@pm215’s post about the ekiben wrappers made me curious, so I used that as today’s listening practice. My original plan was to try Supernative like a number of people here, but I kept getting an error message every time I tried to sign up on the site, so…
The designs for the wrappers are quite lovely! I think I’ve only ever bought one ekiben, but I don’t recall it coming with something fancy like the papers in the video. I can be pretty frugal, though, so it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d simply bought as cheap a bento as possible. In terms of comprehension, I had some issues in the beginning, but I was doing okay. Then my partner came in and started getting ready for bed, and my concentration went right out the window. When I listen to things in the morning or for my schoolwork, I find I’m more zoned in and able to understand. Still, being that focused is draining, and I’d love it if my passive understanding was similar to how it is in English (though I certainly find myself missing things when I passively listen to English-language content, too). Guess that’s why I’m participating in this challenge.
That probably would be less expensive, though I can’t say my home cooking would compare. Thinking about it, of course I could’ve just made it for myself. I never really considered it, probably because dinner is my “big effort” meal and my partner doesn’t have the same love for mapo tofu that I do. Still, I can treat myself every once in a while, right? New small goal: make mapo tofu at least once during this listening challenge.
Week one of this new anime season coming to a close with the premiere of Chainsaw man and I WAS FUCKING BUSY GETTING CAUGHT UP! OMG there is so much that I am current with releasing new episodes this season that I am just up to my nose in new anime. O.O Saturday Morning Cartoons? More like Saturday Cartoon Marathons! X.X
I listened, then read, then listened while reading along, then listened again to むかし夕日の公園で、a short story by 乙一、from the Read Real Japanese Fiction collection. At least my reading speed seems to have increased, because I could read along while listening at normal speed no problem, but maybe it’s only because the story was relatively simple. Listening after reading was only marginally more comprehensible than listening before reading. I get a lot of words, even phrases, but I just can’t (yet?) connect them in real time.
Less anxiety means I can enjoy doing stuff again! …at least a little bit.
Nihongo con Teppei is really good for that, he’s so cheerful that even when I don’t understand 80% of what he says I still feel better about myself. I’m really looking forward to re-listening to all these episodes when my listening comprehension is better.
Today I listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei, and also an 800 Core Words video from JapanesePod101.
I was hoping to watch some anime tonight too, but its gotten kind of late already so I’m not sure I’ll be able to after all. Perhaps tomorrow
I’ve wanted to learn Japanese mahjong for a while since I saw it in FFXIV and piqued my interest. I learnt the basics back then but I never continued learning nor practising what I learnt, so one can say that I never really learnt anything and forgot after a while. Lately I’ve been interested in learning a bit again, and out of boredom and curiosity today I looked it up on YouTube to see if I could mix in some listening. I found an interesting Japanese mahjong channel with a playlist for beginners and I liked it, ended up watching three videos.
I’ll link it for the curious, if any. It’s probably also a lot easier when you already know a fair bit of what he explains, but I like how he explains it regardless:
I’m sure this will come in handy for when I play the Yakuza games, eventually .
I’ve been meaning to post at least a bit in this thread (I also meant to do the same with the write each day thread but that… didn’t happen). Not daily but at least some listening this month, so I’ll use this vid as a reason to listen to some Japanese and finally post here. I’ve been watching anime, gaming and other things in Japanese but not really listening to anything “actively”.
He talks so fast!
Even though I know how to play, it’s pretty hard to keep up with him. I should really get into the daily habit of listening again. Thanks for sharing!
Very much so! I’m glad I knew how to play before because the AI can be a right jammy thing
well, depends on which Yakuza game, Yakuza 6 seems to have the most jammy AI
I’ll take the opportunity to link this thread that was shared recently, for you and anyone else who might want some podcasts to listen to (pinging @pm215 , perhaps you’ve seen it already but since you were looking for podcasts, here, have a hundred):
About 麻雀 @Zakarius , it does look quite interesting! Learning the yaku seems very intimidating and it’s what has always kept me from joining public games, but hopefully I can learn them gradually. I’ll make sure to practise with bots first but oof daunting. I always have this anxious feeling when joining some competitive online games when I’m learning something new that occasionally I can’t shake off. I remember learning a bit of chess I had the exact same feeling, I don’t know exactly why. Eventually I didn’t catch much interest in chess in particular but I’m sure if I pushed myself into joining games without much thought I would’ve had a better time. I hope I can take mahjong the opposite way, just joining as much as I can and learning as I go while having fun. Those yaku tho.
Also same, I wanted to start outputting at some point as well, but in that regard I think I want to write directly somewhere that is read by Japanese people too. I used to have a Lang-8 account but by now I’m sure the site is close to being dead. HelloTalk seems by the day more like a social media platform rather than a language learning tool, I don’t know, and LangCorrect seems nice but sadly for what I’ve seen it lacks the number of people, with the same couple of natives correcting all the entries. In the end I haven’t decided anything and I keep procrastinating on writing . None of the options convince me greatly so far . Another plan was using an FFXIV character on a Japanese server and try to make acquaintances and other interactions, but so far I haven’t carried it out (yet?).
I watched HUNTER x HUNTER (1999) with generated sub up to episode 62, which is as far as the watching club wants to go. All I can say is it ends painfully, although I can’t say I hate it.
I have started doing audio-handwriting quiz on Anki for a few days now. As expected, Core deck is easier to write than Yomichan. Though, Core deck resource somehow has sentence audio (which doesn’t sound so bad), which for Yomichan, I have to search for sentence audio myself (mostly from immersionkit.com).
I believe SubtitleEdit I posted the other day can extract audio segments from video files and YouTube as well.
October 11th
What did I listen to?: A Series of Unfortunate Events Ep 5
How much time did I spend listening?: Not even the whole episode, like 20 min
The hectic time is starting Honestly I couldn’t really concentrate that well, so I decided to stop only halfway through the episode and save the rest for when my focus is hopefully a little better. There’s just too much going on, idk how it’s suddenly 10pm.
I’ve given myself up to booktube. Hilariously I didn’t even read much today, but yet I watched a video on people talking about books.
Didn’t watch all of it. 90 minutes is a LOT. I barely have the patience to sit through 45 minute TV shows most days.
I actually tried to get some Japanese exchange students I met to use that site to no avail. I think it has a lot of promise, but it needs better marketing maybe? I do think the platform is well done, though. although still lacking some features. I think it’s just one person developing it, though.
Listened to more Thinking in Japanese. This episode was about giving and receiving feedback. The host’s premise is that feedback is “like a mirror”; it’s not about “this is a good thing” or “this is a bad thing,” but rather making adjustments. For example, before you go out, you look in your mirror and fix your hair if it’s messed up. I try to have this more neutral mentality, but it’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s good to get a reminder.
I’m enjoying はてしない物語 more and more. On Monday I listened to most of the prologue (which is ~38min), and this morning I listened again to some of its second half (because I first thought I had misunderstood something, but turns out I hadn’t after all) and finished the prologue.
Which means we are now leaving the “real world” and entering the “book world”. I’m curious to see how they will mark those two different worlds, as in the physical book the text is printed in different colors iirc. I will probably listen to some of the first chapter (which is ~42min) tonight!
Today I sampled many videos on 妖怪, although most of them I didn’t watch to the end. I reckon it still counts as listening. Nothing really to recommend, but you can enjoy a 妖怪しりとり in song or picture book form:
And at the other end of the spectrum…
Whilst my daughter was having some maths tuitution, last night I listened and shadowed along with a couple of dialogues from the back of Genki II textbook for about 50mins. Think it was only 3 minutes or so of Japanese. It’s painful work at the moment for sure.
I think it has a lot of potential too. It possibly lacks marketing indeed, I haven’t seen it publicised around the language learning communities too successfully. I logged back in to my lang-8 account to check how it is nowadays and it’s such a shame that it got abandoned in favour of hi-native, but I guess that’s what gets them more money in the end. Lang-8 had really nice tools and many people using it back then, I thought it was amazing to have a place where you could write fairly sized journal entries and have people correct your errors. It gave you the possibility to try to form and connect sentences and trains of thoughts, to actually learn how to express yourself and not just ask a simple question like the hi-native format.
It would be awesome to see LangCorrect thrive and have many people use it, but sadly I don’t think it’s possible to achieve in its current marketing state, especially for any language other than English. It’s still awesome that you tried to get people use it though, honestly. Perhaps it’s the longer entries and journal format that doesn’t attract people anymore?
softlyraining’s leaf pile listens 
In terms of comprehension, I had some issues in the beginning, but I was doing okay. Then my partner came in and started getting ready for bed, and my concentration went right out the window. 
When I listen to things in the morning or for my schoolwork, I find I’m more zoned in and able to understand. Still, being that focused is draining, and I’d love it if my passive understanding was similar to how it is in English (though I certainly find myself missing things when I passively listen to English-language content, too). Guess that’s why I’m participating in this challenge. 
Still, I can treat myself every once in a while, right? New small goal: make mapo tofu at least once during this listening challenge. 
.
daunting. I always have this anxious feeling when joining some competitive online games when I’m learning something new that occasionally I can’t shake off. I remember learning a bit of chess I had the exact same feeling, I don’t know exactly why. Eventually I didn’t catch much interest in chess in particular but I’m sure if I pushed myself into joining games without much thought I would’ve had a better time. I hope I can take mahjong the opposite way, just joining as much as I can and learning as I go while having fun. Those yaku tho.
. None of the options convince me greatly so far 
. Another plan was using an FFXIV character on a Japanese server and try to make acquaintances and other interactions, but so far I haven’t carried it out (yet?).
Honestly I couldn’t really concentrate that well, so I decided to stop only halfway through the episode and save the rest for when my focus is hopefully a little better. There’s just too much going on, idk how it’s suddenly 10pm.
