Satori Reader appreciation thread

Japanese Language Resources
21

Thanks for the suggestion of the Sakura and Suzuki story here. I’ve been using SR and since I’m so new to both Japanese, I found the first episodes of all of the series I looked at painfully difficult. Nevertheless, I’ve been very slowly deciphering my way through “Hole in the Wall” despite that. I’ve been doing the same with the ABBC as well. I’ll give the Sakura and Suzuki story a try and see how that goes once I eventually make it through HitW.

I’ll add that I also quickly came to the same conclusion regarding the HJ grammar series being an excellent daily activity since it’s not too burdensome to go through an episode or two per day.

22

You got it!

23

My reviews
(spoilers are blurred in the dropdown, so you can open everything without fear!)

Disclaimer: It has been a while since I used SR so it could be that I’m misremembering things or can’t be too specific in my reviews!

Easier

The Jam Maker

I dropped it pretty quickly because I have a lot of experience with (mild spoiler, happens in one of the first 5 episodes I think) blind people, and it seemed to portray blindness and living with it very differently from what people I know who are blind have told me, and that annoyed me a bit. But maybe that changed later.

Additionally, it made me too hungry :laughing:

Kiki Mimi Radio

My favourite! Somehow mysterious and exciting. I wish there were more stories like this and that it was longer, no other story seemed to grab me as much as this one :smiley:

Hole in the Wall

Very cute! I really liked this one. Although (this will become a recurring theme) I didn’t like how we needed an detailed account on (mild spoiler, happens in the first few episodes) how a few of the mouses died.

Sakura and Suzuki

This was the first one I tried and it was such a drag for me. I dropped it about 2/3 of the way through in favour of Kiki Mimi Radio, which I am very happy about.

Intermediate

Kona's Big Adventure

I really liked it! Although it has some very rough descriptions of animal abuse, which I didn’t really want in a graded reader. I prefer mine to be more fluffy or, if they are gruesome, specifically in the thriller/horror genre (like The Neighbour or Koibito).

The River Sanzu

This one I remember the least about. I remember thinking there was too much car vocabulary? I almost fell asleep while reading the first few episodes. Felt very tiring. The ending was nice though.

The Neighbor

I really enjoyed this one. I wish it would have leaned more towards the creepy aspect and didn’t get resolved so quickly.

Koibito

Well, I read that this was the best story in SR, so I guess I was a little too excited for it. I was a bit disappointed that it had a lot of weak points and wasn’t as exciting as I hoped it to be. I think if I’d gone in with lower or even normal expectations I would have enjoyed it more. But all in all it was one of the better stories for sure and a real page turner for a graded reader.
I was really annoyed at the ending though. :see_no_evil:

Harder

I dropped them all, so here are some quick impressions

I started Secret, Fujiki Consulting Services and Kona’s Big Adventure II. I dropped Kona’s Big Adventure II because it was too sad to me since (big spoiler) Mocha died. I don’t remember much about Fujiki, but I also dropped it because it got sad (I can’t even remember in what way (except that it was about cats again?)), just that I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t find a light-hearted story in the vein of Kiki Mimi Radio, and I want a bit more basic stories in my graded readers and don’t want them to hit too close to home or get too depressing. But that’s just me!

I guess it didn’t help that during the year when I used Satori Reader we had 2 heartbreaking cat deaths in the family, so the stories that revolved around sad cat stories were a bit difficult for me to read. :see_no_evil:

I had nothing against Secret, but my subscription was about to expire and I just thought it was time to move on, as I didn’t enjoy the harder stories that much anyway.

24

What’s the recommended starting level/background knowledge for Satori Reader? I exist in an indeterminate state between absolute beginner and lower intermediate, with plenty of random concepts where I should have a solid foundation because I’ve never followed a textbook or taken a class.

25

I believe the easiest stories are on there are mostly targeted at roughly the upper beginner to lower intermediate level.

That said, in my experience from learning another language to fluency, and so far it’s been the same with Japanese, and my usage of SR to date, you really just have to dive in and struggle through it for a while.

Having a decent vocabulary built up through an SRS system and a bit of grammar background knowledge definitely helps, but even then it’s still hard at first because you really haven’t internalized those things yet despite “knowing” them and it’s just painfully slow.

The good news is that it gets better pretty quickly if you just keep at it and consistently read a little bit day by day. I find that going back to re-read things you’ve already been through is quite helpful too. Not only does it act as a nice refresher, but it also is a good motivational boost to really feel your progress.

26

Oh, I’ll add that I think the absolute easiest thing on there is the Human Japanese Extra Credit series since that is a companion to the Human Japanese app which itself is actually targeted at total beginners. It’s also just simple individual numbered sentences, so it’s very approachable. Pretty much anyone that has learned hiragana can dive into that without much hassle imo.

Here is an example of the first couple of sentences from the series (starts with Chapter 7). Do keep in mind that I have it setup to intentionally not show furigana on the Kanji that I’ve already learned here on WaniKani, which is why you don’t see it in the first example, but you can configure all of that as desired.

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And here is an example of the first couple of sentences from the next chapter in the series (Chapter 8):

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27

Lower intermediate is a good starting point, however, if you haven’t started reading at all, reading some beginners graded readers first can be a better starting point imo. Why? Because it helps practicing reading faster.
You can try SR for free and see how it goes, it’s the best indicator, though.

Me as well.
Funny thing is, it’s been sitting on my iPad for ages and I was kinda reluctant, making another subscription for something. Had no idea it was made by the same person who created Human Japanese which I really appreciate. Well, imagine my surprise when I took the plunge :woman_facepalming:t2:

I’m really rusty, though, since It’s been about 4 years since I had any japanese exposure whatsoever, so I’m going over the HJ series again, but I started reading and listening to some of the stories in SR. I’m really intrigued by 狐の嫁入り🦊, but I need the practical sections more at the moment, so it’ll have to wait.

It’s a great idea, creating this thread, @mitrac. Much appreciation.

28

I used the beginner Human Japanese ages ago but had forgotten about it, so thanks for the reminder. I think I’ll study it again from the beginning. It helps that the beginner and intermediate apps are sold as a bundle on iOS and are relatively inexpensive (and I don’t want any more subscriptions).

29

You’re welcome.
Since you’re starting HJ from the beginning again (it’s so much easier and faster the second time around.) and if you have kindle app on your iPad already I really recommend this graded readers before you start delving into SR. It would most definitely fill the gap of not having much you can read as a beginner.

30

Human Japanese

How does one study its vocab? I am having trouble getting through as I have non existing vocab.

31

This is where Satori Reader can help you with its HJ extra credit section. You can add cards of vocabulary from the sentences into the studylist inside SR and use their srs system to learn them.
Since you can integrate your Wanikani progression into SR with an API token, you’ll be able to see vocabs you’ve already learned in WaniKani with their kanji, instead of kana only.
The UI of SR is very flexible, and I recommend taking the tour of how to use SR to familiarize yourself with all its options.

If you don’t want to commit to another srs system at this stage, which is totally understandable, you can do a few more levels in WaniKani, and learn more vocabs with it.

It’s hard at the beginning, because everything is new, every single word. So every sentence is a grind, but that’s the way it is at the beginning. Give it time, be patient with yourself, the exposure will get you there eventually.

32

I personally used a shared premade Anki deck that followed it exactly. Decks often come and go, but it looks like a good one is still up on Anki web at the current time. You can remove everything except the vocabulary words if you don’t want to do all of the sentences that deal with the grammar points.

One that follows Human Japanese Intermediate is also still up and is also 100% complete with every sentence and word in that.

33

I think Satori Reader is THE BEST free learning resource for improving listening comprehension, because of how you can play audio for sentence level, episode level or series level.

I read only the free episodes for a few years, while I worked my way through other learning sources.

As far as “jumping into reading”, Satori Reader is ideal, for reasons well-listed by Mitrac. It’s a MASSIVE time-saver, because all of the lookups have been done and grammar well-explained. It’s great for being your feel for the language, as a whole.

I haven’t finished ANY series in there, I think.
I’ve only read a few novels (Harry Potter 1 and Kiki’s Delivery Service and Konbini Ningen; plus listen to the audiobooks of all these) and a few manga (Death Note, Teasing Master Takagisan, Crayon Shin-chan; and their anime in Japanese).

This is a darn lot of work to do intensively, because I have A LOT of lookups. Satori Reader is relaxing. Plus, I can never l recognize the spoken Japanese fast enough to catch it all.

Most of my study time, since I began studying Japanese in 2019) has been spent cramming vocabulary.

Now that I’ve gone through level 47 of WK and have been studying for so long, I’m finally around N3, intermediate. I’m finally able to recognize what people are saying enough to have a conversion…

At THIS TIME, for me, I finally paid for the Satori Reader subscription, and am slowly going through and able to fully absorb the vocabulary and grammar, and listen (once I’ve studied).

This is what I need right now to improve my listening and speaking ability

34

How are we wanting to do content warnings? I’m thinking either a table:

Title General content warning Details
Story 1 Content warning A Content warning A happens in episode 5
Story 1 Content warning B Content warning B happens throughout the story

Or hide details:

Story 1
Content waning A

Content warning A happens in episode 5

Content warning B

Content warning B happens constantly throughout the story

I prefer hide details (I think it looks neater) but what are everyone’s opinions/ideas?

35

I think I prefer hide details too, for the same reasons^^

36

Thanks for posting this, I keep forgetting that I signed up for a monthly account again late last year. I should probably switch to yearly while I can still get in on the New Year’s sale. I’ve been working through the two Human Japanese series before I dig into their stories.

37

If we’re gonna put them in for every story it would probably look neater with hide details

38

Since we’re expressing appreciation for SR here, I just did lessons for 高 and 校 on WK and sure enough, while doing my daily reading on SR, I came across: 鈴すず木さんは高校生です。 with only that furigana since it’s configured to only show furigana according to known kanji and to automatically follow WK. It’s so nice to really reinforce the readings and see it in real sentences (albeit a super simple one in this case).

39

Thanks for the reviews everyone, I’ll try to set aside some time on the weekend and make a table in the home thread that links to them so that people can more easily find them and add a link to new ones. Also, maybe I’ll separate that list, i.e., product reviews vs story reviews.

You got some great responses already. If you want to know more, I wrote a lot about this in my guide post under the heading “Best for - many levels”. It gives some expectations on what you might get out of it depending on when you join, and also my opinion on the ideal starting point.

I like the hide details as well! It looks like everyone liked that so far and maybe its easier to keep updated (I don’t know about you, but the tables formatting just gets overly burdensome on smaller devices).
Maybe we can also specify whether the content warning is a major or minor spoiler, something like
Content warning A (minor spoiler)?

@hotdogsuplex or anyone else, feel free to get that started, otherwise I’ll try to get some of the current ones in there over the weekend!!

40

Finally I have some real time to respond. Sorry for the delay.

Yeah I have found those, seems good. But I have to many SRS systems to pick and want to use but little time. So need to figure that one out.

I have gotten hold of their vocab list so using jpbd is an option that did not require any modifications.

Tnx for helping me!