I’m probably going to start with Yuyu - I’ve listened to some of his podcasts before, although I never really seemed to ‘connect’ with him, as opposed to some other podcasts and YouTube instructors that I’ve come across.
But I’ll give it another try via Satori Reader.
I’d be interested in more proficient Japanese speakers thoughts on the Yuyu Japanese Podcast on SatoriReader: I think it’s a good resource for spoken Japanese being very different to normal written Japanese, and very different to how a non-native Japanese speaker would express themselves. It seems good for getting used to his copious Aizuchi (相槌) ( => "short verbal interjections and rhythmic nodding used to show active listening, understanding, and empathy during a Japanese conversation").
I’ve found myself saying “sou sou sou” a lot recently - not sure if that is good enough or not, though…
I find myself making lots of “rookie mistakes”, such as with cash payment machines, even though I’ve made those mistakes before.
I think Yuyu makes an effort to speak simply but a high proportion of his speech has Aizuchi fillers and (naturally) it’s also more natural spoken Japanese as distinct from written grammar and vocabulary. It’s an area where most of us lack enough comprehensible input, so the way SatoriReader does it with embedded lookups including explanations, is very useful.
Thanks! I see they’ve released so many new short series I need to add a bunch of polls, I’ll try to do that on one of the next weekends. I subscribed again with the last discount to try them out and ease myself out of a reading funk. Anyone have any tips for which short ones are most interesting? I was going to go for the Bartender story first otherwise.
Bartender is definitely a good choice. The first episode was beautifully narrated.
Story wise was not bad either.
Mother was really special as I could relate to the protagonist. Perfect length.
Kawaranai Mono has some intriguing sentences that are written beautifully.
You shouldn’t use the web browser for Satori Reader, there is a Satori Reader app which works very well on my phone and on my tablet.
I am surprised that it even works on kindle at all - do you have sound output on your kindle?
Actually, the app is just a reskin of the website, except it has less functionality.
For the Kindle, there’s no sound.
Many, many years ago, I was trying to learn German prior to (what I thought would be just one) year there. I was trying to read German book that I had. It was Real Literature (the Nobel Prize kind). It was very hard and I had to look up about every 2nd word. It was all very depressing and, because of all the dictionary work, extremely boring. My summer job boss saw what I was doing during lunch break and said, “That’s the wrong book. You need to read some ‘light literature’ that is exciting, maybe a detective story.” Unfortunately, the only German novels available were high fallutin’ literature.
Anyway, almost 50 years later, I’m working on another language, Japanese. And this time I find that Satori reader fits the bill exactly.
The dictionary is easy to use. The stories are so exciting that I don’t want to stop reading them. I can easily note words that I would like to learn and export them to my anki.
My only problem is that I’m finding so many nice words that I would LIKE to learn much faster than I can possibly learn them.
welcome to the thread!
Satori must be such an amazing find after such an experience.
I can relate. In the end, I think I ended up creating some ‘rules’ for myself to limit the number of words that I added to the SRS list on Satori. For example, I liked listening to the full sentence audio when doing review, so I think the best rule I had was that I would only add a word if it was the only word in a sentence that I didn’t know yet. And I might have done something like only add words I felt I had already come across (and forgotten), so they must be Important Words 
I hope you have fun!
Yeah there’s so much good vocab in Satori. For me personally, because I’m also using WK and NativShark, I decided not to use the SRS feature in Satori for now. But I’ve also found that if I see a new word and I just look it up in Wanikani and learn the radicals, I often just absorb it without having to make a flash card, especially if it comes up again and again. It has made reading so enjoyable knowing it won’t create any new homework haha!
I’ve been noting WK vocabulary in my anki, because that’s the list of “words I (sort of) know” including pitch notation. I have my anki set to not practice the WK vocab, because I’ll get enough practice in WK.
With Satori, I’ve been exporting the words to anki, and practicing them. However I noted too many, so I’ve decided to stop adding new ones till the backlog dies down.
Interesting. I’m curious, why use Anki when WK and Satori Reader both use spaced repetition systems?
I was using Anki before I started with either WK and Satori and I like to limit the number of places where I do reviews. My Anki includes meaning(s), kanji, hiragana with pitch notation and audio.
What I do for WK on my Anki: if I already have the word from elsewhere, running with SRS, I just add a WK tag. If it is a new word for me, I check the meaning in a dictionary, add a new card in my special WK deck, German to Japanese only. Currently I’m not running SRS on most cards in my WK deck in Anki, because I’m hoping that I won’t need to. On a few of the cards I decided I wanted to activate SRS, but most of them are just there for reference or future use if I decide I need them.
With Satori, it is possible simply export the cards to Anki and not do the SRS in Satori. I did try the SRS in Satori, but I think the intervals adjust better to your forgetting in Anki, so I’m doing the SRS in Anki instead of Satori. On the Satori cards in Anki, I’ve been adding my pitch notation and (sometimes) some German synonyms.
(Actually my English is still better than my German, but my Anki deck started with German set I got from a course. Changing between English and German during Anki reviews makes me a bit nutty.)
That’s very interesting! Thanks for sharing that. Looks like you’ve worked out a thorough system for yourself!
Ever since I moved to satori intermediate I’ve noticed my understanding of Japanese in anime to go up a significant amount to where I notice the subs can be of subpar quality. Though I still have far to go with satori intermediate. Maybe the rest of the year? Its the long middle and it definitely feels long.
At one point I was doing three chapters of satori intermediate but the power was too much for me and 2 is comfy and easy.
Same with me, though not with anime. I’ve been watching the Taiga drama 軍師官兵衛 (Strategist Kanbe), and am enjoying how non-literal the subtitle translation is, though the gist is correct.
