🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Fall 2022 🍁

Japanese Language Listening
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October 6 :film_strip:
An episode of Mononoke and a short 水木しげる 妖怪えほん clip.

October 7 :film_strip:
Another episode of Mononoke and the first episode of the Junji Ito collection that I found on youtube.

Thoughts on Mononoke: I love the art, I like the story - as far as I understand it- but I don’t love the audio. Much of it is silence, or screams and other incoherent voices, some is very slowly enunciated for effect, and then there are bursts of normal speed speaking in between all that. I’m not sure it’s the best choice for listening practice. I will stick with it some more though, because I do find it interesting, and I love the visuals.

Thoughts on Junji Ito: I haven’t read anything by him, but I’ve looked at some of his works and they seem to be creepy in a very unique way. The art style of the animation was very different though, and subtracted from that. It was still creepy, but didn’t feel as unique. I may try another episode, or I may not, not sure. The embedded English subtitles didn’t help much with listening either.

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Main post

On October the 7th I’ve listened to

  • Today’s NHK Easy News.
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:fallen_leaf: Day 7, 7th of October :maple_leaf:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Today I watched episode one of Mononoke (thank you KJules for the link!) and while I have no idea what’s going on I’m blown away by some of these shots. Amazing, amazing, amazing. It’s like a poem being acted out visually.

For a more comprehensible experience I’m going to listen to the audio recordings of some more free Tadoku books.

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October 7th

I had a class with my tutor at lunchtime today so that was lots of listening practise! We talked about winter approaching, and the increase in energy prices in the UK, and also spoke about a wedding party I went to last weekend.

This evening I listened to an episode of Nihongo Con Teppei too. It was about space :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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I found an old episode of トリビアの泉 on youtube, so I watched that – brought back memories of watching it on a tiny CRT TV back in the mid-2000s in Japan when it was originally broadcast. I’ve always thought it’s a good series for language learning: it’s funny, it has a lot of repetition built into the structure of the episode, there are subtitles of the important bits to assist with the listening, and if you don’t understand something it doesn’t matter because it moves onto the next segment pretty quickly anyway…

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:house_with_garden: Home post

10月07日

  • Several YouTube videos about 原神 (about 20-30 min ish in total).

I’m not sure if I forgot to post anything I listened to these last days but anyways. I was kinda hopeful I could track the work I do just to have something to track in this challenge, since I don’t follow days anymore, but I don’t think I’ll track anything at this point. It’s pretty hard to quantify or define what I watch or listen to, in this case for example, with YouTube videos, and at the end of the day it doesn’t really add much of use to my study or motivation. I’ll just continue posting normally and most likely say goodbye to the home post :saluting_face: . I’ll think about what I want to do with it going forward ;-; .

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I’m still traveling so keeping things simple. Watched YouTube today and tempted myself with yet more books…

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Tuned into Hokkaido News 24 and JapaNews24 for a collective 30 minutes. Pretty sleepy at the moment, most of its going right past me. Except a segment about original designs coming back at Uniqlo, got most of that.

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

October 7th:

Decided to give the first episode of エッセイラジオ a try. The calming narration and music reminds me of Sound Library. I really did try to focus, but two things got in my way: the lack of headphones (didn’t want to get up and get them) and my partner’s mutter (over some mobile game or other). Note to self: keep a pair of headphones by the bed if you’re gonna do listening practice at night. I’ll have to give the episode another listen.

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October 8 :headphones:

2416 → 2336
SuperNative today. I wasn’t in the mood for concentrating for long, so I thought I’d do something short and sweet. How wrong I was. My score went way down, and I kept listening to more clips in order to get it back up, with the result of it plunging further. In the end I gave up before it could reach 0. :expressionless:

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Oct 8, Sat of Week 2 of Fall :maple_leaf: 2022

Today, I went in a car with my family to renew the passport, so I got a chance to visit (2) Kinokuniya bookstores. On the route, I watched YouTube, because I can’t read anyway. Onomappu is as interesting as ever, in particular –

I watched 2 of Onomappu’s.

I also watched 日本の森, and I found an interesting one explaining songs.

Well, I liked this artist a while ago (several months ago), but I can’t remember the song’s name (although I perfectly remember the tune).

I also listened to other songs being explained. I found a song in particular being shadow-banned by YouTube.

To be honest, several years ago, when I was actively doing WaniKani, I can’t tolerate 日本の森, even with subtitle; but I rarely need to look up anything in the subtitle nowadays. (Well, I noticed several months ago.) Listening alone is probably alright too, although I am not sure I should do that yet.

I arrived at the shopping center a little carsick. There was quite a traffic jam just on entering the building before parking.

Then, when I have some time alone (during book-shopping), I listened to a whole playlist of Yonezu. (Well, I like the rhythm, and I listened to around 22/33 minutes.)

While I don’t feel the music particularly effective for learning, it can be listened with very little stress, and reflecting whether I really understand the lyrics or not. (I don’t really, although if I sing, I might understand a little more.)

I bought a piano music score book (of Japanese songs), and another book featuring several smart peoples (celebs?).

Before the trip, I also watched 1.5 episodes of HUNTER x HUNTER.

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Yeah I didn’t think until @omk3 mentioned it that the show might not be great for listening practice specifically. I just think it’s quite visually captivating. But I certainly wouldn’t model my own Japanese after that style.

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Main post

On October the 8th I’ve listened to

  • Nihongo Con Teppei for beginners podcasts 587 – 598
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October 8th!

Today I listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei, and watched an 800 Core Words video from JapanesePod101.

(Home Post)

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:fallen_leaf: Day 8, 8th of October :maple_leaf:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

It’s the weekend, so it’s time for textbook work! Did some Genki listening comprehension exercises. Gosh, even the beginner stuff is a bit too fast for me. I have to listen to it several times, but I suppose that’ll just make it stick better.

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I finished listening to the audio book for 変な家. It was OK. Liked it better than 殺人ライセンス, but it definitely didn’t wow me. When I added it on BookMeter I saw that it has a movie version coming out, so I looked up the trailer. It’s uh… Not exactly impressive:

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Went a little overboard today. Started to get carried away with listening choices.

Started my day with Nihongo con Teppei episodes 9 and 12. I like the way they ramble.

Discovered that I’ve read enough Way of the House Husband to start watching that anime without worrying about spoilage. Watched episode one, raw, then again later with my roomie with english subs on for them. Mostly I wanted to see if they would find it funny. Got a few laughs here and there. Luckily it ended with a cute cat.

Gave Pimsleurs Japanese Level 2 lessons 3 and 4 a listen as well. Thought I might be able to prepare ghost peppers for the dehydrator while listening. Too distracting. Way too distracting. Will listen to them again.

Randomly started the first episode of Made in Abyss. Watched all of it. No subs, just checking it out, seems fun but I missed a lot of the premise so far I’m sure.

Oh, the Lemon song video that polv shared too. Good stuff.

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

October 8th:

Watched some more Ranking of Kings. I did better avoiding the English subs, but there were some moments when the conversation included words I didn’t understand. Thus, I let myself sneak a peek so I still would know what’s going on. And let me tell you, this show has been throwing some curveballs since episode 3 or so, but I’m here for it. :grin:

Side note: the main character, ボッジ, is absolutely ADORABLE. He’s just this pure little guy in a world full of, frankly, a-holes. Look at this child and tell me that you wouldn’t protect him at all costs. Can’t do it! He’s that precious. :blush:

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October 9 :headphones:

Supernative 2336 → 2346

Still in bad concentration mode. I thought the scores would be a fun feedback, but I’m now thinking I’d better not look at them at all. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but most of the time I get 1 or 2 points for a correct answer (I’ve even gotten 0 once), then get subtracted 15 points or so for an incorrect one. This is doubly frustrating when I heard correctly but made a typo in my overconfidence. But in the end of the day, what does any of it matter? It’s still listening practice, and it’s not like I’m out to prove something. I know I still have a lot of work to do in terms of listening. I know that even when I know what the missing word is, I still usually don’t immediately understand what the whole phrase was saying. I may even know and hear correctly all the words, but I still can’t process them properly in real time to make sense of them.

In between challenges, I found an audio file online for a short story I wanted to read, but no text. I listened to the audio multiple times, and while I understood a lot, I couldn’t piece it into a coherent narrative. So I had the idea to try and transcribe it. It was a slow and painful process, and I only did the first few paragraphs, but I found it surprising that I could mostly transcribe correctly (I got the printed story in the meantime to check) and then, looking at the written text, I could make sense of it. So it’s not my listening as such that’s the problem. It’s the real-time processing of what I hear. I’m sure it’ll get fixed in time. It must, because I can think of no other way to work on it other than to keep listening.

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Every day I have been listening to a lesson or two on Japanesepod 101. They are audio blogs about life in Japan which I find really interesting. I also am trying out a Spotify Podcast that I found today called YUYUの日本語. I enjoyed the first episode about messaging apps used in Japan and found it easy to follow along so I’ll see how the next ones go. :notes:

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