🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Spring 2023 🌼 🌱

May 9th!

Another little listen today - 2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei.
I’ve had a nice, but busy, day today - so I needed something quick and simple rather than spending ages on trying to pick a new series to watch.

(Home Post)

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:hot_pepper: May 9

Attempted re-watching Tampopo. Made it eighteen minutes. Physically exhausted tonight. Calling it early.

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I started listening to the audiobook for パパ活 which is a nonfiction book looking into what is basically the Japanese equivalent of sugar daddy culture. It’s an interesting listen partially for the topic and partially because the sentences go from 100%, easy comprehension to “huh, what did he just say?” and back for me pretty frequently :sweat_smile: I’m still catching my ears up to the kinds of vocab used in nonfiction / analysis type writing.

I’ve only been listening to books I’ve already finished lately so having something new that’s in my comprehensible range is nice. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up.

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10/05/2023 :fairy:t5: Home Post Link

I listened to one episode of Japanese with Shun today. It was about weight training, so I was pretty intrigued. but it turned out that I didn’t know any of the vocabulary lol, so I had to listen to the same episode again. It was still pretty fun though, and I learned a lot of new words.

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May 10, Wed of Week 7 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

歴史 [58-60/90] - 明治と国際

Places and names

吾輩は猫である Ch.1 latter half.

Also watched, why Japan survived colonization?, but got to around half of it. Pause, read sub and look up, indeed.

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:cherry_blossom: Day 40, 5 月 10 日 :herb:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

:arrow_right: Another frog video :frog:
Had a lot of trouble understanding even a little bit of it, but I decided it still counted as listening. I have the habit of not counting things if I feel they haven’t been completed successfully, but that’s silly. I still tried and so it counts.

:mount_fuji: Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 23 - 24
An episode about summer - I’m with てっぺい in that autumn is my favorite season and summer is a bit… Also noticed a grammatical construction I just read about! Nice.

it was ほうが~より btw

In a basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, the construction is: ほうが~より
On Bunpro it is the other way around: より~ のほうが
It was really interesting to see it in actual use, where てっぺい used: 「冬のほうが夏より」

Another episode about watching television, which I don’t do and am not interested in.

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May 10th!

Today I listened to the next episode of Season 1 of JapanesePod101’s Lower Intermediate series.

(Home Post)

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I found this series of manga-style skits about a high school girl and her shiba inu and it’s pretty fun. I don’t know if I can watch all 45 minutes straight (I prefer long-form content and this is just a stream of short form) but it’s still fun:

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asveri’s home post :seedling:

Hi everyone! This will be my first challenge (or anything in the WK community actually), and I’m joining late, but I’m very eager to stretch my listening muscles. My goals are just to listen more every day, regardless of what content it is, and be consistent. I would like to read subs less and focus on listening, too.

What I’m planning on using:
– some dramas (thinking that rewatching something I’m already familiar and comfortable with, but without foreign subs, would be a good idea, perhaps チェリまほ)
– videos from (JP) figure skaters, as I already watch them sometimes + am familiar with the vocab + it’s my big love
– stories in Bandori (バンドリ) since they’re fully voiced and I can check both JP and EN subs in different versions of the game
– some random Youtube videos

May
01 02 03 04 05 06 07
08 09 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31
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Summary Post

May 10th
What did I listen to?: Speak Japanese Naturally goes to Roppongi
How much time did I spend listening?: ~9 min

Ok this was really cool >< I love art museums - how were those paintings done by high schoolers, they looked so good :weary: My personal favorites were the blue whale, tiny seal carving, llama with strawberry on head, 3D bald eagle (how) and all the shodo aksjksdghknv the calligraphy was so cool, I freaking love calligraphy, it’s so pretty :tired_face:

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:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 5月8日 and 5月9日 and 5月10日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Continuing to be kinda lazy

5/8 - 雑談しつつチェス配信 - YouTube - i watched this chess stream while getting ready for bed, don’t really remember much
5/9 - 2 episodes of ゆるキャン△ + 1 episode of skip and loafer
5/10 - 1 episode of ゆるキャン△, honestly I coul probably do this one comfortably with no subs or jp subs, but I’ve left the english on so far. Mostly not reading them, so might try turning them off tomorrow. Everyone speaks slowly enough that I should be able to look up words even without having jp subs

Over the course of those days I’ve also been listening to the Happy End discography (70s japanese rock band, one of the first commercially successful bands to write western style music w japanese lyrics), and sometimes I do pick up more than just bits and pieces, but it was largely background music while cleaning/working. Enjoyed their music quite a bit, especially the 2nd album 風街ろまん

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May 11, Thu of Week 7 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

吾輩は猫である Ch.2 [1/8]. As far as I have listened to and dropped last time.

Complete the YouTube from yesterday.

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:cherry_blossom: Day 41, 5 月 11 日 :herb:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

:mount_fuji: Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 25 - 26
Episodes about reading the newspaper and magazines. Hard to understand, so note to self to relisten tomorrow.

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Home Post :hatching_chick:

May 7th

I watched the video about Jinbouchou by Speak Japanese Naturally. This one was way easier to understand than the one about Mount Fuji. But I had just woken up when I watched it which made it a bit harder to stay concentrated.
Later I listened to the Nihongo con Teppei episodes 173-175.

May 8th

I got a little unmotivated again so I only watched Akane’s Korea vlog. I ate something crunchy while watching so it was hard to hear what she was saying sometimes and I resorted to reading the subtitles from time to time.

May 9th

I listened to the Japanese with Shun episodes 15 and 16. His podcast is so much easier than his youtube videos that I have watched so far.

May 10th

I watched Naoko make tofu and realized that there are only a few of her videos left that I haven’t watched yet. :frowning: This one was an older video and I was surprised by how many english translations she showed on screen. I’m glad that she has changed her approach since then and only shows translations very rarely now. Overall I was happy with my understanding.
Next I tried Akane’s Kyoto vlog. This one was very difficult for me - especially when she was talking to her friend. When I watched the video a second time while reading the subtitles I could understand a lot more but still not all of it.

May 11th

Today I went for Akane’s Shin-Yokohama vlog where she taught a lot of phrases and words to use in trains and shops. I really enjoyed the video - especially the ramen museum part. It was very interesting and looked so cool!
After that I remembered that I hadn’t watched any Comprehensible Japanese videos in a while so I decided to watch the one about obon festival. It was very interesting! I finally learned what the cucumber horse and the eggplant cow items in Animal Crossing are about. :smile:

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May 11th!

Another tiny listen today - an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.
I really need to get back to doing more listening each day, but this week has been super busy and I’m tired. I’ll try to do a bit extra over the weekend to compensate for phoning it in a bit this week :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

10 Likes

Summary Post

May 11th
What did I listen to?: Speak Japanese Naturally goes to Kofu
How much time did I spend listening?: ~28 min

Well first I tried to watch that shiba inu manga video that @pocketcat linked because it looked super cute, but within about five seconds it became apparent to me that it was way too fast and difficult for me to follow anything :sob: I’m sad sauce because I could catch juuuust enough to get the idea that I would probably really like it if I could follow it :upside_down_face: Alas, back to walk and talk videos for me :joy:

This one was quite long - not gonna lie, I got super lost when she was explaining things with like…place names, or historical people. I was looking at the subs quite a bit :upside_down_face: Also the opening gave me like…painful nostalgia, idek what it is about Japanese train stations but I miss them :cry: It’s not like I ever lived in Japan or anything, I have no right to be this emotionally bonded to them but for some reason there’s just some vibe there I miss terribly. It reminds me of my second trip to Japan (which, legitimately was the best time in my life, I love and miss that trip terribly too) - getting off the train in a new place, looking around, seeing all the things. So healing :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Oh no! The vocab is a bit advanced (IIRC one of the first skits was a joke about Schrodinger’s Cat) but you could try using the youtube speed option to bring it down to .75x or something and see if it helps at all. A lot of Japanese comedy skits are spoken super fast, I think for effect.

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Is that what it was about legitimately all I processed was like…big word! big word! WORDS ahhhh

Oh I forgot this was a thing :joy: I will try that - idk if it’ll help enough (like you said, it might be that the vocab is just too advanced) but slowing it down might at least give me enough time to process the words so I can tell whether the vocab is too advanced :joy:

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11/05/2023 :man_fairy:t5: Home Post Link

created this mini template to use for the next 4 days because I’m on a trip but don’t want to miss out on updating and maintaining the aesthetic of my home post hehe

resource: Nihongo Con Teppei

no. of episodes: 1

thoughts: i made a very silly mistake and confused the topic “cooking” for “travelling”, so i was very confused when they were talking about eggs and pasta :skull: I listened to the episode again and it was okay in terms of comprehensive lol.

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:hot_pepper: May 11

Frogs and dogs yesterday.

Zero Escape: 999 for ~25 minutes today.

Tough to get in the minutes right now.

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