April 17th!
Today I listened to 3 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners. No issues with understanding any of them, other than my concentration wavered a bit during the third one, so I listened to it twice to hear the bits I zoned out on!
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４月１7日 (Home Post Link)
Listened:
- Sakura Tips 587 - had been a long time since I tried out one of these, and was surprised at how much more I was understanding now. I did end up reading ahead more than listening, because the narration is pretty slow, but oh well. Progress!
- ビーバーお散歩 (長崎バイオパーク ライブ) ~15 minutes - not a ton of listening, but very cute
Word(s) of the Day:
迷う（まよう）ー to give into temptation; to lose control of oneself (buying a new camera lens lmao)
中身（なかみ）ー substance; content (I think 今日の動画の中身 was the context)
むしろ ー rather; better; instead; if anything
歯噛み（はがみ）ー grinding of the teeth
There was also a comment in the chat 「かじかじ！」 that happened while the beaver was swimming, I initially thought it was saying 舵 (rudder) talking about the beaver’s tail, but I think it might also be this:
Would also like to share some good images i found when searching for かじかじ:
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It’s crazy how time flies, I have been travelling last week and didn’t get to update my post at all 
but also I didn’t have much to say if anything. Listening consistently to about 2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei a day, sometimes more, and try to interact with people in Japanese as often as I can. Definitely see some improvement in my listening abilities, but maybe I just imagine it 
it’s definitely still very tiring and hard to keep focused!
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April 17
Played Zero Escape: 999 on the PC for a couple hours today. Since I already read the novel parts on the Nintendo DS, I played in dialogue only mode on the PC and focused on listening.
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18/04/2023 
Home Post Link
Watched two episodes of Gudetama: An Eggcellent Adventure! I don’t know why I did, but I was very bored and wanted some new stimulation. Also, the animation looked really cute.
I did understand most of it, and I had the Japanese subtitles - so I could figure out the meaning (vaguely) based on the kanji even if I didn’t know the correct vocab.
I don’t really think I’m going to continue though. It’s probably a good listening resource for N5 - N4 but I found some of the voice overs very a-annoying, I’m sorry to say that T_T
But anyways, today was a good listening day!
random
also I think I might be the only one in this challenge with a huge timezone difference? Because most of ya’ll update when it’s the next day mid-morning for me hsjsjs
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Apr 18, Tue of Week 4 of Spring Q2 2023
Nihongo Switch on やる on Spotify, played at 1.2x speed. No subscription any more, but didn’t hear advertisements yet. No transcript, I should learn to take notes, as a practical skill, and also taught in JLPT listening guide.
YUYU podcast on 室町 (from latest word thread), then 奈良・平安. I learnt about Player.FM. Probably no audio ads, only (annoyingly) visual.
こころ (夏目漱石) : (中) 両親と私 Ch.9-11.
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Not last night, but the night before (I forgot to post yesterday, I think I was still trying to formulate what I had just witnessed) I watched one of those old OVAs from the depths of YouTube. I’m really not sure why I like watching these, they’re all older than I am so it’s not nostalgia, oh well it’s fun so who knows.
This one was from '85, and was pretty typical of that era, it didn’t really stand out to me that much in animation, acting and all that, it was just pretty standard. Apart from one thing - it was a bit weird, it looked like it was going to be a historical action kind of jam, but ended up being a romance with surprise incest that you could totally see coming and just groan because why, why, why does this seem to be a common theme and pretty much a guaranteed square on your anime bingo card. But then surprise again because it wasn’t actual incest-incest, ha! … it was something a whole lot weirder.
Spoilers: Basically because of time magic space powers a girl is sent back in time via a magical bell (you know it’s a magical bell because when it chimes it chimes louder than anything you’ve ever heard and the camera zooms in on it so you know that this bell is pretty damn important) were she starts to fall for this guy who’s about her age. But this guy has a little sister (who wants to marry him, because of course she does, it had to have some real incestual suggestion in there) and the main girl has a younger neighbourhood boy who she looks after and is basically her little brother - turns out the little girl from the past is actually the main girl from the future and the little boy from the future is actually the main guy from the past, they got separated in the magical timewarp thingy and ended in different timezones (how this timewarp started in the first place I do not know).
By the halfway point this becomes pretty apparent, but by the time the main characters find out they both seem pretty chill and cool about it and end up getting married anyway. It never explained if they were actually related in the end, so it could have actually ended up being 4th dimensional incest.
I think I understood about 50%? I’m not sure, maybe 60%, it was hard to tell what with being distracted by so many questions I had about the plot.
I also think that the entire budget went into animating her hair because there were several scenes were it is is magnificently smooth hair animation. By comparison everyone else’s hair was as static as anything. Even in extreme high winds.
This anime also filled the relatively common old OVA bingo square of:
Huge 10ft bad guy who just appears out of nowhere who is impervious to damage and can lift buses and eats steel girders, but then ends up dying rather quickly from a fleshwound (bonus points if he has a punk hairstyle)
Noticed on my Watch Later list on YT there’s a live action period drama thing coming up, it looks like it’ll either be completely batpoop ridiculous or actually pretty good, with no room for anything in between, so I’m looking forward to that one.
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Day 18, 4 月 18 日 
Tobira - p. 34 - 35, 会話文
Thankfully these were quite short conversations, so they won’t be such a pain to re-listen to like the main text of this chapter.
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I didn’t have a lot of time today so I only listened to some Comprehensible Japanese videos in the evening. I didn’t feel like it but I didn’t want to lose my streak. 
I watched the Animal Guessing Game and the video about Kabuki. The animal video was very easy but I found out that I’m pretty bad at remembering animal names apparently. 
I should practice those more often. The Kabuki video was harder to understand but I still got the gist of it and it was very interesting! Because of this I looked up a video of a real Kabuki performance but I stopped watching it very quickly because it was a lot of talking and I couldn’t understand a single word. The make-up and the costumes were phenomenal though!
random reply
Sounds like you’re living in Asia or Oceania? I’ve noticed the time differences too! I’m from Europe and there are some people who always update in the middle of the night or the very early morning for me. But who knows? Maybe everyone is simply practicing their japanese listening skills at 3am. 
I don’t judge.
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April 18th!
Today I listened to Episode 129 of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners, and also watched Episode 12 of Rilakkuma and Kaoru.
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４月１８日 (Home Post Link)
such a busy day, only had time to listen to music and then a little bit of podcast late at night before bed. Drove a ton today and had a ヨルシカ album on pretty much the whole time though, wasn’t following super closely but i was picking out words and phrases even on songs i haven’t looked closely at the lyrics for
Listened
Word(s) of the Day:
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April 18
Well, I guess I had left Zero Escape: 999 running on my PC after playing yesterday. So, I picked up where I was and put in around three hours today. Not solely listening practice this time. Because I was advancing new material and a lot of it was unvoiced puzzle related text. Still, I caught some things I would have read differently.
random reply
That’s me throwing everything off, probably. Typically posting between 1am-4am my time.
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Apr 19, Wed of Week 4 of Spring Q2 2023
歴史 [21-22/90] - 鎌倉時代 [1-2/5]
Places and names
- 源頼朝 = Minamoto no Yoritomo - Wikipedia
-
源義経 = Minamoto no Yoshitsune - Wikipedia
- 壇ノ浦の戦い = Battle of Dan-no-ura - Wikipedia
-
御恩 と 奉公
- 御家人 = Gokenin - Wikipedia, lower-ranking vassal
- 侍所 = Samurai-dokoro - Wikipedia (Board of Retainers)
- 問注所 = Monchujo - Japanese Wiki Corpus
- 政所 = Mandokoro - Wikipedia. Unusual reading of the first Kanji.
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北条氏 = Hōjō clan - Wikipedia. First Kanji also.
- 執権政治 = Shikken - Wikipedia, a regent of the shogunate
- 北条政子 = Hōjō Masako - Wikipedia
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後鳥羽上皇 = Emperor Go-Toba - Wikipedia, but now an ex.
- 承久の乱 = Jōkyū War - Wikipedia
- 六波羅探題 = Rokuhara Tandai - Wikipedia
- 御成敗式目 (貞永式目) = Goseibai Shikimoku - Wikipedia (Formulary of Adjudications)
こころ (夏目漱石) : (中) 両親と私 Ch.12-14. Also, check out translations on soseki website. (Translations more important than the actual writing?)
【Vlog】日本のラーメンを紹介します🍜 - YouTube from 日本語の森. I have listened to the debates too, but I find them difficult. Maybe easier if I paused to read subs? (Also, too many emos? 
)
random reply
I know Japan and Oceania are earlier than me, and many people in Oceania speak English, of course. But those people don’t come.
Now posting at 7pm.
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19/04/2023 Home Post Link
I watched half of this video from Speak Japanese Naturally. The voice-over was so calming but it was quite difficult for me to understand because it was almost like a mini history lessons ><
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I clicked on this video solely because it had a cute dog as the cover photo:
This was actually pretty helpful! コマちゃん is highly cute, now I need to find a Japanese speaking dog to practice with 
First time watching one this channel’s videos, I like the style and how the Japanese is presented, I struggled a bit to understand the sections without subtitles, but I managed to get some of the questions right at least before the answers where shown.
@prath, just realised we shared the same channel! 
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April 18 
April 19 , 
Continuing with かがみの孤城 (why is it so slow? 
), but today I also played this week’s portion of 極限脱出 9時間9人9の扉. Fun, and I think I can actually feel my listening improving. While I do always read along, I sometimes catch myself relaxing on the reading and focusing more on the listening, then not needing to go back to confirm what I heard with the text. Baby steps.
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４月１９日 (Home Post Link)
- a pet shop after dark (大神ミオ ライブ）~2 hours - I watched about the first 45 minutes pretty actively and then was kinda drifting in and out for the rest of the stream. Weird little point and click puzzle game
Word(s) of the day:
壷（つぼ）ー pot; jar; vase
看板（かんばん）ー signboard; sign; billboard
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Accidentally posted my reading stats here, sorry folks!
In case you are curious about them: 📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2023 🌸🌷🌼 - #577 by NicoleIsEnough
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Nice, and I love the chocolate colour palette. But am I right to suspect that these stats are for reading rather than listening? 
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How did that happen? 
Will fix asap!
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