Sadly they have the muscle to require a lot of “exclusives”. I wish they didn’t, I prefer Audiobook.jp
Oh definitely! They require no subscription, and they let you own the audio files. A much better service by far.
Day 30, 4 月 30 日
Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 11 - 12
Still relistening, but I’m close to where I left off.
I’m absolutely doubling down on exercising while listening. If I’m exercising I’m too busy to click away from my audio files, and because of the playtime I can force myself through doing my physical exercises because “it’s just x-amount of minutes”. Win-win.
Week 4 Recap
Another mixed week, but I ended strongly. I listened to something five out of seven days and hit my content and time goals four days. I’ve also reestablished my Japanese study schedule, which I’d strayed from due to end-of-semester job pressures. Overall, I feel I’m in a good position moving forward.
One new observation: I don’t think I’m making a lot of progress with native-level material. However, the level-appropriate material feels a lot slower now, probably due to my efforts with the native-level stuff.
That’s about it. Once more over the breach, as they say…
30/04/2023 Home Post Link
Watched YouTube shorts in Japanese for around 15 to 20 minutes.
A few videos from Takashii from Japan and a few from Study In Daily Japanese. I’m not subscribed to these channels but I come across their shorts frequently so I ended up watching all of that.
I watched 2 more episodes of Invisible on Netflix and I’m enjoying it greatly. It’s very bingeable because unlike the two shows I need to finish (最愛 and 桜の塔) it’s pretty easy (language wise) and unemotional for me. While it’s not a purely formulaic cop drama and does have an overarching plot, I’m not that invested in it and am just here for the ride.
April 30
Completed this weeks Zero Escape: 999
I also read 電車の中で若者に注意 from Read Real Japanese Essays.
I read it before I listened to it. I think I prefer listening alone once before reading.
May 1, Mon of Week 6 of Spring Q2 2023
こころ (夏目漱石) : (下) 先生と遺書 Ch.33-36.
I have found this one regarding 「」. Perhaps comparable with quotation marks (")?
歴史 [39-41/90] - 江戸時代 [1-3/11].
Places and names
- 徳川家康 = Tokugawa Ieyasu - Wikipedia
- 徳川家光 = Tokugawa Iemitsu - Wikipedia
- 徳川綱吉 = Tokugawa Tsunayoshi - Wikipedia
- 徳川吉宗 = Tokugawa Yoshimune - Wikipedia
- 徳川慶喜 = Tokugawa Yoshinobu - Wikipedia
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関ヶ原の戦い = Battle of Sekigahara - Wikipedia
- 石田三成 = Ishida Mitsunari - Wikipedia
- 五街道 = Edo Five Routes - Wikipedia
- 旗本 = Hatamoto - Wikipedia, the upper vassals with the right to an audience with the shōgun
- 御家人 = Gokenin - Wikipedia, did not have the right to an audience with the shōgun
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幕藩体制 = Bakuhan-taisei (the feudal system characteristic of the shogunate) - Japanese Wiki Corpus
- 親藩 = Shinpan (daimyo) - Wikipedia
- 譜代大名 = Fudai daimyō - Wikipedia
- 外様大名 = Tozama daimyō - Wikipedia
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三奉行
- 寺社奉行 = Jisha-bugyō - Wikipedia
- 勘定奉行 = Kanjō bugyō - Wikipedia
- 町奉行 = Machi-bugyō - Wikipedia
- 参勤交代 = Sankin-kōtai - Wikipedia, the policy for daimyō, to alternate living for a year in their domain and in Edo, the capital
- 京都所司代 = Kyoto Shoshidai - Wikipedia, the shogunate’s military governor stationed in Kyoto
- 武家諸法度 = Buke shohatto - Wikipedia, Laws for the Military Houses
- 禁中並公家諸法度 = Kinchu narabini kuge shohatto - Wikipedia, Laws for the Imperial and Court Officials. So many 法度's.
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百姓
- 本百姓 = Honbyakushō - Wikipedia (real peasant) owning harvesting lands
- 水呑百姓 = Mizunomi Byakusho - Japanese Wiki Corpus (water drinking peasant) refer to those who did not have their own harvesting lands. Don’t know if they can’t drink お酒.
- 五人組 = Gonin-gumi (five-household group) (Japanese history) - Japanese Wiki Corpus
- 村八分 = village ostracism
- 穢多 ・ 非人 = outcasts
Day 31, 5 月 1 日
Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 13 - 14
I think two episodes is a good basic commitment for now. My goal is to reach at least one hour of active listening each week, so two episodes a ~4 minutes each day will get close to that. Then I can round it off with something else for flavour.
01/05/2023 Home Post Link
Watched a few youtube shots in Japanese and watched Suzume in the theatre finally! I enjoyed it and I have thoughts but now I’m super tired and can’t articulate any of it. Feels like I have less and less time these days gaaah.
May 1st!
May already! This year seems to be going very fast.
Today I listened to 3 episodes of JapanesePod101’s Lower Intermediate Series.
I keep putting off watching the final episode of Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure because I can’t decide what to watch next.
April 27th
I listened to episode 13 of Japanese with Shun and watched a Comprehensible Japanese video about traditional japanese sweets. I can’t wait to try those sweets. They look delicious!
April 28th
At this point I kind of lost motivation to keep listening to Japanese every day but I thought I would at least watch one video to keep my streak going. I chose another video by Comprehensible Japanese about language learning.
April 29th
Akane’s Nara vlog was okay to understand I think. Tbh I have already forgotten most of the video. There were cute deer of course but that’s pretty much all I remember.
April 30th
Yesterday I watched the news story about the capybara falling asleep in the water that everyone was talking about. This reminded me of the video about the capybara with a mandarin orange on its head. So I watched that one right after. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to understand some of the stuff that the presenter said in the video. The last time I watched it I couldn’t understand anything.
I also watched a video about kitchen objects by Akane. There was a small quiz where you can guess what different objects are called. I could only name one of the objects so I learned a lot of new words.
May 1st
Today I listened to Nihongo con Teppei episodes 161-165 and it felt pretty easy.
Overall I feel like I have made decent progress over the course of the last month. My understanding has increased considerably. I am very motivated now to keep studying grammar and vocabulary because I feel like this is what is holding my listening comprehension back the most.
I’m looking forward to the second month of listening.
May 1st
What did I listen to?: Animal videos on Youtube
How much time did I spend listening?: ~28 min
It is time~
Unlike last challenge, I had something I wanted to listen to right away, and it was the capybara video that @Zakarius posted earlier (I was saving it for this day to motivate myself ) Then I found an important sequel - Capybara with mandarin orange on head
From there I took a detour into this video of a very blobby frog (courtesy of the World Frog Biting My Fingers Association ) before getting back to more Very Important News Stories about a baby seal and baby lions. Then I finished off with a video of someone adopting a floofy Great Pyrenees puppy so small and floofy
I love that we somehow independently watched the exact same capybara video
May 1st
I wasn’t planning to start 硝子の塔の殺人 immediately, but here I am, already about an hour in. The audiobook so far is way better than I feared, quite good actually. For some reason they chose some rather intense scenes for the sample, and I nearly didn’t get it because of them. But so far the performance is not over the top at all, and the narration especially is very much to my taste. A lady’s voice is a bit grating, and a certain man is nearly incomprehensible, but this is all good practice in small doses.
It’s 夢読 (I think that’s her name, Yume something) isn’t it? She sounds pretty much exactly the same in the other book recording based on the sample. That’s just her character type
Strangely no. She hasn’t spoken too much so far, but the little she said didn’t bother me at all. It was in fact 月夜. She’s way too hyper.
Oh well her being hyper is a character trait but in that case you might have liked the Audible version a little better. They gave her an actress with a deeper voice so her “hype” doesn’t feel so intense.
My life was incomplete until I saw that capybara. I am now on a whole new level of consciousness and I am happy that we can experience the wonderous world of the capybara together.