What do you guys use to practice listening?

Japanese Language Listening
#11

Because it’s Pokémon, the American re-dub by 4Kids entertainment, not Pocket Monsters. It’s likely that scripts are edited considerably (not merely localized) and also possibly episodes mashed together. While this may no longer be true of the series, anime was done this way back when the original show (on Netflix as Indigo League) was airing. For a while (and maybe it’s still true) both Digimon Adventure and Digimon: Digital Monsters were on Canadian Netflix. The first is the original Japanese show, the second is the American show, which cuts and combines episodes above, taking a very Lovecraftian episode (which is still creepy) and making it tamer - and make less sense. I’ve really been hit with these differences (having grown up with the U.S. show) while watching Digimon: Tri, when they refer to events that either didn’t happen or were mixed together with other things. (The Movie here in NA was two movies combined, too.)

But I’ve really digressed from the OP’s question…

To @Luis91 - I’ve been occasionally watching (a very fast-talking) Japanese girl’s Let’s Play. I don’t recall her name… someone else posted it and I keep going back to the bookmark when I want to continue watching her play the game I’ve chosen to follow. I also watch Terrace House (both the Tokyo one and the Hawaii one) on Netflix. I’m about to re-watch it this time without English subtitles, and instead with Japanese ones (to hopefully increase my reading speed, and force myself to listen harder.) There have been a few other threads on the topic, I suggest you search for them for even more suggestions and resources. ^^

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#12

I am quite sure the subtitles and languages available depend on the country where you are living.
If I recall well, you are from Germany. You can watch Fullmetal Alchemist in japanese here!

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#13

The original show? I watched brotherhood. Thanks for the tip.

#14

Yes the original show. At least it was possible for the first 10 shows I have already watched (with german subtitle, my level in japanese is not yet good enough to use japanese subtitles or no subtitles at all…)

#15

I normally don’t understand a lot either, but subtitles prevent me from focusing on the Japanese grammar. That’s why I was asking for a simple show. FMA will polrobably work too, because I can roughly remember the plot.

#16

For listening, I recommend pure listening - so no video, no pictures, just sound.

There’s a podcast I quite enjoy called Hiiki Biiki. It’s just a guy and a girl discussing things they like: Nintendo, Star Wars, McDonald’s, Tokyo Disneyland. Really good practice and since there’s no plot or real direction to the conversation it doesn’t matter if you miss huge bits, they’ll eventually start talking about something you can pick up on.

My biggest general advice for listening practice is to make sure you relisten. Preferably several times. I’m often amazed how much things can get transformed from indecipherable gibberish to fairly comprehensible Japanese on a second listen.

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#17

I have the original show.

I watched the dub (based on the American version, it should be identical) like 15 years ago, but there are clearly some visual differences, too. For example the American version contained almost no references to Japan - I think I didn’t even know back then that it is a Japanese cartoon. In the original version though, there are Japanese writings there and there, and some small details, and some scenes which look distinctly Japanese.

Not sure why it was edited that heavily to make it as non-Japanese as possible, it is not 1941.

#18

Isn’t there a whole episode of Pokemon that didn’t make it for being too “Japanese”? I think it involves Misty entering a swimsuit competition and getting perved on by an old man.

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#19

I’ve been listening to Bilingual News this afternoon and it’s really great! American guy and Japanese girl first read then discuss recent news stories in English and Japanese. Honestly, the guy is a bit of a wing nut (kind of like JPod Peter with the leash off) but his wild ‘theories’ make for good entertainment.

I’ve been using it like this: first listen to Eng and Jp news stories (only about one minute long each) then skip back (they have a handy 30 sec rewind button) to listen to the Jp version multiple times, maybe check some of the vocab, and try to understand as much as possible. After that just casually listen to their discussion without stressing too much about missing some parts. Repeat with the next story (they have about 5 - 8 different stories over an hour plus podcast).

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#20

I like animelon - you can watch certain anime’s, and you can toggle different subtitles, including english, japanese, hiragana only, and romanji only. It shows both the subtitles and also the transcript on the side, and you can rewind by line, so it’s easy to go back and re-listen/read the previous sentence.

I usually watch with Japanese subtitles, then re-watch with English if I had a hard time, and then go back to Japanese subtitles only. My goal is to eventually turn off the subtitles all together, but I’m not that proficient at it yet (and haven’t been able to devote a large amount of time to it)…

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#21

uhh… minecraft… le… t’s plays… please dont tell anyone… but i actually kinda like this…

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#22

Thanks for the Udemy rec. They’re actually having a sale right now, so picked up N5 and N4 courses to give it go.

#23

Do they have Japanese let’s plays? Or do you watch English ones with Japanese subtitles?

#24

Um… yes… Japanese people play video games and talk and upload those videos to streaming sites. Did that seem like it would be unlikely to you?

#25

I didn’t mean to sound like I was insulting them by saying they never did let’s plays or anything. I was more saying that it never even crossed my mind. And when I’ve searched for Minecraft let’s plays they’ve never come up in the results for me, so again, it was something that never came to mind. I’m sorry if that came out wrong, but I’m generally curious at to what recommendations there are.

#26

Did you try searching for マインクラフト? Seems like there’s a lot from a quick glance.

#27

It’s called 実況プレイ（じっきょうプレイ） in Japanese if you want to search for them yourself. I’ve been using it pretty much from the start, off and on, to practice listening in an enjoyable way, since (depending on the game) it’s likely to be entertaining regardless of how much or little I can understand. In the beginning I would only understand stray words here and there, now I can at least mostly get the gist of what’s being talked about. It’s pretty nice how each time I watch I pick up something new :slight_smile:

I also wrote a wk-alike webapp in php to practice only the listening part of the core6k vocab and context sentences.

#28

BlockquoteIt’s called 実況プレイ（じっきょうプレイ） in Japanese if you want to search for them yourself. I’ve been using it pretty much from the start, off and on, to practice listening in an enjoyable way, since (depending on the game) it’s likely to be entertaining regardless of how much or little I can understand. In the beginning I would only understand stray words here and there, now I can at least mostly get the gist of what’s being talked about. It’s pretty nice how each time I watch I pick up something new :slight_smile:

Thank you! I’ll look some of them up now! Do you watch with or without subtitles? I think I need subtitles to start to learn the minecraft words in Japanese. I’m excited, though. Thank you for sharing! :smiley:

#29

It’s very uncommon for them to have subtitles (as in, I’ve only ever seen two that had them). They’re made with the assumption that the people watching will be Japanese after all :slight_smile:

However, when I started, I was excited to just understand one or two words per video, and just built from there :slight_smile:

#30

I highly recommend checking out Benjiro on YouTube. He’s a teacher on iTalki, but he actually has a series where he essentially purchases sessions with other iTalki teachers and they have a conversation for an hour using simple Japanese. There’s around 20 hours of listening content on his channel and it’s honestly the most approachable long form listening practice I’ve come across as a beginner myself.

I would also recommend checking out “NHK For School.” It’s meant for Japanese children, but it’s a great resource. It has a whole lot of videos on various topics separated by grade level.

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