🔉 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge (Summer Edition) 🏖

[rikaiwisdom]

@KJules

On another note, do y’all want me to compile a resources wiki on this thread also? We could add our recommendations there, and I could link to it from the top post? I want to try a bunch of the things you’re all doing, but they may get lost in the replies…

Sounds like a good idea to me! I gave some podcast recommendations in the reading thread, I’ll copy the message so that hopefully it’s useful to some:

@rikaiwisdom

@wiersm

Any recommendations? I’m still trying to find some nice podcasts.

Actually a few! It’s still somewhat uncharted territory for me and I haven’t listened much to some that I’ll list, but I have them saved out of recommendations from others and such. You might know some if not most already:

• Nihongo con Teppei → Obligatory mention for the sheer amount of content he has released (700+ episodes). It’s still going, now under the name of Nihongo con Teppei Z. Huge variety of topics.
• YUYUの日本語Podcast → For the little I’ve listened of this it seemed really nice. It’s similar to Nihongo con Teppei in that he speaks about different kinds of topics each time. He also has a YouTube channel with a lot of content to which he uploads old episodes of the podcast with transcriptions which I’m sure is a ton of work, as well as live streams and so on. Recently he started a history of Japan podcast I’ve been really meaning to check out, on his YT channel with transcriptions as well.
• Let’s learn Japanese from small talk! → Two Japanese exchange uni students in the UK. It’s one of my favourites personally, they’re so silly and fun to listen to and the topics are usually really interesting about Japanese culture.
• ゆる言語学ラジオ → Recent ish discovery. It’s cool facts about language and linguistics but in a casual setting, just two friends chatting. It does seem really fast paced but the very little I’ve listened to was very promising.
• 味な副音声 → Barely listened to this one yet, but talks about food. Chill, relaxing atmosphere.
• Let’s Talk in Japanese! → Similar to Nihongo con Teppei and YUYUの日本語Podcast, but this one has each episode graded in JLPT levels, which is nice.
• さくら通信 → Another one I have saved. Huge variety of miscellaneous topics, goofy broadcasters, longer episodes.
• ゲームなんとか → Long talks about video games.

The easier ones I recommend are YUYU, Let’s Talk in Japanese, Let’s learn Japanese from small talk! (love this one personally), and Teppei (has a beginner podcast too as it’s been mentioned). The rest are more advanced. I don’t have absolute beginner recommendations, sadly, sorry! I’m sure someone else can recommend easier resources. I just didn’t have the need for them because I covered the beginner levels in a language school, so I don’t know what’s out there and don’t have anything I can personally recommend.

On YouTube I also recommend Comprehensible Japanese (already mentioned), あかね的日本語教室 and もしもしゆうすけ (if you check his playlists it’s much easier to navigate) . Also for videos on grammar, obligatory mention to 日本語の森 and ゆみせんせいの日本語ch .

I think podcasts have boosted my listening comprehension by a lot. I treat listening differently from reading; extensive listening and intensive reading. I would go for something that you can understand a decent portion of but I wouldn’t worry about not understanding everything (e.g. understanding 10 or 15 minutes of a 20 minute podcast or whatever). As long as you listen to something that is around your level I’m sure you will improve over time. It just takes time and patience, like reading and anything else.