I do the same, I rip the audio to put on my laptop then sync it to my phone and iPad, then I can listen to it anywhere. I can even listen while Iām driving if I want to without having to worry about changing CDs.
It also means if I accidentally scratch the CD at least I have a backup of the audio.
I love JFZ! The website is fantastic with the video lessons, quizzes, and games. To me, itās well worth the $99 a year.
Well, Iām not exactly @Sarabrina ćć ā in fact, Iām not @Sarabrina ćć at all (though also a cat 
), but what I personally like about Nihongo con Teppei for beginners (havenāt listened to Nihongo con Teppei original yet - plan to once I finish listening to the beginner podcasts):
P. S. Btw, I didnāt find the option to download whole pageworth of podcasts, so I wrote a small Python script to do it:
import requests
import re
url = 'https://nihongoconteppei.com/page/4/'
path = 'E:\Docs\Japanese\Podcasts'
with requests.get(url) as r:
contents = r.text
regexp = re.compile(r'http://media.blubrry.com/nihongo_con_teppei/s/nihongoconteppei.com/wp-content/uploads/\d{4}/\d{2}/.+?(\d+\.mp3)')
for res in regexp.finditer(contents):
file_url = res.group()
file_name = res.groups()[0]
with requests.get(file_url) as r:
with open(f'{path}/{file_name}', 'wb') as f:
f.write(r.content)
All you need to do is to replace the path value with the path to the folder you want to save podcasts in. Also, if you need to load podcasts from other page - you would need to enter the address of that page into the url variable.
My Sensei has started a youtube channel where she comments a gameplay of Final Fantasy 9, I like it a lot 
Since the Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai book club is about to start tomorrow (!), I thought Iād do another BLCD review for those interested in giving the Drama CD-series a try for listening practice.
Content warning! This drama CD series has adult content as does the manga! If thatās not your thing, give this series a pass.
But if you donāt mind the themes of masochism, sex, yakuza, drug deals and physical violence, itās in my opinion a great series that got a phenomenal audio drama adaption.
åć鳄ćÆē¾½ć°ćććŖć by Kou Yoneda
Cast:
Yashiro: Tarusuke Shingaki
Chikara Doumeki: Wataru Hatano
Kanji Kageyama: Hiroki Yasumoto
Eishin Kuga: Yuki Ono
Takahito Misumi: Toru Okawa
Atsushi Ryuuzaki: Kenta Miyake
Kazuaki Hirata: Akimitsu Takase
Yuusuke Nanahara: Kazuyuki Okitsu
Hayato Sugimoto: Takahiro Miyake
Shizuma Amou: Takuya Sato
This adaption has got several big-name voice actors, such as Kenta Miyake (you might know him as All-Might from My Hero Academia), Toru Okawa (who played Roy Mustang in Fullmetal Alchemist, Saito in Ghost in the Shell, and a ton of other stuff), Wataru Hatano (played notable roles in animes such as Fairy Tail, Yowamushi Pedal: New Generation; Bungo Stray Dogs, My Hero Academia etc.).
The main character of Yashiro, played by Tarusuke Shingaki isnāt as well-known perhaps, though heās also done voice acting in some pretty big anime series, like My Hero Academia (as Mirio Togata), Ghost in the Shell: Arise (as Togasa), Fate/Zero (as Kariya MatÅ and this role in particular is amazingly well done). Heās also doing voice acting on various video games and a ton of more anime and drama CDs.
This is a great cast for this BLCD adaption, with seiyuus who are all well suited to their roles.
Story:
Yashiro is the young leader of a yakuza group. When heās not dealing with the shady business of money extortion in the money loan business, he seeks out sex partners to serve his deep masochistic side. Starting work as a bodyguard for him is Chikara Doumeki and although Yashiro has decided to never lay a hand on his own men, he finds thereās something about Doumeki that he canāt resist. A complicated relationship of sorts ensues while there is increasing turmoil within the yakuza group.
Review:
This is a wonderful adaption of the original manga. It diligently follows the original story and the characters have clearly been handled with great care. The sound production is well thought out and done. Suitable music, though they use a bit of classical music on CD1 (that does not reappear later on), probably because they just didnāt know the series would take off and having more music composed for the series is costly? But thankfully, Satieās Gymnepedie (heard in 2 instances in the first CD) was dropped for original music moving forward. It certainly got a better composed soundtrack than some BLCDs, though itās not particularly noteworthy perhaps. It just works.
Itās worth noting thereāre several instances of karami (voice acting of sex scenes) and itās full of the themes of masochism and sadism, which might not be everyoneās cup of tea. But Shinaki Taruske is pretty darn good at this type of voice acting. XD (karami is frankly hard to do well, for male and female seiyuus both!). I can only applaud him for his hard work. And yeah, youāll also hear Miyake Kenta being all sadistic during sex! 
That might not be how something you wanna think about when you hear him in different roles, as there is always this cross-pollination going on when you start recognizing actors. I think heās amazing as Ryuuzaki, very rough and yakuza-ish! 
In some ways I feel the BLCDs are easier to digest than the manga, because the language isnāt that hard to follow, but in the manga, dialect, slang and casual grammar might trip you up while reading. Listening makes those expression seem natural and less challenging, imo.
I highly recommend this as it is a quality BLCD production. Itās really about whether you like the themes, story and characters for this one, not quality issues that is not uncommon for other drama CDs.
Happy listening everyone! ^>^
Just two Youtube channels I found and been watching a bit. No over the top, high pitched screaming Vtuber voice. Pleasant to listen to with clear audio quality and imo good enunciation.
ćććØććŖćć Dude talks about drawing/illustrating.
ęå¦YouTuberćć« She reviews books.
Also found this podcast.
Think in Japanese Two humans talking about various topics. One has good audio and speaks a bit slower, the other one has rather bad audio and speaks faster.
As a followup, Iād like to point you all to Kiryuu Coco.
Sheās sometimes a little bit hyper, and her voice takes some getting used to, but because sheās bilingual and makes a huge effort to cross the language barrier between JP Vtubers and their English-speaking following, she makes for great listening practice.
Unfortunately, as of today, she has graduated, so there will be no more new content. But her old content will remain up, so it still makes for good practice. Especially her Reddit Shitpost Review streams are great, because they revolve around explaining English memes to Japanese VTubers, giving you a lot of context for what is being discussed.
Thanks for telling us about this @yamitenshi! <3 Itās very helpful to people keeping track of Japanese VTubers! ^>^
Hey, if thereās one thing Iām passionate about, itās VTubers!
And food
And video games
Okay maybe Iām passionate about a lot of things 
Anyway, for anyone interested in VTuber stuff (a lot of it makes for decent listening practice, honestly, and though all of them put on a persona to some degree the conversations flow fairly naturally a lot of the time), check out the VTubers thread:
https://community.wanikani.com/t/vtubers-anyone/47228
Itās a wonderful rabbit hole to fall into. The more, the merrier
I hope everyone whoās into Japanese audio media knows about the ongoing Extensive listening challenge š (2021) that @valkow kindly has set up for us! ^>^
Iāve created quite a list of Drama CD-series to get through within 12 months. But I donāt think itās impossible. Not the least since Iāve already gotten started on it! 
So, last night I began by listening to ććć«ć»ćć¤ć³ć! ^>^ 
CAST:
Toshiyuki Morikawa
Kazuyuki Okitsu
Tooru Ookawa
Tatsuhisa Suzuki
among others
This BLCD is a murder mystery. The main character, Kamijo is a police detective tasked with solving a gruesome murder where a man has been starved to death (with some rather unusual body mutilation thrown in ). At the crime scene, the first witness happens to be a young boy.
Desperate for leads, Kamijo seeks to question the boy, only to be faced with his guardian, a clinical psychologist called Sena, who do not want to put the boy through that sort of stress. The reason is that the boy is struggling with mental disease (spoiler) (multiple personality disorder) and seemingly canāt remember anything from the time.
It quickly also becomes clear that Sena and Kamijo knows each other from their school kendo club, though itās been 15 years since theyāve met (something like that). And Sena is little inclined to let the police question the boy heās been charged to help.
This is how this story kicks off, only to become even more complicated as the police suspects another abduction of a yakuza member, to be yet a murder in the makingā¦dun dun dun
If you like murder mystery, this BLCD might be for you. It has a calm air which I love, as we get to follow Kamijoās internal monologues of struggles with the case. Thereās some good music and sfx as well, but, the best part is definitely the cast. 
Kazuyuki Okitsu (left) & Toshiyuki Morikawa (right)
Toshiyuki Morikawa and Kazuyuki Okitsu are fabulous together. They have a unique rapport, not just on this Drama CD but also others Iāve listened to, where they just play off on each otherās roles. It makes for a very fun listening experience! 
(Sena is tsutsuntsun-ing his way through the dialogue, giving Kamijo a really hard time and putting him constantly on the wrong foot! 
Heās also an outgoing gay man and Kamijo keeps being flustered by him. )
But, thereās also a side story of sorts, of the Yakuza gang that inadvertently finds a member of theirs abducted. The yakuza boss (played by Tooru Ookawa) and his younger lover (played by Tatsuhisa Suzuki) makes for a great counterpoint to the main plot. Not the least since Tatsuhisa Suzuki is doing one of his best acting jobs ever!!! 
Heās gob smacking amazing as a former junkie, now turned clean, but struggling to find a place at the side the yakuza boss. He totally made me tear up in the special, where the yakuza boss and the lover are the main characters. 
Is there karami? Of course there is! 
Itās done well as well.
This story has a lot of crime solving terminology, not to mention the whole mental disease theme running through the whole story, with several technical terms being flung around at times. It can be a struggle to keep up. But, itās good enough that a relisten to difficult parts should be a joy rather than a bother. 
Iād consider this BLCD to be somewhere between Intermediate/Advanced. (a little bit depending on how much other listening youāve done, I think).
In any case, I can warmly recommend it! ^>^
Can you point me to an online example of a āvoiced visual novelā, and then I can track down more myself? I havenāt seen one of those, but they sound great!
Total beginner question here: are BLCDs, audiodrama CDs, really CDs? (I hope notā¦)
Where is the central marketplace for them so I can nose around?
Thanks.
So, Drama CDs are exactly what they sound like: CDs with audio dramas, where BLCDs are the subgenre for boysā love stories. (in the 90s the releases were on cassette tapes though! )
Drama CDs are not āvoiced visual novelsā, something I have no experience of myself. @riya might be able to better explain it.
But, yeah, Drama CDs are all adaptions, much like anime is, but without the visuals. Either itās based on visual novels or manga (sometimes also video games, or even anime).
You might call it the cheap alternative to getting an anime adaption, for semi-popular series.
The Japanese music business is not known for being very forward looking, and Iāve seen the lack of mp3-download options, like iTunes, discussed before. CDs and singles are still popular release formats for music.
You can find Drama CDs on Amazon JP among other places. Just search for it. Iāve only used Amazon, because I usually buy manga and BLCDs in some kind of mix. But other sellers exist for international delivery. Just google.
There are all sorts of visual novels with Japanese voice acting. Itās quite common for visual novels, aside from indie releases, to have voice acting for all the characters (sometimes the protagonist is left unvoiced). Depending on what platforms you have access to I can try to find stuff to recommend?
For an example, this is a playthrough of ć²ćććć®ćŖćé ć« on the Switch where you can hear the voice acting: ćć²ćććć®ćŖćé ć« å„ćå®ę³ćć¬ć¤Part2 - YouTube
The commentator also reads along with the unvoiced lines and because itās on Youtube, you can slow down the speed.
If you want a huge list, you can check out the visual novel database (although the sheer number can get kinda overwhelming): Browse visual novels | vndb
Thanks thatās a great database. In the last day, Iāve tracked down what visual novels are, opened a Steam account (I havenāt been a gamer thus far in may life, but Iām open to changeā¦), and bought DRAMAtical Murder because it was so highly recommended by @ekg (and since it was from 2012, I was confident it would run on my windows 7 laptop), and pre-ordered āthe Great Ace Attorney Chroniclesā to be released sometime in July.
Visual novels that I might enjoy (who knows, Iām so new to the genre) would be āmale protagonist, historical, but not samurai, any part of the worldā or āany gender protagonist, whimsical, non-violent, slice-of-Japanese-lifeā. I tend to prefer, more realistic less āanime likeā animation. If you know any titles that you think might appeal, please let me know.
Now, the DRAMAtical Murders I downloaded - has spoken Japanese, but only English subtitles, with no way to call up the Japanese. Is this common? Where would it be best to purchase future visual novels if I wanted both English and Japanese? Or is that not possible - if I purchase from a Japanese retailer I get only Japanese and from a U.S. retailer only English?
You can see the available languages on the store page. Itās really a 50/50 if they have JP interface, but it seems to be becoming more common. You can probably still refund the game, if you like.
Is there a way to filter voice acted novels? For some reason there doesnāt seem to be a tag for that. I still find the majority of VNs are not fully voice acted. Or maybe Iām looking at the wrong place. Lotās of the famous older ones are.
@Todd_A Unfortunately the Ace Attorney games donāt have much voice acting outside of cutscenes as far as I know. Theyāre still great games though!
Hmm Iām not as familiar with Steam since I primarily play Japanese games on my Vita. Itās hard to find ones with both English and Japanese. Umineko has both and you can get voice acting to work if you install the third-party PS3 version patch but itās not exactly an easy read. Most Japanese visual novels are PC-only and I have a Mac so I donāt have access to a lot of stuff.
I havenāt played Dramatical Murder but itās too bad there isnāt a Japanese-text Steam version out there. There can be mismatches like that sometimes based on licensing and ports. Typically, if you buy the Japanese version of a game, especially if itās originally in Japanese, it will only have Japanese language options. English ports of Japanese games are typically English text translations with Japanese voice acting, although there are more options on Steam. If you want both Japanese and English text with Japanese voice acting, that does narrow it down.
Hmm, I mostly play historic fiction, otome games, and mystery novels so my slice of life knowledge is rather lacking. Itās too bad you donāt like samurai stuff because I would have otherwise recommended Hakuoki (which is both English and Japanese and has voice acting) but itās about the Shinsengumi
Itās a bit hard to think of anything that hits all of this criteria. Steins;Gate is another one that comes to mind but thatās more a sci fi time travel thing.
Ah, I thought the link I shared had the āvoice actingā tag on it but maybe I messed up somewhere. I canāt speak for a lot of indie JP VNs since I donāt have said PC to play them on so my experience with VNs comes from stuff that gets released on handheld consoles which is almost always voiced. As far as stuff on Steam goes, it probably depends on if itās a port or not.
By āfullyā voice acted do you mean including the narration? Or just that all lines of dialogue by non-protagonist characters is voiced?
Even just the walkthroughs you pointed out on Youtube might be enough to satisfy my interest at this point, until I get to the level where I want to start hooking sentences for an anki deck myself. Iāve seen folks do some pretty exciting sentence mining in online tutorials.
Iā'm open to any gaming system I can run off my laptop, Google slate tablet, or even I suppose, my seldom used iPad, so suggest anything you like. I am in no way tied to Steam. I just donāt have any game consoles.
What does the term āportā mean that youāve used above? I get gist, butā¦
The new Ace Attorney Chronicles look like they are set in Meiji Japan, which really piques my interest.bAnd Iāll give a look to Hakuoki too, any good story is likely to carry me along. The BLCD that @ekg described āFlesh and Bloodā sounds fantastic (I was a big fan of the Patrick OāBrian historical seafaring novels as audiobooks - all 22 of them!), now if only āFlesh and Bloodā had a visual novel adaptation I could sink my teeth into to study some vocabulary!
No, just the dialogue. I guess it can be just the difference in Vita and PC.
It does seem to have the tag, but itās a bit unclear to what extent of voice acting that means. Sometimes the characters throw some random sentences in there so Iām not sure if that counts as worthy of the voice acting tag. Fruits of Grisaia comes to mind. And Danganronpa. And Danganronpa seems to have the tag while itās barely voice acted. The researching I need to do just adds to the stress of never finding a fitting VN . Not to mention platform problems.
Having requirements of a VN being fully voice acted and not a romance story, I guess my options are kind of limited 
. AI: Somnium Files was amazing, though. It had everything; comedy, mystery and science. So if you have some mystery recommendations 
. On the other end of the spectrum, I looked into Dies Irae, which seemed interesting, but the almost 100 hour length is a bit intimidating. Especially with the archaic language 
.
