Extensive listening challenge 👂 (2022)

Japanese Language Listening
#19

I somehow missed this comment earlier! Yes, Tag is more of an art piece than anything. Kind of in the same vein as Antiporno I’d say. There is actually a really great video essay on YouTube about the women of Sono movies that I’ll look up and link when I get home. It touches on those films in particular (also Guilty of Romance/恋の罪 which I similarly enjoyed but which is pretty outside the horror genre and well into art film territory imo).

EDIT: @Daisoujou read your Letterboxd review and it was dead on. I can never get people to understand why I love it by explaining the plot. The plot isn’t even the part that draws you in!
Also this is the video essay, it’s in English but it mostly nails what I find so appealing about his films. Subversion and messy, complex female characters.

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#20

Thanks for taggging me! I want to join!!!

I wonder how much anime I watch

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#21

All done, post is now a wiki!

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#22

Thanks!

I guess with that, have at it everybody!

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#23

I want to make listening more of a focus this year, but I’ve no idea what would be good goals at all. I’ve no listening habit to speak of, mostly I just watch something whenever I’m in the mood and have time. :sweat_smile:

I guess I’ll make myself a table and figure things out as I go.

I’ll continue watching Yu Yu Hakusho and (from time to time) One Piece and the other random anime I’m very irregularly watching already. I think it’d be nice to get back into Terrace House and Love Wagon too.

It’s great hearing about all these movies and shows since I don’t really know about many. I’ll probably be getting some inspiration from these.

Edit: just made my table… Is terrace house a variety show? :thinking:

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#24

I think I’ll join. Although reading has bigger priority for me, I still wanna make a good start here as well. Focusing on things I can watch with Japanese captions, so I can practice both listening and reading.

Started watching the anime Komi can’t Communicate last year on Netflix with Japanese closed captions. It is a bit fast for me, not the ideal first candidate, but I stuck with it and I’m 7 episodes in already. A second season is also confirmed, so that motivates me even more to keep going.

Part of my year goals I wanna watch through at least 10 different anime/drama series and one movie. Of course I’ll still watch/listen things outside that I might not fit into my own challenge.

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#25

Up until now, I’ve been pretty inconsistent with my listening practice. Some days I’d listen to different podcasts/videos/watch anime for an hour or more and other days I did nothing. The most consistent exposure I get to Japanese is playing Genshin Impact with the Japanese audio every day.

So, to ease myself into regular practice, I’m giving myself one achievable goal to listen to Japanese for 15 minutes every day - and then I also have the other goals that I can complete when I have time in the next 6 months.

I think that even with the goal of 15 minutes/day, I’ll probably start listening to more than that since it’s not a large commitment. It’s sort of like when you trick yourself into doing more work by telling yourself you just need to do one problem, but then you do all of the problems in the set because you have momentum.

From my experience with language learning, the biggest hurdle is getting comfortable with listening and speaking, so I’m really glad @rodan got the ball rolling on this challenge!

皆さま、頑張って！行きましょう！

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#26

Thanks! Yeah the movie is a hard sell outside of some movie nerd subcultures, for sure. The runtime doesn’t help. It’s interesting you mention Antiporno cause I did actually quite like that one – really when it comes to the thematic stuff Sono is doing I like Tag a lot; that one I only disliked in a filmmaking sort of way. It felt… messy to me, not in the good way. But I did write a bit in a review of it as well about women in media being exploited and treated as disposable for male enjoyment. Seems the video essayist and I came to pretty similar conclusions on that one. Thanks for sharing that video, by the way! It was good. Unfortunately I haven’t seen Guilty of Romance yet, but I want to.

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#27

According to wikipedia it’s a リアリティ番組, but I don’t know if that is a subset of variety shows or not. :woman_shrugging:

Hooray, extensive listening thread for 2022! I’m excited to get going.

I haven’t made my table yet, but my goals are:

  1. listen to 12 audiobooks
  2. finish 20 dramas raw
  3. watch 250 variety show episodes (preferably raw but sometimes I can only find things with subtitles)

And then I’m also watching some anime, which I didn’t make a goal for. I think I’ll put it in the table as well just to keep track.

I finished my first drama already, so here goes:

  1. 最愛
    Quality: ★★★★½
    Enjoyment: ★★★★½
    Ease of understanding: ★★½

In terms of listening comprehension, it was difficult because of dialect, a confusing plot and a lot of characters, and sometimes discussion of business and pharmaceuticals, etc. It was a good enough show that I often resorted to checking the Japanese subtitle file for lines that I didn’t understand raw.

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#28

OMG. LOVE 最愛。 I’m only 4 episodes in though :sob: I have so many series going at once. I also struggled with the dialect a bit but definitely found the business meetings way harder to understand comparatively. My business vocab is bare minimum right now.

I wonder if we’ll end up overlapping on other dramas? I’m currently binging 密告はうたう even though I should be finishing my other series…

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#29

Oh nice! 最愛 really pulled me in fast; it was quite the experience from beginning to end. Apparently two of the producers (I think) on 最愛 have a history of working together, and in looking at other things they’ve done I see Unnatural, which I loved as well, so I’m thinking to try to watch some of their other stuff, too.

I am also prone to watching way too many things at once, lol. If we both do that, surely at some point we’ll overlap again! :blush:

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#30

I haven’t seen Unnatural but just looked and 新井順子 also worked on MIU404 which I enjoyed a lot and there’s a review on MyDramaList suggesting it’s similar due to the same screenwriter (as Unnatural - different than 最愛 though. This lady).

Hope we catch each other on the same series again some time :smiley:

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#31

Great to see some people talking about Japanese movies here. Love Exposure is also one of my favorite movies of all time. Big fan of Sion Sono and Takashi Miike in general.

Also big thanks for the list @Thaisthetic! I usually have no problem with Japanese movies if there are Japanese subtitles, but I find that there’s a big drop off in comprehension when there are no subtitles at all, so I need to work more on my listening in that area (even though there’s no way that I could realistically keep up with posting everything that I watch here).

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#32

About audiobooks, any tips on where to find them? I’ve been able to find older stuff that’s copyright free on YouTube, but wondering if there’s any good way to get ahold of newer stuff as well.

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#33

Have you checked the Japanese version of Audible? The Japanese Kindle store is really good, maybe audible is decent as well?

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#34

Hanty’s Listening Challenge Detailed List

I’ve decided to start on my list on what I plan to listen to here. I’m not planning to tackle everything on the lists, but rather I made them to serve as a reference point of what I’d like to try to get through.

Films (including animated)
Title Subtitles Viewing Review Finish Date
After Life (ワンダフルライフ) None Rewatch N/A N/A
After the Storm (海よりもまだ深く) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Chronicles Of My Mother (わが母の記) None 1st time N/A N/A
Departures (おくりびと) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Every Day a Good Day (日日是好日) None 1st time N/A N/A
I Are You, You Am Me (転校生) None 1st time N/A N/A
Kabei, Our Mother (母べえ) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Like Father, Like Son (そして父になる) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Tokyo Tower: Mom & Me, and Sometimes Dad (東京タワー オカンとボクと、時々、オトン) None 1st time N/A N/A
Shoplifters (万引き家族) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Still Walking (歩いても歩いても) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Sweet Bean (あん) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Tokyo Godfathers (東京ゴッドファーザーズ) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Tokyo Sonata (トウキョウソナタ) None Rewatch N/A N/A
Until the Break of Dawn (ツナグ) None 1st time N/A N/A
Wolf Children (おおかみこどもの雨と雪) None Rewatch N/A N/A

I’ve seen most of these movies before, but I watched them just before I came to Japan. My public library had a bunch of DVDs available for rent including a great variety of foreign films, so I got to pick up a lot of movies that looked interesting. I’d like to add some Akira Kurosawa films on the list at some point too, but as you might notice, I’m a Kirin Kiki and Kore-eda fan, so they were my main priority for this list. I love when they collaborate in movies, but it’s a terrible shame that they will no longer be able to. :frowning:

Live Action Dramas
Title Subtitles Challenge Viewing Episode Review Start date Last updated
Hanzawa Naoki (半沢直樹) None All episodes Rewatch 0/10 N/A N/A N/A
Hanzawa Naoki Season 2 (半沢直樹2) 英語 All episodes 1st time 0/10 N/A N/A N/A
Legal High (リーガル・ハイ) 英語 All episodes Rewatch 0/11 N/A N/A N/A
Legal High 2 (リーガル・ハイ2) 英語 All episodes 1st time 0/10 N/A N/A N/A
Say I Love You (愛していると言ってくれ) 日本語 All episodes Rewatch 0/12 N/A N/A N/A
Under One Roof (ひとつ屋根の下) 英語 All episodes 1st time 0/12 N/A N/A N/A
Under One Roof 2 (ひとつ屋根の下2) 英語 All episodes 1st time 0/12 N/A N/A N/A

I don’t really watch TV dramas, but these were all ones my husband recommended and watched together. 愛していると言ってくれ is really good not only for listening practice but for reading because one of the protagonists is deaf so he uses sign language to communicate (and so do some of the other characters who communicate with him). Since you can’t hear him speak, Japanese subtitles are provided. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough kanji knowledge and had to rely on my husband for translation at the time. As for Legal High, if you’ve seen Hanzawa, it’s the same actor except his personality is the complete opposite. It’s a funny show but between the legal terminology and the super speedy talking, it’s difficult to fully appreciate without English subtitles.

TV Anime
Title Subtitles Challenge Viewing Episode Review Start date Last updated
Ansatsu Kyoushitsu (暗殺教室) None All episodes Rewatch 0/22 N/A N/A N/A
Cardcaptor Sakura (カードキャプターさくら) None All Rewatch 0/70 N/A N/A N/A
Donten ni Warau (曇天に笑う) None All Rewatch 0/12 N/A N/A N/A
Gin no Saji (銀の匙) None All Rewatch 0/11 N/A N/A N/A
Gin no Saji 2nd Season (銀の匙2ndシーズン) None All 1st time 0/11 N/A N/A N/A
Monster (モンスター) None All Rewatch 0/74 N/A N/A N/A
Princess Tutu (プリンセスチュチュ) None All Rewatch 0/38 N/A N/A N/A
Sazae-san (サザエさん) 日本語 Currently airing episodes 1st time 1/? N/A 1月9日 1月11日
Shingeki no Kyojin The Final Season Part 2 (進撃の巨人) 日本語 All 1st time 0/? N/A N/A N/A
Spice and Wolf (狼と香辛料) None All Rewatch 0/13 N/A N/A N/A
Wolf’s Rain (ウルフズレイン) None All Rewatch 0/26 N/A N/A N/A

Most of the anime are ones I watched while I was still in university and doing the MAL Challenge (watching 100 series a year). So watching them again is long overdue and something to look forward to now with Japanese knowledge.

Variety Shows
Title Subtitles Episode Count Last updated
あなたは小学 5年生より賢いの？ 日本語 0 N/A
チコちゃんに叱られる! 日本語 0 N/A
YOUは何しに日本へ？ 日本語 0 N/A

I don’t really like Japanese TV except quiz shows or if I’m learning something new, hence the ones I chose on the list. YOU is either loved or hated by viewers, but even though some interviews are kind of ridiculous, there are some really heartwarming episodes too. I like that they check up on some of their old guests to see how they’re progressing.

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#35

Audiobook.jp is where I get all my books. I tried ListenGo for a short while too, but their subscription model I don’t like, browsing the site is a pain, and I had weird issues where the last few seconds of chapters would be cut off.

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#36

I decided to join in since I really want to move myself to do more listening this year. I did a different format since the mediums I do listening on vary depending on how I’m feeling, but I want to try and consistently do some amount of listening. I’m going to do a lot of things I’ve already seen before at least in the beginning so I don’t worry about missing plot as much, and maybe later when I’m more comfortable may venture into new territory. We’ll see how things go. Oh also and for now at least I’m using subtitles where possible, though would like to eventually move to listening without.

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#37

皆さま!

I just had my first 1-1 open conversation practice with a Japanese teacher and it was ROUGH. I’ve been studying for 8 months, I’m currently enrolled in a Beginner 2 class at my Japanese language school, but as soon as I was being asked simple direct questions in Japanese my mind went blank.

I went into it knowing it would probably be rough and I was correct. Anyways, guess I can file this away under the “Other” listening category. My new goal is to understand and remember enough to make it like 3 minutes into a conversation without sounding like a total fool :,)

It was honestly a great reminder of the amount of listening/speaking practice I need to be doing to just avoid sounding like a toddler. I’ve gotten to an upper-intermediate level in Mandarin Chinese before (I’m now rusty in that, too), so I know it’s possible to get past this hurdle but I’m going to need to ganbatte pretty hard.

I’m truly amazed by all of you multi-lingual learners out there (and very jealous).

Anyways, 皆さま、頑張って！

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#38

For anyone looking for content I saw someone on Reddit linked AudioMovie.jp which I hadn’t seen before. I listened to a few minutes of 令和版・夜のミステリー and the quality seems good.

Also I’m probably going to finish 密告はうたう tonight and look forward to reviewing it. :smiley:

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