Favorite shows on netflix to improve casual spoken Japanese?

I think only terrace house helps me

2 Likes

I enjoy Midnight Diner—the stories are interesting and it’s good listening practice for me.

I don’t really try to mimic all the casual speech though since I’m a 20-something woman and it’d probably be odd if I spoke like a middle-aged man :laughing:

16 Likes

It would definitely leave an impression though and that is worth something too😂

2 Likes

I recently picked that to help with listening, it was totally not what I expected. I didn’t watch a trailer, and I presumed it was a reality show about late night eats.

Terrace House was bit too much teenage dating sim to my liking. Otherwise good.

Midnight Diner was great.

I’d also recommend hiru no sento zake (昼のセント酒) from Amazon Prime Video. It’s pretty funny show.

My friend just recommended Solitary Gourmet, but I couldn’t find it on any streaming services.

2 Likes

Same, i’m watching it now, good to listen to casual native material and the stories are funny. Is the 〜かい? a Tokyo dialect thing, I never remember hearing that when I lived in Tokyo, but my Japanese wasn’t great when I lived there at the time.

Also just listen to your fave movies on Netflix with Japanese audio, if you watch something like Wolf of Wall Street you’re gonna get some real casual and slang going on.

I love 孤独のグルメ, it’s great to learn about all kinds of food, and at least from the episodes that I’ve seen, the language isn’t really any harder than terrace house.

Unfortunately I don’t know any legal ways to stream it :thinking:

1 Like

A lot of people watch Terrace House, but sometimes (especially when it’s a big group speaking) it’s pretty hard to keep up.

I love “リラックマとカオルさん”. Cute and generally not too complicated! The episodes are short, too, so if I’m short on time I can easily watch one episode without having to move much aside in my schedule.

Midnight Diner is great too, and recently started watching Carole and Tuesday, but certain characters likes to talk in very big words so not highly recommended unless you’re above intermediate level :sweat_smile: I have to watch it with Japanese subtitles turned on because they talk too fast at times.

2 Likes

If you’re in Japan Netflix has some food-related shows, including Solitary Gourmet, Samurai Gourmet, and Kentaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman.

If anyone is into cute things, I’d also recommend Aggretsuko or Rilakkuma and Kaoru. Both of those shows helped me get used to the type of speaking you do at work, with friends, etc, and they’re super cute to boot.

In my experience, English language shows set it “normal” environments can be interesting to watch with the Japanese subtitles on. A few seasons of Brooklyn 99 are on Netflix, and they generally speak very casually to each other. I tend to pop on the Japanese subtitles whenever I watch anything on Netflix, but if my goal is to study a bit for speaking/listening, I tend to learn more from realistic fiction than say Lord of the Rings (which is still interesting, but maybe a little less practical haha).

I really enjoyed リラックマとカオルさん, but mostly because I’m obsessed with Rilakkuma. Since the episodes are so short, I’d go through them once with just the Japanese audio, then the next time with English subtitles. It really helped me with picking up casual utterances and greetings!

2 Likes

i tried aggretsuko with japanese subtitles find it too fast to keep up or understand

i find terrace house the easiest to sort of keep up with. Especially when new members are welcomed and so forth. Midnight diners is interesting but a little tough

2 Likes

I’m not sure! I looked it up, and one resource says かい can be a masculine version of the か question particle.

1 Like

Mary and the Witch’s Flower (the anime Film) is good for beginners too.

1 Like

Yes I recommend this one too, it is very stupid and funny!

2 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.