I have been using Bite Size Japanese every day for about a month now. It has been fantastic!
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I should describe this a bit more. This podcast is for beginners and people who are feeling bad about not understanding anything. Fret not. This podcast is about simple things in daily life using colloquial vocabulary. She speaks slowly, but not terribly slowly, and when she uses a more difficult word, she often defines it in English or Japanese. The subtitles have full kanji and it works great.
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July 7th!
Today I watched 3 episodes of Fruits Basket Season 2 (with subs), and also listened to JapanesePod101’s Upper Beginner Season 1, Episode 3.
I know JapanesePod101 gets mixed reviews, but I really like how they repeat a dialogue twice at the start, then give an english translation of it. It lets me try to understand the first time, then listen again to try to catch any bits that I missed, and then confirms for me whether or not I understood it properly.
Thanks for sharing that channel @Sailnir, it looks super useful!
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Decided to give the 妖怪 video ya’ll were watching a try and oof! @omk3 @Zakarius I think the assessment of this as ‘easy’ is a bit off 
I got through ok (def missed some things) but went back to peek the JP subs to check my understanding. That’s quite extensive vocab, and it’s describing the origin of words in some places to boot!
I haven’t yet listened to any 殺人ライセンス today so no updates there, but I’ll probably listen to it some tonight. While I enjoy how easy it is I have been a bit disappointed at the slow plot development.
edit: I think this 妖怪 video is slightly more approachable, although still a pretty wide vocab. There are closed captions in JP if you want them: Japanese Yokai – 3. Oni, the Quintessential Yokai／【日本の妖怪】３．これぞ妖怪 鬼 - YouTube
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| LEDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 2 |
July 7
Nihongo con Teppei Z: episodes 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 → 61 min.
Lately I’m finding podcasts chill to listen to at night when everything is quiet. I discovered Teppei also does live streaming and they’re all on YouTube, so that might be another near future resource to listen to.
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Jul 8, Fri of Week 2 of Summer 
2022
I am watching this version of シン・デレラ
Yesterday I watched several anime (planned ones too – やがて君になる, 進撃の巨人, SPY x FAMILY; I don’t want to continue Death Note yet). The one that caught my eyes is 盾の勇者の成り上がり. No subtitle, and although my understanding was limited, I caught vocabularies and grammar here and there, and made some story. – I might consider reading the series later.
Thanks Sailnir for the YouTube Channel. It probably works well eyes-free as well. With YouTube subscription, I can play YouTube on smartphone with screen off.
About Yokai videos, if I were to pick one to study (vocabularies), that would be omkさん’s. Indeed, I can’t really understand enough from listening for both videos; and I also probably can’t gauge many grammar points without knowing vocabularies first.
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He also, crucially, sometimes just does bizarre things like this
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July 7 
Home Post
All I really wanted to do today was play バディミッションBOND (which I guess is kind of listening but that felt like cheating 
) so I just watched some of a random let’s play to get my listening in. It was pretty fun! I definitely didn’t get all of it (he talked really fast sometimes) but it was a good time overall!
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July 8 
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Pocketcat! 
This is exactly the kind of video I was looking for on Yokai, yet Youtube just never let it appear on searches for some reason. (In hindsight, I should have thought to look up Japan Foundation for possible interesting videos, yokai or not).
I watched the whole seven-video playlist on Yokai in a row, and I had a huge smile on my face the whole time. That’s the kind of Yokai presentation I had been looking for for ages. The focus on art and real Japanese traditions and history, the lovely photography, the direction, it was perfect! I’ll certainly rewatch with subtitles, because the videos were too good for me to let stuff slip by unnoticed, and I may relisten without subtitles again (and again?). 
Language-wise it was about the level of the wildlife videos, I thought. I didn’t catch everything, not even close, but I definitely caught more than in the NipponPon video. The only part where I got one or two words at the most, was when an old lady spoke about encountering a kappa when she was in elementary school. No idea what kind of dialect/accent that was, but it might as well be a different language to my ears.
Among other things, Gegege no Kitaro made an appearance of course, as did Hokusai and his amazing art. I could gaze at those pictures for ages. And there’s a Yokai museum? Who knew? I’d certainly love to visit!
Here’s the link to the playlist in case other people are interested:
Yes, I can see that now. That’s a relief, to be honest. I think it was the cutesy clipart that fooled me…
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Lol i tried her a month and a half ago and could barely understand anything. Maybe I will try again.
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I have reached enlightenment after watching that, was worth the braincells 
The track slaps though 日本語のボキャブラリー、どんどんいきますよ ♪
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Day XVII: 風呂 
Listened to today’s Edo tale!
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Thanks for sharing, this looks really helpful!
Yehhhh there was some pretty out-there vocab, I did not find it easy one bit
And those yokai vids look real interesting! Thanks for sharing, I’ll make note to listen to these later!
This is amazing
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Don’t worry. The more you listen the easier it will become. I lived in Chile for 2 years. It took me 4 months of straight listening to start to understand a lot.
Today is about sake:
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4 months is a very short time lol but thanks for the encouragement.
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It was %100 immersion %100 of the time and Spanish is way easier than Japanese. That said, if you can get an hour of listening in a day, by the time you reach level 20 you’ll be understanding every word you know and that will be a lot. In 4 months you can be really good.
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I am taking your word as gospel and will report back. I do at least an hour a day and 4 hours on good days. I have been doing this for a month and only on level 11. I have even more motivation to listen more though (and soon will be in Japan). Hugsies
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Sounds awesome! Use subtitles in Japanese, they make initial understanding much easier.
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What are you going to Japan for?
july 8 
home post
I forgot to listen yesterday 
so today I’m listening to twice as much to make up for it. Even though I’ve already listened to something today, I’ll try to fit in more later (maybe Teppei)
I decided to listen to this today! Apparently I was already subbed and had watched her first video, but I must have done that a while ago because I don’t remember it at all (maybe it was a situation where I thought “yeah I’ll listen to this” and then never did, that seems to happen to me a lot when it comes to listening practice). I (re?)watched her first video and she speaks at a great pace! I’m trying not to look at the subtitles unless I really don’t understand what she’s saying.
Yeah that definitely describes me lol
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Onn the JET Programme
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