I thought we could share some interesting listening resources with each other. Please don’t say NHK News / Easy News, Erin’s Challenge or JapanesePod101. I’m talking about native material you’ve come across that’s funny/awesome/interesting to listen to/watch. It can be videos as well.
You can write as a note how difficult you think the material is.
I’ll start! Lately I’ve been watching Usshii’s playthrough of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. He’s a very casual player, and makes a lot of funny mistakes and outbursts. He’s recorded 91x25 minutes of gameplay, so there’s plenty to watch. He speaks very casual Japanese, but pretty simple otherwise. Most kanji in the game has furigana. I’m not very good at listening comprehension, but I can catch quite a lot of what he says, since he talks pretty slowly. Even if you don’t understand all of the text, the game is easy to follow.
I also watch the Japanese TV show 世界の日本妻は見た a lot. The crew visits Japanese wives who live abroad. You see a lot of different cultures and homes (and fridges) – and they talk pretty slowly (and a bit more formally) as well! You can see a lot of episodes on youtube.
I think ニック&ぶらっくさむらいチャンネル are a riot. They’re really wild and obnoxious, and they think they’re so cool and I think it’s really funny.
I also watch Ask Japanese, I found that you can turn the subtitles off. The title is self explanatory, they just ask Japanese people what they think about a variety of topics.
Grandma’s recipes, a bunch of cute old Japanese women talking about food. There are subtitles on the video but they’re small and you can ignore them.
Also like to hunt down seiyuu events. They always talk super fast. But I don’t know how to find a steady stream of it. I just say like ‘noragami seyuu event’ and see what comes up. I wonder if there’s a channel it come on in japan? I don’t know. Some times they also do game shows, which I don’t know where to find. I also wonder where to go to find game shows because those are funny too. I listened to atokyo ghoul drama cd once, it was pretty funny so I want to find more.
if any one knows how to track down an keep up the material a mentioned please tell me. Well I know you buy drama cd’s, but the others I’m not sure where to find a steady stream of them.
I’m also looking for a competitive Japanese Pokemon player who does youtube, but I’m not sure what to type.
Oh! I almost forgot, I found out there’s aJapanese version of lilo and stitch, and while I’m mad that lilo isn’t in it, but they kept all the other characters the same, It’s pretty easy Japanese so I like to watch it anyways.
Thank you for sharing! Your three first suggestions sound awesome, I’ll definitely check them out. I’ve also watched 日本語の森, they’re really thorough and speak clearly. I recommend them as well.
If people are looking for playthrough of a game in Japanese on youtube, write 実況 + [game’s name in Japanese] in the search field – something will probably pop up.
In terms of videos, I follow a lot of youtubers (mostly let’splayers), and 2bros is probably my favorite. Also, 弟者(おとうじゃ, the younger brother obviously )’s voice is pretty sexy, if you are into that.
In terms of podcasts, I used to listen to 秋元才加のweekly Japan! It’s yet another news related podcast, where they comment something that happened during the week. Obviously, those news are a bit stall by now, but it’s still good listening practice.
A few years ago, I also came across a really cool podcast were two Japanese friends were talking about random stuff then transcribed what they said to help Japanese learners. Sometimes the notes even explain some grammar points.
I’ll try to find it back when I have more time.
I recently discovered and am enjoying Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo
It’s a kind of amusing and entertaining drama about foreign people in Japan learning Japanese and also includes interesting tidbits of information about Japanese language and culture.
You’re more than welcome to explore the 成人向け section of http://www.dlsite.com/ . Theres some wack shit on there, but I’ve found some gems. About a year ago I found a gay H-voice roleplay between a 12th century daimyo and his shogun but I didnt write down the RJ# and have been searching for it ever since.
Its certainly interesting and also where I get 90% of my listening practice. I’m not gonna go into specifics because I don’t want to get in trouble, but there are also quite a few ways to get some of the stuff on there for free. PM me if you really care.
I really like toco toco tv. They feature one ‘creator’ per video. Could be a musician or a graphic designer or a videogame director. The later videos all have optional English subtitles and they’re only ten minutes long - so good for repeating.
There are also a couple of ‘top 10’ channels I watch. 電撃ランキング seems to be easier to follow, but I sometimes try トップランキング too.
I’ve been watching some of みとくのゲームチャンネル’s Zelda playthrough, but I might check out the Usshii one as well now. She also doesn’t seem to be terribly great at the game, which is good for us because we can hear her thinking out loud when the answer is already obvious.
For pure listening - I’ve seen both of these mentioned numerous times on here, but they’re not in this thread yet - ひいきびいき (guy and a girl talk at length about very everyday topics eg dates, visiting Kyoto, SNES mini, upcoming superhero movies, cheese etc) and 世界に一つだけの本 (short narratives about a woman who works in a travel agent) are both good for intermediate level.
I came across this site that quizzes you on clips from Japanese series and films. It’s started off really basic with things like ね, です and よ etc so I don’t know how advanced it gets.
The quality of the image, audio and the site itself is really good. You can also save vocab to an SRS system.
I know it wasn’t exactly what you’re looking for but I reckon it’s worth knowing about…
(kind of have a youtube flip atm, since I can finally understand some of what they’re actually saying. はじめしゃちょー talks waaaay too fast though, and the 100xburgers, 1000xbananas fad is tiring)
I randomly stumbled upon this guy while browsing (it’s genius, even if you don’t like fish):
Thank you so much for asking this! I’m really enjoying looking through everyone’s answers so far!
I have one to add, that I listen to all the time. Kasumi Kobayashi has been reading and posting japanese classical literature to her blog for years. For a while, her blog vanished and sooo many of her older readings vanished. If you dig, people link to downloads of her collection on Reddit every now and then. But her newer readings appear on her new blog. I was sooo happy when I found out she was back. Her voice is blissfully calm, and she speaks so slowly and clearly. She also types out the segment that she’s reading so that you can follow along. I’ve listened to some of these many, many times. Enjoy!
Usshii’s playthrough of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 
I’ve also watched 日本語の森, they’re really thorough and speak clearly. I recommend them as well.
I’m not sure what to type either.
spooky listening practice 
I didn’t even know people could just change their channel name on YouTube.