Did a better job of restraining my rhythm game desires today, but it still cut into my time a bit. I also went climbing for the first time in a while! If it had been less busy I would’ve tried putting on a podcast or something while working out, but it was packed
Listened:
ヘブンバーンズレッドとAngel Beats!のコラボ！！【ホロライブ/白上フブキ】 - 0:15 - saw angel beats in the title and clicked to see what it was about. It’s a collab with heaven burns red, which… no offense to any of the veritably legendary people involved in the creation of this game, but it looks awful lmao. Money grab gacha machine goes brrrrr.
【雑談】最近悩んでいることがある！【東雲ささみ/新人VTuber 】 - 1:15 - a rather 無計画な配信, so talking points bounced around a lot. it took me a bit to realize ドラクエ was ドラゴンクエスト. She was talking about mmos and I didn’t realize there was a dq mmo also learned about japanese battery sizes after she started talking about 単６型. recurring topic of the stream was trying to keep her cat タイガ off her desk, he really wanted to knock over her mic
漢の中の漢 出てこいや！決定戦！！【Bouldering Gym Share】 - 0:30 - boulding competition vid, i’ve been kinda skipping on climbing content since I hurt myself last year, but I have a trip coming up that’d be nice to be in shape for, gotta get some hype goin
more mio legos - 1:15 - できた!! at last! I think it was like 12 hours of total build time, but it’s such a good looking set, I’m sure it’s worth it. She also started singing a ラジオ体操 song when people were worried about the sky starting to get light, so had to go look for that among a fewother songs, all of which I did stop to try to find
ARIA The NATURAL (9:18 → 10:34) - 1:15 - finished chapter 7! I see where the true ending goes now, and i’ll definitely be coming back to try to get it. Idk if that’s a now thing, though. I might play the other game first. On to the 最終章!
One video from Comprehensible Japanese intermediate
Feb 9
One video from Comprehensible Japanese intermediate, one from Nihongo-learning beginner, and I found a different SDV let’s play playlist. I can understand a lot more from this one, and there are 200 videos, so it will take me about six months to finish it. It should be interesting to see how much I can understand by the end.
Checking in on progress: in order to be on pace for 100 hours I should be at 31 hours today, and I am currently well ahead of that still!
I tried to watch my DVD of totoro today for a nice change of pace, but it turns out the DVD I have is damaged beyond repair It’s probably one I found thrifting and I just never actually tried playing it to see if it would work. Oh well. Not worried about being able to find that one again.
Today was just full of tech issues! When I went to go play aria I couldn’t get my ps2 to get the disk spinning. Thankfully, it ended up being an easy fix (one of the sensors that checks to make sure the lid is down before trying to spin up the drive was loose), but still gave me a little heart attack “I’m so close to finishing this game please don’t die noooow”
Listened:
マリオパーティ5［RTAinGunma24-ISOBE］ - 1:00 - still working through the rta in gunma vods (at least the ones I care about), i loved playing mario party 5 as a kid. runner talked pretty quietly and mumbled a lot, but still managed to hear at least some of the tech descriptions
ルパン三世 カリオストロの城 (no subs) - 1:40 - good to see our beloved 泥棒 and 部長, as always. would’ve greatly benefited from subs on this, cartoonishly rough and/or old speech from some characters + some pretty specific heist and royalty related vocab were a rough combo
新しいパル捕まえるよ✯ ┆I’ll get you a new pal ✯【 PAL WORLD】 (天使うと) - 0:50 - friend sent me this while she was live to ask some questions about what she was saying, so I was like half translating some stuff while watching. Was fun! I haven’t seen any later game palworld stuff.
more sasami pokemon HG - 0:30 - Now that I’m done with the mio legos I needed a new low effort long stream to just put on and not need to be constantly focusing hard, and there’s like 40 hours of this play-through in total. Today she decided she wanted a mareep and evolve her pidgey
ARIA the NATURAL (10:34 → ? (end)) - ~1:00 - finished the game today! I’m gonna have to switch to tracking by system time, which is currently at 13:44. I liked the ending, and really enjoyed playing through this game. I’ve played a few shorter VNs in japanese already, but one of my goals this year was to finish a “real” VN, even if this is still short by VN standards it’s definitely a full game. I started a new game just to check if it counted as a completion and I had a bunch of new menu settings, so I think it’s all set to try to go for a true route whenever I want to try.
Listened to another episode of the series Dialogs: Hotel on Satorireader yesterday and watched the voice over video of Week 4 and Week 5 of Ruri Dragon on the ABBC. The Ruri Dragon voice over was also quite fast for me. I had already read Week 4 first so the first part was okay. The Week 5 voice over just kind of flew over my head unless I read along. I probably need to listen to lower level Japanese clips…
On another note, I’ve been really tempted to watch the videos you’ve been posting @Zakarius . Probably not my level but they all look really interesting!
Personally I think Speak Japanese Naturally might be the easier of the channels I’ve been watching to follow because she speaks pretty softly and carefully, and there’s usually Japanese subtitles to read along with, even if I don’t always understand what is being said I feel I can hear and pick out the individual words more clearly than other Japanese speakers.
And Daily Japanese with Naoko I think I understand most from because she adds a lot of visual content that links with what she’s saying, I find that really helps to understand even if I’m not catching all of the words.
Though I don’t understand everything in the vids, I wouldn’t say my listening ability is all that high really, but I’m always surprised at how much I do end up understanding and hearing from these videos, so if you get the time to do so I’d definitely recommend trying some out!
Thank you so much for the recommendations! I might send Fumi’s channel to a friend. I watched two of her videos and found there’s a bit too much English explanation for me in there so I prefer Naoko’s videos. I just watched the one on Okinawa Island today!
You’re definitely right about the visual aids! It also helps that she speaks very clearly and not too fast. I might start watching her videos more throughout the challenge! Thanks again!
Some new vocab/phrases:
往復「おうふく」roundtrip
片道「かたみち」one-way
お待たせしました I’m sorry to have kept you waiting
ゴクゴク sound of gulping
よいしょ or おいしょ a shout for lifting heavy things or using force, or beginning something. also used to encourage oneself or others
press release translation - 0:40 - did a transcription/translation request for same friend from yesterday, except this one was way more rough. All 会社代表取締役 speak, which I don’t have a lot of practice with and it really shows. It was a pretty short video but it was like complete focus to do this, so I’m counting it lmao. I was so engrossed that I even forgot about my coffee Part of that was probably that I wasn’t familiar with any of the events or topics he was referencing though. Maybe I should try listening to the news more, or something, instead of just watching gaming vtubers that’ll have to be a different, much more intensive, challenge, though
【復帰雑談】ただいま！お休みいただきました！【ホロライブ/大神ミオ】 - 1:20 - Mio’s back from vacation! Talked a bit more about getting her drivers license and then some fun stories about her trip to okinawa, going to a king gnu concert and seeing shiina ringo, going to hokkaido for the snow festival. Looks like she’s gonna be playing p3r next week too! excited for that, since I’ve been putting off buying the game until it’s on sale.
more sasami heartgold - 2:00 - really enjoyed the guy in the forest who had two カモネギ named カモ and ネギ then we learned 頭突き from the move tutor to got hit trees and get a heracross, which she’d been saying she wanted to get almost since the very start of the run.
四月は君の噓 (no subs) ep 1-3 - 1:00 - felt like it was about time for my yearly visit. I still remember a shocking amount of the performance/music related words from reading it in japanese last year
ARIA the ORIGINATION (start → 0:30) - 0:30 - lots of exposition in this section so it was a lot slower. Once we get into the people talking, I’m sure it will pick up the pace a bit
狼と香辛料 Vol.1 (0:02-1:30/8h). The end of Ch.1. Long chapters, so it may be better to mark by time, rather than by chapters. (I still like stopping at natural breakpoints, though.)
Posting early bc brain has been fairly unresponsive today and a lot of stuff is just kinda bouncing off. May have finally found my saturation point for japanese audio will probably come back for at least a lil bit of aria though
Listened:
【SNOW MIKU 2024】MK15th project ラストスパートステージ - 0:20 - a report on the status and some history of the MK15th project, with an announcement for a meiko/kaito online concert on 2/24. The listening itself gave me quite a bit of trouble, anything they said I either 100% understood or 100% didn’t understand
ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ［RTAinGunma24-ISOBE］ - 1:20 - more rta in gunma vods. I know a lot less about oot than wind waker, and basically nothing about ganon source requirement as a run, so this was a fun route to watch
四月は君の噓 ep 4 - 0:20
ARIA the ORIGINATION (0:26 → 1:01) - 0:30 - despite being from the same developer, the sprites are a lot more involved in this game. Way more movement, still not as much voice acting as I’d like, but we met up with 灯里 and アリシアさん at last
Listened to episode 14 and 15 of Sakura and Suzuki on Satorireader and kept thinking in my head they were talking about music whenever I heard うまく, only to realize on the second try that I was thinking in Korean.
A conversation about reading the room in general social situations. This one has built in Japanese and English subs, so I tried not to look at the English ones at all, though I did have to read the Japanese ones a bit to understand. It was a little hard to follow along sometimes.
Sakura and Suzuki on Satori Reader, ep. 28 and 29.
I slacked off in my listening practice two days in a row, bad macalys !
Well, I listened a looot of j-pop punk, does it count ?
(sometimes it feels nice to take a break)
２月８日 
also learned about japanese battery sizes after she started talking about 単６型. recurring topic of the stream was trying to keep her cat タイガ off her desk, he really wanted to knock over her mic
among a few other songs, all of which I did stop to try to find
Lycoris Recoil ep 6. This episode went by fast!
It’s probably one I found thrifting and I just never actually tried playing it to see if it would work. Oh well. Not worried about being able to find that one again.
I had already read Week 4 first so the first part was okay. The Week 5 voice over just kind of flew over my head unless I read along. I probably need to listen to lower level Japanese clips…
Part of that was probably that I wasn’t familiar with any of the events or topics he was referencing though. Maybe I should try listening to the news more, or something, instead of just watching gaming vtubers 
then we learned 頭突き from the move tutor to got hit trees and get a heracross, which she’d been saying she wanted to get almost since the very start of the run.
ゆびさきと恋々 ep 6
Sakura and Suzuki on Satori Reader, ep. 28 and 29.