🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Fall 2022 🍁

October 15th!

I’ve been at a wedding all day so I’m super tired, but I still managed to squeeze in an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for beginners. It was about chocolate, and had a bit about various flavours of Kitkat.

(Home post)

12 Likes

I started a new show, not done with episode one because of course it’s an hour long episode and I got home late. It’s called Silent and seems to be a romance drama where I’m highly hopeful someone will get cheated on in a deeply dramatic and emotional way. I have my popcorn and tissues ready as needed.

12 Likes

Missed posting for a couple of days but kept on listening.
Let’s see, I remember I listened to a bunch of random bits and some Nihongo con Teppei on Wednesday. Pimsleurs Japanese Level 2 lessons 5 and 6 on Thursday. Then lessons 6 and 7 yesterday.
Listened to some random stuff during the day today but in the evening I went to see Melt-Banana in concert! That counts as listening to Japanese right?

Listening practice will be more difficult tomorrow I’m certain. My ears are shredded.

11 Likes

:fallen_leaf: :headphones: softlyraining’s leaf pile listens :maple_leaf: :studio_microphone:

October 15th:

Today turned out busier than I thought, so still waiting on watching those cult videos. :slightly_frowning_face: Instead, I listened to an SBS Japanese report about Australia’s COVID isolation rules.

11 Likes

Oct 16, Sun of Week 3 of Fall 2022 :maple_leaf:

Today, I listened to 1.5 episodes of Nihongo SWiTCH.

It also means that I didn’t listen to the latter half of 神無月 on Friday. Though, today I listened to half of 気分 on public transport, before listening the latter half inside the building.

I didn’t listen to Nihongo SWiTCH on Saturday. Instead, I watched 1.5 episodes of Death Note with JP sub (just not to be ahead of my reading and reading club, and I watched the other half episode a while ago); skimmed an older episode of Death Note; and watched an episode of HUNTER x HUNTER (with generated sub) on that day.

I am considering Nihongo SWiTCH for completion challenge (100+ episodes to go), and I am OK with taking time (at least for now).

On Saturday (yesterday), I focused on reading (without any drawn images), and sometimes read aloud quietly…

10 Likes

I’m not officially signing up for this challenge until the off month probably, but I had my biggest listening comprehension victory yet (with Spanish) and I wanted to share haha.

Today I watched my first Mexican wrestling show in a while (AAA’s Triplemania), which had Spanish commentary, and I was blown away by the fact that I could… actually understand it for the most part? I had probably 80% comprehension, even without subtitles.

I’m not sure what exactly changed since the last time I watched lucha libre, since I haven’t really been watching/reading much wrestling stuff in Spanish lately (though believe it or not, I’ve been learning Spanish move names from translating Japanese wrestling haha). I guess it was a probably a combination of reading (which improved my vocab) and then listening to the Duolingo podcast and then the TV show and films I watched for the summer challenge, which boosted my comprehension speed as well as gave me practice with recognizing words when I hear them.

It made the show a lot more fun because I was able to get more context on the wrestlers I wasn’t as familiar with (the commentary would point out notable moves and explain some of the characters’ history), and I also caught what felt like a fun easter egg lol when the commentary mentioned that Kenny Omega (my favorite wrestler, or, well, one of my top two faves haha) wanted to be in the match for the Megacampeonato belt, but his AEW suspension prevented it. That is more than has been officially said on AEW television regarding his current status (though we know a bit about what’s going on from what has been reported on in the dirtsheets). Being multilingual with pro wrestling gets you all kinds of fun bonus information haha.

It was just really cool! Felt like all of my studies were really starting to pay off. It’s super neat to watch native content without subtitles and actually understand it.

14 Likes

I’ve finally settled on a podcast I’m enjoying: ゆる言語学ラジオ, which is a podcast about language. It’s a bit tricky listening for me but I like and have some background familiarity with the topics, which helps a lot. Also available on youtube, where it has some captioning that makes it a bit easier than the audio-only podcast.

13 Likes

Main post

On October the 16th I’ve listened to:

  • Nihongo Con Teppei for beginners episodes 634-642.
12 Likes

I tried watching a recorded live stream where 4 booktubers talked about scary books they liked. I lasted about 13 minutes before I got bored. I’m trying to find unscripted Japanese sources with multiple people talking, but 9/10 I get bored watching. This isn’t really shocking as I’m the exact same way in English. :sweat_smile:

Anyways, they included a list of the books they talked about and I know that’s something @omk3 is ever on the lookout for, so here’s that:

  1. 霧が晴れた時 自選恐怖小説集 (角川ホラー文庫)
  2. 吸血鬼ハンターたちの読書会
  3. 残穢(ざんえ) (新潮文庫)
  4. 宮辻薬東宮 (講談社文庫)
  5. 玩具修理者 (角川ホラー文庫)
  6. 仄暗い水の底から (角川ホラー文庫)
  7. ハッピーエンドにさよならを (角川文庫)
  8. 黒い家 (角川ホラー文庫)
  9. 黒冷水 (河出文庫)
  10. 漂流教室〔文庫版〕(1) (小学館文庫)
  11. 裏家電
  12. 儚い羊たちの祝宴(新潮文庫)
  13. 事件現場清掃人が行く (幻冬舎アウトロー文庫)
14 Likes

October 16 :arrow_forward:

Just a quick あたしンち video today, as I spent most of my free time reading.
I also tried to do some Migaku, but hearing the pitch accent in whole phrases is proving impossible. I probably need to go back and practice simple words some more…

Aw, thank you so much for thinking of me! I’ll be sure to check them out! :blush:

Edit: @pocketcat I don’t know if you looked at the books you listed, but I thought the last one just possibly might interest you. It’s a non-fiction book by someone whose job it is to clean up crime scenes. I’m afraid it may be way too gruesome, but still likely interesting.

13 Likes

13, right? I looked at it, but for better or worse I’ve read a book on the exact same topic in English and found it super boring. That person maybe was a bad writer though :thinking: I do intend to read more nonfic in Japanese though, so can’t hurt to actually stick in my 読みたい pile

edit: send help, I’m falling down a rabbit hole of the related books which totally look up my alley

9 Likes

October 16th!

I was travelling back from the wedding today, so we listened to Japanese music for the 2.5h car journey.
I also listened to an 800 Core Words video from JapanesePod101.

(Home Post)

13 Likes

:fallen_leaf: :headphones: softlyraining’s leaf pile listens :maple_leaf: :studio_microphone:

October 16th:

Finally started watching the first cult video! :raised_hands: It’s late, so I only watched the first 10 minutes or so. I didn’t realize there was a new religion boom in Japan during the 90s; I know about Aum Shinrikyo, but I didn’t know there was interest among people beyond that one. It’s also interesting that the mangaka’s mother became interested in being a JW; so few people are Christian in Japan in general, and becoming a JW just seems like a really hard sell to me. I imagine you couldn’t go to anymore festivals, since a “no celebration” policy is part of their practice. Definitely keen on watching more, and I honestly might also pick up that manga, too.

12 Likes

Woot Woot!!! Congrats!!!
How long did it take you to get here?

6 Likes

A long, long time :sweat_smile:.

I started learning Spanish in eighth grade, which was well over a decade ago. I stuck with it through my first two years of high school, then basically didn’t do anything with the language for years and lost most of what I’d learned. I picked up Duolingo sometime around 2015, I want to say? Kind of casually did it on the side for a few years, but didn’t really get very far.

Then in 2019, I discovered pro wrestling and fell head over heels for it as an artistic medium :sweat_smile:. Japanese wrestling was my favorite style, but I sampled pretty much everything, and I did enjoy lucha libre. I recommitted to learning Spanish partially because of that, and also partially because I had a few friends who were learning Japanese and I wanted to be able to do stuff with my Spanish, too. I used Duolingo and more or less recovered most of my high school Spanish.

Then the pandemic happened, and wrestling worldwide ground to a halt (or persisted in sort of a half-existence…). I translated a few (Spanish-language) interviews and articles about LGBTQ luchadores, then finally took the plunge and started learning Japanese at the end of 2020.

In early 2021, I started reading books in Spanish as sort of practice for doing it in Japanese. Ended up more or less keeping it up. Added the Duolingo podcast at some point, then tried watching Spanish-language television shows (with Spanish subtitles) this year for the first time, thanks to the first iteration of this challenge.

I also did start having actual opportunities to speak in Spanish in 2020 thanks to some charity work I was doing. Then I got a job where I also had to have conversations in Spanish sometimes. I’m still not great at that and haven’t practiced it that much, but I am working on it :sweat_smile:.

So, yeah, it has been a lot of years and a lot of starting and stopping! I would say I didn’t make real progress until I started actually reading books in Spanish last year. All of my real gains in comprehension have come mostly from the past couple years.

I do still struggle with a lot of native audio-only content, like the last native media podcast I tried was way out of reach, and the last show I watched (La Casa de las Flores), I was heavily reliant on the Spanish subtitles. But for whatever reason, I guess wrestling shows are maybe doable now :sweat_smile:? I suppose the non-scripted nature of the speech maybe makes it use simpler language than a TV show or book, plus the visuals of the match are there to help with comprehension.

11 Likes

October 17 :film_strip:

Today I watched all five videos from the みちしる playlist by NHK on youtube. They’re interesting little videos on Japanese traditions and landmarks: The Nebuta festival, the Ise Grand Shrine, a village with 30,000 cherry trees, Mount Fuji, and the tradition Namahage, where villagers dress up as demons to frighten children on New Year’s Eve. Cool stuff. Apparently there’s way more such videos on the NHK website. I’ll investigate another day.

Meanwhile, Migaku pitch trainer feels like I’m banging my head against a wall now that I’m trying to make out the pitch in whole phrases. Will it be the wall or my head that cracks first? The latter, most probably. :sob:

14 Likes

@lucylavelle Could you elaborate please, sounds interesting.

4 Likes

Managed to listen to my TRY N5 listening comprehension on both days.
Everything was re-listening which has it’s pro’s and con’s.

10 Likes

Sure :slight_smile:
It’s this series: The 800 Core Words and Phrases - JapanesePod101

You need an account to view the videos, and I think a free account only lets you watch the first 3. But I’ve found it a really nice series for vocab building, and a bit of listening practise when I can’t watch something that needs my full attention.

10 Likes

Oct 17, Mon of Week 4 of Fall 2022 :maple_leaf:

Today, I listened to 2 episodes of Nihongo SWiTCH.

I might consider re-listening, in particular, the first one. After all, a purpose of attending a lecture is to be able to do well in exam, that is, do I remember most essential stuff?

The time I listened was when today I went to a small fitness center by my own. No trainer, that means I controlled my time. So, I trained long enough to finish two episodes. (There are some time segments I didn’t put headphone on as well.) In any case, I want to eventually exercise regularly, without hiring a trainer, nor needing a fully-equipped facility.

I also watched HUNTER x HUNTER (generated sub) now to Ep.71, when a post watching-club arc has ended (up to Ep.70), yet I have seen only 心臓麻痺. Though, I think I saw 心臓の死 in my childhood memories.

Yeah, in my mind, I am somewhat rushed to finish the series (Ep.92), and continue reading the manga. Probably as far as I somewhat knew the storyline (but like, on a level of passing by).

11 Likes