🔉 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge (Summer Edition) 🏖

July 13th!

Today I listened to Episode 18 of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners, and also watched 3 Episodes of Fruits Basket (with subs).
I’m pleased by how understandable I’m finding Nihongo con Teppei now. The last time I tried it, a few months ago, I couldn’t follow much of it at all, but now I can basically understand it all as long as I’m fully concentrating on it :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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Home post

LEDC
Week 3

July 13

ゆる言語学ラジオ, episode 6 → 24 min.
Nihongo con Teppei Z, episode 29 → 12 min.

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I continue binging terrible shows I won’t name.

Got like 3 hours in easy though…

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July 13 :blossom: Home Post

I did a pretty good amount today actually; I watched a couple more videos from the Cities Skylines guy (though one of them wasn’t about Cities Skylines :eyes: imagine that) and I checked out the first episodes of a couple anime on netflix, of which the far more enjoyable one was べるぜバブ :joy: It is chaotic, lots of fun so far! Very silly and just has a pretty wild setup overall, so I’ll probably be watching more when the mood strikes :grin: Language-wise the most difficult aspect so far is that like half the characters are delinquents but I’m so used to aggro anime boy speech at this point that I’m really unfazed lmao. There’s some keigo stuff too but nothing too rough there either. So far so good!

Omg classic, honestly where like 90% of my star wars knowledge comes from :joy:

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I’ve really gotten into Pokemon Journeys, I’m watching an episode or two every day. I love scorbunny in the show (or should I say ヒバにー). I never really watched pokemon as a kid, but I think this is easy enough that I can follow it easily even without understanding every word, and it’s pretty engaging. Ok, off to watch another episode!

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Jul 14, Thu of Week 3 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

Today’s story is 雷さまの病気 (:studio_microphone:).

Kaminari-sama

Actually, there is also a recording on YouTube, is spoken a little differently, but looks unpopular?

The recording is now around 16 min, even the original audio is a little less than 10 minutes. Also, this is the second time recording. (I recorded the first time in the morning, 9 hours ago, then I got busy.)

Story impression

Use this to protect from (かみなり).

【爆笑・めでたし】まんが日本昔ばなし「雷様の病気」(高画質) 8-4 screenshot

I have watched a little more anime – やがて君になる is ending. Also watched a little of かぐや様は告らせたい S3, which works nice as a comedy. (I read the manga and S1-S2 before, but I think comedy parts of the story are better.)

Now, I think watching with JP subtitle is better, but not being in Japan, there are a lot of chance to watch without subtitle anyway.

Also, I thought about pitch a while ago, that I might be able to imagine and emulate with my native language [1] About the notation, I use color codes for now, because I am more sensitive to them than black-and-white. (I avoid non-Japanese scripts, but colors and non-letters are OK.)


Yesterday, I attended a session with another italki tutor for small talk. (Another booking is still there starting next week, maybe to focus on education and assignments?) I think I can somehow listen and talk back? [2] Sometimes my thinking was slow or not there, and sometimes I have to ask for clarifcation; but then, there are obviously hope for the future. Two or three years ago, I went on a tour to Japan, and I can’t practically communicate at all. (Although I was always able to somewhat read.)

I was also given some mangas’ and movies’ recommendations. (And I also revealed my background.)

Obviously, I can’t just attend every day (because money, and I have irregular schedules too); but to test with textbook’s audio question / dialogue prompt. I think the textbook is somehow harder and less encouraging; but I have to try and win somehow.


  1. which is tonal, and somehow I feel more tonal than Mandarin Chinese. Not that I really know Mandarin well enough. ↩︎

  2. I think it is largely about vocabulary size, and commonness, as well as relevance. ↩︎

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:sound: Listening Room: Date 20220714 :loud_sound:

Day XXIII: :art:

Watched the 7th and last video of 日本の妖怪

Some really interesting pieces of art in this video!

Sad to see this end, this was a great series of videos! Not sure if I learned much, language-wise that is, it’s pretty hard to tell with listening. Sometimes it feels like I can recognise a word one day and then completely blank over the same word the next day. And other times it feels like I’m only hearing the same words every time and not hearing new ones.

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July 14 :orange_square:

It’s been one of those days. I couldn’t concentrate or anything, didn’t like any kind of content I tried out, nothing interested me. In the end I did listen to enough Japanese by sampling and rejecting dozens of videos, I just didn’t really pay much attention to any of it. I even tried listening to my long-neglected audiobook. This also couldn’t hold my interest though. I’m sure the problem was me. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

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Don’t be so harsh on yourself. I’m sure your brain needed some well-deserved rest - you usually read and listen and study a lot each day! Just enjoy whatever you feel like doing today :blush:

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Ooh, I’ve been watching more of those occasionally too! Saw a flying car one today that was pretty good. Though when I’ve tried to branch out into his non-Cities Skylines videos it seemed like the vast majority are survival games? Which I’m really not into. I want to look around more though, curious what you watched.


Home post

Went out for a short walk in the heat and listened to more ひいきびいき . I definitely think it’s the right level for me, a bit easier than さくら通信. Both are probably fine but I don’t feel like I’m missing significant things from the former. I guess continuing the theme, with something I’d know about, the PC gaming episode caught my eye. Only had time for about half of it but it was, indeed, a guy describing his experience with doing that. Getting to names of processors and stuff, it reminded me of how terribly slow my comprehension for larger numbers still is, haha. And it gave me a good laugh when he described Razer product names as 中二病. He’s not wrong!

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Home post :guitar: July 14th

・Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 149 (continued). Topic: Star Wars. Length: 1 hour.

They started talking about one of the movies I haven’t seen yet, mentioned Kylo Ren and Finn and the new red robot whose name I didn’t catch. I tried turning the speed up to 1.5x, my audio player app doesn’t have anything between that and 1x. A bit too fast to catch everything, sometimes sounds were just unintelligible mumbling, but went surprisingly okay. Saved me some time when I should really be going to sleep.

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Home post

LEDC
Week 3

July 14

ゆる言語学ラジオ, episode 7 → 33 min.


Today’s episode was way too difficult. These guys can throw so many sentences until coming to a stop, it’s insane. Paired with ridiculous speech speed. I wonder if I should leave this one until I improve a bit more… :thinking: . I don’t know, I’m at that point where I think Nihongo con Teppei doesn’t push my limits and I need something a bit harder, but this one in particular is still a bit too much, probably. What they talk about is super interesting but it sucks missing half of it ;-; . I might try さくら通信 next.

E: On another note, I’m interested in ひいきびいき too but I was not very comfortable downloading the torrent without a VPN… I won’t lie, I don’t know exactly how torrent works, and didn’t want my IP leaking out there. That’s the reason I haven’t really listened to it yet. It used to be one very recommended everywhere a few years ago. In fact if someone could enlighten my ignorance about torrent safety I would appreciate it. FURTHER EDIT: I should clarify, legal torrenting, which I think this is, right? The authors gave permissions for the podcast to be downloaded and stored, if I remember correctly?

last edit: nevermind all that, it’s apparently fully uploaded on archive.org.

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This is true! And it’s where I’ve been listening.

If you use a VPN, having one of those (properly configured to work through torrenting software) is a good way to keep your IP obscured when torrenting, too.

IIRC there are also services that torrent things for you and then give you simple download files, but you’d have to pay for that and I imagine you don’t have enough reason to seek that out.

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July 14th!

Today I watched 4 episodes of the final season of Fruits Basket. Only 3 episodes left now… I’m going to be sad when I don’t have any more to watch I think. Need to start thinking about what to watch next.

I also listened to JapanesePod101’s Upper Beginner Season 1, Lesson 4. This series focuses on teaching Keigo via listening to announcements and recorded messages. Todays was an example of calling a Customer Server phoneline outside of business hours. There were plenty of words I didn’t catch since my Keigo is pretty terrible :smiley: but I got the gist of the whole example so I was really pleased.

(Home Post)

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I continue to watch terrible romcoms. The dumber the plot the better. Preference given to anything not involving high school students. I’m getting a bit bored of it though so might return to my regularly scheduled programming of audiobooks, crime shows, and random things on youtube.

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Summary Post

July 14th
What did I listen to?: はじめてのおつかい
How much time did I spend listening?: 1 episode (15 min)

I ended being at work late and I knew I wasn’t going to want to do anything when I got home, so I smartly decided to watch an episode of this on my phone while I was riding the train home xD Not a lot of listening, but better than nothing.

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Jul 15, Fri of Week 3 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

Today’s story is かや泥棒の長八郎 (:studio_microphone:). Seems to be a famous 裁き from 大岡(おおおか)越前(えちぜん)

Echizen

Story impression

One way to look at it, is how to judge so as to retain real relationships, not making grudges and hardships for everyone? Yet, appropriately warn and make a lesson.


Yesterday I watched やがて君になる to the end (EP13), but I don’t feel like it has ended. Watched an EP on smartphone (Netflix app), and didn’t require Language Reactor and PC/laptop. (Actually, right now, I use Language Reactor mostly just to download subtitles.)

Also tried Doctor X, which appears difficult to me, even with subtitle (albeit interesting), so I watched only the beginning of it. I might need to learn more medical vocabularies first, perhaps from ブラックジャックによろしく manga series?

Not many JP series on Netflix has JP sub for me, but of course the above two series have one. Another one that has sub in my region (タイ) is Berserk.

となりの怪物くん looks funny and cute so far.

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July 14 :blossom: Home Post

Today I just watched another let’s play and another episode of べるぜバブ, so nothing too crazy! It’s all still generally going pretty well, though it’s definitely more of an effort to get myself to do even a fraction of the amount I do with reading :joy: but hey it all add up either way :man_shrugging:

The only non-Cities Skylines ones I’ve watched are these:

It’s this platformer where you have to die and use your previous corpses to proceed which really just feels like someone made a game targeted for him specifically :joy: It’s been fun though! I definitely feel like they’re easier than a lot of the Cities Skylines videos, more like ongoing reactions and less city planning terminology haha.

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July 15 :orange_square:

Today I didn’t have time to waste looking for the best video to watch, so I just semi-randomly picked the “I Love Sushi” playlist from the Japan Foundation YouTube channel. It was much more interesting than I expected! The first episode especially focuses on the history of sushi, which apparently looked very different in its original form. [1]. The next episode was on 握り寿司, and the final one on local sushi varieties. This was also very interesting. I didn’t have my full attention on the videos, and there was a lot of vocabulary I didn’t recognize, but I understood adequately, I believe. (that wouldn’t be the case if it weren’t for the visual element, I’m sure).

Thank you, I needed that reminder. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
I do tend to forget that brains need down-time too…


  1. a whole fish with stuffing ↩︎

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:sound: Listening Room: Date 20220715 :loud_sound:

Day XXIV: :cow2: :cow2: :cow2: :chocolate_bar::cow2: :cow2: :cow2:

I wasn’t sure on what to watch next, so I just watched からめる’s latest vid, but I think I actually understood quite a lot of the Japanese, so yay!

Additionals
:heavy_check_mark: Episode of Pokemon

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