Inhae's blog

I can’t believe that September is already over… I haven’t done much, and I’m annoyed at myself for having “wasted” one of my favourite months of the year.

I haven’t updated my Notion, because there was nothing to update 😭. I finished one Japanese novel and that’s it, and even that novel was from the beginning of the month. In other words, I have barely touched my books in the last three weeks. There are reasons for this though.

First, our cat was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. We had to go to the vet clinic four or five times in a week because there were complications, he went through two anesthesias, and overall the week in question has been very stressful. I haven’t done Anki nor opened a book during all this time. In the end, the RFA procedure he went through was successful and, fingers crossed, everything will be fine from now on 🧡.

Someone got spoiled when he came back from the hospital:

Secondly, my husband was on a business trip for one week, and every time I’m thinking I’ll be super productive with the house to myself, but I always end up feeling lonely and unmotivated. Simple chores like cooking, doing the laundry and worse, getting the trash out, feel like impossible tasks… So I didn’t touch my books nor Anki this week as well.

And lastly, on a much more positive note, Nod-Krai released, and I have spent more time playing Genshin than reading. I love the new region more than I can say, the music is great, the characters too, the NPCs look so diverse, and the stories I have been through so far resonate with me much more than the ones from Natlan. Overall, I find that Natlan’s lore has been a lot to take in at once, and if you add that my Chinese was not good enough at the time, I feel like I never understood the lore of the nation well enough to love it. Every world quest was a struggle, I didn’t have the courage to read the texts we sometimes find in the wild, and I didn’t like the characters that much either.

Nod-krai is the complete opposite, and I am very proud of my Chinese progress. World quests (not voiced and often wordy) have become easy to go through, and I even read the tutorials in Chinese now.

I started a thin (48 pages) Midori notebook when Nod-Krai released. I bought a Monami 153, it’s the first ballpoint pen manufactured in South Korea and is an iconic pen here. It has the same design that when it came out in 1963. I have a lot of stationery items, but I wanted to keep it simple for this notebook, so I decided to do everything with this ballpoint pen (but I did use a marker to highlight world quests titles).

At first, I started doing some spreads with a map, local specialties, tutorials and so on.

But this was too much work, so I ended up using it mainly for world quests, because even though they are easier now, they are still the most difficult content of the game (compared to voiced content). I write down vocabulary and key concepts and quick summaries of the story if I don’t finish the quest in one go. I also want to practice drawing, so I’m recording things I come across during my exploration.

And I’m also still drawing in my reading journal, but I’m not happy with the result. I really want to have a nice reading journal that I would feel happy to open and use, but I still haven’t achieved that goal. I see that many YouTubers use a lot of stickers and other supplies, but I don’t want mine to become too crafty. I’d rather keep it simple with drawings as main source of decoration.

One problem is that I’m reading three books at the same time, but I would like each book to have its own pages grouped together in my journal, instead of being scattered. So if I start a Japanese book, and then start a Korean one, how many space do I left for the Japanese book before doing the entry for the Korean one? The picture above was for a short story, so I decided in advance that I would allocate a double page for this short story with a drawing, summary, and a list of characters. The problem is mostly for novels, because I never know in advance how much space they will need.

I came to the conclusion that the best way to do it would be to have three notebooks, one for each language. This would also pair well with my language challenge, because it would be easy and fun to see which notebook gets filled the fastest. I can’t buy three hardcover notebooks at once though, it would be expensive, and a bit intimidating to start three big notebooks at the same time. So I’m looking for thin soft cover notebooks. I’m thinking of using the same Midori notebook I used for Genshin, but I don’t like that there’s a lot of see-through with this paper. It’s fine when using the ballpoint pen because the ink is not that dark, but with my black fountain pen, it might be a little too much see-through. And they don’t have a dotted version I believe, which would be ideal. I still have some pages to fill in my current journal, and I want to start the new system with the new year, so I still have time to find the perfect supplies.

Finally, a picture of my Anki progress, there’s not much to say 😭…

And Aino is my favourite character of Nod-Krai, so I added her to my Anki cards.

Oh and I guess I should say a word about the book that I did finish!

斜め屋敷の犯罪 by 島田荘司 (Soji Shimada)

This is the second book in the Kiyoshi Mitarai series (御手洗潔シリーズ), and the first one, 占星術殺人事件, had been a DNF for me. Given how much I enjoyed 斜め屋敷の犯罪, I think I should give the first one another try.

This novel is a locked-room mystery based on puzzles, and this kind of mysteries is usually not my favourite. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t enjoy the resolution of the puzzle all that much, and as often with stories focused on the “how” rather than the “why”, the motive felt a bit underwhelming.

However, the core of the novel, the many pages we spend in the mansion with the suspects and the police officers, was a pure delight. I enjoyed every second of it, and this is what made me love this book so much. I actually loved the parts without Kiyoshi Mitarai more than the parts with him (he appears very late in the novel).

I also loved the architecture of the mansion, I kept flipping back to the floor plan, it’s one of the most intriguing I’ve seen in a mystery novel.

That’s it for September. I really want to go back to reading, but Genshin is taking most of my time at the moment, and I don’t think it will change in October. My exploration progress is only 40% so there’s still a lot to go through. I also hope to be cycling more as the temperatures are now the best for outdoor activities 🚴‍♀️.

I do have a couple of exciting things coming in October: my husband will go on a business trip to Taiwan and he said I can give him a list of books and he’ll try to find them there. It will be the first time I get physical books from Taiwan! I will also place my Hobonichi order. I’ve only had the A6 planner these past years, but I’m going for a Weeks in addition to the planner for 2026. I just can’t decide if I want the pale blue one or the Kyohei Sakaguchi one. I’ll post about what I ended up choosing in my next wrap-up!

Happy October! 🤎🍂

About

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.