🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Spring 2023 🌼 🌱

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

April 5th

Watched another episode of Good Morning Call. It’s kind of amazing how a change in medium can make all the difference: more cheesiness ensued during the episode, but I let the credits play at the end this time and they showed scenes from the episode alongside the manga panels from the original story. While I appreciate the faithfulness, having the MC do stuff like hide behind her stuffed animal and tip toeing away doesn’t really work as well in live-action. I suppose it could, but you’d really need to frame it right so that it retained its humor.

None of this really has anything to do with listening, I guess. Sometimes I can’t help but ramble a little… :sweat_smile:

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:hot_pepper: April 5

Went with Toy Story JP Dub today. Brain decided it would auto interpret the dialogue when I was only partially invested. That’s new. Unfortunately these Disney movies are really great in Japanese. Even the songs are produced in Japanese. But they’re super expensive and even more difficult to come by because of their limited (re)release schedule. Actually, yesasia cancelled a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves DVD order I placed recently because they couldn’t track it down.

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April 5-6 :european_castle: :headphones:

Continuing with かがみの孤城, and while I’m now definitely in new territory, I’m still very much bored. Does this book get interesting for adults at some point? I’ll finish it in any case, because I’m stubborn and I paid for it, and I need all the listening practice I can get, but seriously, after more than a 100 pages and 4 hours of listening I need some more excitement than this.

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I watched a video on the ants and the grasshopper last night so I learned the word

アリ ー ant !

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New listening thread means the return of intermittent posts about long forgotten films/shows, kind of forgot about the other thread at the ends, oops. But I’ll be doing something similar here again, I won’t have a home post but I’ll try to watch things a bit more regularly (I hope). So, thanks @omk3 for hosting the thread!!

Last night I ventured into that deep abyss of YouTube again and watched one of those long forgotten OVAs. I won’t list it here because I don’t think it’s really supposed to be on YT, but that lonely YT vid from several years ago is probably the only video of existence of this anime, these things were usually released in extremely limited quantities on media that existed for like three months way back in '87 or something :laughing:

Two episodes made up the anime, at about 40 mins each. I think I fully understood about 30% of it, and can stretch that to about 50% with understanding from context of the images. Every time I watch/read something it reminds me how far I’ve have still yet to go.

It was, what I think, to be about some kind of ancient curse set down by Izanagi I think… I think, there was so much info dump from the narrator that I was lost in about 5 seconds, then happily pointing at the screen because I recognise who Izanagi and Amaterasu are. Magic demons, ancient Buddha monk powers, Oni (specifically Gakki it seems) and magic space cosmic time powers(??) All make for a good recipe.
And all this ties into modern day (well the then modern day of the late 80s) and some investigator guy looking into this curse for reasons I couldn’t understand, and then some kid who turns out to be a target of the curse because he resembles a hero of ancient times. It was a pretty standard dark fantasy plot of any 80s anime really.

What I love about this era is that there is always an absolute mad moment (or several) somewhere along the line. Everything seems normal, happy sort of thing then BAM super intense gore out of nowhere, then everyone goes back to mundane life like they didn’t just see Takashi-kun get his entrails sprawled around a tree like tinsel :rofl:

Really wish there was a modern equivalent for this type of thing, I love dark mythology stories but they seemed to die out at some point. One thing I miss that I don’t see in modern anime anymore is that one scene of an anime that makes you stare at the screen in wonder at what in the ever-loving 何 did you just witness.
Though the productions standards aren’t always great for these old OVAs - tincan sound, lips that move before the words can even start, still pictures with EXCESSIVE shaky camera, I think the biggest thing is the really sharp cuts between scenes, it never feels like the scene is properly finished before they blast through another ten cuts.

One thing though is that it means all my reading about Japanese myths has paid off, most of the words I could recognise were mythology words, so that’s good. Now, if only I could understand normal, everyday conversations that’d be great.

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Home Post :hatching_chick:

Thank you @polv and @KJules for the grammar explanations! :heart:

Today I tried listening to the Japanese with Shun podcast. I chose episodes 8 and 29 and enjoyed them a lot. I especially like the vocab summary at the end of every episode. The slow talking speed is nice for beginners like me but I might try speeding it up a little next time.

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Apr 6, Thu of Week 2 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

国語文法 [48-50/50] – 敬語1-3. This reflects DoBJG, just in Japanese language.

YouTube notifications. Yuka-sensei is nice again – 【Vlog】日本語の森のみんなと「お花見🌸」をしました。 - YouTube

残月記 : 残月記 Ch.2 [2/30]. I am thinking of dropping this one (for later?). Very early in the story, anyway.

Natsume Soseki’s こころ Ch.1-3, around 20 min, as I have heard it being referenced by other artists. I tried audiobook.jp first, but it seems too quiet, so searching YouTube (Premium). Not that much louder, but instead of one track with Ch.1-4, it get more detailedly split by chapter.

Then, YouTube’s in sleepy tanuki’s thread. I particularly like the quiz.

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April 6th!

Today I wanted to start reading Chi’s Sweet Home, but I’d heard it had some baby-talk which might be difficult to read at first so I watched this video first, which was really helpful.

I also watched episode 5 of Rilakkuma and Kaoru. I found the ghost girl a bit difficult to understand, but it wasn’t too tough overall.

(Home Post)

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6/04/2023 :fairy: Home Post Link

Today was also a Japanese With Shun day! I finished 2 episodes, and both were long compared to the one I did yesterday.

It’s fun so far, I really enjoyed the episode about New Zealand and Japan climate (because it was easy to understand :joy:). The Daily Routine ep was very nice too, although I had to look up some words.

I feel like I’m getting more out of podcasts than YouTube videos. This is because I tend to rely on visual cues a Lot (or sometimes entirely) when I watch videos. So I more or less get what they’re saying. But with podcasts, I actually focus and tune into the words and actively think about what it means. Might try sticking to podcasts for a while and track my progress.

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:cherry_blossom: Day 6, 4 月 6 日 :herb:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Listened to the dialogs in the first chapter of Tobira that are supposed to be example dialogs to practice with. Really difficult but really helpful, it was about how to ask for the meaning of specific words or things.

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:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 4月6日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Listened:

  • マイクラ (大神ミオ ライブ) ~35 minutes - minecraft streams tend to just be a lot of chitchat while people are working on stuff, so some threads of the conversation I just get totally lost on (esp when they start doing puns or old references). It does feel good when I can follow stuff though!

Word(s) of the Day:
同居(どうきょ)ー living together
粘土(ねんど)ー clay (technically knew this from ホリミヤ already, but more connections = more better :grin:)
意識不明(いしきふめい)ー unconscious
白樺(しらかば)ー white birch

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

April 6th

More Good Morning Call. Listening went so-so. I had a headache when I watched it that still hasn’t gone away, though I don’t want to claim that as a total excuse.

There was finally an over-the-top moment that I actually thought was kind of funny: main girl’s senpai is going over to her apartment to help her study, but he doesn’t know that she lives with a classmate, so her friends are trying to stop him. Meanwhile, she’s trying to prevent her roommate’s sister-in-law from going over and learning their secret. It culminates the three groups (MC+sis-in-law, senpai, and friends) each dealing with some kind of hazard in slow-mo. It doesn’t really connect altogether, but I still found it amusing.

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:hot_pepper: April 6

Played Zero Escape: 999 for ~1 hour.

Watched The Big Lebowski (JP Sub/Dub). This one I haven’t seen dubbed. Some challenging dialogue and the subs are practically unrelated to what’s spoken. This one will take some practice.

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This sounds like a hilarious experiment! (And horribly difficult to follow)

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It’s something all right. Like the whole thing is tuned to a different key. It will come back around in my rotation shortly. I did miss a lot.

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Home Post :hatching_chick:

I watched three videos by Comprehensible Japanese today:

The last story was very fun to listen to. I recognized some words that I have learned on WK.

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:cherry_blossom: Pflaumentee’s Home Post :cherry_blossom:

Hi!
Since I joined the Reading Every Day Challenge the other day I realised that this is kinda fun and a good way to keep accountability! So I really wanted to join this challenge too now, I have been eyeing these challenges so long hehe~
Well my listening material consists mostly just of Nihongo con Teppei, but maybe I will add more when I get used to it more. I am just about to complete Genki 2, but especially Grammar is still so hard for me, I have to think a lot if the sentences get more complicated, especially if I am just hearing it! Hope that might improve with the help of this Challenge~

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Home post

Haven’t missed a day yet. Had difficulty with a video the other day but that’s fine, I just moved on and found something else to listen to. Mostly been a mixture of Comprehensible Japanese and also Learn Japanese with Tanaka San

Today I ate some ramen and played an animal guessing game with Yuki. I thought the 4 animals that she described at the beginning where the ones we had to guess so I wondered which of the 4 were tall and eat leaves from trees… silly me.

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April 7 :film_strip:

Today I took a break from my audiobook and instead watched an episode of Full-time Wife Escapist (such an awful title, let’s just call it by its original name: 逃げるは恥だが役に立つ) making an effort to glance at the subtitles as little as possible.

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Apr 7, Fri of Week 2 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

歴史 [1-3/90] - 人類の出現・四大文明. Well, there is another one from Historia Mundi, who wrote a book, as well, but it’s like 200 hours.

Proper names

こころ Ch.1-6. From beginning to a little beyond reading. It gets interesting in a way.

Then some YouTube news. Perhaps not understanding enough doesn’t count, but I might find some new subscriptions.

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