Day 21! Went for another walk, didn’t have time for the full episode, but listened to another 45 minutes of a random episode of さくら通信. This one tripped me up for a bit, however, after a certain point I found that I was following everything for quite a while. They got onto telling a story and stuck with it for a while; I think that helped. In that long stretch even when I missed a word here or there, I could pretty easily get it, which is definitely big progress from where I was a few seasons ago, whenever it was that I last joined one of these challenges. Feeling decently encouraged heading into the start of the film club 
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July 21st!
Another episode of Terrace House. Quite a sweet one today 
I also had a lesson today. We talked about lots of things including my trip to London last weekend, and common interview questions.
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7月21日 (金)
I listened to:
Learn Japanese with Noriko 20-22 (20 min?)
ことのは日本語の会話 8 (~10 min)
日本語の聴解のためのpodcast (あかね) 2 (10 min)
Kurzgesagt - 地球で最も孤独な場所、深海に何が隠れている？深海 (1:30)
Noriko is very easy to listen, so I don’t even notice when I listen to several podcasts one after the other. ことのは日本語の会話 had a really interesting subject (for me, as a woman) - 生理. It’s the type of day to day topic that never really gets discussed, so it was refreshing to listen to the girls talking about it and also naming some of the ways it is referred to in different languages (such as tomato festival and dynamite festival in Japanese, lol). I also hadn’t listened to あかね in a long time, so I decided to go from the start - it was also great, she did a self-intro in business Japanese and explained the verbs and words she was using afterwards - as someone who sucks at 敬語 or anything similar, it was really helpful.
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7月22日 (土)
I listened to:
Learn Japanese with Noriko 23 (~9 min)
ことのは日本語の会話 9 (9 min)
日本語の聴解のためのpodcast (あかね) 3 (4 min)
Another enjoyable podcast day, learned some words in 岡山弁 with Noriko and about some Japanese 迷信 with ことのは日本語の会話. I used to often listen to podcasts during my commute to work when I lived in my last apartment, but I stopped it eventually (and just stopped listening to podcasts in general). Now, I find myself enjoying walks to errands or chores much more since I look forward to what I’ll be listening or learn in the meantime.
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７月２２日
ゆとりっ娘たちのたわごと #1 (37 min)
Started a new podcast I had saved from a while ago. It seems like another 雑談 type of podcast with two young women talking about random stuff. It felt a little bit gossipy at one point and I’m really not into that, but the rest was fine, they seem to be having a lot of fun. I’ll keep going to see if it’s something I like or not really, it’s too early to judge. I also don’t understand how they order their episodes? It seems like they have two things (series?) going on at the same time, each with its own order, so at some point another #1 with a different tag starts and it’s kinda confusing.
I also sort of decided that the shower is not a good place to listen to most of these podcasts, sadly. The sound of the water flowing makes it unnecessarily harder to understand what’s being said, and unless they have exceptional audio quality and they talk directly to the mic it usually doesn’t work out. YUYU is usually perfectly fine (except for the episodes where he has guests with their own mics, which then it depends), so I might just listen to YUYU there in that case, but that comes with the risk of burnout from listening to the same thing constantly. I like podcasts, but to be honest I don’t love them to the point that I’d purposefully sit and listen to them, I only listen to them while I’m doing other stuff that doesn’t require attention. On the other hand if I only listen to them while doing other stuff like say cleaning, that won’t be enough to fill the time I’d like to have everyday with listening, because I simply don’t clean every day, so I have to either think of new ways to integrate podcasts, or find something else like videos or series or whatever that is more amusing and makes it more likely for me to listen to or watch more often. Next challenge, I suppose! I still plan to explore that Crunchyroll idea at some point. And I also plan to resume early morning walks/exercise at some point, that would really give me a lot of time to listen to things for sure and solve the problem altogether, but… that’s a whole change of habits and schedule and harder to pull off.
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July 22nd!
Another episode of Terrace House with my daughter tonight. A new member is coming in the next episode, but my husband is due home tomorrow so it my be a while before we get to see them! 
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7月23日 (日)
I listened to:
Learn Japanese with Noriko 24 (~9 min)
日本語の聴解のためのpodcast (あかね) 4 and 5 (5 min)
Kurzgesagt - 地球で最も孤独な場所、深海に何が隠れている？深海 (1:30)
A calm day, not that much listening apart from a few podcasts during chores, since Sunday is usually a more family-oriented day. Got started on some Kurzgesagt though, which I am happy about.
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July 23rd!
Turns out my husband was getting home later than I first thought so we had one more night of watching Terrace House We watched 2 episodes.
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Day 24, ７ 月 ２４ 日 
: Back to my Home Post
Comprehensible Japanese
- No.1 in Japan VS No.1 in the world
Comparing and contrasting things like highest mountain in Japan with highest in the world. Also learned how to say km², which I will remember by thinking of Jack Frost (平方 / hee-hoo).
- Ramen
I’m hungry…
I remember the ramen I had in that nice Japanese restaurant …last? year. We need to go back, there were so many delicious sounding things… And I definitely want to try more ramen broths.
11 Likes
7月24日 (月)
I listened to:
Learn Japanese with Noriko 25 (~9 min)
日本語の聴解のためのpodcast (あかね) 6 (5 min)
ことのは日本語の会話 13 (17 min)
The girls from ことのは日本語の会話 were talking about the differences in parents-children relationships in Japan and abroad, which was quite interesting to hear about, as usual. Especially how in some cultures parents and kids just say ‘I love you’ to each other casually (which me and my parents do), while you wouldn’t really see that in Japan… but they considered it normal to get in the bath with their moms 
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Day 25, ７ 月 ２５ 日
: Back to my Home Post
Comprehensible Japanese
- Driving
- The Ant and the Grasshopper
Another story I hate because people are always so condescending when they explain the moral to you.
Here I'm ranting about it
… because I’m extremely autistic.
“Oh, it’s about how you shouldn’t be lazy and work hard so you’re not a burden on others”, no you dumbass, it’s about how some animals live in social groups where most workers only live three months and don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labor but instead ensure the future of the group as a whole, and some animals don’t have such social structure and still live their lives because different ecological niches.
Not to mention that grasshoppers lay their eggs in autumn, so them dying isn’t detrimental to the survival of the species, but an ant queen, the only one who lays the eggs, is helpless without workers and needs a support structure to ensure they make it through the winter.
How dare you try and anthropomorphize these bugs and moralize and demonize their completely natural behaviours, you absolute hindbrain. “But it’s a metaphor”, I know what a metaphor is, I know you’re using these animals as stand-ins to impress you morals upon children for the sake of social conditioning, I’m just telling you it doesn’t work because it’s too transparently stupid and wrong about the insects to boot!
Wow, I really don’t like that story, huh? Maybe I’m just extra cranky today.
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Haha, I love your naturalist’s view of the story. It instantly makes it so much better! I propose we use it form now on to teach kids (and adults, why not) about nature, and the amazing variety of life in it.
I never liked the story much either, but truth is it’s one of Aesop’s fables, which are full of anthropomorphized animals (those poor demonized foxes) that take on human qualities for the sake of moralizing. So I unfortunately doubt the initial purpose of the story was much different than the one given to it nowadays, but then who knows.
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July 24, Mon of Week 5 of Summer Q3 2023
YUYU, 1 new episode.
予言の島 Ch.3 - 3
July 25, Tue
予言の島 Ch.3 - 4
YUYU, 2 new episodes.
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Not really had the time recently to get any Yakuza or listening in, but I managed to play some Yakuza last night, and today I listened to the important task of acquiring cake:
I can usually listen for about a minute or two and understand before I just default back to the subtitles because I stumbled somewhere. Once I start reading the Japanese subs it’s hard to not read them. But when the cake started to appear it was pretty distracting looking at how tasty they were so I guess that was a good way of stopping me from looking at the subs. But I’m not sure how much I understood other than thinking ケーキ ケーキ ケーキ ケーキ repeatedly.
I don’t remember where I’d gotten to in Yakuza 0 on my last post, but I’m now on chapter 4. It’s not as easy listening-wise when playing as Majima, all that Osaka-ben is very mumbly. I’m getting pretty distracted by the substories too, which don’t always have much dialogue, but they are too much fun not to be distracted by.
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7月25日 (火)
I listened to:
Learn Japanese with Noriko 26 & 27
日本語の聴解のためのpodcast (あかね) 9 and 10
ことのは日本語の会話 14
Today in ことのは日本語の会話, the theme was 反抗期, aka the rebellious period teenagers go through. Another fun topic to listen to. Noriko had a harder podcast about Covid, while Akane talked about SNS and movies/anime. Overall probably got >30 min of listening, and the topics are nice and varied, but I’d also like to challenge myself to listen to different materials… it’s been a bit hard since I’ve had tiring days with work/life in general, but I will try to vary it a bit perhaps tomorrow or Thursday.
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I listened to some Nihongo con Teppei Z with subtitles (an hour in total) and was shocked at understanding 90-95%.
Then I watched all 5 episodes of “Old Fashioned Cupcakes” on Netflix. I have watched this show 3 times before with English subtitles so I know the story very well. I love it so much.
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I haven’t been posting much this challenge, but I found a short, natural Japanese, and kind of funny / random video I wanted to share:
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July 24th!
Today I only squeezed in a little bit of listening.
2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.
July 25th!
Busy day today, so more Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners - 2 episodes again.
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