Thank you for all of the resources and recommendations, @ekg and @Windgreen! I really want to work on my listening comprehension, but I don’t really know where to start. :\
I will definitely be making a list of your drama CD recommendations, ekg. These all look right up my alley. Probably won’t be able to actually understand anything for a good while, but I like making lists of resources for when I can understand.
I don’t have any recommendations atm, unfortunately, but hopefully that’ll change in the future.
I’m happy you’ve found something of interest here! ^>^ And please come back when you have something you’ve found yourself.
It’s hard to rate the difficulty level of stuff, but I think you might wanna go for slice-of-life type of Drama CDs, to begin with, since the vocabulary is more straightforward and you might have encountered words from anime etc.
Sci fi is always its own world and historical drama also comes with its own vocab.
I think my first Drama CD that I managed to understand more or less, was the one for Yami no Matsuei or Descendants of Darkness as the anime was called. Since I had the anime fresh in my mind, that helped a lot since the drama CD is an original story not featured in the anime. But, it helped that I knew the setting, especially with the supernatural aspects of the story.
If you are a fan of Japanese voice acting, then you might enjoy watching ぼいすた!Voice star, is a quirky show that invites seiyuus to talk about their careers and also get them to do some live some voice acting. (several episodes can be found on YouTube when searching ぼいすた!)
In this episode we have Toshiyuki Morikawa and Jun Fukuyama!
Since I just rewrote the welcome-post for the thread, I’m gonna put what I wrote about my own interests here in the comments instead!
I’m a huge fan of Japanese audio productions and audio media. A lot of my motivation for learning Japanese in the first place was to appreciate Japanese voice actors, getting to read their blogs, listen to interviews, and of course the audio dramas (+anime, games, movies, etc) they lend their voices to.
I’ve been into a variety of stuff, but mostly BL Drama CDs. But I also go for audio dramas of various genres that are created in parallel with anime-series as they’re ongoing or before the mainstream anime gets launched. Also, games can get the Drama CD add-on-treatment. But, I also like online radio talk shows.
I simply feel it’s great to be able to listen to something interesting while I do other stuff. But also, I like to settle down and enjoy some quality time with an engaging and emotionally involving drama - it’s very calming, almost meditative as you get sucked into the story.
Lately I’ve been listening to the Drama CD adaption of Kazuya Minekura’s
manga series Wild Adapter.
It’s a rather long Drama CD series (6 CDs in all, one for each manga volume). Even if I consider Wild Adapter a BL series, there really isn’t any overt BL content. Considering the themes, you might even call it a seinen series (the underworld crimes, the drug angle, and the violence).
But, it has a surprising amount of slice-of-life type of banter between the main characters of Tokito (voiced by Hideo Ishikawa) and Kubota Makoto (voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa).
Other notable seiyuus making apperances are Susumu Chiba, Shinichiro Miki, Kosugi Juurouta, and Toshihiko Seki.
This is a solid production. Suitable music, sfx and Morikawa shines in his interpretation of Kubota (he’s really pulling off some pretty unique voice acting here! ^>^).
I really love this series. It’s interesting and captivating and also not too difficult from a listening comprehension perspective. Highly recommend!
So, a couple of new listening tips for people interesting in the real world and news in particular. Lovely @RoseWagsBlue has made a great post about how to stream Japanese news with subs.
If you’re already reading NHK easy news, you might also wanna give this a try! ^>^
YouGlish allows you to search YouTube for words spoken in Japanese. Very handy if you’re struggling with the pronunciation of a word or recognizing it spoken. ^>^
I just learned about the author Mimei Ogawa, and checking the Wikipedia page there was a link to LibriVox Audiobooks that are public domain recordings of various books, including Mimei Ogawa’s works.
These audio books are free to download, in a multitude of genres and languages - so I hope this helps you find something you enjoy while practicing your listening comprehension! ^>^
If anyone is interested in some male-voiced podcasts, @cccswann kindly shared these great recommendations to practice one’s listening comprehension! ^>^
I can’t understand the nuance of the sentences, but I pick up words very often. Not to mention he does try to separate his episodes by levels(N4 , N3, etc.).
Inspired by some recent threads talking about lack of sleep, there is a Audio CD-series with voice actors doing monologues to help put you to sleep.
I had to do some searching but here’s a link to one of the CDs, with voice actor Takaya Kuroda.
They use a dummy head mic (a 3D-recording device) to create a full 3D-audio experience - which isn’t very common. And they do so to full effect - meaning expect whispers in your ears and an audio illusion of a person moving about the room talking to you.
It takes some getting used to! But, it’s pretty neat.
This is a series, so just get the CD with the seiyuu you favor and hopefully they will put you to sleep in no time! ^>^
Speechling provides you with listening comprehension practice (for free) where you can control what area of listening comprehension you wanna concentrate on:
Core foundation of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc
Training course from beginner to expert level
Phrasebook in various areas (basic expressions, travel, money, personal questions, hotel, asking for help etc.)
Hopefully some of you here on WK is helped by this awesome site! ^>^
My favorite resources for practicing listening comprehension are: -Nihongo con Teppei podcast
-Miku Sensei shadowing audios (for Patreons)
-Benjiro - Beginner Japanese Youtube channel
-Watching native content with the Language Learning with Netflix plug-in (for Chrome)
These all look right up my alley. Probably won’t be able to actually understand anything for a good while, but I like making lists of resources for when I can understand.
A lot of my motivation for learning Japanese in the first place was to appreciate Japanese voice actors, getting to read their blogs, listen to interviews, and of course the audio dramas (+anime, games, movies, etc) they lend their voices to.
