2024-01-15
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| Date | Name | Type | Amount | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-01-15 | デジモンサヴァイブ |  VN |
 <1 scene |
40m |
| 2024-01-15 | Japanese from Small Talk |  Podcast |
1 episode (84) |
55m |
| 2024-01-15 | Easy Japanese | Podcast |
2 episodes (694, 700) |
20m |
So played some more デジモンサヴァイブ. It was broadly going well so far until the archaeologist character showed up. So far it’s been characters show up, on a study trip, some discussion about who to hang out with, rocks fall (nobody dies), they go exploring, they find a shrine, ooh look, funny pictures on the walls, oh someone’s gone missing, we should look for them or should we check out the funky shrine. All good once I got over the handwriting font, stuff I play in bed with my phone nearby to look up the occasional word. Then the archaeologist shows up and it’s like running into a brick wall of myths, legends, era names, etc. Words like ケモノ or 神隠し which I only know because of Anime (Kemono Friends and Higurashi), not any studying I’ve done. So hopefully this dude’s an outlier, as it’s the kind of thing which moves it from “play on my steam deck in bed” to “play on my desktop with the game on one monitor and Jotoba on the other”.
Other than that on the podcast front I’m still looking for the level +1 from Shun. I tried two podcasts from the intermediate podcast list article by Tofugu. Basically I just picked the two that were conversational rather than monologues as that sounded more interesting. Despite Easy Japanese being in their lower intermediate list and Small Talk in Japanese being in their upper intermediate list, I actually found the latter easily. So the first episode of Easy Japanese was about 空耳 or mishearings. Shun had a similar episode (on tongue twisters) and this kind of content focused on the word sounds rather than their meaning is hard for me as it all kind of blurs together and the words are usually being presented without the context that would help narrow down the options that are there if it was a regular podcast topic. So I tried a second episode to see if that was just a bad topic, this one on Christmas Eve. It was at a level where I could probably manage it if I sat down specifically to listen to it as my main activity, but not at a level where I can passively consume it while walking without tuning out.
On the other hand, Small Talk in Japanese has probably worked its way into the Upper Intermediate category because it’s hosts often talk really fast. They’re definitely faster than the other podcasts I’ve listened to, and honestly faster even than some of the native focused content I’ve listened to like Cardcaptor Sakura or most characters in Digimon Survive. Which means when it’s audio information only, it’s easy for me to get lost. But maybe it’s the topics they picked (office work, a trip to the ghibli museum, anime they were watching), but I found more hooks back into understanding and generally had a higher comprehension than Easy Japanese. I think it’s still not at “passive listening while walking material” level, but it’s closer. They actually did start with a topic of words that differ only by pitch accent, but that’s a little more limited than the Easy Japanese version, which even included cross language mishearings, like mishearing Spanish as Japanese. Also Small Talk used Dogen’s favourite 橋・箸 example as their first one, which made it real clear what was going on.
I did learn in this process that Nihongo con Teppei has a more intermediate podcast in his main one (I had thought the “for beginners” podcast was his main one), so I might try Nihongo con Teppei Z next.