🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

:snowflake: Day 34, 3rd of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Some more PiroPito Minecraft, #38. Too tired for anything else.

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February 3rd!

Today I had a lesson with my teacher. We spoke about a lot of different topics, including some manga I have been reading recently, and a visit I had last weekend from my family.
After work, I also listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.

(Home Post)

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:headphones: :desktop_computer: :sound: :snowflake: February 3

Listened to Teppei for beginners #42 and #43, as well as played like 30 mins of BU$TAFELLOWS

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Feb 4, Sat of Week 6 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

ガラスのうさぎ [13/18] + relistening old episodes from [1].

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That’s really cool! They must have the time of their lives, haha.

Ha, lucky you! It certainly sounds like you’re in a much better spot there.

I think if I was earlier in my studies I’d be more okay with less engaging content (I remember how elated I was reading a boring graded reader just because I could understand it, haha), but at this point I just don’t have the stomach for it anymore.

Let’s hope it works for me too then! Since it’s enjoyable, I’m not gonna stop doing it either way :slight_smile:


That all being said though, since for me this challenge was about finding content like podcasts and videos for me to specifically listen to to learn, and since that seems a bit premature for me… I’m gonna drop out of the challenge for now, and continue doing that when my vocab improved enough.

And until then, I’ll still have the listening that I do anyway - anime and Hololive with subtitles (and the latter sometimes without), music, and conversations. No need to track that tho.

(I’m enjoying this thread tho, so I’ll still read along :slight_smile: )

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February 4th!

I did a lot of listening practise today.
I went to a Japanese conversation exchange meetup and spent about an hour and a half talking to people. My ability was not as advanced as the other people in the group I sat with, so I listened a lot more than I spoke this time.

This evening I also listened to 2 lessons of JapanesePod101’s Upper Beginner Season 1.

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

February 4th
What did I listen to?: Old Enough!/初めてのおつかい
How much time did I spend listening?: ~25 min (2 episodes)

I was supposed to start this challenge for February and it is now February 4th oops
I’m not gonna lie, I was just not motivated to start this challenge at all :weary: I’m still sort of contemplating dropping it and just focusing on the reading challenge because I’m enjoying that right now and listening just sounds so… :upside_down_face: I don’t have anything interesting to listen to, like nothing I can think of appeals to me at all.

This is a lot of whining, sorry

The idea of a learner-focused podcast just sounds deathly boring to me, podcasts just don’t interest me as a medium and the topics seem so mundune which does not motivate me to try and overcome my general disinterest in podcasts. (Admittedly, my only direct experience with these is Nihongo con Teppei, which was understandable for the most part but not something I would characterize as “interesting”). I don’t know how to find interesting things on Youtube, because I don’t even know what I would want to look for, I feel like I only ever find good things on there by accident and my Youtube algorithm is not set up for Japanese language content :upside_down_face: I don’t have the attention span or listening comprehension for something like a movie or audiobook, and an anime feels like too much commitment for right now (also probably too hard).

I feel like trying to improve listening is such a catch 22 for me because the stuff I’m most likely to need/use is the same stuff that I would dread having to listen to if that makes sense lmao. Like I’m utterly unmotivated to listen to anything that would be remotely useful in situations/conversations I might actually encounter at some point, all I want to do is listen to weird stuff on random topics with zero relevance to anything I would be discussing in my actual life :joy:

Anyway…I like Old Enough but I have already watched these episodes with English subs :upside_down_face: And I really struggled trying to understand anything without English subs, I turned on the JP captions for the second episode because I felt like I understood NOTHING of the first one and it sort of helped but not really. Some days I don’t really mind just listening without understanding but my tolerance is low today :joy:

As I was writing this, I was scrolling through the thread looking for any potential listening materials I might have glossed over or forgotten about - this is me rambling/making notes

I finally looked to see what Onomappu actually is and found his video on Japanese picture poses - I was like, ah, finally, something that aligns with my interests :joy: :joy: I’ll probably watch it tomorrow. I wonder if there are any k-pop j-tubers…a lot of k-pop groups promote in Japan so it feels like there should be? I’m going to do more research on this. Absolutely no one else will be interested, but that’s fine :joy: I should just learn Korean but Korean is hard

Also probably going to watch this at some point, I do not know him or his band but this type of content calls to me :joy: Also interested in the visual kei things, I don’t know anything about visual kei but the premise of the videos sounds interesting and fun.

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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. :sweat_smile:

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 :snowman::snowflake:

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 :blush:

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 :frowning_face:
(Video is nice, I like Meshclass)

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Hahaha do you prefer German? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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!” :rofl:

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Would be too easy if everything is covered with する :joy: :laughing:

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February 4 :heavy_multiplication_x:
February 5 :film_strip:

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. :grin:
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 :joy:

:rofl:
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! :tada: :crazy_face:

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Summary Post

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 :joy: 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 :upside_down_face:) 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 :rofl: 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 :joy: 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 :woman_standing:

I also watched

And THE EYES :joy: :joy: I literally cried laughing, I cannottttt :joy: 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 :joy: 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 :slight_smile: (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 :joy: 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 :joy:

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 :joy:

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 :hand_with_index_finger_and_thumb_crossed::heart_hands: Seriously appreciate it :heart:

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