Hey Goobers.
I have a job at an auto parts manufacturing facility that allows me the use of my headphones while on the clock. Occasionally, when I’m motivated enough, I’ll either put on an audiobook that’s essentially a dictionary–a Japanese word is read, then the English translation, and then the word is used in a sentence, then that sentence is translated to English. I figured if I kept this on in the background for long enough, I would start to subconsciously pick up on more words. But due to the size of the audiobook–2000 phrases/words–retention is difficult. Whenever I do recognize a word or two, it’s usually only because of WaniKani or some other resource I’ve been using to study. Is this not an efficient tool? What would you recommend? A user in the podcast thread recommended “Nihongo Kon Teppei” and I’ve been listening to a lot of that, but with my low level of vocab, it’s hard to really pay attention to what words you do know that Teppei is saying when they’re drowned out by a bunch of words I don’t know. When this happens, it’s easy for me to get distracted. Teppei will be talking about something I vaguely understand, but my mind will wander, and I’ll start thinking in English on accident and I’ll stop being able to pay attention to Teppei. It also doesn’t help that sometimes the audio is soft spoken and the factory is quite loud. What should I do? Is it too soon to start listening practice? Should I keep at it? I have a golden opportunity to sink time into listening practice at my job, but jeez Louise it doesn’t seem like that at times. Please help! Any and all advice is appreciated.
In my experience the listening skill came without me realizing it. I did that same thing you’re doing with teppei, I listened, I picked up on some things, then my mind wandered, and when I noticed it had wandered, I started focusing on the listening again. And eventually I noticed that I actually understood things and my vocab had improved. I only occasionally stopped to look things up.
That being said, I’ve actually improved my vocab primarily through reading, and it can be difficult to connect words you recognize on sight to words you hear. My advice would be, maybe before work read or skim through a transcript of the podcast, just so you already know a bit what it’s about. Then even if your mind wanders, you can hop back in and have an idea of what’s happening.
One thing I would say, is listening to a list of 2000 words doesn’t seem effective, for the reasons you say. I find even doing flashcards was less effective that just jumping in to real content.
Music. 
One thing that helped for me was repetition + visual context clues, as well as practicing using something I enjoy.
I love watching anime and J-dramas, so I do most of my listening practice that way. The visual nature means that even if I’m not picking up on a lot of the dialog, I can still understand a lot of what is going on simply because of what I’m seeing on screen. And often the visuals provide clues that point me in the direction of what the dialog might be, so I end up recognizing words I probably wouldn’t have if I had just heard them in isolation or without additional context. I also enjoy re-watching things many times, and just like with SRS, the repetition of the same words/grammar points makes them stick in my memory better.
For the times I don’t have a screen available, I record the audio from some of my favorite episodes, and copy those recordings onto my phone. Whenever I’m in the mood (usually when I’m exercising), I can choose an episode, put on my earphones, and listen to it as I work out. I’m familiar enough with the episodes that I can follow the story based on memory, even without the visuals, so I don’t get distracted by lack of understanding. And every time I listen, I pick up on more of the dialog thanks to the repetition.
I do know some people get bored when they re-watch/re-listen to the same material over and over, so that could be a problem that I don’t have (I almost never get bored with repeats). A variation could be to choose a series (or something else that you know you enjoy), watch an episode once while recording the audio, maybe look up a summary or a transcript, and then listen to the audio once before moving on to the next episode. Series’ tend to repeat certain words, and characters often have tendencies toward certain phrases and grammar points, so even if you’re not repeating the exact same dialog over and over, you still get some repetition.
One other note: For me, listening skill has come in waves. For a long time, I felt like I was understanding virtually nothing - maybe a word here and there, but that was it. Then suddenly I was understanding many words, but still feeling like the meaning of the sentences was just out reach, and for another long period of time that was where I stayed. Only just recently (after years of study off and on), I’ve suddenly started grasping complete sentences (albeit relatively basic ones) and even multiple sentences in the same conversation. I expect I will stay at this level for a while, and then suddenly realize I’m understanding complex sentences and full conversations.
In other words, keep at it even while you’re feeling like you’re not getting anywhere. Progress will come in time!
Pimsleur is what you’re looking for. There will be enough English to keep you engaged and enough repetition of new words to start remembering them. It’s pricy but exactly what you’re looking for. I’ve not tried it but perhaps @Shannon-8 san might comment more
if you’re into games, I found Game Gengo’s vocabulary videos really helpful to match scenes to vocab. sometimes when I drive I’ll put a video on if I know where I’m going so I can focus a little more. I think the hardest thing is you can’t learn stuff if you know nothing. (the 80% rule and whatever) so it might just be more helpful to pick like a grammar point and look for it in whatever your listening to. like listening for か at the end of a sentence to know it’s a question. hope this helps:)
I wanna echo and combine what Kazzeon and corald said. If a song is good I can read the lyrics and listen to it 5x, 10x, 20x times until the meaning flows from the words
But I think I gained more from listening to short stories and episodes a billion times
Also, I do recommend vocabmaxxing for a while more. I think listening is a bit rough if you only know like 200-300 words, but so as long as you’re not sacrificing time you spend elsewhere it is a plus
I think you can pick something simple and listen to it multiple times, probably how you can get the most out of listening at this point
What I like doing is listening to an audiobook of a book I’ve already read (or that I am reading). That way even if my mind wanders a bit, once I realize it I can just pay attention again and know where in the story I am.
If you aren’t reading books yet, you can do the same thing with a podcast for learners or something along those lines that you’ve previously listened to or read a transcript of. You just need to be familiar enough with it so that if you miss a couple sentences, you won’t be lost.
Yeah, we practiced a song like 20 times for an event, and it started with, ok i know the words now, and every time we had to sing it again and i paid attention to a different part of the lyrics, I started to get the meaning. It’s pretty cool.
Could I have sat down and poured over the words? Yes. But it’s more fun to just listen to the music.
こんにちは
Are you Michael Douglas?
Oh wait… FakeMichaelDouglas 
Hey, fake is 偽 (onyomiぎ kunyomiにせ WK41)
ShanMne: “I should have know it was a fake, it said ぎGicchi, instead of Gucci.”
ShanMne: “I always buy the にせ(fake) bags for my niece.”
I’m in my 6th year of studying Japanese… I’ve been studying pretty hard for all this time… I started out brute-forcing my way through the Harry Potter book and audiobook, listening every single night “extensively” (which means you don’t know what the heck they’re saying)… But I knew the story, AND I was looking up words left and right.
Only now that I have a gigantic pile of vocabulary under my belt am I able to listen and talk now… But I still have trouble because of gaps… For the past year, I’ve been listening daily to a vocabulary audiobook (2000+ words and phrases) off and on… and now it’s really clicking, because I finally know most of the vocabulary and grammar.
Is your book Learn Japanese While you Sleep or in Your Car, like mine? If it is, I wrote out some lists from there in my blog, with the kanji etc (hopefully, I put a tag in there so we can search… At least I wrote out the chapter names when I did a list, so that should bring you right there…)
I found it best to focus on a few chapters and see what all they were saying, and familiarize myself with that vocab. But… It can be boring.
I often extensively listened to whatever book I was reading or anime I was watching…
(I put big noise cancelling headphones on over my earbuds, so I can hear when on airplanes and leaf blowing out when my SO is listening to music… Maybe that can help you at work?)
And I cranked through all of Duolingo as my core study those first years… Because it was listening and seeing the words and their meanings and kanji in the context of sentences. I still do Duo daily, and am finally able to recall it all from my head…
And I’m nearly done with Wanikani.
I failed the JLPTs a bunch… Always the listening!!
On the other hand, my friends who are in Japan are speaking with people in Japanese every day, can talk a lot!… But two years ago, they said my vocabulary is amazing! But I couldn’t talk or listen well!
There was a Cure Dolly talking about top down or bottom up learning of Japanese.
I am apparently “top down”, and have done a lot of “translating” in order to understand.
I felt I needed to know a lot of words to understand. My friends are bottom up…
Anyway, once I started the Pimsleur Japanese, it forced me to switch to thinking in Japanese, so I can quickly listen and speak.
They keep the vocabulary tight, centered around a dialog, and quiz during a half hour “lessons” with SRS-type spacing through the course of about 6 weeks of 1/2hour daily 5 days a week per level, re-using what you know and mixing it up to make your brain think about it. Michel Thomas does a similar type of program.
Anyway, recently, two months of Pimsleur Japanese really helped to unlock 5 years of built up vocabulary… so I can speak now… And I can listen better… But still have trouble… I do find myself “thinking in Japanese” more and more these days…
I bought this 1 year All Access Pimsleur for $165…
Now, I’m a curious person… So I’m trying a “bottom up” approach with Chinese by using Pimsleur and not knowing a bunch of vocabulary or grammar… I’m on lesson 8.
I only super concentrate and am now speaking out loud on a half hour lesson the first time I do that lesson.
They’ve dumped in A BUNCH and have flash cards with words and sentences with audio and speaking exercises… I re-listen to all the previous lessons (I respond out loud or in my head, if I can’t speak)… to smooth it out, and it takes less concentration on repeats
I think it’s best to do something you really enjoy, whatever it is. I’ve jumped around a lot. Mostly nowadays, I like listening to Let’s Play videos with Japanese people playing Video games (that I am familiar with) in Japanese… I’ve found that it keeps me happy while working.
Early on, I enjoyed going through the JPod 101’s and Comprehensible Japanese… but those got annoying on re-listen with all of the English chit-chat… When I tried the Nihongo conTeppei’s years ago, they were too hard for me… (My friend actually took 1 on 1 lessons from him… Her Japanese is good)
I also sometimes listen to the Satori Reader series that I have read to reinforce that vocabulary (I have a subscription now… If used to be over my head, so I only did the free stuff, then)
すみません…
I didn’t feel like my rambling helped you much…
とにかくgood luck to you! がんばって
That is super interesting, so even though you’re at an intermediate level vocab and reading wise, starting Pimseur (from the beginning or did you skip ahead somewhere?) sounds like it was still interesting. I hadn’t considered using it myself but now you have me curious if it would smooth out some of my abilities.
I started at level 3 out of pride regarding years of hard work… 
As for your applicability
Satori Reader is still a lot of work for me to grow to comprehend
Maybe when you have time to devote 30 minutes a day for a week (as I write the words, I see how unreasonable they are), try the free week and see for yourself…
Unfortunately, there are only 4 levels… So it leaves you off … So try levels 3 and 4 and see what you think…
But I was struggling creating output and basic conversation in Japanese after 4 years of intensive study without ever speaking. I think you may already be too advanced
Thanks so much! That’s a good idea to try the free week - and be prepared for 30 minutes a day, oof when will that happen