🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Spring 2023 🌼 🌱

:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 4月1日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Unfortunately pretty busy today so I will have to wait to try out some new stuff tomorrow. I was hoping to start trying something that has a transcript so I can listen, and then check my understanding against the transcript and then listen again, but being rushed meant I just clicked on basically the first thing I saw :laughing:

Listened

  • はたらくUFO (大神ミオ stream) - watched about 15 minutes of this until my friends came to pick me up; game looks unbelievably cute

Word of the Day:
バイト代(ばいとだい)ー earnings from a part time job

17 Likes

Apr 1, Sat of Week 1 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

残月記 : 月景石 Ch.2 [2-3/13]. Actually listened once before, then read. Now listen. Perhaps next time listening with synced reading would be nice. Perhaps I understand most now, but that also depends on attention, and energy.

I will probably start 残月記 : 残月記 once I finished reading the previous story (Ch.9). I can’t be sure of listening alone.

15 Likes

4月1日、土曜日 (Home Post Link)

始めましょう!

I had a pretty good start today. I listened to Radio Kishiwada for about 15 minutes, then listened to the short story 浦島太郎 (Urashima Taro) while reading the Japanese, after having read the English translation and studied the vocabulary list.

I think I’ll update my goals. I’ll try for 20-30 minutes a day: 50% listening to native Japanese without assistance just to see what I can catch, and 50% lesson material with supports (simultaneous Japanese reading, vocabulary lists, etc.). Both seem fruitful for me right now.

16 Likes

April 1st!

Today I went to a Japanese conversation exchange meetup that happens on the first Saturday of the month in a city near where I live. We talked about April Fools Day, and whether any of us had ever broken a bone.

I also watched the first episode of Rilakkuma and Kaoru, with Japanese subtitles. I was able to understand a good chunk of it just by listening, but the longer sentences sometimes required a bit of subtitle reading!

(Home Post)

17 Likes

:cherry_blossom: Day 1, 4 月 1 日 :herb:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

I listened to the audio provided for the first chapter reading exercise of Tobira. Even though it’s not even 5 minutes long it’s really exhausting because it’s so far above my level. I usually listen to it while reading (or at least trying to read) along.

I think this was my third time going through it? This time I had read a translation beforehand so a lot more words were recognizable, but it was still too much for me to attempt to translate on my own. But being able to follow along when your brain hooks onto words or sentences you recognize and going “oh hey, this is talking about castle so-and-so, I know where I am in the text” is also a useful skill to have.

14 Likes

Gonna try podcasts and speaking to native speakers

Apr
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May
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14 Likes

:tulip: APRIL 01 2023 :tulip:
home post

I got to the bus stop way too early today (I forgot it was Saturday so it’s a different schedule) so I took the time to listen to a recent Sakura Tips episode on Hokkaidou and how snowy it is there.

Listened to it 4 times: twice without a transcript, once with the transcript, and again without. Overview of my listening attempts:

  1. Understood more than I expected I would! But I mostly just understood the first third. Getting confused about one sentence led to me getting confused about the whole rest of the episode, I guess I got tripped up and then got out of the zone b/c of it.
  2. Caught quite a bit more, probably around half? Except it was mostly that I caught lexical items and not the grammar.
  3. Reading the transcript helped a lot! I tried not to read ahead so I was reading at the same time I was listening (like subtitles).
  4. I caught more grammar, but tbh I was getting bored of listening to the same thing over and over so I ended up spacing out towards the end :sweat_smile:

There was one part where she talked about how she’s not used to snow so she likes it, but for people who live there it’s just troublesome, and man do I relate to that… I live somewhere that gets a lot of snow and even though it’s pretty it’s so annoying. In fact it was lightly snowing while I listened to the podcast, though it didn’t stick (edit 2 hrs later: IT’S SNOWING HARD NOW I’M GOING TO SCREAM. please it’s april, let it be spring, let me be free)

Ooh I’ve watched this series, it’s the only audiovisual thing I’ve actually finished in Japanese :smiley: It’s pretty good for listening practice imo! Some of the episodes have more of these long sentences than others (mainly the ones where Kaoru’s at work)

15 Likes

:hot_pepper: April 1

Much less time spent listening than I hoped for today. Still, spent an hour on Zero Escape: 999. Then watched episode 7 of Quartet on Netflix. I should probably start the series from the beginning again. I was only passively tuning into the first few episodes and then realized I could follow the story well enough.

14 Likes

:speaker: :blossom: softlyraining’s garden of sounds :cherry_blossom: :headphones:

This is another challenge where one of my goals will be to post regularly. I think i might try listening to some TED talks as practice; probably not every day, but I’d like to do it maybe once a week? I’m a little concerned that I’ll start spacing out early on, so it might be best to pace myself and try to find the shortest ones possible. Other than that, I pretty open to listening to whatever strikes my fancy: stuff posted here, podcasts I already follow, maybe some movies or a show.

:cherry_blossom: :seedling: Apr :seedling: :cherry_blossom:
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:blossom: :tulip: May :tulip: :blossom:
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Updates

April 2nd - Kimono Mom YouTube video
April 3rd - Satori Reader
April 4th - Good Morning Call
April 5th - Good Morning Call
April 6th - Good Morning Call
April 7th - Good Morning Call
April 10th - Good Morning Call, Miku, YouTube
April 14th - Good Morning Call, Aggretsuko
April 24th - Aggretsuko, Spirited Away, Satori Reader

18 Likes

4月1日 :cherry_blossom:
:house:

Listened to two tracks of the second Flesh & Blood drama CD while taking my dog for a walk. There was some stuff at the beginning I couldn’t quite catch so I think I’ll give it a second listen through later then go write my thoughts in the club thread.

15 Likes

Apr 2, Sun of Week 1 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

残月記 : 月景石 Ch.3-4/1 [4-5/13]. The reading is catching up soon, then I would go to the next substory, 残月記 : 残月記. I may still re-listen as a bonus. while not wanting something too new, maybe?

国語文法 [38-39/50] – 助動詞 (1-2/10). A bit interesting to see conjugation from another perspective.

14 Likes

Home Post :hatching_chick:

I took an N4 practice test today and my listening score was 45/60. There were some words and grammar points that I didn’t understand but overall I’m happy with my result.

I used one of the Todai Easy Japanese News App JLPT practice tests.

16 Likes

April 2nd :european_castle: :headphones:, :film_strip:

Another hour of かがみの孤城 today while reading along. Following @pocketcat 's advice, I sped up the audio and listening was much more pleasant today. It’s now just a tiny bit faster than my reading speed (if I stumble on a word or two), so I often end up listening first, then pausing and reading what I just heard, which makes for purer listening practice.

I also watched some Full-time Wife Escapist (still cute and cozy), and the first story from a film called 偶然と想像. Not very impressed, so far it felt slow and rather pretentious. It’s by the same director as Drive My Car, by the way, and it did share the same kind of long, silent scenes. I may continue it at some point, not sure. Speaking about long, silent scenes, I tried “In the Distance” from the JFF+ Independent Film Festival the other day, and I gave up on it because it too felt too slow and like nothing much was happening. There are times that I enjoy such films, but apparently this is not such a time.

15 Likes

I watched a video from a youtube channel that some of you may recall me binging last challenge. It’s a good fit for me as I understand a decent % the video but there’s always a few ?? words or sentences so I don’t feel like I’m coasting. This one I stopped around 30 min in though as when they started talking about the mobile game incorporated into the challenges I got bored:

15 Likes

:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 4月2日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Listened:

  • はたらくUFO (大神ミオ stream) - another about 30 minutes
  • はたらくUFO - wanted to relax when i got home so I put on the rest of the stream; another 45 minutes. Could tell the game was getting a little frustrating towards the end of the stream and she ended very quickly :melting_face:

image
behold! a turtle with a tiny hat! truly the pinnacle of game design

Word(s) of the Day:
繊細(せんさい)ー sensitive; delicate (feelings, sense, etc.); subtle​
歪(いびつ)ー distorted; crooked; irregular; warped​

16 Likes

I haven’t yet gotten around to creating a home post yet as the final week of busyness is here :sweat_smile: but I am proud to report that I listened! :laughing:

April 1st:
I listened to the first part of はてしない物語 once more (~15 min.) as I didn’t have access to Flesh&Blood and I didn’t feel like browsing youtube or the like. I’m still missing vocab here and there, and at some point I will listen again while reading the book to see how this goes.
Incidentally I was with some friends when I listened, and I did not have earphones with me so everybody was entitled to join in to my listening :joy: This was fun as not everybody understood Japanese, and so the understanding was limited to the occasional katakana words :grin: But we tried an app (I think Google Translate?) to see what it was able to catch, which was also fun. It correctly captured one or two sentences, but in another one it misheard 怖い and instead caught 可愛い :rofl: Way to go, I guess…

April 2nd:
Chatted with my Japanese friend for 1.5 hours which should be enough listening for today. As always, we chatted about this and that, starting from how his recent sales exhibitions went, to strikes in France and retirement age in Germany and Japan, to planning for a trip we want to go on together, to why there are eggs at Easter, to how to unblock a kitchen sink :rofl: It was a ragbag of topics, indeed.

15 Likes

April 2nd!

Another episode of Rilakkuma and Kaoru today. I’m pleased with how much I understood in this one. :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

15 Likes

:speaker: :blossom: softlyraining’s garden of sounds :cherry_blossom: :headphones:

April 1st
I wasn’t feeling the greatest yesterday, so I listened to several episodes of Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange on Satori Reader while I rested.

April 2nd
I went with something random today. I’ve watched some videos from Kimono Mom in the past, back when her daughter didn’t really talk. Now she mugs the camera on a regular basis. :grin: She’s become such an adorable little goofball, and the presents she got were so cute!

18 Likes

2/04/2023 :fairy:t4: Home Post Link

I did not do much today, but I spent 20 mins listening to few episodes from Nihongo con Teppei’s podcast. It was great, I didn’t have to look up any vocabulary at all this time, so I’ll take that as a win!

17 Likes

:hot_pepper: April 2

Watched Back to the Future Part 1 w/ JP Dub and Sub. The subtitles aren’t clearly readable sometimes. At full speed anyway. I’ll give the trilogy another go with subs on before I go freestyle. Really, I’m only looking when I get lost/ space out. I think I actually paid attention to listening most of the time this time though. I’ll give myself a C-.

17 Likes