I’m trying to use dramas and podcasts to help with my listening comprehension as I’m sort of in the intermediate level, but nothing has prepared me for actual spoken language. I can understand things when people speak carefully around me. However, I mishear things all the time, and if people don’t enunciate I can’t pick out any words at all. You can’t rely on people repeating themselves. Lots of resources are aimed at people who want to just understand anime without subtitles or pass JLPT, but I’m old, I live in Japan and have a part-time job.
Residents, what have you done to get over that hurdle? Should I just watch reality TV non-stop? (It’s not that interesting to me though.) It feels impossible, but maybe it’s just slow going.
If you are able to, see if your town/city put on Japanese classes. See if your town as an international group, they usually advertise these classes there or in the city hall. That’s what I did, they are usually volunteers and not actual teachers. But it’s more of a chilled conversational exchange rather than a lesson. Plus it’s free!
I feel like joining this ‘class’ has not just improved my conversational Japanese but also has given me lots of opportunity and invitations to local events.
I would suggest picking some piece of content that has Japanese subtitles available if you’re struggling too much.
Try listening once on your own with no subtitles.
Try listening again and this time take it slow with subtitles (looking up stuff as needed)
Then try again without subtitles
Repeat step 3 a lot until you feel comfortable
Do the above when you’re able to sit down and focus and repeat a lot and you’ll get better. The closer the content you’re listening is to actual spoken language the better.
I’m already in a class in my city. I also have an izakaya that I go to. They know I’m learning, so everyone is very patient. Unfortunately, I can understand what everyone says.
Not really understanding where he is grabbing the source material from, but this AJATT youtube guy who does full-immersion 14-hour-long live videos looking over his shoulder as he overloads on Japanese content may be useful.
Most of the videos that he watches have typical Japanese caption overlays.
I wasn’t getting any good recommendations on my English language youtube account, so I just went and made a new Japanese-only google account and started searching for topics I was interested in. If you put in a bit of effort to go down a couple of rabbit holes you should get plenty of good native-aimed content you’re interested in recommended to you, and lots of stuff on Youtube has auto JP subs or baked-in semi subs.
Most of my listening has come from Netflix, 98% of stuff has Japanese subs on there. Find stuff you’re at least relatively interested in aimed at natives, whether Anime, Drama, Youtube, Podcasts, whatever it is. If you watch things you’re more interested in, you’ll be happy to put more effort into understanding compared to stuff you don’t care about.
My plan for when I am going to try to start learning how to speak Japanese is to spend a lot of time in japanese vr chat. Perhaps that will help you out as well. Another idea is Japanese audiobooks.
I get the best results when I take one of those Japanese TV shows like when the comedians go to a bunch of restaurants or something - not the TV headline news - but record it. Then play it back at normal speed. When I don’t understand something, pause and repeat. It’s kind of a tedious way to watch though so I only do it for intentional study, not every time I watch TV.
If I just let it fly by I don’t actually feel like I’m getting any better or learning anything.
I personally try to have conversations with my coworkers or my Japanese partner. Having someone around who I know I have to communicate with in Japanese every single day helps in the everyday language practice.
I have gotten konbini confessions recommended to me as well, and when I follow that recommended video pipeline or short-form video thing, I will eventually start getting pure Japanese content. I would recommend searching on Youtube things that you like, but in Japanese. Like travel vlogs and food vlogs etc.
I personally like watching let’s plays for games so I watch a lot of 牛沢. My partner really likes his stuff, and even more so after I said “Oh, this guy is really easy to listen to.” He’s got a calm energy and enunciates very well. I recommend his crime scene cleaner games or his Yakuza series. (He’s actually a character in the new Pirates of Hawaii game too!)
Just doing a few searches in Japanese around on youtube should open up some recommendations but it will take a long time until they are constantly on your home page. If you start subscribing to Japanese channels more will come up.
Although… outside of Youtube and going out to talk to people at your izakaya… Try eavesdropping! At restaurants, cafes, at work, shopping, everywhere! Since you live in Japan, this shouldn’t be too difficult, but you have to be prepared that you could hear something you might not want to hear (some people are so bold when they are drunk at a yakiniku restaurant… ) This can be just a warm up, and if you hear something that you are really curious about what it means, or wait, what does this mean? you can take a note on your phone or have a small eavesdropping notebook of words to look up later, and if you type it into a dictionary app and nothing comes up that just means it might be something similar to what you wrote down. Then it’s time to ask a native what it could possibly be or do some detective searching around on the internet. It could be new slang, or something innapropriate, so if you do go the native route, be careful
like the comedy duos? I was going to say that I don’t have a TV but I could just watch one of those via TVer. How long of a clip do you use to study with?
I would talk to my coworkers more often but my job is physical, so my conversations only last a few minutes. This is actually a related problem I have… I try to give instructions to my new kouhai but it’s a struggle. Luckily my boss helped me the other day, but it’s frustrating.
Re: YouTube, I need someone that speaks unintelligibly but has subtitles. I can understand when people enunciate.
I don’t know why I only go to cafes to study… I feel like I should bring a book so I can look “busy” while on my eavesdropping spree, bwahahaha
I am glad you have provided more info about when you have trouble. The comment that you understand when people enunciate keeps jumping out at me. If it is a hearing issue, do you need hearing aides. (Note to self, make the appointment to have hearing checked). If the issue is auditory processing then listening to content that is unintelligible on youtube, or anyplace where you can control the speed, and slowing it way down to see if that helps would be a place to start. If it helps, you could work with the content at the slower speed and try to learn the words and phrases you don’t know, then work up to full speed. This is not a question I am asking you to answer on this forum, but if you had trouble in school understanding lessons, then not having great auditory processing could possibly be an issue. Could you have some sort of written back up at work, if you are explaining the same thing over and over to new people? I may be way off, but just some ideas…
It might be an auditory processing issue, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to look into that.
I only started helping training recently. Yesterday I had a whole shift with the newer folks who are young. They seem to use a lot less jukugo and speak more clearly. (WK has helped with the random jukugo but I’m still playing catch-up.)
I talked to one of the izakaya guys, and he suspects that people’s dialects might be throwing me off. Also, older people sometimes speak way differently. I know that my own spoken English is actually hard to understand, so I’ve been more conscious to enunciate when talking.
have you tried an app / website called renshuu? a lot of their sentence examples contain audio spoken by native speakers and most of the time i have to play them back 10 times because BOY do people speak fast and pronounce things in very unexpected ways.
I just thought that if clear speech solves the issue, than the problem is not your level of Japanese (grammar, vocabulary etc.) and just listening to podcasts might not help. Dialect differences make sense as the problem. I find dialects other than kansai hard to understand and if this came up as an issue a lot I would try to study the specific dialect that I didn’t understand. I’d like to be a fly on the wall and listen to the dialects you are hearing.
) This can be just a warm up, and if you hear something that you are really curious about what it means, or wait, what does this mean? you can take a note on your phone or have a small eavesdropping notebook of words to look up later, and if you type it into a dictionary app and nothing comes up that just means it might be something similar to what you wrote down. Then it’s time to ask a native what it could possibly be or do some detective searching around on the internet. It could be new slang, or something innapropriate, so if you do go the native route, be careful 