Busy with work, but I managed to relisten to past Jam Maker episodes, plus a new new one. Every time I listen to something new (and come face-to-face with less-than-stellar results), I wonder if I’m actually improving or not. I think that’s why I’ve become interested in re-listening more. That being said, there didn’t seem to be too much improvement regarding The Jam Maker.
January 12th
Since it wasn’t raining for once today, I went for a long walk and listened to Satori Reader, this time Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange. (Side note: grateful for the much-needed rain, though it hasn’t been without consequences…) I blew through over 30 episodes, and my comprehension was a little all over the place. I’m not really sure if there was a pattern or not, beyond that it was harder to understand everything when the narrator spoke faster versus slower. Some vocabulary that I’ve gone over time and again still didn’t register right away, but then rarer ones like 非営利団体 I got right away.
Another tiny listen today. I finished work late, and already had plans with friends in the evening so I didn’t get home until about 11pm and I’m a little too tired to listen well. So I just listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners. It was about dreams.
The one I went to is in Birmingham if thats anywhere near where you are!
I found out about it in a way thats kind of hard to replicate! I got talking to somebody at the bar after a gig I went to for a Japanese band called The Wisely Brothers and mentioned I was learning Japanese and he told me a friend of his who was also there that night organised a monthly Japanese Conversation Exchange and then introduced us
I am rewatching Cherry Magic for the 3rd time but this time without English. However I think I need to start sentence mining to get the full effect of immersion.
I relistened to an audiobook I’ve already heard while on a walk today, and the rest has been more N1 listening exam study. I’m now browsing audiobook.co.jp seeking another audiobook as I’ve struck out lately finding things at a comfortable listening level that are also interesting.
Going with the “stuff that actually interests me, but is maybe a bit too hard still actually” thing again, I started listening to another episode of Holotalk:
I don’t have the stamina to listen to a lot of it right now, but I got a bit in. Definitely slightly harder than the previous one with the still slower speaking Okayu, but with occasionally Yomichan-ing the subtitles (and if bad comes to worst, waiting until Kiara translates it to English) it’s definitely doable.
Sakura Tips Ep. 4. This podcast is kinda weird for me - I feel like she is talking slower than Teppei, but she keeps using more vocab that I don’t know yet, so it’s actually more stressful for me.
I find this too! I started with Sakura Tips and was getting nervous that there was a lot I wasn’t getting, then when I switched to Teppei I was like, oh well, this is ridiculously easy in comparison haha. The early Teppei stuff is quite easy topics versus like Sakura tips where you’re right into Autumn Leaves and Overwork as opposed to “Do you like studying Japanese?”
Anyways the last few days I’ve done mostly Teppei!
Day 11 - Nihongo Con Teppei episodes 4&5 Day 12 - Nihongo Con Teppei episodes 6-8
Haven’t listened today yet, but will later on. There was a lot more Kendrick Lamar talk in those Teppei episodes than I expected.
So-matome N3 Listening Ch.2 [5/6]. Answering questions not so difficult, but listening to people speaking for too long and catching everything is.
かがみの孤城 now has all tracked listened, but I will re-listen and read more than half of 下, to mark the latter volume as read. For some reasons, it says 既読 in audiobook.jp (but it’s actually already listened (?)). It said so for each track as well, just never noticed.
jpdb.io has like 11k reviews remaining. I might try to cut down 1k reviews each day, if I am not overloaded.
Watched PiroPito Minecraft #4 - #6 today because I deserved a treat. Not really useful for listening practice, but his voice is so nice and calm. Great to have just playing in the background.
Aaahh Cherry Magic was my first jdrama and is still one of my favourite jdramas of all time
Hope you enjoy watching it without the English subs! It’s also one of my future goals to watch the drama without subtitles. I hope I’ll get there someday😊
Meanwhile I’ll keep gushing about Kurodachi everytime they come up on my dash on Tumblr…
@prettysorchastic@TobiasW So I can tell you something. I put the podcast transcripts into japanese.io and they have a stats mechanism that gives a difficulty rating on a peice of text. I don’t know about those episodes, but a couple of the more recent Sakura tips ones have come out as ‘intermediate’ level as opposed to Teppei - those come out as beginner. It’s to do with the difficulty of the words, the amount of kanji, the grammar used. So the lesson is that just because someone speaks slowly, doesn’t automatically make it easy.
@lucylavelle thanks for the update… hmm Birmingham is a about a 3hour drive for me… cool story though… I’ll see if I can find anything on the south coast via google.
Oh and I’ve been listening to my podcast playlist to death. Added a couple of new episodes.
I think somebody at the group I went to said there is a group in London that was started by somebody who used to go to the Birmingham one and then moved.
If London works for you I can try to get some info about it next time I go (Which should be the first weekend of February).
Googling UK Japanese language exchange has lead me to some really weird sites, so maybe next ask if they know of any organisations or what I could search on… London is more doable but … ちょっと。。
I have some contacts in southern England with ties to the Japanese community who might know about language exchanges in the area? I could ask them if you could tell me the general area? (no need to do it publicly in the forums, I have my email address in my profile header).
Today I retried the first file from the かがみの孤城 audiobook while I was out. I understood a good amount, certainly more than before, but my attention still started to drift after a while.
More relistening to audiobooks today.
I downloaded the audiobooks for #真相をお話しします and 俺ではない炎上 last night as possible travel listening, but I think I’ll make sure I have some other books I’ve already listened to as backup. I’m a little leery of 俺ではない炎上 in particular because the plot sounds very much like ＃ある朝殺人犯になっていた which I didn’t care much for, but this book came up so much in book review videos I decided I’d give it a try. We’ll see.
edit: Sorry @NicoleRauch I accidentally quoted you and don’t know how to undo it replying to you!
softlyraining’s listening corner 
