May 30th
What did I listen to?: Akane in Akihabara
How much time did I spend listening?: ~16 min
TIL that LingQ is pronounced like “link” instead of “Ling-Q” 
The maid cafe they went to seemed quite cute, I was deeply amused by Akane’s English teacher trying and absolutely failing to make anything remotely resembling a heart with his hands 
He kind of reminds me of my dad for some reason lmao xD
May 31st!
I watched the first episode of Shadows House today, with no subs. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t really understand, but knowing the story from reading the manga made that manageable. I think I’m going to carry on watching this series with no subs since hopefully knowing the story will stop it from becoming as frustrating to try to watch.
End of the Challenge!?
How did that happen so fast?
I managed to listen every day during this challenge - and I reached my goal of doing more listening than I did during the winter challenge. There were still a few days where I only managed to squeeze in an episode of Nihongo con Teppei, but far less than in January and February.
A few highlights from this challenge -
As always, thanks to everyone who participated for your support and recommendations and companionship, and of course big thanks to @omk3 for organizing.
I’m still planning to listen every say throughout June - but I’m going to take a break from doing daily posts. I’ll still be hanging around in the thread though, and enjoying the posts from anybody who is planning to keep posting in June!
See you all again for the Summer Challenge!
Day 61, 5 月 31 日 
Comprehensible Japanese - 間違い探し④ 川で釣り
It’s another spot the difference game! I love those. Honestly, the whole channel (of what I have seen) is so much fun, I’m glad I decided to switch over from Teppei. And soon I’ll be trough the complete beginner playlist! I’m excited for what’s to come.
The last challenge day. This time it didn’t feel like such a chore and I had much more fun. However, I have not been as diligent as I would like in doing listening every day. I will definitely join further challenges, but maybe also try and continue listening as much as I can during this one month break.
For now, I’m going to focus and art/writing during the coming month, so I won’t continue to post my listening experiences in this thread.
May 31, Wed of Week 10 of Spring Q2 2023
歴史 [88-90/90] - 経済成長・これから
Parade 4 - 1 [1/4].
- Wrapping upListening to audiobooks went from, along with e-book / physical book, and now to listening only. Reading along isn’t that bad, just it takes time. Maybe I was wrong. Probably I should did it better. Nonetheless, very commonly, I listened to last time first, or perhaps more than twice.
Audiobooks are actually a little above my level, but I can somewhat make it if I catch up with reading. Reading exactly along listening is possible too, but it’s easy to lose sync; also some benefits of guessing while listening is lost.
After some point, I decided that I should improve vocabularies. Maybe grammar too, but that’s just similar to reading.
The official challenge is over! Congratulations to everyone who participated! 
As always, feel free to continue posting over June until the next challenge starts.
Speaking of the next challenge, I can keep hosting it no problem, but seeing as I haven’t really been updating properly lately, maybe there’s someone more enthusiastic who would like to take over? It’s fine either way 
As for my May update, I finished the 硝子の塔の殺人 audiobook (always reading along, of course). I really liked both the book and its audio version. One character’s voice was particularly grating, but other than that it was good, and the narrator especially had a very calming voice and tone. Many times I caught myself understanding everything just by listening while I was trying to find my place on the page. Progress! Many others or course, I had to pause and reread or look things up. I still completely lose the thread if there’s more than one unknown word in a sentence. I pause to think and suddenly the audio is several sentences later.
I also tried the first Tatami Galaxy episode again. I thought that now that I have finished the book I’d find it easier to follow, but it’s just so fast. Even reading the English subtitles was nearly impossible at that speed. Just crazy.
I don’t know what books I’ll start from tomorrow, but I want to keep accompanying at least one with an audiobook. It seems to help both my listening comprehension and my reading speed, and it’s fun.
I’m going to let you know in advance that even though 扉はと閉ざされたまま has an audiobook, several of the voices are annoying even by my standards and I’m pretty sure mine are looser than yours 
Ahhhh I loved that book! I sometimes re-listen to it while on walks because it’s just an enjoyable story to sink into, especially now knowing all the tricks & twists.
May 31st
What did I listen to?: Akane takes a taxi
How much time did I spend listening?: ~12 min
Continuing on the theme of “everyday situations that give me anxiety” The taxi app she mentioned sounds kind of interesting, I’m not sure I totally understood correctly but it sounds kind of like Curb or something where you like…Uber the taxi and pay through the app I wonder if tourists can use it or if you have to have a JP credit card or something of that nature. Not that there’s a lot of need to take a taxi as a tourist (like she kind of said, I’ve never needed one while I was there, I just took trains and the occasional bus and that got me anywhere I needed to go). But it would be nice to have the option in a more rural area. Although I suppose the more rural area taxis probably don’t use the apps I just like apps because I never know what anything costs and I’m paranoid about not having the right amount of money on me (even if I have like…more money in my wallet than I would ever realistically need 
I have to have like twice what it could ever possibly cost in order to feel assured that I have enough xD I think I would actually die on the spot if I took a taxi and it turned out I didn’t have enough money, like literally just have a heart attack and die right there on the floor)
And with that, the challenge is over! The is BY FAR the best I have EVER done at a Listen Every Day Challenge, wow - I only missed 3 days out of 31!!! That’s 90%! Compared to the winter challenge, where I missed over half the days (and that, at the time, was like a personal best for me in terms of the percentage of days completed in a listening challenge ) What we have learned from this is that my brain likes walking videos, travel videos, kind of mundane little “here’s how to be a person” videos. I will have to keep this in mind xD
５月３１日 (Home Post Link)
Challenge completed! Congrats everyone! It’s been a lot of fun practicing listening with people, and I’ve really enjoyed a lot of the stuff people have shared. Watched some excellent videos, listened to some cool podcasts, and just in general spent more time focusing on listening as a skill than I would have otherwise!
I didn’t really come into the challenge with any goals other than do a little bit every day, which I did! There were days when I didn’t listen to anything long-form, but I did get at least some japanese sounds into my ears and tried to process them with my brain every single day. I did learn a lot about my listening ability, and the kinds of things I like listening to and watching during the challenge.
The last week I’ve mostly been listening to podcasts and music at work, with a few scattered episodes of anime, some mio streams, I watched an N3 practice stream from 日本語の森, and I’ve also picked up something new!
I found a place to watch アンパンマン, and so have been watching a few episodes of that here and there as a part of my broader “understanding cultural influences” project (also the reason I was watching a bit of the original gundam). This service has no subs, but thankfully I can understand more than enough to follow a preschool kids show lol. It is, all things considered, not actually all that interesting to an adult, but I figured I should at least get a taste of it. From what I understand, he’s ubiquitous in japan, but basically a non-entity in the US. Learning a little bit of new cultural info is nice, and being able to watching something comfortably with no subs also feels really good.
I think I’ll probably be taking the next month off from the challenge, but I’ll be back in July with some more concrete goals to work towards!
Thanks for the heads up! I wasn’t aware of the book, but the sample is pretty sneaky - the voices included sounded just fine. I guess 硝子の塔の殺人’s sample at least was honest, making sure to include some of the most unpleasant shrieking so that you knew what you were in for. And then the rest was a pleasant surprise
So looking at which of the books already in my tsundoku also have an audiobook available, my choices seem to be: 64, 嫌いなら呼ぶなよ, 妊娠カレンダー and むらさきのスカートの女. After finishing two long (one of them also difficult) books just now, I don’t think I want to tackle 64 right this minute, so I guess 嫌いなら呼ぶなよ (or any of the rest) sounds like a good choice. 
It was nominated for some award iirc. I’m idly reading it right now but I hate the voice acting of several of the characters. I’ll see if I can get you a sound clip at some point. I’m also not loving the writing style (it’s just bland) so that doesn’t help. Still, I’m holding out hope that the plot will prove worthwhile
I‘d be very interested in reading that one (also Akutagawa prize yay!) but I‘ll be extremely unable to do so right now due to Life™ taking its toll on me quite strongly. (If you want to know how strongly: in May I managed to read all of 70 (!) pages 
). So if you could read something else in the meantime, I’d be happy to join you for this one later in the year, promise! 
Ah, I see And I thought May was rather busy for me 
Of course I’ll wait for you. I’ll go ahead and set up a thread for 嫌いなら呼ぶなよ for now. I hope @pocketcat can join, but if not, I guess I’m used to lonely bookclubs by now. 
Jumping in for the off-month!
| Jun | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 22 | |||||||
| Week 23 | |||||||
| Week 24 | |||||||
| Week 25 | |||||||
| Week 26 |
= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish
As usual, I’m going to try to listen to something in Japanese and in Spanish every day!
I actually technically started early because I started a 60 day walking challenge last month that involves going on 45 or 60 minute walks every day, and a 90 minute walk once a week, so I have been listening to so many podcasts. Because of that other challenge, I doubt I’ll have any trouble completing this one .
As usual, I’ll be watching lots of Japanese pro wrestling shows, which I do count for the purposes of this challenge! I’ll also count post-match comments videos and similar kinds of content.
However, this time around I want to try something a little bit different! I’m going to aim for actual comprehensible listening practice instead of transcript-assisted practice, and subtitle-less listening practice that is above my level.
I’m currently listening to a podcast called Oyasumi Japanese with Shun, though I’m going through the episodes pretty fast, and will probably have to find another podcast by the end of the month, haha. So I’m not sure what I’ll be listening to after that, but I’ll find something!
I’m currently almost finished with the Duolingo podcast, though it is honestly too easy for me at this point, and I’d probably be better off moving on now. But I genuinely enjoy the podcast, so I decided to listen to the remaining episodes.
I’ll be moving on to a harder podcast soon, though, but I haven’t really looked into my options there, so I don’t know which one I’ll be choosing yet.
I got a decent chunk of this week’s レベル7 done last night so hopefully I can finish it this evening and 告白 too, but if not 告白 for sure tomorrow as I usually do those readings in one shot. Should free me up for a little reading on Saturday But I do expect to read slower as my schedule lately is swamped.
Oddly I was just on audiobook.jp and saw this:
June 1, Thu of Week 10 of Spring Q2 2023
中国史 [1/11]. Some clips are up to 30-min long, so I might break into halves.
Repeat on Parade 4 - 1 [1/4].
Hopefully this works: SndUp | Post info
No spoilers, just a ~30 second clip from chapter ~2 I think. It has 3 voice examples, one in particular I find especially annoying but I don’t like most of the cast tbh.
Thank you for the sample. Yes, one of them sounds very anime-ish and would probably get on my nerves after a while, but surprisingly I didn’t find them insufferable. It seems I may have a higher tolerance for male voices.
31/05/2023 
Home Post Link
super super late update but I’ve been ill for the past two days and coudn’t update what I did on the 31st. As usualy though, I listened to one episode from Japanese with Shun and watched a lot of videos in Japanese.
Alsoo, I loved doing this challenge with ya’ll!! I’m taking a break for a week, but I’ll be back in July 
June 2, Fri
中国史 [2/11] – 秦. I don’t understand the series that well, but I intend to force through the series, at least for references.
June 3, Sat
Parade 4 - 2 [2/4]. I wonder what really happened…
中国史 [3/11] – 漢. It gets better.
June 4, Sun
Parade 4 - 3 first half [3/4]
YUYU – 2 episodes of Europe trip.
June 5, Mon
Parade 4 - 3 latter half [4/4]
June 6, Tue
Parade 5 - 1 [1/7]
中国史 [4/11] – 三国志の世界. Actually, I bit into this one for a few days.
June 7, Wed
Parade 5 - 2 [2/7]
中国史 [5/11] – 隋と唐. Before another famous era.
June 8, Thu
Parade 5 - 3-4 [3-4/7]
中国史 [6/11] – 唐の盛衰. Also revisited pre-秦.
June 9, Fri
Parade 5 - 5 Part 1/3 [5/7]
Also revisited 秦, first half, which is the story, disregarding the map. 史記 continues after here.
June 10, Sat
Parade 5 - 5 Part 2-3/3 [6-7/7] (end audiobook)
中国史 [7/11] – 宋の盛衰
Busy as usual, so my updates are a bit sparse. I thought I’d attempt to check in once a week at least, but, well, I’m already a bit late to that .
Haven’t missed a day yet, thanks to the walking challenge I’m doing! I do feel like listening to podcasts in Japanese has helped me a lot with building my listening comprehension. I’ve noticed some gains in listening comprehension during pro wrestling shows as well, though that really comes and goes. I do better when the wrestlers are speaking very straightforwardly. (Wrestlers love to not speak straightforwardly…)
It has been a bit of a quiet period for Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, so I finished just two translations, one for the VOD show on May 27, and one for the June 4 show.
Here’s a photo from the May 27 show of a moment that made me laugh. Kamiyu and Shoko Nakajima teamed up in the main event for Kamiyu’s return to her hometown, facing Mahiro Kiryu and Aja Kong (not pictured). There is quite a bit of a height difference between Kamiyu and the “147cm Big Kaiju” Shoko, which meant that one of them was more effective than the other one when they tried this tag team move on Mahiro .
Besides TJPW, I’ve been watching a lot of Pro Wrestling NOAH in particular lately, and also tuned in for the big NOAH/New Japan Pro Wrestling/All Japan Pro Wrestling crossover show, All Together Again, which happened a couple days ago. I’m at kind of a frustrating point where my Japanese isn’t good enough for me to be able to completely follow what’s being said on my own, but I also get frustrated listening to the English commentary team talking over the wrestlers, and occasionally have quibbles with their translation choices. Maybe in another year from now, I’ll finally be free of the English commentary team, haha.
For Spanish, I finally finished the Duolingo podcast! Or, well, not quite; I stopped right before the latest season, because they were re-releasing old episodes with a bit of new content added, and I tried listening to one of them and just didn’t have the patience for that, so I decided to move on.
I did want to say, though, that the last season I listened to, The Mystery of the Itata, was genuinely incredible. Legitimately gripping stuff! I was enjoying it completely independently of language learning practice. It told the story of the Vapor Itata, which was a boat that sank in Chile over 100 years ago, but for a very long time was basically entirely forgotten about, despite the fact that like 400 people died, most of them exploited laborers who were traveling to work in the mines on false promises of a better future.
I searched around for another podcast that was a bit harder than the Duolingo podcast, and ended up trying out Radio Ambulante, which was actually made by some of the same people, and which covers similar content. It’s an NPR podcast that is made for native speakers, which intimidated me a lot at first . But I tried it out, and to my surprise, I can understand probably about 70-80% of it? I was honestly blown away. Some part of me never thought I’d ever get this far with any language I was attempting to learn.
I still have far to go, but it’s nice to see that I am in fact making real progress. I’ve watched a lot of Spongebob in Spanish, but this is my first time listening to purely auditory native media in Spanish, and one meant for adults, at that!
