Definitely felt that this week was harder than a lot of previous ones. Maybe some of the immigration vocabulary (plus not being very knowledgeable about the programs she’s explaining – I know I get away with not understanding everything sometimes when she’s talking about things I’m already familiar with). The Maybelline “curvitude” also wasn’t helping!! (What a stupid word!)
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Finally caught up to the current episode!
I got to this point and had to go look up where this comes from, because I’ve never in my entire life heard anyone in the UK call it a winker, only an indicator or sometimes a blinker. From what I can see, it was a more common informal term for indicators in the UK in the 50’s, and since the 60’s has basically completely fallen out of usage, so I’m guessing Japan borrowed the word from us Brits back in mid-century. It’s interesting to see how something can be borrowed from another language and then outlive what it was borrowed from!
(If anyone else from the UK actually knows people who use this though, please let me know, it might possibly be only a regional thing these days?)
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It is interesting how that works - for example, some words originated in Portuguese as spoken maybe 500 years ago (and who knows whether those words are still in use in the original language).
On my first visit to Japan I ran into something like that - IIRC I saw a sign that referred to a parking lot as a モータープール
I can well imagine that it dates back to US military occupation following WWII - it certainly is not in common usage in ordinary American banter - but then who knows how common its usage may or may not be in Japan - I forget where to go for word frequency lookups - but this seems to indicate that it may have ended up as kansai-ben:
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That was pretty much the only section I understood 
Reading your summary was super helpful! And also I can see why I didn’t understand the rest, a lot of unknown vocab. I wonder if listening to podcast can get better by just listening to podcast more, or if I need to put some kind of other work into it. In any case, thanks a lot!
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I find it a bit like reading, I get better at it just by doing it. For podcasts it’s very surprising. For me the progression over several months has been going like this: I find it easier and easier to parse, which makes it easier to identify important words to look up, which makes it easier to get the gist, which makes it easier to guess words and keep going.
I can’t really tell I’m making progress unless I relisten to something from a few months back, and then it feels like dramatic progress. Or I’ll tell my partner about something Utako said and he’s surprised I got that from a Japanese podcast.
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Thanks, that’s reassuring 
makes sense too. And while doing these small steps on podcast comprehension, hopefully at the same time the vocabulary grows by itself from reading! (Which I’m pretty consistent at. Wish I could do the same about listening to podcast but I keep not including it into my daily routine and being disappointed the next day 
)
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I’m the same, aside from a 2 month listening challenge where I really did about 10 minutes a day, my listening practice is pretty lumpy. It still seems to help, though! And your reading is so far reaching, that must feed into this so well
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Week 14
Episode: 014
Time Count: 29:56
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Thank you! I was hoping someone from the UK would comment on this. In Australia, “indicator” is the more common term and I think “blinker” is an older, less used word. I wondered if she’d just made a mistake!
Definitely! Listening is like any other skill - the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. I’m a fan of podcasts because I can get my listening practice done while doing other things (walking, housework, driving) but I like to watch movies and anime too. I’d recommend starting with something like “The Bite sized Podcast” (not her first episodes - not a fan of those because she had yet to work out what she was doing - but the recent ones are really good) - the episodes are only around 10-15 mins; there’s lot’s of them & the sound quality is good.
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I love podcasts for that reason too, but I tried doing that with Japanese podcast and my focus jumps off very fast to the “other thing” I’m doing (walking, housework, etc) instead of listening to what’s being said. It requires a lot of effort for me to focus so it doesn’t feel as pleasant as listening to podcasts in other languages I’m more fluent in. Maybe the theme (slice of life usually) is also a bit less engaging than other things I enjoy listening too (more complex subjects like for example neurology or computer science or sometimes more light like parenthood or non violent communication). Not sure though that I would understand anything yet if I were to find something in Japanese about my topics of interest. I guess I’ll just have to keep pushing through maybe making an effort in consistency would be a good start!
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What I like to listen to in English and what I’m happy to listen to in Japanese are completely different. Talk to me in Japanese & I’ll hang on your every word even if the subject is the price of bananas (笑)
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Haha I see what you mean 
it’s like kids discovering that they can read: the milk cardboard?? Best thing ever, now let me tell you what all the ingredients are!
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Most of them are in fact still in use 
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I’ve never listened to this (I’m not a tech phile ) but you might find it interesting - @polv regularly listens to this I think. It sometimes gets listed among podcasts for advanced Japanese learners
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Thanks 
definitely can’t casually listen to that yet, but maybe I can try once a year and see if one day I noticed progress 
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I started listening to this and was like, wait, when did she get a job… at a gym? The one time I skip an episode (ep 13) it turns out to be important so going back…
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Week 15
Episode: 015
Time Count: 35:10
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I love this episode - especially the section where she recounts how beer has given her lots of opportunities to improve her English speaking skills (listen from 16:50 on for inspiration!). I’m a late convert to drinking beer, but hell yeah とりあえずビール🍻
Ep. 15 ビールで英会話力アップ？
英語を話す: 友達を作る: after the intro where she she says she’s been feeling sluggish recently, she says that her number of podcast listeners is growing and that there are now people who she doesn’t know or have any connection to listening to the podcast and that she’s even received mail asking for her advice on how to get better at speaking English and so she says that while she is by know means fluent herself, she has got better over time. Her first piece of advice is to make friends you can speak in English with.
If you attend an ESL class like she does, she strongly recommends making friends with other students - inviting people out & accepting invitations, creating study groups. One of the advantages of speaking with other ESL students is that some of the self-consciousness present when speaking with a native speaker is lessened.
Outside of ESL classes, you should start by just smiling and greeting people you come across in your everyday life - like in shops, when picking up or dropping kids off to school etc - and then from there you can start making small talk.
英語を話す: 好きなことをやる！She also recommends getting outside interests - she herself does tap dancing and Zumba and while she hasn’t made close friends through these endeavours, she’s had plenty of conversational practice and felt like part of a community.
And then there’s beer! She likes it. There’s plenty of different kinds available in America. People who like beer, like to talk about it at length. Beer has provided many opportunities for her to practice her conversational skill! One great example is when she was at the library and was asked by a stranger if she likes beer on account of the beer stickers stuck on her laptop.
英語系おすすめYoutubeチャンネルHer favourite YouTube channels for English learning:
- バイリンガル英会話 as the name suggests the presenter Chika-san is bilingual - covers lots of topics and is already well known
- Hana English - similar to Chika-san is another bilingual living in an English speaking country (Australia) but because she’s an ESL teacher her language videos are particularly good
- (and favourite) happa 英会話 The presenter Jun-san is half Japanese and is based in California. She’s also an ESL teacher with an 英会話 school and her videos are full of native-speaker phrases (Utaco feels that Jun is like her own stalker since she’s always showcasing phrases Utaco has just learnt). She has a podcast too. Utaco has used this channel a lot for study purposes.
One day Utaco would like to interview Chika-san and Jun-sa on this podcast
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@Lisaveeta I love your summaries – so helpful!
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Thank you!
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