🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

February 24th!

I had a class with my teacher today. We did a listening comprehension exercise, practised some grammar and had lots of fun conversations.

I also listened to Lesson 3 of JapanesePod101’s Lower Intermediate Series.

(Home Post)

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Feb 25, Sat of Week 9 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.5 [1/5].

Samurai Champloo EP.5 (no sub yet), but I haven’t really decided an anime / drama to stick with yet.

First 3 tracks of 吾輩は猫である (1.5 chapters), which I have listened to before. Also, ignoring (half-ignoring) Kanji when having Furigana, is probably the key to reading.

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I watched a video on ‘3 books to read in your teens’ and unsurprisingly I’d heard of none of them and safely dodged any urge to add things to my 積読 pile :relieved:

It was unusually easy to understand for ほんタメ though. They’re not the hardest, but I usually have to pay closer attention to follow their discussions and this one was very straight forward. Maybe because it was less their feelings and impressions and more a straight forward ‘this is the plot’.

edit: I saw the horrible AI voice anime heads I was complaining about again

They have multiple channels and it doesn’t always show the heads before you click in. They drive me mad.

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It’s free software japanese people use to make YouTube videos without having to do the heavy lifting Vtubers gotta do. I forget the name of the software but my wife told me about it when I asked why these characters were so common.

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Feb 26, Sun of Week 9 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.5 [2/5].

夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 [1-2/17]. Track 1 is just 登場人物. The audio is in 聴き放題. I have also bought Bookwalker counterpart. I’ve found this one from searching the forum for N3 audiobook.

また、同じ夢を見ていた is also in 聴き放題, with the same author as 君の膵臓をたべたい; but I don’t like a female voice. So, maybe later.

I would put 吾輩は猫である on hold for a little longer. Harder to follow, even with text. With reading alone, I am still probably not good enough.

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February 25th and 26th!

I was on a trip this weekend, so I did listen on both days but didn’t manage to post an update yesterday.

Yesterday I listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei, and also lots of Japanese music while we were travelling.

Today I listened to an episode of JapanesePod 101’s Lower Intermediate Season 1.

(Home Post)

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I was looking for something else when I came across a TV special based on a 宮部みゆき book uploaded to youtube. Since it hasn’t been copyright struck yet I wonder if they simply don’t care as much about (presumably) early 2000s made-for-TV movies.

Anyways, @omk3 , from what I’ve watched thus far (around 9 min) I think you’ll like it and it’s fairly approachable I’d say. Slow and clear narration, dialogue (excusing a few small points) is likewise clear and not too complex. 宮部みゆきスペシャル 魔術はささやく - YouTube

Also, I popped open Viki to see what new they had and found 教祖のムスメ which I watched the first episode ages ago, really liked it, and true to form, never finished it. It looks good though for anyone looking for a mystery/suspense high school drama (no comedy aspect, rather dark IIRC): Master's Daughter | Japan | Drama | Watch with English Subtitles & More ✔️

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Very low effort weekend

:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 24

Listening from playing BU$TAFELLOWS for about 2h

:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 25

Listening from playing Nier Replicant

:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 26

Listening from playing Tales of Arise

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Feb 27, Mon of Week 10 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

新完全マスター聴解 日本語能力試験 N2 問題紹介. Honestly maybe I want a different kind of exercise, probably more repeats. I still need to establish structures and habits.

夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 [3/17] = Chapter 1 latter half. Liking it already.

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:snowflake: Day 58, 27th of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Episode #50 PiroPito Minecraft. I don’t even care if there’s next to no dialogue, I’m tired and deserve to enjoy some unhinged gameplay.

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February 27th!

Today I watched a video of the first chapter of Ruri Dragon, which I’m currently reading with the ABBC.
I was trying to focus on listening comprehension and mostly succeeded, but I did end up pausing to read a few speech bubbles.

(Home Post)

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Super silly skit today, a little hard to follow because of dialect, but not too bad.

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February 25-26 :heavy_multiplication_x:
I keep missing days lately. Not happy about it.

February 27 :film_strip:
One episode of Heaven and Hell. I’m nearing the end, and it’s reasonably fun, but there are still things that bother me, even excluding the soul exchange premise. The lead actress’s way of acting, with that sudden cold smile every few minutes especially gets on my nerves.

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Having posted exactly once at the beginning of the challenge it hardly even feels right to say that I’ve been participating. Aside from the lurk and like I’ve offered nothing. Posting really stresses me out. Especially when I find myself trying to rephrase how I’ve continued doing the same thing the following day.

I have been listening everyday however.

In January I was really into Japanese Ammo with Misa. Particularly this listening practice playlist:
Listening Practice - YouTube

I’ve been listening to Aozora Bunko Audiobooks in my vehicle, Edgar Allen Poe, 江戸川乱歩, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Something new that I’ve been meaning to share for a while. Bouldering competitions seem to be popular in Japan, they’re typically long videos, I find the competition mesmerizing, and count the commentary as passive listening practice.
Boulder Japan Cup Male Final 2023🔥 (Condensed) - YouTube

My favorite thing during this challenge though has been acquiring Japanese dubs of Western movies that I know and love in English. Not as easy I would have liked it turns out. Started with Amazon and only 1 of the 5 movies (Blu-ray) that I ordered, that explicitly stated Japanese language in the description, actually contained Japanese audio. Faced with the realization that a huge price difference on movies between the Japanese region and mine meant movie studios would go out of there way to hide Japanese audio from my region, I resorted to importing Japan and Hong Kong edition Blu-ray and DVD discs. Took forever to get here of course but I really love watching my old favorites dubbed into Japanese. Still, many of the movies I’d like are out of print now and ebay has not yet turned up any gems for me. But the hunt is fun itself. Oh, also I’ve been multi-tasking movies with 漢検 practice on my Nintendo DS Lite. Just about to wrap up level 8.

Of course, I’ve watched most of the videos shared here as well. When I got in trouble for watching @basilsauce 's trainwreck gyaru videos I knew I had discovered something good here.

It took me two and a half movies just to get through writing this. I’m so jealous of the folks that make posting look so effortless.

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:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 27

Another low effort day, just the listening from playing BU$TAFELLOWS for 15 min

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Feb 28, Tue of Week 10 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

新完全マスター聴解 日本語能力試験 N2 Ch.1 似ている音の聞き分け. I bought a pencil and a rubber today, and had to use both. Probably sufficient exercise count, I may say.

夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 [4/17]. Full chapter two, with a little longer than an hour track.

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:snowflake: Day 59, 28th of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Did a lot of Genki exercises. I keep forgetting that I can check my work by going through the provided listening material. And it’s great listening practice (but I’m often too lazy to check).

That’s it for me for this listening challenge. Next month is my own stuff. I managed 44 out of 59 days, could be better, could be worse. I had a lot of other commitments, and I’ve been stuck in a bit of a plateau with my Japanese skills. I’ll be continuing with Genki, but I hope I can get back my motivation to improve my Japanese listening skills with some more fun input.

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February 28th!

Today I listened to 2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for beginners.
Its late so my concentration span was pretty poor but I managed to understand everything, though I had to rewind a few times when I caught myself zoning out!

(Home Post)


End of the challenge already!
I managed to listen every day, though a lot of days I only managed to do a tiny amount of listening. I’ve had a really busy start to the year though, so although I did less listening practise than I had hoped - without this challenge I probably would have done hardly any at all - so I’m counting this challenge as a success. :slight_smile:

Big thanks to @omk3 for hosting, and to everyone who participated - I got to watch a lot of fun videos through your recommendations!
I’m still going to keep listening every day in March, but I’ll probably take a break from doing daily posts, though I’ll still be lurking around in the thread :grin:
See you all again for the Spring Challenge!

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Challenge Wrap-up

Well, that didn’t go very well :joy:
Since my last post on the 16th, I haven’t done any listening at all, I just got overwhelmed with life and let it drop :upside_down_face: In total, I listened on 12/28 days. This is the exact same number of listening days I had in the last challenge, but I did start this challenge later, so like…percentage-wise, I guess I did better? lol. And if I hadn’t participated in the challenge, I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened at all, so that’s something. Big thanks to everyone who gave me listening material suggestions/ideas/recommendations :heart: I don’t know why it’s so much harder to stick with listening. But I’ll keep trying :upside_down_face: Maybe next challenge will be better, I think April and May should be less busy than the past two months have been.

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Ah so this is the end.
While I didn’t miss any days, I don’t think I took the challenge as seriously as I should have. There were some days that I had some meaningful listening done with good content consumed, but there were also a lot of days where it was limited to stuff like music. I’m sure any listening is good listening, but I always listen to music. Probably should have tried to find some better things.

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