Have you tried Miku Real Japanese? She actually has a lot of interesting topics and this is coming from someone who doesn’t really enjoy podcasts. Or try watching stuff ie movies or drama with Language reactor. I find it helps a lot
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わかる～
It seems like there is interesting content (I heard really good things about Yuyu, Miku Real Japanese and Hikibiki Podcast, for example), but at least for me those are too hard for now. I hope you’ll find something nice for you!
I just watched the Onomappu video you talked about (here’s a link for anyone interested), and yeah, that was fun, thanks for mentioning it! (I didn’t understand a lot, but since I’m not treating it as a Learning Experience™ anymore I didn’t mind too much.)
Can I offer you some Atashin’chi in this trying time? It’s short, it’s episodic, and at least I found it more fun than e.g. Teppei.
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On episode 3 of 美しい彼 My Beautiful Man and I am so annoyed with these characters that my heart is literally racing. But at least it’s interesting enough that I may get like a solid 3 hours of listening in today.
Has anyone else watched this show? I need to discuss this. By episode 4 I am on team ditch this lil beyotch and be with the University classmate
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I guess I can put 2 50-minute classes as listening practice since the teacher speaks a lot in Japanese. After completing my practised speech (about 1 minute) we spoke freely for 25 minutes. Mostly me speaking about tattoo culture in Japan with very terrible grammar and also listening to the teacher’s perspective. The longest conversation I have had and free listening so small progress I guess.
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I hear you on that. I’m certainly at the stage where I can still tolerate some light boredom since my brain is still getting used to recognizing the sounds I can read but don’t recognize when spoken, but that period is disappearing much faster than I expected. Which is good, but also… I can see myself needing to find material that I’d find interesting in any language, and that becomes a problem. 
Also, for what it is worth, I agree with @omk3 about watching things with subtitles. I think the important thing is to train yourself to listen first and read second. And in that way, English subtitles can actually help, because you can probably glance at them and take in the important info, meaning even if you only have a second or less to look at the subtitles as the person finishes speaking, you can still catch any important bits you missed while listening.
But it definitely is a skill to watch the action and listen, instead of being fixed on the subtitles. I still sometimes use English subtitles on shows in English because for example when long science words are said (say during the crime lab portions of crime shows) I have a hard time following exactly what chemical formula it was, but I might recognize it in the subtitles.
But a few years ago, I realized that even when I could just listen, my eyes would be glued to the subtitles. I’ve mostly trained that habit away, so I stare at the action rather than the subtitles. But I did need to train myself.
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Feb 5, Sun of Week 6 of Winter Q1 2023 
So-matome N2 Listening Ch.2 [1/7]. Intonation. There are too many sections in Ch.2, so I decided to start one ahead.
Death Note EP.26. Flashback until now.
ガラスのうさぎ [12/18]
聞くだけで一気にわかる日本史 : 奈良・平安
This one is cute and nice. I like this one.
The length too. J-drama is too long, but perhaps I shouldn’t avoid it too much.
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Really helpful video again. Many advices that are easy to remember and use almost immediately 
One example of what is explained in the video:
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Until a Japanese comes along the way and 掛けるs his sunglasses and necktie and after he is done he 羽織るs his coat.
God, I hate Japanese verbs for clothing 
(Video is nice, I like Meshclass)
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Hahaha do you prefer German? 
German verbs for clothing
Er sprang in die Hose, schnallte sich den Gürtel um, zog sich die Stiefel an, schnürte sie, wickelte seine Gamaschen, schlüpfte in sein Unterhemd, knöpfte das Hemd zu, streifte sich den Pullover über, warf sich den Mantel über die Schultern, setzte die Sonnenbrille auf, band sich den Schlips, knotete sein Halstuch, steckte sich den Orden an. “Fertig!” 
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Would be too easy if everything is covered with する 
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February 4 
February 5 
I didn’t do any listening yesterday. I thought I had time, but some unplanned socializing got in the way. I had a good time, no regrets. 
Today I watched the first episode of Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange and one episode of Quartet.
Quartet is turning out to be really good. I’ve started to really care about the characters. Great performances by all, too.
Heaven and Hell felt, I don’t know how else to describe it, rather campy in the beginning. The performances were just a touch too simplistic and over the top. But at the end, after the exchange took place, the actors came into their own. The difference was striking, and they both felt much more natural all of a sudden. These will be the personas they’ll keep for most of the series, I assume, so that’s a good thing.
He’s in Quartet too
That’s cheating a little though. You can do that in English too, and most languages, I’m sure. But the same meaning could be expressed with just a couple of verbs, couldn’t it? A more boring result, but a milder headache for learners.
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For Swedish it is pretty much one verb that covers it all: att ta på (att = to)
Although for hats, glasses, and sunglasses, you can also say: att sätta på. But the first one is just as usual. So you could technically learn only one verb for it all (at least I can’t remember any clothing items or such you’d need to just something else for. Even broaches and jewelry is covered.
So I guess, Swedish wins! 
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February 5th
What did I listen to?: Onomappu’s Japanese Picture Poses and Shinya Makes a Felt Rabbit
How much time did I spend listening?: ~22 min
I watched the picture poses video I mentioned yesterday and I loved it - my favorite is the 片思いハート pose Definitely recognize the ルダハート (which I think is just called like cheek heart or something in Korea, I had not heard of Luda before this video tbh 
) and ピースハート (which I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do lmao). I didn’t know that 曲げピース was a thing but that makes SO MUCH SENSE now, I see it all the time but I thought they were just awkward peace signs, I didn’t think it was on purpose Also happy to see ギャルピース make an appearance, I was low-key waiting for it because that was a big trend while my boys were in Japan this summer. I don’t spend too much time looking at k-pop idol photos, what Anyway, I love learning what all the little poses are called, there are so many I wish hand poses like that were more of a thing in Western culture tbh, because I never know what to do with my hands/arms in pictures, I’m always just like 
I also watched
And THE EYES I literally cried laughing, I cannottttt The way he was just SCREWING THEM INTO THE RABBIT’S HEAD kfshdkfjsdx that was the best plot twist
I enjoyed that deeply, thank you for sharing It looks like he has some other crafty videos that I might check out later, male musicians doing crafts is a weirdly specific genre of video that I very much enjoy.
So much reply!
I have not looked at Miku - giving it a look now, there are a couple episodes that sound interesting and it seems like the length is pretty reasonable so I’ll try to give it a shot 
(it may well be too hard for me too but we’ll see haha). Also I had not heard of Language Reactor, I’ll have to look more at that, it seems useful! I feel like I never look things up when I’m listening, I always just let it go (which is probably not the most efficient way to listen lol)
I forgot, I did try Hikibiki some time ago but my main problem with that one was that it’s loooong (and I mostly didn’t understand it, but that’s honestly secondary lmao). I don’t know how one listens to a podcast that’s like 45 min to an hour+ long, I just can’t - I assume most people do other things while listening to them but I don’t really…work that way as a human, I can’t sit there just listening to something for an hour nor can I focus on listening to words while doing something else (and constant prolonged talking often makes it harder for me to do whatever I’m doing, whether I’m fully listening/understanding or not). This is a problem for me with English podcasts, so I can only imagine the problem would be even worse in a language that I don’t comprehend very well even when my full attention is directed at it lmao, I feel like having it on as background would just be annoying and not help my Japanese.
But
You saying this made me take a look at Yuyu and OMFG YUYU HAS A VIDEO ON EXO LMAOOOO I’M WATCHING THAT LATER THIS IS GREAT Translator’s note: Exo is a k-pop group
See, this is another thing I struggle with, the titles of these general podcasts don’t really give me any indication of what the topics of the episodes actually are, so I assume they’re all the same boring things. That’s my bad I guess lmao, clearly Yuyu has aligned with my interests at least for one episode I cannot believe there’s an Exo episode, that was not what I expected Thank you for mentioning it and making me go look at it
I will definitely take a look at this later as well! First impression, I don’t love the animation style, but I will still give it a shot
I just want to say that you guys really inspired me to look into some new things and helped me find much more material that motivated me to continue listening so thank you 
Seriously appreciate it 
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Yes of course But that’s the same in Japanese, isn’t it? And the point of the video was to learn all the different expressions one can use to be more precise, I thought.
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I don’t think it’s the same. You can wear trousers, shirt, jacket, shoes, necktie, hat and glasses with one verb in German, can’t you? I’m not sure you can do that in Japanese. Maybe with the famous する that fits everything.
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I think for everything from shoulders down you can use 着る. And then the small things all go by する and then you have 被る for caps, hats and the like. And that should be it, I guess?
(To be precise, I came from “to put on” as that’s what 掛ける and 羽織る mean, but I think in Japanese there is no difference between “to wear” and “to put on”? 
In the German text I used lots of replacements for “to put on”. You could use “anziehen” in most of your examples, but I wouldn’t use it for hat and glasses - that would be “aufsetzen”. But yes, mostly just one verb.)
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February 5 
Home Post
LoZ: Breath of the Wild 
Poor start to February since I listened to nothing on 2-4th. Today I felt like actually playing a game with gameplay and not just text (sorry VN), so I started Breath of the Wild, I’ve been meaning to replay the story in Japanese, especially before the next one comes out.
Unfortunately, less is voice acted than I hoped, but about as much as I remembered. Meaning I need to get to cutscenes to get audio… Only cut scenes are fairly uncommon, and some of them do not have voice audio. Pretty much got maybe 10 lines total playing for 30ish minutes.
So maybe I won’t be able to count it as listening practice much, lol, but when I can I will. xD
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February 5th!
Today I had a class with my teacher.
It was conversation focused, so lots of listening practise
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Answer to windupbird re: podcast grievances & Atashin'chi
It’s actually very similar for me. There are a few podcasts that I actually want to to like and listen to, e.g. Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, but the shortest one’s are… 4 hours? 
And the normal ones 10+ hour series? How do people do this?
Maybe podcasts aren’t a good medium for my Japanese either then, but it would be a shame to miss out on such a big portion of possible resources. Especially since it’s also something I wouldn’t have to sit in front of the computer for, and god knows I do that too often. But it’ll be a while until I find out anyway, because the ones I can already listen to are a bit dull.
Same to be honest, but it is what it is, and I liked the characters!
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I’m procrastinating reading my book so I binged some Youtube.
Hairstyle advice for women in their 40s
A 14 minute video from a fast-talking stylist who makes lots of disclaimers at the beginning
A 9 minute video from a different guy who’s more blunt and slower-speaking
Spoiler: they both agree that there’s no such thing as a hairstyle that’s absolutely NG, and that it’s important to have shiny healthy-looking hair. This didn’t actually help at all for deciding how to cut my hair, but anyway it was listening practice.
Oversharing and bonkers gyaru うさたにパイセン loses her money and fancy apartment but does a tour of the empty apartment before leaving. Later she goes to Nagano, where she’s rented a 300 year old mansion that’s huge and super cheap and kinda creepy. At some point she blew a wad of money on getting a set of ceramic caps on her teeth, complete with diamond-studded fangs, and I don’t know why I subjected myself to watching that one because she brought the camera to the dentist and showed her teeth in progress.
Other videos from the last week:
Tsubasa Masuwaka (another gyaru model but she’s sane) talks about her choice to get a Mirena IUD (12 min), and discusses various forms of birth control so that her viewers learn more about their options. This is just her sitting and talking, and sometimes showing illustrations from the pamphlet.
A 7 minute video by 日テレNEWS about Mosburger’s first shop and some of the early history. Eventually it would become one of the largest and most famous hamburger chains in Japan.
And an easy 3 minute ラジオ体操 stretch/warmup exercise by NHK.
I’m glad you enjoyed it! I laughed so much I cried at that part too, the first time I watched it.
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