Read Real Japanese - Essays -真っ白嘘 村上春樹.
The Read Real Japanese books have finally come into play! Purchased them such a long time ago. The first volume (Fiction) was one of the first Japanese learning oriented books in my collection.
I listened to 真っ白嘘 once by itself. It’s just shy of four minutes. Then listened again while reading along. After thoroughly reading the story I listened twice more. Once with text once without.
Watched some of the youtube shared here and caught some more Edgar Allen Poe in the car.
書院造 = Shoin-zukuri - Wikipedia, a style of Japanese residential architecture used in the mansions of the military, temple guest halls, and Zen abbot’s quarters
2 episodes from Japanese with Shun. Finally broke past the only-one-episode-per-day thing
Really enjoyed both the episodes as usual. It was such a shock (as an insufferable introvert) to hear that Shun was just walking around in a new country making friends On The Street?!
It was a little difficult this time, because Shun described his first day, the city where he lived, Thai food and so on. Excited to listen to the other two parts of his solo travelling series.
Nihongo con Teppei - Episodes 1 - 3
Relistening to some of Teppei because I haven’t listened to him for some time and wasn’t ready for new material. The transcripts are still so, so important to my understanding/enjoyment.
Ah, these books are so tempting. I want to get fiction or essays, but they’re super expensive. Would you recommend them to someone who’s slowly transitioning from beginner to intermediate? Maybe around N4 with just a little of N3?
I feel like that is very much the level that Satori Reader is made for.
I enjoyed the darker stories on the app, but lots of light hearted ones as well. Not as boring as most graded reader type content, and it will give you a hand when you need it.
Having only now read the first entry from Essays and part of the first from Fiction I can’t recommend based on much. I can recommend though, I think, for your level. Based on the furigana, the in-built dictionary, and the level of the grammar notes. The side-by-side reading/break-down flow is very nice. Paragraphs are translated by each numbered phrase.
Just thumbed through the stories. None of them appear to involve school life in any way.
朝ミオ 4/24 (大神ミオ ライブ) ~25 minutes ー Got to it a little late this week, but was still a nice chill stream. Didn’t get through all the letters, but might finish them tomorrow. There was a spot where she was talking about doing swimming in elementary school that I want to re-listen to as well because I didn’t catch a good bit of the story
Word(s) of the Day:
心がける ー to keep in mind; to bear in mind; to try; to aim to do
有給休暇(ゆうきゅうきゅうか)ー paid vacation
受け身(うけみ)ー passive attitude; passivity; passiveness
I’ve also only just barely started reading them, but I think you wouldn’t have to worry about them being too difficult, at least. The translations and notes explain things pretty thoroughly. I haven’t tried Satori Reader, so I can’t really compare the two, but the thing that I like about the Read Real Japanese series is that the stories/essays were written for native speakers (not learners), and the notes in the back of the book go into a lot of the nuance that I probably wouldn’t have noticed on my own even if I understand the basic meaning of the sentence. Then again, that part might be more interesting to me because I spend a lot of time trying to translate Japanese that’s above my level, haha, and if you’re not doing that, you might not care as much about having those notes.
I personally think Fiction is harder than Essays, though that’s judging only from the first chapter of each. There was quite a bit of unknown grammar and vocab to me in the first fiction story, and I despaired a bit at that, but then I started reading Essays, and I was basically having no trouble at all with Murakami’s essay . I think the way it’s written is much closer stylistically to what I spend most of my time translating and reading. But I haven’t really read much fiction outside of manga. If you have, you might have a different experience.
Received a couple imported DVD in the mail yesterday. Robin Hood (1973) and a Looney Tunes (3 episode) “Collection”. These, as well as an imported copy of Dumb and Dumber I received last month, are of an incompatible region to my players. Today I resurrected some gear and converted them to something useful. Then watched them, mostly to check for errors.
Dumb and Dumbers’ Japanese Dub is so fun. Really sounds like they had a good time with it.
Robin Hood will be ok, I didn’t give it much of a chance this play through.
Looney Tunes I watched a couple times through. Only 21 minutes on the disc With the sparse product description available, It was a shot in the dark. Might be worth it just for 「どったの センセー」“What’s up Doc?”
agreed! It’s a great reading resource for me atm, but I really just want to dive into reading other types of Japanese literature, even if it’s a little too ambitious fsfs
sold.
yess aah I was so very tempted mainly because of all the grammar + translation notes. I think I might give the essays a try after going though the sample then.
Thanks for all the reviews ya’ll, helps a great deal!
Maybe? It seems I entirely missed the window for both Read Real Japanese and Satori Reader. I somehow went from “There’s no way I’ll ever be able to read Japanese” to reading actual native content with basically nothing but a book club in between, and I’m still unsure when the right point would have been to read them. I’ve had Read Real Japanese Essays on my bookshelf for many years and could have read it at any time, but at first it felt way too hard and then later not really necessary. That said, I have recently read one essay and one short story, and I found the content engaging and the translator notes very interesting. It’s like discussing the text nuances in depth with someone, and this can be helpful even at an advanced level. I’ll probably get around to listening/reading the rest of the essays and stories at some point, but I’m in no hurry to do so.
I listened to almost 2 hours of Japanese songs, and I’m counting this as today’s practice. I went through the lyrics of a few songs and randomly selected interesting words to add to my SRS. It was fun, but I feel too tired to do my usual listening activites.
This is so cool!! I can’t wait to read more native content :')
I tried watching two videos by Ken.
The first one was about café conversations and it was harder than expected - especially the small talk section with the owner of the café.
The video about valentine’s day was also quite difficult. I’m assuming this is because they might be speaking more natural japanese here which I’m not used to…? (In addition to my lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge of course.)
I also tried another N4 practice test which was the hardest one I’ve taken so far. My listening score was 32/60 and I only barely reached the overall passing score. There is a lot of vocab and grammar study ahead of me.
April 24th
I listened to Nihongo con Teppei episodes 151-154. I was pleased with my level of understanding.
April 25th
I listened to the Japanese with Shun episodes 10 and 11 and watched two Comprehensible Japanese videos. They were about popular travel destinations for japanese people and good luck meals japanese students eat before exams. The second one was pretty difficult but both videos were very interesting. In my country there is no such thing as good luck meals for students. I know that there is at least one local tradition where people eat a special meal on christmas eve for good luck though. There might be more traditions like this that I’m not aware of but I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any meals specifically for exams.
April 26th
I listened to Nihongo con Teppei (episodes 155-160) and Japanese with Shun (episode 12).
Nihongo con Teppei - Episodes 4 - 6
I always have a bit of a hard time paying attention to podcasts (audio processing issues…) so I’m glad these are so short.
There’s a little intro speech after the OP in mobile suit gundam talking about the setting, and since parts of it get repeated so often, i’ve been trying to listen to it every time it comes up. There was one phrase that I absolutely could not make heads or tails of though, so I went and found a transcript: 「人々はそこで子を産み、育て、そして死んでいった」old man on 70s audio equipment half-mumbling 「子を産み」 was just not working in my brain I ended up doing a lot more pausing and rewinding to re-listen/look up stuff for this episode, so I think i’ll count it for listening today even though I had eng subs. Not quite to the level where I can follow 80s anime mumbled and slurred line delivery on my own quite yet
Listened:
Mobile Suit Gundam ep 8
Word(s) of the Day:
編隊(へんたい)ー formation (eg. of aircraft)
故郷(こきょう)ー hometown, birthplace, one’s old home
退却(たいきゃく)ー retreat, withdrawal
生き延びる(いきのびる)ー to survive, to live long