A little bit of a curveball today. So I have a weekly anime night with some friends, and today we were watching Shirobako the Movie, so I decided to double dip for some Japanese practice.
It’s hard to tell how I expected this to go. On the one hand it’s a big jump in Natively levels from the anime I’ve tried before (level 23 → 32). But on the other, it had a lot going for it too - I’d seen it with English subs recently, the workplace theme flows well from just finishing New Game, a lot of the niche terminology from anime production is just straight up loanwords from English. Also they sort of tone down the “anime voice” a bit in the show (outside the Miyamori and friends scenes) to go with their documentary inspired aesthetic and to contrast with the in-universe anime, which actually is helpful in my case with the practice from Japanese from Small Talk.
So overall, despite the Natively level it went well, but I’m not quite sure I can just take arbitrary level 32 stuff either. I guess I will broaden what I think to try a bit for my next anime and pick something around level 27/28 to see how that goes though.
Been a while since I’ve updated, but I think I found a nice way to integrate more listening into my normal routine again! Prior to doing my challenge I kinda struggled having the patience to watch much anime with jp subs. Even early in the challenge, I tried watching the first ep of bocchi with jp subs and struggled quite a bit and decided to shelf that for a while.
I was planning on catching up on ゆるキャン△ s2 before s3 starts next month, and figured “eh why not try it with jp subs and see how much I can do?”. Turns out, quite a bit! The only thing that reeeeally trips me up is all the place names and sometimes narrator describing some geology/geographic stuff. Even the kansai ben is pretty tame.
Made it up through episode 10/13 in just a few days! I think I’d still struggle with something like 薬屋のひとりごと, but for my more down to earth slice of life stuff I think I’ve definitely entered a phase of being able to comfortably watch stuff with subs (and some quick yomichan pausing)
So, after much hemming and hawing about it, I think I’ll be joining the spring challenge for the full duration next time!
I also finally learned a good method for making gifs from a screencapture… so… there might be some of those
Free episodes 5 and 6, on my exercise bike (and maybe more later (anime, not bike ))
I had forgotten this nice guilty pleasure coming with sports anime : shiping characters
It’s not my fault, they talking with double meaning most of the time
Well I’m not sure because I understand well in comparison to other anime I’m watching at the moment (Solo Leveling, for example is a challenge, even with the english subtitles). You tell us.
Today I rewatched the first two episodes of Log Horizon, as the success of Shirobako the Movie inspired me to try some harder anime than I have previously. It went ok, but I have previously studied these two episodes in one of my earlier attempts of listening, so the real test is getting onto new episodes (probably tomorrow)
And this is the end for winter of this year !
Great challenge for me. I love listening japanese. However, I admit I do more extensive listening than active one. Maybe I’ll try to improve on that on to the next challenge.
End of challenge - Summary post
During these three months I’ve been watching anime without subs and I’ve listened to a ton of JP content on youtube (especially virtual streamers). Even if it wasn’t every single day, I successfully did what I set out to do at the start of this challenge: Don’t skip two days in a row. I’m very happy about that. Short summary of the anime I’ve watched:
Anime
Progress
Status
薬屋のひとりごと
Episode 4-24
Finished
リコリスリコイル
13 episodes
Finished
ゆびさきと恋々
12 episodes
Finished
Yuri on Ice
12 episodes
Finished
Frieren
22 episodes
Almost done (28 eps)
Is my listening skill better now? I think so. Kusuriya was a bit of a challenge though, as expected. Through this challenge I’ve experienced that I can absolutely watch anime without relying on subs and understand most of what is being said (depends on the content, of course). Previously I’ve only watched anime with subs, so knowing that I can watch without subs is pretty cool. One thing that I feel is more challenging when it comes to listening contra reading is that it’s not always easy to just look up unknown words if I can’t hear them in the first place. I feel like that happened a lot while watching Kusuriya.
As for what I’ve been watching on youtube, I’m much surprised by how fast some of the streamers can talk in collabs and have the other person catch what they said no matter how slurred the articulation is. …I still got a long way to go, haha.
The best thing is that I’ve been having a lot of fun thanks to this challenge c:
For the final day of the listening challenge, I watched two more episodes of Log Horizon. Unlike the last two, I hadn’t studied these during my 2023 attempt at watching the show, and still, they went… well. Between this and Shirobako the Movie, it’s a nice sign of how far I’ve come over this season. In the beginning, my goal was to just listen, and stuff like Japanese with Shun was difficult and Log Horizon had just flat out defeated me in 2023.
In the first half, I made some progress as Japanese with Shun progressed from challenging to boring. But the latter half, after switching to Japanese from Small Talk as the primary consistent material, I was feeling like I wasn’t making much progress, as that podcast felt like it was getting harder if anything (I think they do pay less and less attention to the beginner audience as they proceed), so there was a real feeling of being stuck in another local maximum again.
I think part of it is there’s less of an objective metric to measure listening progress from. With reading there’s reading speed for example, where in the beginning I was taking 3 hours for a manga volume I could do in 10 minutes in English. But with listening, in the gulf between “Not getting any of it” and “I understand perfectly”, it’s very easy to “feel” you’re at 80% understanding but be getting major details wrong and be at 20% understanding. So it’s hard to sometimes trust when I feel like I understand something better.
But it turns out that time with the harder podcast wasn’t for naught, as my “slowly slowly” approaching to raising anime difficulty may have been too conservative after listening to a more natural speech style podcast. (Plus maybe the Quartet listening exercises and just generally better grammar knowledge along the way helped too). I’m particularly glad with the Log Horizon before and after difference, as I don’t like to leave learning material victorious, so coming back to something I once couldn’t manage and completing it is a nice feeling (see also the bookworm novel volume from the reading challenge).
I have not been keeping a very accurate daily log, so I might start keeping track weekly. This time it’s a month, but I know that I’ve been listening almost daily since I watch at least an episode of something. So March’s listening was:
finished Sousou no Frierien, up to episode 28.
-finished Spy Family, up to episode 37 (caught up)
-finished A Sign of Affection, up to episode 12 (caught up, end of Season 1)
-finished Apothecary Diaries, up to episode 24 (caught up)
-The 7th Loop, episodes 1-7
-Easy Japanese Podcast, episode #730, 早生まれ
I’m still watching all anime with subs, but once in a while I look away from the screen, and I can hear & understand a few words here and there.
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Shirobako The Movie
Anime Film
1 Movie
2h00m
Free episodes 5 and 6, on my exercise bike (and maybe more later (anime, not bike 
))
Challenge almost done! I can’t remember the last time I’ve watched this much anime consistently/regularly.
Log Horizon
Anime
2 episodes
1-2
Free, 2 episodes.