July 1st!
I listened to 4 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei Beginners today and was pleasantly surprised to be able to understand basically everything other than a few seconds where my attention wavered a bit and I didn’t listen properly.
I’m hoping to improve my listening stamina during this challenge, since at the moment I disappear off into daydreaming unless I concentrate really hard on listening!
Watched a few episodes of this sol anime (まちカドまぞく), feel like I’m picking up a lot of new vocabulary from it, which is great 
Also listened to roughly 1 hour of the 安達としまむら audio books during my walk. Currently on volume 6!
Home post 
July 1st
・SKM N2: I went through 問題紹介 5 & 6 (did 1–4 yesterday), and then the exercises on page 16–26 (did page 14–15 yesterday).
I already like this textbook. I discovered one thing I’m struggling with: double negatives. Specifically this structure: できないんじゃないでしょうか which means できないと思う. And then there’s stuff like intonation, which is usually easy to understand (question vs assertion etc), but double negatives like mentioned can make things confusing (did it happen or did it not?).
・Also listened to Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 145. Topic: Shopping. Length: 1 1/2 hour.
Long time no hear, Sakota Daichi-san, Kimura Haruka-san! It was fun to hear unknown words and try to figure out what kanji they’re supposed to be spelled with. Like 実店舗 (じってんぽ) “physical retail store (rather than online)”, never heard it before. Also 無印 (むじるし) “unlabeled, unbranded”, really had to pause for a minute to look it up because I couldn’t accurately pick up the sounds.
Today was kinda intense, went all out on the first day hahah 
July 1 
Home Post
It begins! 
I’ve been anything but consistent with listening so today was kinda chaotic figuring out what I wanna do; I had some lets plays on in the background and that went reasonably well, definitely didn’t understand everything but enough to get some goofs and such. I don’t have the stamina to do listening like that for very long yet though 
The main thing I want to do consistently is watch at least an episode (probably mostly anime tbh) a day, which I’ll probably mostly do with Japanese subs since I think that’s still most beneficial to me at this point. And that means ハイキュー！！ right now! I always forget just how much I love ハイキュー！！ until I watch it haha, it’s just so much fun 
I’d watched through the first few episodes of the second season in Japanese a while back and fell off for one reason or another, so it’s good to be back. It’s a pretty manageable watch for me at this point too - I paused a couple times to look up a word, but for the most part I just let it go at normal speed and kept up just fine. I’ve consumed enough media with shounen-esque speech to be unfazed 
I guess listening to Japanese music could also count as listening, and if that’s the case I guess I’ve been practicing listening every day It’s different though, definitely more passive than what I’m going for for this challenge, but it all helps!
Making a note to come back to this later, thanks for the suggestions everyone!
| LEDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 |
July 1
Final Fantasy 14 Live Letter: 2 hours.
Here we go again. The timing of the presentation was pretty useful for the start of the challenge! These live letters are presentations where they announce adjustments and upcoming new content for the game and they are usually lengthy. This one was two hours long, and as usual very fast paced and quite hard to catch at times, but that was really fun as they usually don’t have English translations for many of the Live Letters.
Well, I ended up listening to something random yesterday. So random, in fact, that I can’t remember the details. (Okay, no, I just remembered, it was about how stainless forks, spoons, and knives are made)
Not sure what today will bring.
july 1 
home post
I listened to Kona’s Big Adventure on Satori Reader today… or at least, I tried. I caught a little bit here and there, but overall I struggled to understand what was happening. I’ve read this story before so I was expecting to be able to follow along a bit better! Tomorrow I’ll probably go with something a bit easier like Comprehensible Japanese or something
Jul 2, Sat of Week 1 of Summer 
2022
Today’s story to be listened and read aloud is お月さまのお使い, which is a 民話 from 高知県.
There is a singing song in that story, that I can’t really sing. Probably this one.
I’ve got a new meaning for ぺったんこ today. If you can’t familiar with a colloquial meaning of this vocab — try googling for images.
Yesterday, I listened to a podcast about an interview with a successful Japanese learner, but it’s in Japanese, so I don’t really understand much. Also, watched a YouTube on foreigners living in Japan, like their food. Actual answer varies, though. Also, some people’s speaking got a voiceover. Probably that isn’t Japanese.
As I have tried reading aloud for about a week, I am thinking about memorizing pitch accents somehow; and what I trust most, is memorizing.
I now see communication skills as having two parts – understanding well, and being expressive (and expressiveness itself covers being understood well); while writing does have some separate points from voicing.
Well I’m not starting the official challenge very strong, I ended up having a medical issue and I spent most of the last two days sleeping. Theoretically I could have put on some japanese on in the background, but I did not. I’m still feeling under the weather, so I don’t know if I will listen to much this weekend, but once I’m feeling better I will! I’ve been doing well in June, although I haven’t updated here. I keep a physical study journal, and if I can make it over to my desk today I’ll update my log here.
I have been reading people’s updates, its cool to see what everyone else is listening to! Good luck to everyone starting the official challenge!
I really hope you’re feeling better soon 
Might be a little light on listening today, I accidentally dragged myself out of bed late and I see I’ve managed to pile my reviews a bit too high again. Oops. All the same, back to watching a little bit of speedrunning, right now it’s The Wind Waker! Great game. I listened to the next part of the audiobook for スマホを落としただけなのに and I’m happy to say I’m still usually catching the gist on my first, blind listen! Missing loads of details, sure, but I’m pretty pleased, especially since the last one was about the detective characters (the perspectives change with each section), who at the beginning I couldn’t follow at all.
Also, last night I happened to catch a little of Amano Pikamee playing The Quarry. She’s a vtuber so that’s not for everyone, but in what I saw, I thought her speaking seemed relatively simple, so I wanted to share.
Listened to two, one about rabbits, monkey and mochi, and the other about a skelebob.
I feel the problem of picking out select words but not the rest of the sentence still persists, and I fight with myself figuring out the context and miss the next sentence.
I have some sake for later and will see about watching a Japanese film, hopefully the sake will have magical listening ability powers. 
This is from a different story but have a cute deer:
I think, from what I’ve heard, the magical powers are related to talking 
. But I hope you prove me wrong.
I can’t really have alcohol anymore, but I used to love sake. From my understanding a lot of it is actually considered best to have chilled, but get the right kind and I found it super pleasant to drink warm.
Now that you mention it, if I could still drink, it might do wonders to shut up the part of me that always stops movies halfway through because I feel like I’m missing too much, haha.
That’s my luck, get magical Japanese talking powers and no one will be around to hear it. 
Sorry to hear you can’t have it anymore. I’m not a super fan of alcohol, I only really like whisky and wine, but I’ve found sake to be a really nice drink. Usually, depending on the size of the bottle, I’ll have part chilled and part warm another time, but I feel my preference is to have it warm every time. I feel it brings out the flavour more, plus it provides extra cosy feelings.
There are non-alcoholic sake, but I’ve never tried one so not sure how good they are, but could be something!
Oh good to know! That might be worth a shot sometime. My problem is so nebulous I can’t even be sure what it is without experimenting more – basically, after I caught covid, I developed sudden bad reactions to drinking even small amounts of beer or wine. The best guess I have is it’s related to histamines, but if that’s true, then I guess the alcohol content wouldn’t really matter. I need to do more testing with specifically low histamine alcohols, or there’s something you can use in wine that allegedly removes them? 
Anyway, enough about my health problem, have fun! Excited to hear what you watch and how that goes.
July 2 Home Post
I’m doing okay so far I think! I watched a couple more lets plays and that was pretty fun; definitely understanding more than I have in the past so that’s cool. Stuff like that is good for listening practice without subtitles, since I don’t feel as strongly about catching every single nuance as I can get with actual plot
On that side, ハイキュー！！ is powerful; I got caught up in all the transformative stuff happening and ended up watching three episodes! Love training camp arcs It’s still a generally comfortable watch, though there are specific characters I have particular difficulty with for sure Like Nekomata especially says a lot of weird stuff, and Takeda can get kinda metaphorical, that kind of thing. Other than that it’s pretty smooth sailing! ハイキュー！！'s always a fun time
Oh no, I hope you feel better soon! Sending you good vibes 
July 1 
July 2 
So I decided to color code my listening days.
would mean passive listening in the background, very low to nil comprehension
would mean somewhat active listening, some comprehension
would be active listening, adequate comprehension
is the goal: active listening, satisfactory comprehension (I’m being realistic here, I don’t expect full comprehension any time soon)
So the first two days fell right in the middle of this range. Yesterday I listened to some かがみの孤城 at bedtime, and it was going really well, until, well, I fell asleep.
Today I decided to listen to something before bedtime, and watched three Onomappu videos. I really like his style, very easy to deduce the meaning even when I don’t know, or don’t catch, the words. I was actively watching this time, and didn’t fall asleep (!), so I can say it went better than yesterday.
I really want to get back to the audiobook though. I probably need to find some totally mindless tasks to accompany it with. Too bad it’s too hot for walks at the moment.
Home post July 2nd
・Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 146. Topic: Outer wear. Length: 1 hour.
There were also mentions of Star Wars and 合コン.
Was tired, so no shinkanzen master today.
July 2nd
Taking it a bit easy today as I’m trying to chill out a bit pre-JLPT tomorrow!
So I took a bubble bath and I watched the first 4 episodes of Fruits Basket Season 2 (with subs), which I’ve been meaning to watch for ages.
