🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

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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February 28 :heavy_multiplication_x:

And, I ended the official challenge with a missed day. Hmm…

I listened to Japanese for 50 out of 59 days during this challenge. I did find interesting content to engage me this time, and I have certainly made progress in comprehension, but listening is still something I struggle to fit in my day, and will often sacrifice it in favour of reading. I suppose that’s okay. I will continue to try and listen to Japanese as often as possible until the next challenge starts. My ultimate goal is still to be able to enjoy audiobooks, and while I’m closer to it there’s still a long way to go. I suppose I should devote more time to that かがみの孤城 audiobook some time soon, instead of just remembering it whenever I feel unwell.

Congratulations to everyone who took part in this challenge - I hope it has been fun as well as beneficial. Feel free to continue posting here until the new thread is up in April!

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:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 28

Listening from playing Tales of Arise about an hour.


End of challenge! I missed a couple of days but overall I was more consistent than I expected. I have been doing this in a very low effort way and even like this I feel there’s been some improvement. The last week I’ve been doing very very little so I’m going to take this month off and I’ll probably join next challenge with renewed energy and hopefully some more ambitious plans.

It was really inspiring seeing what everyone was doing, especially those people that can straight up watch series and movies and understand :exploding_head: Hoping to get there in time. Thanks, everyone!!

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Mar 1, Wed 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.1/2 音の変化や縮約形. Probably the section in the whole book that has short writing fill-ins.

夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 Ch.3 first half. After that, re-listening to Ch.2.

Winter Challenge Wrap-up

  • 2 workbooks = 日本語総まとめ N3+N2 聴解
  • 5.2 audiobooks, 1 of them doesn’t have text. [1] Also, I keep failing 吾輩は猫である.
  • Latter half of an anime series (21 episodes) [2]
  • J-drama didn’t went well, although I made through 4 episodes of 緊急取調室.

日本語総まとめ 聴解 series has a nice summary of the left page of each pair of pages, but I can’t count of the exercises to be sufficient. Nonetheless, probably it’s quite handy for habit making.

Audiobook might work well for understanding the storyline, but I felt didn’t understand well enough for おいしいごはんが食べられますように.

A contributor to my listening is also Anki quiz on listening (vocab + sentence) to handwriting, to ensure that I recognize the vocabulary, which I started doing consistently since end of January.

Since it’s my focus, I can’t thank you @omk3 enough for hosting the challenge.

Paving the path forward. At least my listening in audiobooks isn’t good enough yet; and the quality might be extrapolated to YouTube, shows and podcasts.


    • かがみの孤城 (latter half)
    • ガラスのうさぎ
    • 君の膵臓をたべたい
    • おいしいごはんが食べられますように
    • 夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 [28%]

    No text

    • 聞くだけで一気にわかる日本史
    ↩︎
  1. Death Note EP.17-37 ↩︎

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44/59 days.
Definitely listened to more than previously but could still be more. Don’t really have much else to say. Looking forward to the next challenge thread and trying to get more next time. :sweat_smile:

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Joining in for the off-month, focusing on both Japanese and Spanish as usual!

Mar
Week 9
Week 10
Week 11
Week 12
Week 13

= Japanese
= Japanese and Spanish

I challenged myself this year to read/listen to something in both Spanish and Japanese every single day for 365 days, and I completed this goal in January and February with the reading challenge, so I’m hoping to continue it with listening!

What I'm planning on listening to in Spanish:

At the end of last year, I discovered that I can watch Bob Esponja (SpongeBob Squarepants) without subtitles in any language and have decent comprehension, so that’s what I’m planning to use for the majority of my daily listening!

I might also listen to some podcast episodes, especially if the weather warms up and I can go on walks again, but I’m wondering if I might have outgrown the Duolingo podcast, and should consider finding something a bit harder…

What I'm planning on listening to in Japanese:

This will surprise absolutely no one, but the majority of my listening will probably be pro wrestling :sweat_smile:! I’ll be watching a fair amount of wrestling shows as usual, as well as watching post-match interviews and press conferences in order to translate them.

My main priority is Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, but I watch a lot of DDT Pro Wrestling and a fair amount of Pro Wrestling NOAH as well, plus occasional other stuff that catches my interest. Wrestling shows themselves are more or less passive immersion for me in that I basically just let them wash over me and take whatever I can get (with the exception of some TJPW stuff that I translate).

With post-match comments and press conferences, I typically have a transcript that I can follow along with, though it frequently has mistakes and typos and often leaves out stuff, so I’ve needed to rely on my listening ability plenty of times as well.

Besides wrestling, I’m thinking of using the challenge as an excuse to watch a couple anime shows that I’d been meaning to watch, haha. I want to watch the Tokyo Mew Mew reboot, and the new Aggretsuko season. I might try out language reactor to see if I can get both English and Japanese subtitles on Aggretsuko. I’m definitely not quite ready yet to try watching content with only Japanese subtitles (or with no subtitles, unless it’s wrestling or something that can be enjoyed at any level of comprehension).

I guess we’ll see how it goes? My plan for Japanese is admittedly way less set in stone than my plan for Spanish is :sweat_smile:.

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They are actually quite funny to watch, Its sometimes just use ??bashing?? phrases
wonder?

thanks

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I’m not quite sure I understand your question - could you say it a different way?

Im not sure how to convey it, they are just funny :slight_smile:

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Mar 2, Thu 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.2/1 最初の文を理解する (A-C).

夏へのトンネル、さよならの出口 Ch.3 latter half. Then replay older tracks.

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March 1-2 :film_strip:

Yesterday and today I watched the two final episodes of Heaven and Hell. I had many problems with it (the main one being how police just decided what to do on a whim, never had to give reports or follow orders, just followed whatever clues they liked for however long they liked, grabbed stuff from the forensics lab, barged into apartments without warrants, etc etc - this stuff I found way more unbelievable than the soul exchange premise), but it was entertaining and I did watch it with interest to the end. The main actress basically just smiled and ran towards the camera (so much running, much of it in slow motion, just why?), but the male lead was quite convincing in how he changed depending on what “soul” was inhabiting his body at the time. All in all, fun enough. It felt more like anime for some reason, maybe because with anime I’m more accepting of implausible plots.

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@Zakarius I watched the first episode of an 80s girl gang member turned cop drama on YouTube and I somehow feel like it’s your kind of show:

This channel seems legit / above board btw. From their about:

創立70周年を迎え、映画からTVドラマまで数多の名作生み出してきた<東映>が、その豊富なジャンルの中から特撮・時代劇作品以外を編成、無料で視聴可能な公式YouTubeチャンネルです。

So it’s the copyright holders putting it up on YouTube

Also full disclosure that even though the sound has clearly been remastered, I definitely missed a couple of points and while I got the overall gist, I’m a little hazy on exactly what the old men were trying to force the girls to do and why he killed one of them. I think it relates to those girls having less money, but beyond that I’m ???

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Thanks for the mention @pocketcat!

I’ve been trying to find something new to watch and the video cover photo has me sold already, I’ll check it out when I get the chance!

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