Hello, everyone! Brian here with a long-overdue update. It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since my last update. Please rest assured, that’s not because we haven’t been busy! We’ve made improvements large and small that I’d like to share with you.
Without a doubt, the largest thing we accomplished since my last update is the unification of Satori Reader with our sister product, Human Japanese. For those who don’t know, Human Japanese was this team’s first product. It’s a friendly introduction into Japanese that starts at square one, with no assumption of any previous experience with the language. It consists of two volumes, Intro and Intermediate.
Over the past two years, we have modernized Human Japanese and combined Intro and Intermediate into a single product called Human Japanese Universal, available at https://www.humanjapanese.com.
The best part is that access to Human Japanese Universal is now included at no additional cost for all Satori Reader subscribers. Simply sign in at the Human Japanese website using your Satori Reader username and password.
Since Human Japanese is aimed at beginners, Satori Reader users are mostly at a more advanced level than what we introduce in Human Japanese. However, we have had many people write to tell us that, despite their existing experience with Japanese, they found it very useful as a refresher or to drill in on a point that they never learned properly.
So please do pop over and give it a look. (If you plan to poke around randomly, you’ll probably want to go to Menu > Preferences and turn on the Roam Freely mode so that you don’t need to pass chapter-end quizzes to unlock chapters.) We hope you find it useful.
We’ve also begun a round of updates to Satori Reader, and we are happy to announce some updates that I’ve been wanting to make for a long time now. Here are a few:
It is now possible to delete review cards directly from within the reading experience.
This has the effect of deleting both the J>E and/or E>J cards.
It is now possible to add your own custom notes to review cards.
From within a review, or while browsing your review cards, you can now add your own custom notes. Within a quiz, when a card contains notes, an indicator appears, but the notes are not automatically shown. This allows you to use the notes as hints that you only display when you need them, if you like. You can use the keyboard shortcut “N” to toggle note visibility.
Importantly, E>J and J>E cards are treated as separate entities, so please keep this in mind as you write your notes. If you write notes on the ねこ card, they won’t automatically appear on the “cat” card. That’s partially simply because we have always treated E>J and J>E cards as distinct, but it also allows you to write different kinds of hints/notes if you like. In other words, when the word under review is ねこ and your job is to produce “cat,” you might want a different kind of hint/note versus when the word under review is “cat” and your job is to produce ねこ.
Review cards that contain context sentences now “un-ellipsize” the word under review upon revealing the answer.
When you create a review card, the sentence that contained the word (which we call the “context sentence”) is taken along automatically and appears on the review card. When J>E review cards show context sentences, the word under review is “ellipsized,” meaning that it appears as “[…]” so as to avoid giving away the answer. For example, if the word under review is ねこ and you added it from the sentence ベッドの下にねこがいる, the context sentence will appear as ベッドの下に […] がいる. Previously, even after displaying the answer, the sentences continued to be displayed with the word under review ellipsized. Now, the ellipsized words are automatically restored so that you can see the context sentence in its unredacted form.
The touch-sensitive portion of the audio playback location indicator is now much larger and easier to use on mobile.
Previously, it was hard to “scrub” the timeline with your finger. Now it works properly.
Review card statistics are now shown
You can see your current streak, your overall accuracy, the times you have seen the card, and when it is next due directly from within the quiz experience or while browsing your cards.
Furigana on hover
It has always been possible to view the reading for any word written in kanji by simply tapping it. However, many readers have told us that when reading on a device with a mouse, they would love to be able to simply hover over a word to confirm a reading. For example, you see the word 芸人 and you think to yourself, “Wait, was that げいにん or げいじん?” Now you can simply hover to check.
Please note that the above features are currently available in the website. We are are working on updates to the native apps to bring all this functionality — plus some other features that had not previously been brought to the apps — to them as well. We’re making good progress on Android but have hit a small snag on iOS, but we’re working on solutions and hope to get both apps updated soon. Thank you for your patience!
We have integrated a semantic search feature into our discussion system.
The search feature now tries to find a match both by exact text and by a “semantic search,” meaning that similar words are also considered to be matches. This also works for different representations of Japanese words. For example, an exact text match search will not match いぬ to text that contains 犬, but semantic search will. The search currently performs both a text-match and semantic search and merges the results. We’re still dialing this in, but we’re hoping to be able to better surface the best discussions so that you can more effectively find answers.
Last but certainly not least, I’m thrilled to announce that we have hired a new customer support specialist. Wakana Cavanaugh is a Japanese professor with over 20 years’ experience teaching at the university level. She brings not only deep experience with Japanese but a passion for helping students to reach that “Aha!” Satori moment when things click and everything makes sense. She looks forward to meeting everyone in the comments section.
We’re very excited about the next stages of Satori Reader and grateful to you all for your support. Thank you so much! We look forward to continuing to study with you!
