I’m using a technique whereby I put episodes from a few different podcasters onto a spotfiy playlist. I then listen to the playlist for repeated exposure. I’ll transcribe episodes that I find really difficult to comprehend.
My mixtape is episodes from
Nihongo con Teppei
Sakura Tips
Japanese with Shun
Learn Japanese with Noriko
My goal is to improve my chances of passing N4 listening section in the summer (ha! assuming I passed the N5 one which was tough!)
So I’m trying to listen for an hour a day. When I get a bit bored of my playlist, I’ll challenge myself with new episodes. I’ve not listened to any N4 drills yet so can’t gauge the difficulty - I’ll listen to some soon I guess.
Only one episode of Teppen (#5). I didn’t quite get all of it, but I understood the gist. I’m starting to come to a point where Youtube captions aren’t quite accurate anymore, so I might need a few more passes of each video where that happens.
Day 1 - 2 episodes of Sakura’s Tips podcast, which I just started from the beginning again Day 2 - Onomappu’s most recent video where he calls a friend and just chats. I watched it three times - first with no subtitles, then again with JP subs, and finally with English and JP subs Day 3 - I had to get a train and bus today, so listened to my Japanese music playlist for the whole journey (that counts right…). Then I watched two episodes of JJBA (with EN subs though), as well as another Onomappu video on delinquents, which I did the same way as yesterday where I watched it three times.
Thanks to everyone posting all their links/resources, especially the YouTube ones! I’m always looking for new JP YouTubers that are good for beginners. I’ve noticed with the things I’ve listened to I do tend to get the gist of what’s being said even if I don’t understand everything.
Out of curiosity, are there many people doing audiobooks and what are your sources for that?
Today I listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners, and then attempted 2 more origami videos.
Today I made a simple box - this one turned out ok, other than I’m using really cheap paper so its very flimsy!
And I also made a tulip. I messed up folding the petals so its wider than it should be and the petals are too small, but I’m still quite pleased with it because it stands up on its own and thats kind of fun
This is more suitable for me! He didn’t speak too slowly, yet it was still comfortable for me to understand. I listened to the track two times. Once without pause and I understood most of what he said. The second time, I paused to look up words I didn’t know for sure so I could understand everything. I think this was the perfect practice for me, so I’ll be continuing like this.
It’s late today, and I feel a bit burned out after hours of reading and playing Pokemon Legends in Japanese, so I just watched 7 more minutes of the Holotalk stream from my last post (instead of finishing the last 45 minutes as I originally planned).
Today honestly sucked, one reason being the headache I’ve had for several hours. So, I decided to stay on the Comprehensible Japanese train and just relax while listening to The Tortoise and the Hare. Something I like about her videos is how she’ll say the same concept but in different ways; for example, うさぎはびっくりしました followed by 驚いていました (I’m paraphrasing). It’s a small but nice touch.
I’m having one of those low-energy days so I watched this Youtuber showing a bunch of fashion coordinates for a white puffer jacket and called it good enough. I’m short so I do a lot of clothing shopping when I visit Japan (or I did pre-pandemic, and presumably will do so again in the future), and fashion is one of my stronger listening areas, but also one I don’t want to forget.
I did 52 minutes and 13 seconds of listening to podcasts. It was mainly new episodes of season 1 of Noriko’s podcast. To be honest I didn’t understand much. I like the speed and clarity with which she speaks, but unless I transcribe episodes, I don’t pick up on much. I did transcribe an episode of teppei about chocolate, and in particular how Spanish chocolate gifted from his in-laws is much bigger, and how he prefers sweeter milk chocolate as it goes better with coffee which he likes to drink when eating coffee… drinking coffee!
Hello everyone! Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year! I’m already participating in the Read Everyday Challenge and enjoying it so far, so was excited to find that the challenge had a listening counterpart too! My current goal with Japanese is to immerse myself in the language as much as possible, so I’ll try to be active in both the challenges (though I realise I might end up missing some days in either because of my hectic schedule at uni). Anyway, I’ll try to do my best for this challenge and my immersion journey, and I hope to interact with you all and have some great discussions in the process.
がんばります!(◍•ᴗ•◍)
Videos on the Comprehensible Japanese channel (I was so happy to see so many posts with videos from this channel - it’s one of my favourite YouTube channels for immersion! )
The Activate Your Japanese series (it has Eng subs embedded in the episodes, but I’ll try to focus on the audio only)
Shirokuma Cafe on Animelon (I’ve always wanted to watch this anime with only Japanese subs only, so I’m thinking of trying that for this challenge!)
This list of resources is not exhaustive, so if I end up using any resources other the ones I’ve mentioned, I’ll update this list as well as include the resource in my log.
Last night I watched 仄暗い水の底から, the English title is just “Dark Water”, I think the Japanese title sounds cooler and more ominous. Not heard of or seen this one before, but I enjoyed this one too! It was pretty similar to リング in setup and themes, both dealt with a single mother and a child (with broody divorced husband in the background) and the presence of a curse-spirit. But the subplot of this one dealt with the custody of the child rather than a potential reconciliation of sorts like in リング.
The tension and creepy was also good in this one too, I like the camerawork and minimal scoring of these films. It works really well. I didn’t think the lead character was quite as good though, she seemed to be a bit too hysterical at times. I like that it felt like the film was wrapping up but then there was a little more at the end, it had good closure - I think the opened endedness of リング worked but it’s nice to watch a horror movie that actually has a conclusion for once and isn’t just open-ended or extremely random plot twist for the sake of it.
Japanese-wise I could understand everything the children said (like last time, they were all about six years old) but struggled with some of the adults - again, the ex-husband man is mumbly. And I had no idea whatsoever what the apartment caretaker man said at all, pretty sure every sentence he said was somehow condensed down into two syllables conjoined together with a single, thick string of mumble.
Onto tomorrow’s film! (well, tonight’s really but I’m too tired after to write anything)
Today I watched a Comprehensible Japanese video about playing a spot the difference game (#10). Really nice content that is similar to Tadoku books in that you don’t need to know the vocabulary to understand what’s going on.
Two more episodes of ミステリと言う勿れ! One included some fun kanji practice too, and quick number recognition. Not that I managed to follow that too closely.
Totonou really is adorable.
I’m watching with English subtitles too. I try to not rely too much on them, but I’d get horribly frustrated if I couldn’t follow the plot properly, and possibly give up watching altogether, so I reckon that’s a good compromise. Have them there, glance at them as little (and as late) as possible.
Today I watched 3 episodes of Cells at Work, with english subs.
I’ve been reading the manga of this series with the ABBC and finding it really difficult, so I thought watching the anime might help me out a bit with all of the biology related vocab.
I decided to give this a try as I don’t watch much fashion stuff. I got like 80% but there were a few ? moments. I was a bit baffled by some of her outfits, but a couple were pretty cute.