July 13th. Same cafe event as the 12th, slightly different crowd, hard to follow, lots of conversations about Ukraine, Russia, Shinzo Abe and general politics, but I tried.
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Day XXII: 
Listened to the 6th video of 日本の妖怪, this time about Hokusai and Kuniyoshi!
Yokai and ukiyo-e in one video!
yesyesyes
I will always be sad that Hokusai never got to finish his One Hundred Ghost Stories ukiyo-e series
(though can you really be sad when he has thousands of artwork to his name, it amazes me how much he managed to produce in his lifetime, it takes me forever to make something not even a tenth as good)
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I tried an episode of this podcast after you mentioned it! Had never heard of it. The one titled Overwatch caught my eye (used to play that a lot, arm permitting I’d like to get back into it when 2 comes out…) so I gave that a listen. Turns out it was recorded when the game was very new (and only out in beta I think) and was, primarily, one of the hosts just describing how it works and the characters to the other. Well, it was kinda fun to get a look back like that and recapture some of the feelings around release, interesting to hear bits that have changed now and the like. Difficulty-wise it seemed like a pretty good fit for my listening ability right now.
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My new dog "disappeared a computer cable, so I haven’t been able to get online. But I have been listening to tv Japan for 2-3 hours a day. I’ve learned several new words. Fun stuff!
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Home post 
July 13th
・Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 149. Topic: Star Wars. Length: 45 min.
This episode is almost two hour long, so I’ll continue later. That was fun to listen to, even if it has been who knows how long since I’ve watched Star Wars and can’t really remember anything. Makes me wanna revisit the lego games 
Tiny Redglare’s favorite game on the PS2.
oh! :3 I never expected anyone here to give Hiiki Biiki a try. Host site decided to shut down a few years ago, so I downloaded all the episodes. I’m listening mostly because Kumirei mentioned it. And yeah, the podcast might not be the latest thing on the market, but I hope you enjoy! 
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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 
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| LEDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 
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 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 
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 
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
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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 
2022
Today’s story is 雷さまの病気 (
).
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 雷.
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.
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Day XXIII: 
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 
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 
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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.
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 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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| LEDC | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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… 
. 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 
but I got the gist of the whole example so I was really pleased.
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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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