Today I listened to 2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.
The first was about countries which are safe or unsafe, and the second was about Japanese Children.
I decided to restart 最愛 / Dearest (on Netflix now!) from the beginning since @omk3 reminded me of it. Ahhhh it’s as good as I remember. I just rewatched episode one today, which is ~an hour long and no time for anything else, but it’s kind of fun that I can tell my listening has jumped since I first watched it. I remember before I was barely hanging on during the dialect scenes and now they’re a breeze, no issue at all.
My other trouble spot was a scene in episode two or three with a lot of business talk. Curious to see how that goes this time around
Today I listened to Episode 2 of JapanesePod101’s Lower Intermediate Series 1.
The dialogue was about two friends comparing their bonuses - it was a pretty short dialogue in this episode, but I learned some new words from them breaking it down
This one was mostly understandable (and hilarious), though I’m finding that I mostly understand only through context with the animation and the handful of words I recognise in each sentence, full comprehension still seems like forever away.
More big listening yesterday. First, I listened to a GLOBIS podcast about evidence based policy making and education policy. They were talking at break-neck speed, so much so that I started wondering if they sped up the episode to make it shorter?
For example this guy at 4:00. Boy is it exhausting to listen to. But still better than the guy in the other episode who spoke so unclear I coulnd’t understand him.
Well, after that I listened to another episode about mindfulness and meditation, which was much more relaxed and also much easier to understand (less big politics words).
1 hour and a half thus far. Japanese with K and Miku Real Japanese podcasts. I understood most of the first podcast for JWK but then I barely got what he was talking about with ChatGPT. He speaks slowly but he was using a lot of new vocabulary. Miku Real Japanese, I understood most of her podcast as well since she spoke about humility in Japanese culture. Living here you really understand this.
Watched Confidence Man JP プリンセス編 yesterday. It was really fun. I thought it was the first movie in the series but actually there was a movie before it and a drama series before that. Which explains why the characters seemed to have established pasts with each other. I won’t watch the drama since its not available for streaming except renting on Amazon (which I am not THAT in love with the series yet).
It is funny to listen to Japanese people pretend to be from Singapore by speaking English really badly. xD
I listened to a few tracks of ガラスのうさぎ, which I am now reading somewhat intensively. I don’t find my listening improved in a significant way; not that I looked up a lot of vocabularies in reading either. Maybe comprehension is better if I listen more carefully.
February 23
Random half-finished youtube videos. Better than nothing.
February 24
Rewatched the first episode of 最愛 without any subtitles. Some characters I understood fairly well, others almost not at all. My comprehension is definitely better than a few months ago, but still not at the level where I could watch something without subtitles and not miss important stuff.
Also another (subtitled) episode of Heaven and Hell.