November 23rd
What did I listen to?: ONEUS 日本アルバム「Dopamine」リリース記念特番
How much time did I spend listening?: 1 hour, 15 min
I am currently out of town again so I really didn’t think I’d be doing any reading or listening during this period, but lo and behold, Oneus is promoting in Japan right now and they did a live stream thing earlier today so I thought, what the heck, let’s give it a go xD (For context, Oneus is a k-pop group and I love them with my whole entire heart). They introduced themselves in Japanese at the beginning and I thought this was so cute - one of the members’ names is Keonhee (건희), which gets katakana’ed as ゴニ, so he introduced himself like
More rambling about my experience watching this stream
The first part of the stream was interview-style, with them talking about their new Japanese album release and their time in Japan (they’ve been doing promotional events there for the past few weeks, and they just did a couple of concerts there as well). THE HOST TALKS SO FAST JEEZ like it is just a stream of syllables with no discernable word breaks or sentence breaks or pauses kshdfskjsvnxm help me (I think the boys were a little “help me” too sometimes LOL, none of them are fluent in Japanese, but the host also seemed to be flipping back and forth between Japanese and Korean to translate what she was saying to them or what they were saying to us. Good for them but not good for me, because it is very hard to register rapid switches between a language I marginally understand and a language I don’t really understand xD I had a lot of moments of “what are these words, what is happening” and then a second later I would realize that she was no longer speaking Japanese and I’d be like, “oh, that’s why” xD)
Special shoutout to the members who were miming things as the Japanese translation was happening, like please you dorks Did I know what they were talking about most of the time? Still no, but A for effort Tbh it was kind of distracting me from listening
The second part of the stream was a game where they all ate identical-looking pieces of food but one person got a piece of food that was weird in some way (like it was spicy, etc) and they had to guess who got the weird thing based on their reaction while eating it. It was fun and cute xD
My favorite “I understood that” moment was when two of the members burst out laughing for ? reason (I think one of the staff members off screen was doing something) - Keonhee laughed so hard that he snorted, and the other members were teasing him like 豚、どこですか? That sounds like not much, but it’s the little things~ I also love how they use their limited Japanese to be hilarious, like they’re so fun even when they aren’t fluent and I love that.
My listening was incredibly chill today. I basically tried to figure out Twitcast (hilarious name) and watched some very chill videos. I also got this fun sign up prompt:
That could have been a check box, or a yes/no, but instead it was this and for some reason it amused me.
More Dorohedoro, of which one episode featured baseball with mutated cockroaches and zombified dead bodies. Extremely silly.
I also thought I’d try one of YUYU’s 怖い話 that @rikaiwisdom mentioned. I found it surprisingly understandable. Bookmarked for times when I’m not sure what else to watch/listen to.
But, that’s not precise enough! Surely there should be an option “Between 19 and 20 years old” or, even more precisely phrased, “Older than 19 years old and younger than 20 years old”.
Just a little listen today since I’m feeling worse today, and I ended up working late
Just one episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners, and while I understood most of it there were definitely a few bits I wouldn’t quite follow.
I’m on holiday from work tomorrow though, so I’ll try to make up for it by doing extra listening tomorrow.
I listened to ~90 minutes of 崩れる脳を抱きしめて today. I’m around halfway done with the book and my evaluation is still just ‘ok’. Bit of a bummer as the other two books by the author I’ve liked a lot, but my summary of this book so far is just “guy with daddy issues struggles to maintain professional boundaries with patient”.
That sounds a bit harsh but really it’s fine. I should probably just speed it up so I stop being grumpy at how long winded it feels.
Made it to Ch 2-2 of 青ブタ9. That was longer than the usual section. But this volume is “only” 4 chapters. But is the same length as the previous volume. I think this is a volume I will finish in a week and then get back to shield hero. I’m happy I’m back in the book reading groove. My Chainsaw man reread really got me back on track.
Been poorly this week, wednesday I think it was teppi on the dogwalk and some N5 drills. Yesterday, I’m going to count listening to some Bunpro review sentences otherwise I’d have lost my streak!
Oh I also watched some episodes of a new drama on BBC called ‘Tokyo Vice’ and caught the odd word here and there when they were speaking Japanese.
Two more episodes of Dorohedoro today. With only one more episode to go, you’d think things would be getting clearer, but no, they’re just crazier than ever.
Also, I had a look at that OVA, and it’s apparently all 6 available OVA shorts combined into one episode. So Netflix apparently has everything.
Watched latter half episode of Pokemon - Sky full of Spears.
Listened to an episode of Learn Japanese of Noriko, interviewing another sensei, and giving advice. Then, a part of かがみの孤城, so concluding November, but I would probably read the 上 volume later (ends in December). I understand the storyline somewhat, probably enough to replace 下 volume, but also miss a lot – I would need to improve that somehow.
After, I got tired of listening for meaning, so just listen to songs.
Today I had a fun lesson with one of my tutors. We talked about lots of things including Pokemon, working from home and Black Friday. We also practised using ことになった and ここになっている.
I also listened to Lesson 7 of JapanesePod101’s Upper Beginner Season 1 podcast.
Again, similarly to the read every day thread. First week of the two since I last posted didn’t go as well as the past 7 days.
I finished Atashinchi and started Akebi-chan no sailor-fuku. Also going to do a rewatch of Atashinchi but without subtitles.
Then the odd vtuber/twitch stream but I usually struggle with focus. Also just remembered I wanted to watch more of those short neat Animal Crossing sketch videos on YT
Oh, also need to continue Amachan, it’s pretty entertaining. Started that asadora a long time ago after I finished Hiyokko.
Been continuing my rotation of reading with and without the audiobook. 青ブタ needs to be at 1.10x because the breaks are too long for me. By the time they continue I’m usually already finished with the sentence. 1.10 is pretty comfy but shield hero needs to be at 0.90x because the narrator is too fast. xD
I’ve continued to watch the very chill stream recordings on the personal channel of クリミナル
Today was a play through of Stray that I haven’t yet finished:
TBH his voice is just nice to listen to, which still amuses me given the voice altering he does on his main channel to sound creepy.
Oohh I’ll have to check them out, i love having chill lets plays on in the background while working. So thank you @pocketcat Reminds me i need to find the names of some of my old favourites!
(Hope its ok me commenting here as I’m not actually doing the challenge! I am hoping to hop on next time yall start though and have been lurking )