Lately I’ve been feeling a bit stuck in my Japanese progress and I think maybe doing some listening instead of just always reading could help with that. I guess we’ll see if I manage to stick to this challenge. And I’m really interested in seeing what resources everyone is using.
I thought it to be nice to join this one, added to my log, it will hold me very accountable, and to see everyone progressing together will be a delight I'm sure.
I'm mainly gonna use Crunchyroll without subtitles, and the podcasts 'Nihongo con Teppei' for this challenge. Maybe my youtube playlist some days! Let's have a great Autumn, shall we?
I've been going on for months about wanting to improve my listening, but never really getting stuck into a routine of daily listening, so I'm hoping this challenge will be a good way to build that habit.
I’m intending to use Netflix to watch anime with Japanese subtitles, and then Japanese with Shun each day, listening once without transcript, then again to see how I’ve gotten on. Outside of those, I intend to find some Japanese Youtubers to listen to as well.
Overall I’m aiming for about 45 mins of listening per day.
Continuing on with my Summer Challenge projects so watched another 日本語の森 grammar video:
Also listened to another episode (#17) of 4989 American Life
Summary
Intro & Part 1:
It’s summer holiday time & she’s looking forward to some unplanned time (in contrast to previous summer holidays). She catches up with a young man she first met back in Japan at her tap dancing classes - he was in junior high at the time but now has just graduated from university in America and is about to return to Japan. Out of the blue (it’s five years since they last met), he contacts her & asks if they can catch up before he returns home to Japan. He comes to where she lives and their meet up is a happy one despite their significant difference in age
Part 2: here she talks about one of her favourite places - Big Sur which isn’t all that far from where she lives (Monterey area). She goes there for a drive with the young man who’s visiting. Enjoying the fabulous scenery, she thinks to herself that she really needs to go there more since it isn’t all that far away from where she lives. Being from Shizuoka, she is reminded that many Shizuokans have never climbed Mt Fuji even though it’s in their backyard
Part 3: here she talks about how she’s only fairly recently realised that she’s been pronouncing the “n” at the end of English words like an “m”, closing her lips as opposed to keeping them open. She wonders if this is because in Japanese the ん sound often ends with closed lips. She is surprised when a native English speaking friend can so easily distinguish between the “n” and “m” sounds at the end of English words.
Definitely joining in on this. I haven’t successfully followed along with any challenges so far, but I’m studying for the N5 and really need to improve my listening, plus I am currently funemployed so I’ve got the time.`
not sure how to add myself to this list but I will be joining! Are there any podcast recommendations in Japanese? I also like true crime if anyone has good youtubers or podcasts in that genre!
I went ahead and added you to the list. What level would you say your listening skill is at? The most commonly recommended podcast is Nihongo con Teppei, and some folks have been enjoying 4989 American Life podcast recently. There’s a list of resources here too.
First day of listening, I’ve begun Sound! Euphonium on Crunchyroll, with subtitles since it has complex musical lexical terms, but I manage to grasp basic conversations before my eyes reach for the subs. And I plan on listening to some Nihongo con Teppei later in the day for more ‘proper’ immersion!
I’m actually not a big podcast listener (more a youtube person), but I have listened to one true crime one that I enjoyed. ヒロシエリの未解決事件簿 was the name. I’m still able to see it on Google podcasts but it’s giving me action not available trying to share it
Edit, oh whoops now I see it’s also YouTube! I’ll reply to this once I’m at a computer then, I have a few
Going to make some lowkey goals for this one. Last time my goals were 20hrs/month for a total of 40 hours, so I’ll set it at 10hrs/month for 20 hours total. Of course I might end up going really hard anyways so we’ll see. I will focus on podcasts and audiobooks.
This challenge season, listening was not a huge focus for me. I decided to just listen to however much I felt like, without pushing myself to a huge hours goal.
Total time: 24 hours 05min from podcasts and audiobooks.
I didn’t count youtube, which maybe adds 2-3 hours of casual listening.
The biggest win of this challenge was discovering that I can use audiobooks for listening now! I forged my way through all of コーヒーが冷めない, which was difficult (lots of missed details, lots of pausing for lookups) but still rewarding (noticed big improvements in parsing whole spoken sentences). I also can use children’s audiobooks at the L20-24 level for much more comfortable listening (some sentences are 100% comprehension, a good amount are N+1 comprehension with only one or two unknown words, pausing for lookups is less frequent).
So day 1 done, and I… watched an episode of 葬送のフリーレン. Episode 13 to be precise. Coincidentally I’ve ended up in pretty much the same space on the manga front where I’m starting volume 4, so it’s… sort of double dipping, but I’m sure the anime will take the lead until I get to the end of season 1.
(I’ll get my usual table formatting set up when it’s not 1am)
Day 1: I’m using Tokini Andy alongside my Genki 1 review class, finishing up review of Genki chapter 4 today. I did most of the rest of his chapter 4 immersion material, making sure to always listen to the audio without reading first, before going back and listening to it at least once while reading. I also watched about 30 minutes on the Comprehensible Japanese beginners playlist.
Oh and I had my Genki 1 review class, so that’s listening practice too though if I were keeping an hour total I wouldn’t consider it 2 full hours of listening.
Going to watch Onibaba before bed but I’m watching that with english subs so it barely counts.
I don’t have the motivation to update everyday this time, but I’ll try to post at least once a week about what I’ve been watching. Today I watched a youtube video and episode 1 of Windbreaker.
Me last week: I won’t go really hard with the listening challenge
Me today: [subscribing to audiobook.jp]
So far the コーヒー book is pretty doable, a bit above my level I’d say but I was still enjoying myself and felt like I was following along with the story well enough that it wasn’t just noise. This will be a good one to return to later to see comprehension improvements. It’s also fun that the audiobook is fully voiced and has sound effects and everything.
Sylph’s home thread 
Ahrina’s Autumn 
soggy’s home post 
soggy’s challenge review 
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葬送のフリーレン１
Anime
13
0h25m
