We have a break this week! We’ll start episode 21 next week 
A perfect time to catch up, and if you haven’t already you can make a home post to keep track of where you are and add it to the message at the top!
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Shitsurei’s home post
Also shamelessly stealing from @mitrac for my home post.
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: harder than average for me (may want revisit)
: I loved this episode
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Weeb’s Home Post
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Passive
Active
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I’m using this week for some catch-up and getting back in the habit of listening regularly so I’ll join from 21 again next week. And @shitsurei don’t forget to put a link to your home post here so you can find it later!
Thanks so much @WeepingWeeb for putting in the number as 012, for example - it was really easy to search for the original discussions!
episode 012
I had listened to episode 012 rather casually and in a really tired state the week of the club. So this time with more focus I got a lot more on the relisten, especially with Lisaveeta’s notes. My comprehension on the first section about her worries really fluctuated a lot between, this is so interesting (her discussion about her worries and comparing herself to others) and - barely getting the gist. The parts about American society’s obsession with academic achievements, for example, went over my head.
Episode 013
Ah so that’s the gist I got but I was so unsure and surprised I figured I got that wrong, thank you!
As always your notes are so helpful!
For anyone looking for something particularly easy, the section from 22:40 about how Americans use ‘this Friday’ and ‘next Friday’ is probably a good one since it’s very daily life word choice and a familiar topic!
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I remember agreeing with almost all of what she said but I can’t recall the one thing I think I’d say differently (I can go back and listen if anyone cares). That said Americans for sure (and I’d guess other English speakers, but I haven’t paid enough attention to ever notice) do have rules about when you say this and when you say next, but any time it’s important you’ll either add that context (eg “next Saturday, not the one coming, but the one after that”) or ask for that context. The rules exist, but aren’t set enough that there’s no ambiguity.
@mitrac I think you’ve lost a [ on your quote formatting in that section and it’s coming up as plain text.
Also thanks for the reminder 
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Deleted - wrong thread!
Though I think the post proved I’m spending more time reading than listening!
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(just to let you know wrong thread I think 
)
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Thanks! I remember deleting one and thinking, what was that for 
That’s what i was thinking, too!
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And we’re back! Here is the playlist for episodes 20-40 if you’d like!
Week 21
Episode: 021
Time Count: 28:13
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I am enjoying this more again recently and started listening twice, so I took notes as I listened the second time. I love reading other people’s reactions and commentary so I’ll try to be more active with that again!
ep 21
Brief intro
In her intro she lets us know summer vacation is starting. I had never heard 頭から before, that threw me when I heard 頭
There were some details about parties with friends that I didn’t catch
Last week’s vacation trip (from 2:35)
It’s so cute how excited she was about the big trees and all the water and green in Oregon. Well, she’s been living basically in a semi desert all these years and she mentioned going camping in Utah (also lots of desert) last year, so no wonder she was blown away by how green Oregon was (plus it’s June which helps! ) I heard 青々 several times!
Her trip itinerary included camping at Crater lake, Powell lake (pretty sure, but at the beginning it sounded like Powder, which also exists), Portland, then a night in the mountains in southern Oregon (I think, and now my memory is mixing up, but later I heard her talking about Bend so that must have been before that/ on the way), and along the coast drive back a visit to Redwood national park (it took me ages and just by process of elimination: レッドウッド = redwood, which written kinda makes sense but hearing redoudo - (no space between red ending and wood starting) I looked at a whole list of californian national parks looking for anything close before realising based on everything else it had to be redwood national park and I should just see what jisho says for redwood ) . Sounds like an amazing trip
I love how she was fascinated by how much better the tap water 水道水 in Oregon tasted (she thought since it was terrible where she lives, America had bad tasting water). She talked about how America is so big you can’t make assumptions about the whole country
Did she say that the Milly they visited in Portland, they did a trip together in Japan a few years ago?
Interesting when she says 葉っぱ she specifies 植物の葉っぱ, I aways wonder when I say words like that, will the other person understand?
16:20 英語の話のコーナー
How she remembers words -
She talks about how she uses her past personal experience to remember English words. For example, she gets left and right mixed up when she hears it (car navigation), but if she thinks of volleyball where she had personal experience using the words left attack, center, and right attack (in Japanese) for the three people’s positions at the front, that sorts her out.
And another example, e.g., using a line from a song
20:50 アメリカあるある
This is about how relaxed some Americans can be when they’re late, how it’s so common for Americans to have a drink (coffee) in their hands, and a story about a classmate who was always late and Utaco discovered she was late because she waited in a queue to get a coffee. Sounds very west coast to me
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I’m so glad you did, since it means we get the benefit of another brilliant summary.
Much appreciated!
That is exactly the sort of thing that always trips me up. 
Urk, so that’s what that was! I honestly had no clue what that sound was meant to convey.
Having said that, I invariably understand much more on the second or third time listening through the same episode, even without lookups. Somehow the stream of sound magically resolves itself into meaningful words just from repeated exposure, even with practically zero effort.
with obvious exceptions like 青々
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Glad you liked the notes!
Haha yeah I normally don’t look up something that sounds like a mimetic word but that really stuck out right?!
That’s such a cool effect right? I don’t always have the patience for another listen of the whole episode, but it’s just magic when this happens so I started listening to each section twice and since the sections are shorter at 10-15 minutes that is turning out to be a lot of fun
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Also posting my summary of Episode 21 after having had another listen to it
キャンプにいってきました
Intro: summer holidays have begun (or rather her husband’s have)and she’s been busy seeing friends and going away. Used to having a more quiet life she thinks she needs to be a bit careful & there’s also lots of things she’d like to do at home these holidays but hasn’t yet done.
Oregon キャンプ旅: in today’s episode she wants to talk about the 8night/9 day camping trip she went on to Oregon. The first day they left the house and drove all the way to Crater Lake National Park where they stayed. A few days they went further north to Paulina Lake. And after that they went to stay with a friend (Miri) in Portland. They they camped in the mountains on the border of Oregon and California and returned home via the coast also camping at Redwood National Park. Last year they spent the holidays also touring a number of national Parks but in Utah where the scenery is like that of the Grand Canyon, the landscape being predominantly brown whereas this holiday everything was green - lots of tall, straight growing trees - and lots of water (lakes, waterfalls, creeks). When you go hiking in California, there are no rivers even where they’re marked on the maps but water in Oregon is abundant and the tap water is delicious - Utaco won’t drink the tap water in California & up till now has believed tap water in America was bad but Oregon has made her realise that America is huge & such blanket descriptions don’t apply. Growing up in Shizuoka, the tap water was always cool and delicious so she’s happy to taste delicious water again. Portland was more stylish than she’d imagined - good restaurants, cafes, bars, art, stylish people, eco- minded (?). Also lots of people using bicycles even for commutes. Her friend Miki has met lots of people through her bicycling. Miki’s husband was originally friends with Utaco’s husband through work but they are now all friends and they visit each other (bit more difficult now they live further away) and have even travelled together in Japan. She enjoyed the varied coastal route home & would like to visit there again. She also enjoyed walking among the trees at Redwood National park and was particularly captivated by the foliage. And they managed to visit 9 craft beer breweries!
私だけの英語の覚え方: Here she talks about her unique method of memorising English - to distinguish right and left when she’s driving & listening to street directions, she imagines a volleyball court with its right attacker, centre attacker, left attacker. Similarly when trying to remember where the word “never” goes in the phrase “I have never” she recalls the lyrics of a song by Namie Amuro “I have never seen”.
アメリカあるある: here she talks about how people in America (interestingly, she first phrases it as “Americans” but then chooses a less specific phrasing) always seem to have a drink in their hands and how even if they’re running late, they will still stop and buy that drink on the way to where they’re going. As a 時間に厳しすぎる日本人, she finds this unthinkable. She gives the example of the woman “A さん” at the college gym where she was working last term who not only was always late but also disappeared during a particularly short-staffed busy period to visit the cafeteria leaving Utaco to cope. Utaco loves her morning coffee as much as the next girl, but she wouldn’t be late because she needed to get one first.
And here’s a clip of the song she’s talking about:
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I never mind relistening to Japanese material - always get more on subsequent listenings. It makes me think of children and how they want the same story over and over again even though the parent reading it to them is usually heartily sick of it by then.
Occasionally though - if I listen to something too often or try and make myself listen to something - I can find my attention wandering.
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Thanks for linking that song!
I like how organised your reviews are. Very true to the order of the narrative.
Thank you! I wasn’t confident with either of my interpretations.
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I wasn’t either - had to confirm my guess as I’m not really knowledgeable about U.S. geography - however listening to this podcast is certainly making me less ignorant about the west coast.
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I grew up in California and lived in Washington and I don’t think I’ve heard of Paulina Lake before, so it’s kinda a deep cut outside of Oregon I’d guess. Crater Lake, definitely, but not Paulina Lake.
The thing about the water also surprised me, because where I’m from in California is probably the best tasting water that I’ve had before and because of it I’m a huge tap water snob. She must be too far south to get water from the Hetch Hetchy resovoir where she is because that’s all mountain snow runoff and tastes really good out of the tap. Her comment about the good tasting water from her hometown made me smile though because that’s so me. It does make me want to go taste Shizuoka water now.. come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve really had much tap water in Japan outside of I guess when they serve it at restaurants because I’m always just buying water (or tea) from a vending machine..
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I listened to this just once and without much focus, but here are some notes as I didn’t see any above! Also I noted and finally know what her husband does now, probably she mentioned it before but I must have missed it.
episode 014
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I’m sure I missed this in a prior episode, I was always curious what Utaco’s husband does. It sounds like he’s a middle school teacher.
I didn’t get a whole lot from her story about work other than that she was really having to learn from level zero all the small details about working culture in America. Sounded tough!
Then the English corner section was interesting about surprising filler words. I take these uses she mentioned for granted like saying “well then” the then isn’t the same as the then in “then I went shopping”
In her my favorites she was talking about the idol group Morning Musume, or for short
モー娘.
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Week 22
Episode: 022
Time Count: 27:19
Participation
Will you be listening along with us this week?
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This week's My Favorite (Episode 22, from 13:27):
お香（おこう）(n) incense
Her favourite new incense scent (Episode 22, from 16:15):
Goloka Nag Champa 30g Incense Resin | Sacred Essence
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