🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

Today I watched an episode of Season 2 of The Way of the House Husband. I was trying to watch it with Japanese Subs but I didnt understand much without checking the english subtitles. Still, I managed to understand some bits, and thats better than nothing!

(Home Post)

It’s quite fun, but definitely better as a casual thing for reviewing vocab rather than trying to use it to learn anything new.
There are some fun mini games, like having to serve customers the items they ask for in a shop, and a treasure hunting game where you need to follow directions and that sort of thing.

The main issue for me has been that its pretty buggy - I’ve had a lot of instances of random buttons on my controller stopping working, and interact-able objects failing to respond, and moving around and grabbing items can feel a bit janky. The grabbing in particular can get pretty frustrating when you are in a timed minigame and you are struggling to grab an item you need!

So overall, I’d say its worth at least trying out the demo on Steam since its free - but unless you are really keen to play it its probably worth waiting for them to patch some of the bugs first!

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:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: January 31

Listened to Teppei for beginners #37 and #38, plus played BU$TAFELLOWS about 1.5h.


The month is over! I kinda started this challenge just to try so I’m a bit surprised I didn’t miss a single day. I’ve been doing it mostly low-effort but even like that I feel like it’s helped, so although I initially planned to do it just for January I’m going to continue for February as well.

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Listened to a few episodes of my new bff teppei whilst walking the dog at lunch time (she met some nice little dogs but they didn’t want to do anything other than sniff-greet) and during my mid-morning break. Can only remember the last one where he’s saying how his spanish wife has passed N2 and some tips on JLPT studying - read a lot, listen a lot.

Oh, as that was the most recent episode, I let the spotify play run and it played a couple more podcasts by people I don’t normally listen to, who was it? akane and yuyu. The Akane one was ok, more difficult than teppei but not too bad. The yuyu one felt like natural japanese speed (please don’t tell me he slows it down!) and was interesting to listen to but I didn’t understand much - though I felt cool, it’s definitely where I’d like to get my level to (いつか!)

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Feb 1, Wed of Week 6 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

Death Note EP.22-24. Thus finished the current volume in book club. Someone to say goodbye.

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.1 [3/5]. Keigo. I did pretty well. お見え is new to me.

聞くだけで一気にわかる日本史 (Japan history) : 旧石器・縄文・弥生.

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:snowman: :snowflake: February 1 :snowflake: :snowman: :speaker:
Home Post

Sayuri says everyday :tanabata_tree:

Three episodes again. Microwave, flipflops and 喧嘩(けんか). Was a bit distracted during the kenka one because my 6 month old kitten found it a bit too cold outside today so I kinda missed a lot of it while we went back inside. (I take him outside in a harness every so often.)

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:snowflake: Day 32, 1st of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Listened to two episodes of White Shadow played by 花江夏樹, it was a limbo-like and therefore understandable without commentary.

It seems their usual faire is horror or spooky games, as well as playing with three other people. I didn’t want to brave that chaos yet, but I like watching horror games because the commentator is mostly irrelevant there. Maybe I’ll do some more from this channel for listening practice later.

I think I will try to do some Genki listening exercises for the rest of the month, though. I did the listening exercises for chapter 3, and the last one was a bit too much for my sleepy brain. I got the gist (Mary is declining any invitations from this guy by using several different excuses and it’s very funny) but not the specifics. Maybe tomorrow I can try again.

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February 1st :arrow_forward:

A few booktuber videos again. I was planning to do more listening but time sort of disappeared on me today. Hopefully tomorrow.

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February 1st!

Today I had a bright idea.
“Hey,” I thought, “I keep saying I don’t have enough time for exercise because I’m busy learning Japanese - why not find a cardio workout in Japanese on Youtube and use that for listening practise?”

40 minutes later, I’m completely exhausted and I don’t know how much Japanese I managed to listen to overall, but I’m certainly never going to forget
あとちょと! 止まらないで! or もうちょい頑張って!
And I will live in fear forever of the phrase 地獄の腹筋タイム。

(Home Page)

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Very funny post. すぐムキムキ体調になるんですねぇぇ (I’ve been wanting to use ムキムキ since I heard Teppei say it - thanks for giving me an excuse)

Listened to the most recent Teppei episode whilst cooking dinner (he’d approve as he’s always talking about listening to podcasts whilst doing other things). Then listened to an episode of ‘listening with Shun’ about world war two. For a podcast that proclaims it’s aimed at Genki 1 students, I find it quite difficult and it required multiple listens before the fog started to clear.

Dinner was also fine, just a cheeky wednesday night spag bol.

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:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 1

Listened to Teppei for beginners #39 and #40, and played BU$TAFELLOWS for half an hour.

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Feb 2, Thu of Week 6 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.1 [4/5]. Conventional phrases. Like grammar, but kinda works pretty well with a very short explanation.

Death Note EP.25 :orthodox_cross:

ガラスのうさぎ [11/18].

聞くだけで一気にわかる日本史 (Japan history) : 古墳

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:snowflake: Day 33, 2nd of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Listening exercise from last time, as well as the chapter intro dialogue for chapter 4 of Genki. While it is very easy material with all known vocab, it’s still hard to follow because it takes some times to remember the meaning of various words /phrases. I think listening to past dialogues on the regular might help?

I need to not only get familiar with vocab, but also how that vocab sounds. It’s easy to recognize a Kanji and say “I know that! That means X, Y or Z”, but a whole 'nother wheelhouse to hear it and have the same experience. And while listening comprehension isn’t high up on my list of goals, being able to understand Japanese gaming videos might be nice…

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February 2nd :film_strip:

An episode and a half of Quartet. Today’s random conversation was about the etiquette of wearing stripes, and how it’s not okay to talk about a different food than the one you’re currently eating. Among other things. Backstories are starting to be teased. I don’t know where it’s going but I’ll keep watching.
And they continue to speak very clearly.

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So I really have been sleeping on Miku Real Japanese huh? I am not a podcast lover and only use them as they are the “simplest” input method. But since I need something that I can get away with while desk warming at school (ALT life) I did a deep dive into youtube and realized that her upbeat personality makes listening very fun. I do speed up the audit to 1.25 as I am living in Japan and need improvements as soon as possible.

But yea, don’t sleep on her.

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February 2nd!

Today I played a bit of Noun Town again, and also listened to en episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.
I might need to re-listen to the Nihongo con Teppei episode though. I’m very tired this evening so I kept drifting off to sleep when I was trying to listen.

(Home Post)

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Gotcha, thanks! I’ll try it when I get back into VR.


  • Tuesday:
    • Atashin’chi ep. 2. Almost didn’t get any details, and while I got the gist, I would’ve also gotten that by just with images and tone of voice. Guess it’s still to early for me after all.
  • Wednesday:
    • Voice meetup in the Kotoba Miners Discord Server. We did a Listening Comprehension quiz with a bot that’s apparently using the content from https://japanesetest4you.com - gotta check that website out, it was pretty nice actually. After that our host streamed Escape Simulator again, and we directed him in Japanese on what to do. (Finally a use for backseat gaming, haha.)
  • Today:

And for that matter, it’s been a month! Congratulations to anybody who’s still with us!

How is everybody doing? Do you feel like you’re improving? Is it interesting? Did you find new resources you really like?

I’m proud of being actually consistent and not missing a single day, but I still haven’t found anything that really clicks with me like it is with reading. There are time where I procrastinate a bit on that, but once I start with the manga or book I’m usually enjoying it, and lately I find that it’s even hard to stop sometimes and I’m really looking forward to continue on the next day. With listening, on the other hand… it feels a bit like a chore that I do at the end of the day to make a checkmark, and it’s usually either a bit boring, a bit frustrating, or a fair bit incomprehensible.

On one hand, that’s definitely due to my reading ability behing higher than my listening ability. But I think that the bigger problem for me is my limited vocab. That’s not an issue when reading digitally. I can easily read things above my level, since I can quickly look up things with Yomichan, KanjiTomo or blind typing in Jisho without breaking the flow. And then do the same thing again when the word comes up the next two to ten times, until I finally start remembering it. Sadly that just doesn’t work as well with audio, where you have to stop and search and go back and relisten. It feels clunky, exhausting and not very enjoyable.

So what’s left is listening to content that is easy enough that I can understand it with my limited vocab, but… that’s usually not particularly engaging. Or getting bored going over content multiple times.

I guess I should really buckle down and go back into the hell that is SRS to improve my vocab, huh.


edit: All of this only counts for things that I go out of my way to do, like listening to podcasts or watching videos specifically to improve my listening comprehension. You know, the actually productive things where I struggle and hopefully improve. Apart from that…

  • Watching anime, TV series, movies or YouTube Hololive clips with English subtitles and occasionally trying to understand things? That’s fun. (I don’t feel like I’m learning a lot doing that tho, so I’m not counting it for this challenge.)
  • Occasionally watching a Hololive stream without subtitles and just going for as much understanding as I can? Definitely fun. (Probably also not very productive, and I’m not trying particularly hard.)
  • Conversations via voice chat or in real-life meetups? Pretty engaging, and I can ask for words I don’t understand. (But also exhausting, and I can’t easily turn it into a daily thing.)
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I have a harder time finding the will to update my home post then I do actually doing the challenge

Kind of hard to judge my improvement since I’ve technically been doing this challenge already all the time, even before I started learning Japanese. Anime and music being the main things. That’s why I knew a good chunk of words beforehand.

Well every once in a while I find something new to watch, but that’s pretty difficult for me.

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The past few days I’ve been watching Midorikawa Yuu’s youtube videos about the indies visual kei scene and fandom. They’re hilarious but also actually useful? and I wish they’d existed back when I lived in Tokyo and went to these types of indie concerts all the time. The thing about indies VK is that it’s completely ridiculous but we love it all the same, and maybe we love it because of the ridiculousness.

Midorikawa goes to his friend’s session band show and, instead of getting a VIP pass, pretends to be a bangya with a normal ticket and tries to trade and negotiate his way into the front row. And once he successfully enters the front row, then he has to negotiate to have other fans stand in his place for all the bands he doesn’t want to have to stand in the front row for. This isn’t a made-up idea just for a Youtube video. It’s normal at indie VK show with multiple bands.

Midorikawa gives the microphone to the FANS in the middle of the concert, during the mosh song, so that the bangya can have a try at shouting and working up the crowd. They’re good at it! I don’t know those girls but I felt proud of them for giving it their all.

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First, reading your reflections @TobiasW made me think I might have waited just long enough to start listening practice, rather than sleeping on it. Because several things seems to be within my reach to listen to, and I have no plans to intensively listen (like listening repeated times or rewinding to look up words, very occasionally I rewind if I was so distracted I caught nothing, but otherwise I don’t), so it is imperative to find things where I do know the vast majority of what is being said.

I’ve only been at it for half of January, and I don’t know that I’m improving yet. I’ve noticed I can follow along audio better than I thought, but I also think the last time I had specific listening practice was back in Japanese school and their… method… was not very good. They’d take a long news clip about something we’ve never talked much about, like food, and make us listen to it trying to understand it despite not knowing half the critical vocabulary to understand it. :woman_facepalming:

So, improving or just listening to things that are actually at my level? You decide. :crazy_face:

In a way, I feel like I’m figuring out my actual listening comprehension level, which is useful to know. And it definitely is a bit behind everything else. At one time, I have gone through all N3 grammar although I’m sure I didn’t actually learn them all. I can read slice of life manga pretty comfortably with only a few look ups. My vocabulary probably has a lot of the N3 vocabulary plus whatever is necessary for every day vocabulary. My kanji is solid for the 1-50 levels of WK. Feel a bit shaky on the 50s, but I also think I’ve barely seen them while reading too (so far), so maybe not too surprising.

All that to say, that I think I’m firmly in intermediate territory and steadily advancing towards advanced. While I think my listening is upper beginner or on the cusp of entering intermediate.

Lets not talk about my speaking or writing abilities, those have probably deteriorated back to beginner since Japanese language school. :joy:

I do find the material I’m listening to a bit on the boring side. I haven’t yet taken the time to check out all the resources that I think is within my reach. Sometimes it is easier to just put on the known quantity. I also apparently really need to try Miku Real Japanese that was recommended to me, because everyone who listens to it here seems to like it. xD

I think that Comprehensible Japanese (intermediate) is quite fun to watch/listen to. Most episodes talk about something interesting, although not all. But peeking at the remaining episodes, most of them sound like a lot of fun. So even though I’ve thought about dropping it, because I think there were a few boring ones in a row, I still want to stick it out until the end of the playlist.

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During yesterday’s dog walk I listened to the latest Teppei episode, then one from Shun about haircuts. Then spotify put on some akane and yuyu. I actually quiet enjoyed listening to yuyu once I surrendered to the feeling of ‘you don’t understand this’ and just tried to pick out the odd word. I think he was talking about an economics book at one point.

Not feeling like things are improving but I’ll keep putting the time in. It’s very hard to notice small small incremental change. I’ve realised that I’m not going to remember something until I’ve seen it four, five, six times, and then there’s the ‘oh I can visualize the kanji but I can’t remember the hiragani’ or the ‘oh… I can remember the end but not the beginning’.

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