Didn’t write this yesterday because I was lazy but I watched some various anime episodes, it wasn’t anything special to be completely honest.
January 2nd
While the day isn’t over and I may edit in some more things, I watched this video so far. I’ve been going through this small series of where the seiyuu of Hitori in Bocchi the Rock is learning the guitar to play the opening song. It’s pretty entertaining, I get what’s going on and there’s no real confusion, but there are words that I don’t know of course. Still, even if there many words I can’t recognize, it’s nice that it doesn’t hinder my experience that much. Will probably watch some anime later, but we’ll see.
It’s a VTuber talkshow where Kiara of Hololive EN (on the left) interviews a Hololive JP member. About 2/3 of the show is in Japanese, with Kiara talking with the guest, and 1/3 is in English with Kiara translating it to her English-speaking audience. The automatic YouTube subtitles seem pretty on point most of the time too - I sometimes use them for lookups via Yomichan.
Technically this is a bit above my level, but Okayu is one of the slower-speaking members, and every time JP members speak to EN members their Japanese sounds a bit easier to me. And most importantly, this is content that I’m actually interested in, much more than beginner podcasts.
And so far I actually got most of it before Kiara translated it to English! Although I often had to look up words in the subtitles. There were only two parts where I didn’t even get the gist, one of them being Okayu demonstrating her Aomori dialect while talking much faster than normally…
These were pretty easy listening! Teppei-san spoke very slowly, I could understand what he was saying without many difficulties. Perhaps this podcast is a little too easy for me, though. So from tomorrow, I’ll listen to his other podcasts instead!
I don’t know what your level is, but if his other podcasts turn out to be too hard for now, skip a few dozen episodes of the beginner podcast and try that for size. It definitely stays a beginner podcast, but the first few episodes are much easier than the rest, and it gets progressively harder afterwards.
I took N4 last July with an almost perfect listening score and had the opportunity to have a 1-month internship in Japan last November~December. I’m probably somewhere around N3~N2. I will take note of returning to the beginner podcast if I find the intermediate podcast too hard Thank you for the suggestion!
Ha, fair enough! Then his other ones are probably a better fit, yeah. I just suggested it because I thought the same back then, and then was positively surprised when it kept getting harder. But I was more around N5, so it’s definitely a different situation.
Writing to say that Ill be joining in on another Listen Every Day challenge. I struggled previously with technical difficulties, Nintendo DS studying distractions, and balancing RL work.
During the last challenge I was gifted a rowing machine. I thought this was going to be an excellent way to listen to Japanese while exercising but I wasn’t fit enough to exercise to anything but high intensity music. So I kept working on it and am now listening to Don Quixote (in English) and comfortably rowing 10-15km. If I can finish that, I’d like to step up to Japanese AudioBooks during this challenge.
My “translation station” (laptop) has been failing. Has failed really. Youtube is a guaranteed crash. Making this (type of) thread pretty irritating to me most of the time. Everyone is sharing great content but I’m constantly crashing trying to watch it. I bought a new laptop but it needs to be setup with my OS of choice and configured. I’m getting there. In the meantime, I’ve setup YouTube on my Nintendo Switch. I’m watching restaurant kitchens in action in Japan and starting in on Comprehensible Japanese.
Still listening to Nihongo con Teppei periodically. Added Thinking in Japanese.
Still trying to force myself to listen to Pimsleur Japanese Level 2. Maybe during running, or rowing, got a new set of headphones that actually stay in while running.
I get burned out too easily trying to do these challenges and post all the time. Rather just spread the likes and infrequently take a second to write an update.
Was low on time again today, so I watched another video from Comprehensible Japanese. There were actually a couple of surprises in this one that I didn’t quite see coming. She certainly has a memorable history with pets.
Did a chapter of Honzuki vol 2. The chapters are shorter, easier, and more fun than 穏やか貴族の休暇のすすめ。
I also watched a couple of short video by a reptile breeder on Youtube. I like videos about animals. This guy keeps up a running commentary during his videos, and sometimes he has videos about the creepy-crawly things he feeds his lizards and frogs too, which is also fun.
I’m a few days late to the challenge, but for the last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to improve my listening skills by spreading out to different areas and listen to variety of topics and TV shows every day. This will be a great way to track my progress and maybe organize a bit what I have been listening these past days
Listened to Teppei’s beginner podcast #1. Not sure where my listening level is so I’m starting from the bottom up.
January 2
Like I said in the reading challenge thread, today I did a mock N2 exam so that was a looot of listening that is way above what I’m aiming for in this challenge, but I somehow passed? Barely, and it was not comfortable listening, so maybe I just got lucky. Hopefully when I try it again a year from now I can actually hear everything comfortably. It was hard but weirdly motivating.
Going back to what I can actually understand easily, I listened to Teppei’s for beginners #2
Thank you so much for the list with links. Ive been wanting to try more listening practice that’s aimed at Japanese learners so these seem perfect to go through and check out.
I think some of them I had watched before but had forgotten the names of, so extra happy I could find them again.
Today I watched a short animated folk tale, linked by @pm215 in another thread. It is related to a book we’ve been reading with the IBC, but it’s only loosely related to a story in the book, so I wouldn’t consider it a spoiler. The narration is slow and very clear, so I’m happy to say I understood most of it.
I got started with Nihongo So-matome N3 聴解 that I bought yesterday. I plan to go down the 4-week plan as suggested by the book. The audio quality is quite good, I think. Pitch accents are quite easy to pick up, but other basics like long vowels (two beats) / glottal stops / nothing (short vowels), and perhaps consonants, are still harder. There are also comprehension stuff I had to rewind and check with the answer keys. [2/5] of this week so far.
Windows Media Player Legacy is used to rip CD to MP3, with metadata filled. Last time I tried to copy to smartphone, or upload to Google Drive, metadata became ??? (encoding failure).
Not going to be listening everyday but gonna try and be a bit more listening-active than the last thread (I had like two posts I think?)
I have a least four days of listening practice set, but hoping I’ll get more than that in. Since, looking on Amazon’s Freevee channel, I noticed they have some JP horror and the great thing is you can turn subtitles off. There maybe some others but they haven’t exactly made navigating for films easy. This is for Freevee UK, so they may have more (or less) choice in other countries.
Anyways, last night I watched リング which was fun. Seen it before with subtitles, but it was a lot more immersive without. Even if I did get lost on what they were saying at times, especially mumbly-おじいさん and fast-talking and mumbly ex-husband man. I could fully understand the kid though without problem, I think he was meant to be about 6, but pretty sure that’s a year or so higher than my listening comprehension from the previous threads
Progress!
I think the film’s pretty great, I like the concept and it’s well put together, with pacing, good use of tension and all that. The effects are good too saying that’s it’s about 25 years old now, so I really wonder why, with all the effort and care it felt like they put into making it - like masking practical effects with well placed camera angles and all that - did they use the most comical DONK stock-noise for a very pivotal moment in the plot. I had to pause, it confused me so much
I am glad that the links were helpful! I’ll make sure to save what I’ve been listening to, so if I find something new I’ll definitely update the post later down the road
Lima’s Listening Home Post 
Thank you for the suggestion!
January 1
