🎙 Podcast Club [Now Listening: 4989 American Life]

Japanese Language Listening
1

Currently Listening: 4989 American Life

image
image775×175 41.9 KB

Where to Find:
YouTube | Official website

:studio_microphone: Welcome to the Podcast Club!

This club is meant to encourage everyone to practice their listening skills together! Each week we will listen to a podcast and discuss it in the threads, and vote for the next podcast 5 weeks in advance of the next pick!

If you’re interested in joining in, just listen along to the latest podcast episode and join in the conversation!

While this club doesn’t have a specific Japanese level, it may not be suitable for absolute beginners who are not used to listening to Japanese, but feel free to give it a go regardless!

:open_book: Previous Picks

# Title Notes
01 4989 American Life Current

Each pick will run for 10 weeks regardless of how many episodes the podcast has. If there is high interest in one of the picks after it is finished and people wish to continue listening to it together, that pick may continue as a parallel running offshoot club.

:ring: Proposed Podcasts

Feel free to nominate something you’d like to listen to using the template below! Suggestions must be appropriate though so make sure to read the guidelines.

Guidelines for Proposing Podcasts
  1. Nominate something you are ready to listen to
    We want to maintain lively discussion throughout the club, so don’t nominate something you yourself will struggle to participate in. You also can’t rely on there being more advanced learners available to help with all questions.
  2. Podcasts must have minimum 150 minutes of content
    This minimum would allow for at least 15 minutes each week.
  3. Do not nominate anything clearly NSFW
    We try to maintain a wide appeal, so don’t knowingly nominate anything associated with sexual or overly disturbing themes.
  4. Do not nominate anything difficult to procure
    Picks must be readily available on services such as Spotify, YouTube, or other streaming sources.
  5. Podcasts that fail to score at least 15% on the last three round of voting will get automatically removed
    This approach ensures that the list remains reasonably small and dynamic.
    You may nominate a removed podcast again, but please think about it before hand. Do you think there’s reasonable interest for that nomination?
Proposal Template

Copy this template into a new post when making a nomination.

Insert Title Here

(cover pic here)

Summary

Insert summary here, taken from wherever - Wikipedia, Amazon, etc. Improve the description if you would like / feel it necessary.

Website:
Format/Episode Length:
Genre:
Difficulty:
Transcript availability: Yes/No

Availability

Insert links to places where you can listen to the podcast. Preferably from free to listen places such as Spotify, Podchaser, Google/Apple Podcasts, etc.

Personal Opinion

Insert why you think this podcast would be good to listen to, personally and for the podcast club.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Insert pros here.

Cons

  • Insert cons here.
List of Removed Nominations
Podcast Reason
placeholder not cool enough

Current Proposals

# Title Availability
01 Nihongo con Teppei (Beginner) Spotify / Podchaser / Apple Podcast / YouTube
02 Japanese With Shun Red Circle / YouTube / Spotify
03 Let’s Learn Japanese from Small Talk Apple Podcasts
04 Heikousen Scramble / 平行線すくらんぶる YouTube
05 The Bite size Japanese Podcast YouTube / Apple Podcasts / Spotify

Maximum 20 spots

:world_map: Where to Listen to Podcasts

If you have other recommendations for where you can find and listen to Japanese podcasts, get transcriptions, or estimate the difficulty of podcasts please do suggest them!

Recommendations

Where to find Inspiration:

:bar_chart: Historic Polls

Podcast Selection Polls

Poll 1 - Winner: 4989 American Life

Other polls

:stuck_out_tongue:

Set this thread to “Watching” to get updates!

17 Likes
2

@Akashelia @mitrac :saluting_face:

Anyone want to get the nomination ball rolling? :eyes:

3 Likes
3

Awesome, thanks for making this :smiley:
Yes I’ll start making a nomination right away! I will nominate at least Nihongo Con Tepei (Beginner), that’s the only one I’ve been regularly listening to so far.

3 Likes
4

Nihongo Con Teppei (Beginner)

image

Summary

Teppei picks a subject and talks about it for 5 minutes.

From Teppei's website:

HELLO and WELCOME!
My name is Teppei.
Nice to meet you!
I want to help you to Speak Japanese.

I’ve been creating my original podcast called Nihongo con Teppei. And now started this podcast for beginner learners of Japanese language. But the method is completely the same!

Listening is the key.
More you listen,you will be able to understand and express yourself in Japanese.
At least it worked to me like that.
Now I speak English and Spanish fluently.
I would like to share this powerful method with you.
In my podcast,I try to speak basically in Japanese only.
Sometimes slowly. Sometimes faster.
It might sound a little bit hard,especially if you are a beginner learner.
But don’t worry!
You will get used to my speech probably much sooner than you think.
Please just relax yourself.
Make a cup of coffee or something.
Download those podcast.
Put them into your smartphone or any MP3 players.
Then get out of the room and have a walk while you are listening to the podcast.
Or just like me, listen to podcasts while you are doing the housework.
And you listen to each episode again and again.
Day by day. Gradually you will improve your Japanese.
It will take some time but it will Actually work! Trust me!
See you there!

Website: https://nihongoconteppei.com/
Format: Each episode is around 5 minutes
Category: Daily life
Difficulty: Beginner (N5/N4)
Transcript availability: No

Availability

You can probably search yourself easily for it in your favorite app, but make sure to write “nihongo con teppei beginner” as he has different levels available

Personal Opinion

I like that it is short episodes, I always have time for at least one.
I find his speech easy to understand. When he says words that he thinks are difficult, he tries to explain them or even give the English version, but otherwise it’s Japanese only.
I like how now I feel I know a lot about his life, even though it’s just five minutes, but he mentions things here and there.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Good for beginners
  • Easily available
  • If you like it you will never run out of episodes / there is a harder version

Cons

  • It can be a bit dull / uninteresting
  • He talks alone (VS with someone else), so you don’t learn the interactions with another person (though sometimes he asks us something and answers himself)
7 Likes
5

I’ve added a few things in Summary that could maybe be in the official template?

Website:
Format:
Category:
Difficulty:
Transcript availability: Yes/No

5 Likes
6

Ah great ideas I’ll add those

4 Likes
7

ooh I love the format, thanks for setting this up!! If you haven’t, tag this thread in the “listening every day” thread as the folks there may well be interested in nominating and participating. I like your format @Akashelia I’ll copy that

I have a couple of ideas for nominating - 4989 American Life would be perfect for this, and I need to check if my other ones I have bookmarked have enough content/are approachable enough. There’s a story podcast I like but it might be a bit too hard. I might need to put more thought on that on Friday, so apologies I might not manage this week in the evenings. Actually I have loads of ideas, maybe I’ll restrict myself to the first 2 and then make more later when we need more.

Judging difficulty will be interesting. I wonder if we could create some benchmarks based on some of the most popular podcasts or by creating some criteria and names for various levels?

Thoughts on giving a difficulty score in the nomination post

I find I can only judge the difficulty levels I’ve passed, and then anything beyond that is just “harder than my current level”.

These can definitely be improved on, but here’s my first hack (I’m currently ok at easy native, have had a couple of lucky punches into what I’m calling medium native, and anything else I call hard native, so perhaps that is just BS!):

  • N4 level - dedicated content creator for learners: slow speaking, restricted vocab use, potentially some English, definitely subtitles or a transcript
  • N3+ level - dedicated content creator for learners: more natural speaking speed (but not full speed native), less restricted vocab use but still very common, no English, perhaps subtitles but not necessarily a transcript
  • Easy native - intended for native speaker audience, small number of daily life themes discussed in an organised way (makes understanding easier and guesses more predictable), but no attempt to restrict vocab
  • Moderate native - wider range of topics discussed and less predictability in content flow, but a broader theme or arc of discussion still helps to orient understanding
  • Hard native - quick fire conversation, topics may change abruptly, niche themes or specialised vocab

The challenge of voting for a difficulty in a nomination post would be that some people might immediately be able to say, oh that’s definitely category x, whereas someone else might think, well, my hardest is at “easy native” and this is definitely harder than that. On the other hand, there won’t be so many people and nominations, it might be better to just informally ask people what category to put it in and just go with the group consensus.

Also, it might be interesting have a poll on what levels of listening people most want! If there is a wide spread we could alternate voting for easier or more difficult options, or if everyone is wanting content at the same level, at least we would find out.

Put a reminder for people to

set this thread to watching! :eyes:

5 Likes
8

Japanese With Shun

image
image512×512 49.1 KB

Summary

Website: Japanese with Shun | RedCircle
Format/Episode Length: Monologue / 5-10m
Genre: Daily Life / Travel
Difficulty: Beginner
Transcript availability: Patreon only

Availability

Red Circle
YouTube
Spotify

Personal Opinion

For me, this was the beginner podcast that stuck in my early days. Teppei’s speaking/presentation style was hard for me to listen to, but Shun was just the right pace for me to get into regularly listening.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Shun tries to limit himself to Genki 1/2 level grammar
  • Decent variety of topics, a lot of the early ones are about Shun’s life and places he’s lived

Cons

  • Eventually Shun gets into his rhythm and the episodes get very formulaic. But I made it 100 episodes in before switching.
8 Likes
9

Let’s Learn Japanese from Small Talk

Summary

Website: Let’s learn Japanese from small talk! Podcast Series - Apple Podcasts
Format/Episode Length: Dialogue / 1 hour
Genre: Daily Life / Japan
Difficulty: Intermediate / Advanced
Transcript availability: Patreon only

Availability

Apple Podcasts

Personal Opinion

This was the first two hosts talking podcast I listened to and I found it pretty enjoyable.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Decent variety of topics
  • Two hosts interacting, more natural conversation.
  • The hosts do give a vocab list at the end of the episode for early episodes.

Cons

  • I think especially as the podcasts went on, the hosts forgot their target was language learners and reverted to more advanced/native speech, so the difficulty goes up over the course of the podcast
  • The hosts do not have a great gasp on which vocab language learners might know or not know. They’ll omit complicated concepts from their vocab list but then include りんご
  • Episodes are long, I suggest splitting them up if it wins
7 Likes
10

Heikousen Scramble / 平行線すくらんぶる

image
image1280×720 114 KB

Summary

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhlWQoN7DaQ
Format/Episode Length: Dialogue / 30-40 minutes
Genre: Radio show (with viewer mail ins)
Difficulty: Native
Transcript availability: Fansubs on youtube - no audio, play actual podcast in background

Availability

YouTube

Personal Opinion

This is native content for natives, unlike the previous two targeted at learners. This means it’s going to be hard. But the fansubs make it more approachable than most content of its kind.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Decent variety of topics
  • Two hosts interacting, natural conversation.
  • The fansubs let you try your hand at native content for natives
  • The hosts are a vtuber and an anime VA, so the content might be of interest to many here.

Cons

  • It’s hard, you’re probably not going to get everything the first time around.
11 Likes
11

Neat idea for a club. I’ve never been too much of a podcast person, but I probably need to spend more time listening to this sort of thing sometime. If something not directed at learners happens to win I’ll try to give the club a look.

6 Likes
12

4989 American Life

image
image1003×228 54.8 KB

This podcast is about the daily life of Utaco, a Japanese woman who moved to California with her Japanese husband. She talks about her daily life, travels, impressions of American life and comparisons with life in Japan.

Summary

Website: https://www.4989americanlife.com/

Format/Episode Length: Monologue / ~30 minutes / She’s up to 299 episodes and counting.

Summary

Aside from her standard intro/outro you’ll get used to, each show has an opening where she introduces some of the general ideas in the show and what is going on in her life. Then there are normally about 3 main segments to the show. First is normally a story about some events in her life or a theme she has been thinking about. Then she has other themed segments that repeat week to week, like something about the English language, or Americaあるある (a bit like “only in America”), etc. The nice thing is, this means that if you only want to listen to ~10 minutes, then you could stop after one segment, and easily pick the episode back up to continue the next segment.

Genre: Daily life / solo

Difficulty: Native (but on the easier end)

Summary

Her discussions about her daily life are highly relatable, no matter where you live, and will be familiar if you are at all familiar with life in the US. This makes her speech and the contents relatively easy to understand or even guess if you have trouble.

Transcript availability: From episode 089 on her website (there is a search bar so type the number you want there)

Summary

She didn’t intend this to be a podcast for language learners, but she started publishing transcripts for free on her website when she discovered that she was popular with language learners.

Availability

  • Her website has links or search the app of your choice.
  • YouTube has all episodes and some shorts

Personal Opinion

This is the easiest podcast I’ve found that is targeted to natives. I think it is so easy for several reasons: single speaker with a clear speaking voice and a good mic setup, daily life themes, obvious transitions when the topic or theme changes. And that’s before you consider transcripts (from episode #89).

I like how relatable she is, and for that reason, I started at episode 1 so I could hear more of her backstory! But I think if the club wanted to start later for the benefit of transcripts, that works easily.

I like her humour and especially her impressions of cultural differences. She is thoughtful about language learning and personal relationships. Finally, she’s enthusiastic about travel so you get her impressions on the places she visits.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

  • Diverse topics — from personal stories to cultural observations
  • Cultural Insights: the podcast blends Japanese and American culture in the context of a lived experience
  • Natural conversational Japanese and clear pronunciation, good mic setup
  • While the podcast covers a wide range of topics, it tends to use language that is not overly complex
  • Transcripts (from #89)

Cons:

  • Full on native speed of speech, so definitely excludes beginners to Japanese listening
  • Very focused on life in America which won’t be for everyone
  • Cultural References: (for the expected Japanese audience) some background knowledge for Japanese cultural references is taken for granted, although, to be honest, this is more for incidental mentions like Japanese places or brands. For the main themes, there is enough compare/contrast to understand what she is referring to.
12 Likes
13

The Bite size Japanese Podcast

image
image160×160 34.5 KB

Summary

Website: The Bite size Japanese Podcast on YouTube
Format/Episode Length: Monologue / 10 minutes
Genre: Daily life / Japanese for learners
Difficulty: Beginner
Transcript availability: Yes, on Patreon

Availability

YouTube
Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Personal Opinion

I think this is a great intro to Japanese only podcasts. Each episode is only 10 minutes long, which is not too long and not too short. Layla uses easy(ish) vocab and grammar and her voice is clear and easy to understand.

Pros and Cons

Pros
Great for (upper) beginners getting ready to listen to japanese-only podcasts
Each episode is only 10 minutes
Clear and easy to understand voice

Cons
Might be too easy for intermediate learners

4 Likes
14

Nice to see several different nominations! I’m eager to start, do you think this is enough for the first round @WeepingWeeb ?

3 Likes
15

Yyyyyyes, sorry lost track of time
Shall make the poll soon :saluting_face:

3 Likes
16
Vote for our first podcast!
  • Nihongo con Teppei (Beginner)
  • Japanese With Shun
  • Let’s Learn Japanese from Small Talk
  • Heikousen Scramble / 平行線すくらんぶる
  • 4989 American Life
  • The Bite size Japanese Podcast
0 voters

Voting will end in one week!

Links
3 Likes
17

Also a few extra questions while we’re at it

  1. Are we fine having the book club-esque arrangement of the person who suggested something running the club? (If not or the person is unavailable I’m fine to do it, or do the first one at least if that’s preferable?)
  2. “Each pick will run for 10 weeks regardless of how many episodes the podcast has”. I pulled this rule out of nowhere, does that seem reasonable or would people the number of weeks being higher or lower (still static), or prefer adjusting it on a case by case basis depending on the pick?
  3. And relevant to the previous question, assuming we did a static number of weeks for every pick e.g. 10 weeks for every podcast pick it would make sense for each week to have the same amount of time spent on it. Given the longest episode length of the picks is 1 hour, what time would we want to have per week? (e.g. if it was 30 mins per week the 1 hour episodes would be split in half, whereas say 25 minute episodes would probably stay at 25 since doing 5 minutes of a new ep would be weird)
  4. And relevant to the previous question again, if we’re trying to get time spent as close as possible to the stated limit, what would be too far over or under it? (e.g. we want to listen for about 1 hour a week, but a podcast’s episodes are always 40 minutes, do we assign one episode per week so we don’t go over the 1 hour limit, or do we assign 2 episodes per week so we hit the minimum 1 hour?)

If those questions were unclear do let me know, I may not have explained them quite right

TLDR
  1. Should the person who suggests a pick run that club?
  2. Should each pick run for 10 weeks every time?
  3. How many minutes should we listen to per week?
  4. How much time per week would be considered too much over the limit in relation to the approximate time per week?

My initial thoughts are:

  1. suggester runs the club pick
  2. 8 or 10 weeks per pick seems long enough to get a feel for a podcast
  3. 1 hour per week
  4. Approximate time per week + 10 minutes as the maximum limit (In this case 1h10m), so in the posed situation we would do one episode of 40 minutes, instead of 2 episodes of 80 minutes. But if episodes were 35 mins then 2 episodes of 70 minutes would be acceptable
3 Likes
18

Just a heads up since I got complaints about this when I tried it for the BBC - if you make the entire option a link, some people find it very hard to vote on mobile as it ends up following the link rather than ticking the box.

4 Likes
19

Ohh rip ok thanks for letting me know

1 Like
20

You may want to adjust it while you’re the only voter :slight_smile:

2 Likes