Happy first day of the challenge everyone!!
| Title | Length |
|---|---|
| Walk Through Historic Kanazawa | 20 mins |
| Sailor Moon | 6 mins |
I don’t think I’ll continue with Sailor Moon daily because it’s really hard for me to understand and I want to focus on actual comprehension rather than just hearing as much as possible. So I’ll continue with YouTube videos, probably one a day to start with! I might try watching along with the anime club for the next anime and see how that goes.
Thank you! no worries I can look it up on youtube! this is perfect when I drive to dance class
10月2日(水)
聞けば聞くほど日本語が聞き取れるようになる‼︎ ってことを聞いたんだけど、それって本当？
4989 American Life Podcast 18
She’s feeling tired having just finished the semester. Anyway, she wants to talk about a close friend Maruta (Martha?)who was the first friend she made when she came to America around 4 years ago when they were both attending an Adult Education English class. There wasn’t a class in her town so she had to go to a neighboring one which - like her town - was mainly Hispanic and Hispanic students made up more than 90% of the class and as the only Asian student Utaco naturally felt nervous but she was welcomed by Maruta (who’s is Mexican) and soon afterwards was visiting her at her house and they’ve been friends ever since. Neither of them could speak much English but they managed to share information about themselves and their respective cultures. They are close in age but their lives are very different (Maruta got married young and has 4 children, one of whom is already a high school student. She’s a strict Catholic who doesn’t drink). Despite their differences they somehow hit it off. Utaco had her first lunch out in America with someone other than her husband with Maruta.
A year into their friendship, Utaco decides she needs to go to a ESL college to improve her English. When she tells Maruta, it turns out she’s thinking of doing the same thing and having both been accepted (different classes however) they decide to car share (saving money & for Utaco relieving some of her fears about driving the 35-40 minutes by herself on the freeway - Utaco had been worried what would she do is something happened since her English was still poor but although Maruta’s English wasn’t any better, Maruta however at least could speak Spanish which was widely spoken and understood in that region. Also, Maruta had lots of friends and relatives to help out if something happened whereas Utaco only had her husband. They spend a good hour together five days a week over a year talking in the car on the way to college & as a result their English improved amazingly. When she compares how fast they speak in English with each other now compared to that first day going to college together, Utaco is thrilled.
Part 2: semester’s finished and she’s pleased to say she got an A. However although usually gets good marks for her essays, writing them takes her a lot of time. Her ESL teacher suggested she take an online class in writing short stories and asks her what her background in writing is. Utaco did well in literature at school back in Japan and 10 years ago used to write a blog and she’s always been a big reader. When she asked her teacher how she could improve, the teacher recommended reading books in English. Her next class will be an English with native speakers and she’s terrified
10月一日(火)
First day of the challenge started quite well. Listened to the following:
Total Listening - 47 mins
I thought I’d give My Hero Academia a go, since I’ve watched the whole series, but even knowing the plotline, I think the vocab is probably too far beyond my level right now, even with the japanese subtitles. Also, because of how intense some of the characters talk, I’m having trouble making out what they’re saying at all. May have to switch this out for something a bit more beginner friendly for now!
→ Homepost ←
Oof, I talked about Day 1 on my study log so I’ll just start with Day 2 here!
Day 2:
| Date | Name | Type | Progress | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-02 |  葬送のフリーレン１ |
 Anime |
 1 Episode 14 |
 0h25m |
Today was another episode of Frieren, so another box ticked there
October 2nd 
Home post
 |
Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
 |
Family Members in Japanese | 2 mins |
 |
日本語でゲーム Shashingo EP02 | 33 mins |
Day 2: N5 review class. about 15 minutes comprehensible Japanese. TokiniAndy Genki chapter 4 textbook & listening and shadowing sections
 |
10月02日 | Material | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
YUYUの日本語 | podcast | 35min |
 |
コーヒーが冷めないうちに | audiobook | 30min |
By my estimation, 40% of コーヒーが冷めない is describing people’s outfits when they walk into the coffee shop, 40% is repeating the rules of the time travel, and 20% is actual plot.
十月二日(水)
Total Listening - 50 mins
Swapped My Hero out for Blue Period, think I’ll get along with this one a bit better. School setting, clearer speech, and arty vocab that is relevant to my hobbies so hopefully can lead into maybe some native YT videos on the topic.
10月3日(木)
Daily dose of 日本語の森 grammar video:
4989 American Podcast Episode 19
ヤードセールLOVE
Intro: it might be the rainy season in Japan but where she lives, the weather’s been good and she’s feeling happy. Where she lives in (central coast California), it’s not particularly hot. But while she’s not a fan of rain or humidity, she does miss hydrangeas. When she lived in Japan she visited Kamukura in the rainy season to see them and also Buddhist statues (which she also loves).
Part 1: The other day she went to the Spreckels Yard sale (Spreckels is a nearby small town) where a town-wide yard sale is held annually (she explains that a yard sale is similar to Japanese フリーマ except that rather than being held in a park, people hold them in their own yard or garage. Anyway she and her husband have been to the Spreckels one several times as they love yard sales. Sometimes, she buys knickknacks but she can’t resist buying vintage American cookware like Pyrex or Fire King when the prices are so cheap - she bought a Fire King mug at a previous Spreckels yard sale for ten cents. She and her husband also enjoy haggling. At this year’s sale they bought 4 things 1) scrabble 2) beer bottle 3) yakiniku teppan ( had one already but for $2 bought this one) 4) craft wooden beads which she got for $1 instead of the advertised $2. She gets into a conversation with the seller and then others join in so she recommends yard sales a good place to get conversation practice. She particularly recommends yard sales in rich neighbourhoods.
Part 2: Here she talks about how American apartments often don’t have washing machines which means that you have to go to coin laundries - either within the building or elsewhere. In the apartment she currently lives in, there is a communal laundry which is cheap but in a previous apartment she had to use the town laundry which was expensive. And then there’s also the problem of having the right change - some laundries have coin machines 両替機 but only some allow you to use a card, otherwise you need to use cash.
Part 3: this is her fifth year in America and she’s realised her English has definitely improved. Before she would create English learning goals but now most of those goals have been reached - she’s mainly watching dramas in English, YouTube videos in English, talking in English every day at school. She’s not saying that she’s fluent or that she understands everything she watches but things have improved. Her goal to become a fluent speaker is stymied though by still speaking Japanese all the time at home
Chinese phrase quick equivalent [11-21/100]
Chinese-accent Japanese
るろうに剣心 S3E1
言語交換 #300 3-year anniversary and 10 most watched
Taiwan Food [1-50/100]
Chinese phrase quick equivalent [22-30/100]
本好きの下剋上 Vol.5 (8:06-8:34/12:18)
| Date | Name | Type | Progress | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-10-03 | 葬送のフリーレン１ |
Anime |
1 Episode 15 |
0h25m |
Episode 15 of Frieren today. I changed it up and read the manga before watching this time but they’re still in sync.
It looks like they’re doing 2 chapters per episode, and there’s 8 chapters per volume, so that’s 4 episodes per volume. So if this pace keeps up, it looks like the remaining 2.5 physical volumes I have will line up exactly with the season
I finished the last 4 episodes of Dungeon Meshi. Ngl, I was really surprised because I thought it was the end of the series, I didn’t know there would be a second season lmao
|
10月03日 | Material | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
|
YUYUの日本語 | podcast | 35mins |
Today’s yuyu episode was pretty interesting, he talked about living in Mexico and people assuming he’s Chinese and saying rude things, and how he responds to them now vs in the past.
October 3rd 
Home post
| Title | Length |
|---|---|
| 7 phrases from a Japanese conversation | 7 mins |
I put my listening off for so long today so now it’s late and I only listened to a short video but I will try to do more tomorrow! Working in the morning threw off my whole routine 
十月三日(木）
Total Listening - 55 mins
Really enjoying the videos from nihongoLeo and The Bitesize Japanese Podcast. They feel just above my level, but not so far that I’m really struggling. I would say I’m understanding somewhere between 60-75% of the content, depending on the topic. I definitely want to use their videos as a goal for the end of this challenge, to push that understanding up to around 90%.
10月4日(金)
4989 American Life Podcast #20
やっぱり必要スパニッシュ
Intro: she’s about to go on her summer holidays - the fine details haven’t been worked out yet but they’re heading to the north of the state, Oregon way to enjoy some hiking, camping & craft beers. She’s also thinking of visiting a friend in Portland.
Part 1: she’s reflecting once again that it would be good to be able to speak Spanish. In the Californian town she lives in over 70% of the residents are Hispanic & in the small town she lived in when she first arrived Hispanic people made up 90% of the community. While young Hispanic people who’ve attended school are bilingual, their parents and grandparents often speak no English at all and this is not generally a problem as most business dealings there can be transacted in Spanish. While she can exchanges greetings in Spanish with her neighbours, that’s about as far as the conversation goes. At the meat counter at the Mexican supermarket where she goes to buy her meat, she sometimes encounters shop assistants who cannot speak English who respond to her requests with gestures indicating they need to get someone else to deal with her. At such times, she thinks it would be great to be able to say “ No problem. I speak Spanish”. She also gives the example of being asked to volunteer at a school event by a friend but the event turned out to be comprised of bilingual or Spanish-only speakers. Even the instructions to the volunteers were issued in Spanish. Although she didn’t feel she’d been useless as a volunteer, she reflected that she would have been better able to assist and enjoy herself more if she’d been able to speak Spanish. She adds that she recently went to a tiny local Mexican eatery where the serving staff understood English but the older female cook didn’t. When the others weren’t around she asked the cook where the toilet was but the cook couldn’t understand what she was asking. And to top it off, if Utaco wants to work, Spanish is a requirement for most jobs.
Part 2: Sneakers. In Japan she didn’t wear them much, but since coming to America she wears them a lot. Lots of people where she lives (including women and girls), wear sneakers all the time and own many pairs of them. In comparison, Utaco knows women in Japan who don’t even own one pair. She started wearing sneakers in America when there was a period she couldn’t get her drivers license because of visa issues and so had to walk a lot.
Part 3: parties in America never start at the stated time! If the invite says 1pm and you go there then, no-one will have arrived and the hosts will still be finishing off their preparations. Even when they try to be late, she and her husband are often the first guests to arrive. Local parties seem to be mostly relaxed affairs with friends and relatives but Utaco worries when she goes to parties with her husband where she doesn’t know anyone and where most people are speaking Spanish if it’s rude to be speaking Japanese with him in front of others. She also finds it difficult to know when to leave but concludes that the general rule seems to be “arrive when you like, leave when you like”, something she’s still struggling to adjust to
Prev
Home
