed that I remember meanings pretty well, it’s readings that are the main issue.
On another note, I’ve gotten the free trial for Kimchi reader. For now I’m just adding words I already know from the frequency list, obviously I’m not going to go through all of it, but it’s mainly so I have a good base of words already logged. This is an issue I had with LingQ, my stats were absolutely nonsensical for a while, and that just made me not want to use it.
I do think that frequency list is based on lots of articles and/or news reports, because wow is it skewed. Imagine my surprise when I saw 코로나 at position 323 (but then again, with 앵커 as the 50th most common word in their frequency list, I should’ve expected it XD).
Hope you enjoy the trial!
The frequency list is also biased due to idol content. Some idol names that happen to also be obscure words are higher up than they should be. But it’s pretty accurate once you get into the high thousands, imo
Korean
An update one week into trying out Kimchi reader. I’m reaching the end of my trial soon, and I am absolutely going to be getting that subscription. I’ve been adding more words, and as I’m getting close to 5000 known words, I still think I’ve got quite a few more words to add. I added over 600 words today alone. I’m definitely curious to see where I’ll end up, Suadang was saying it’d likely be between 5 and 10k words, and that’s starting to make a lot of sense, except it’s still a pretty large range.
There’s just something about seeing the numbers go up that’s motivating. Besides that though, it’s a nice tool to gage difficulty in addition to Natively. Still not quite accurate for me right now, but I reckon it’ll get better as my number of known words gets closer to reality.
I started 소리를 보는 소년 | L31 once again, and while I’m technically 40% of the way there, I decided to read back from the start. I like this book too much to ruin it by finishing it while having forgotten half of the story. And that way I can make flashcards as I’m reading it.
Speaking of flashcards though, I’ve been using Anki again. This time linked with Kimchi’s sentence mining, and I love the format, while I was never quite satisfied with what I’d managed to set up with Yomitan. I’ve been going at 20 cards a day for now, which is super fast as I’m just reading the sentence once and then if I don’t know the meaning of the sentence right away, I’ll fail the card.
I am wondering if I’m not mining too much though, because with how much I’m mining, and if I keep mining so much, there’s no way I’m ever going to go through all of my flashcards. Should I be more selective in what I’m mining? It was easier to pick back when I was more of a beginner, or even low intermediate, but now that I’m reading a lot, I feel like with most words, I’m likely to encounter them again soon. Any tips?
I am careful about the sentences though, so that I have ideally only one new words per sentence mined, two at most. I’m wondering if I should also up my number of flashcards per day, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed either, especially since I’m also going through Wanikani.
And on another note, I have finally figured out how to make a Youtube channel so I can have a separate account (but not really, since it’s the same email adress) for Korean input. While I love reading, I do want to get better at output as well, so I’ve decided to try out the Refold method for output and see where that gets me. I’ve selected two channels that I’ll be listening to a lot and shadowing to, https://www.youtube.com/@April_ten and https://www.youtube.com/@winterbooks, the former for 반말 and the latter for 존댓말. I’ll update later on how that goes. I still want to dedicate more time to writing as well (that was one of my goals for the year after all), so I’ll try my best. I’m just going to have to switch from handwritting to typing (idk why I’m having so much more nerve pain in my hands, but oh well). I might post some of the writing here if I feel up for it.
Japanese
Speaking of Wanikani, I’ve slowly been tackling more of those overdue reviews. I am now officially under 1000 reviews left, so things are going well, if slow. But I will get there. The only thing is that I think I’ll reset back to the beginning of level 9, because while I do remember part of level 8, those level 9 radicals and kanji are just completely foreign to me. Can anyone confirm whether this is possible? Like, I know I could reset to the beginning of level 8, but can I reset to the beginning of a level I’m midway through doing?
I’m also in the process of finishing 玉藻の恋 | L18 and 10分で読めるこわい話 1年生 | L18, which shouldn’t take too long. I also saw that https://learnnatively.com/book/c725ff31d2/ from the ABBC over on Wanikani is free right now, so I might just read it quickly, at least partially.
I’ll try to read 図書室の怪談 悪魔の本 (ポプラキミノベル み 1-1) | L23 for the new Children’s novel club as well, and see how that goes. The only thing is that I need to see if I can get it in epub format, because as much as I can tolerate ambiguity, I am not going through a book that above my level without instant lookups.
Also, I now have a kitten! And an older cat as well of course, they’re starting to get along now. So for anyone who’s made it this far, take those cat pictures as a reward. (Ironically the cat in my profile picture is neither of my cats, she’s a cat I would see while traveling to a family friend’s house every summer.)
If you have configured Anki to automatically suspend leeches, I would say you can mine all the things, doubly so if your mining setup includes rich media context like screenshots, and audio snippets from the media you found the word in. To me, mining a word is not only a way to add a word into a spaced-repetition system where I’ll review the meaning and reading of a word again and again but also a way to collect memories and cool words. I am not the type to religiously review flashcards every day (as is evidenced by my Anki stats below), but, when sudden bursts of Anki motivation hit me, it is always fun to come across words I added from a show I watched months ago. It brings back memories.
BEBBY
Wow! 60 mined cards a day is insane. I’m jealous!
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with mining as much as you want. I also don’t mind a backlog. Assuming you’re doing Anki every day, you’ll probably have days that you aren’t making flashcards. I try to have a backlog of 300 and I do 15 new cards a day. I used to have a backlog of 1500 and it took a lot of effort to get it down, but it also led to very fast vocab learning for a period.
Personally I think all the words in any YA book are worth learning. It’s when you get into the niche genre fiction that you get a larger disparity in the “usefulness” of words.
A lot of it is from 네버 라이 ^^
Not only that of course, I’ve been rewatching 더 미라클 S1 | L30?? and made some very fun cards there. This one is my favorite, I don’t think there’s a way to put the audio here but it’s great.
Plus some other sources, I’ve started 너의 시간 속으로 S1 | L20, got a few words there, 소리를 보는 소년 also (which, I figured out why your comp for that one is lower than expected, 독경 — a Buddhist chant — alone shows up 195 times, and there’s just a lot of other random words, particularly 조선 시대 specific words).
Anyway, between your response and @Vie 's, I think I’ll keep mining as I want. I had not in fact configured anki to suspend leeches, just tag them, so I changed that, and hopefully it’ll make the whole process smoother.
Thank you for the pics 
lol I had always thought it was your cat
Congratulations on getting back on track with your learning journey 
