Today was the JLPT, so that involved some listening!
As well as that though, I listened to Episodes 8-10 of Nihongo con Teppei (Beginners).
I also did a bit of semi-passive listening to Lesson 11 of JapanesePod101’s The 800 Core Words and Phrases series while I was writing my daily diary
Nihongo con Teppei Z: episodes 8 and 9 → 27 min.
古見さんは、コミュ障です。: episodes 21 and 22 → 40 min.
Week 1 completed
Work done:
Videos
Final Fantasy 14 Live Letter → 2 h.
Podcasts
Nihongo con Teppei Z, 2 episodes → 27 min.
Anime
古見さんは、コミュ障です。, 4 episodes → 1h 20 min.
Total listening time: 3h 47 min.
First week down. It being short has been great for a nice little push to start the challenge. I think I’m really going to like this new weekly planning. On to the new week!
Well, the second brought to us something about sloths (the animal). I… didn’t pay a lot of attention and missed a lot, to be honest, but I got that they move so little that they have moss growing on them. And when they need a snack, they eat that moss.
Also, they go down from their tree to poop, which is both energy inefficient and dangerous, but there’s a good reason for it that I missed. Considering the thing mentioned moths having their larva grow in said poop just after, I guess it’s related to said reason? I think they mentioned ナマケモノガ (as in sloth moth), but I can’t find relevant results with a cursory google search, so maybe not?
Yesterday, I tried a random episode of the podcast that @NicoleIsEnough recommended to me. However, I only had time to listen to the first 20 min, during which the host and guest were just having small talks. I can’t even remember what they were talking about
And with that, that’s 3 out of 3 days where I didn’t feel invested in what I was listening to I’m still finding it hard to just sit and listen to something… I usually end up starting something else and paying more attention to that instead.
July 3rd
What did I listen to?: Obey Me! VAs visit an Obey Me! café thing part 1 (video on Youtube) I’m just making up titles for these lmao, I suppose I could put the actual video titles but where’s the fun in that
How much time did I spend listening?: 19 min
Today was supposed to be a reading day, but I actually did both things I had the urge to watch more Miura Ayme content today so I decided to let myself give in to that impulse This video was kind of similar to the ones yesterday, in that it was basically promoting a café event thing of some sort, but this time he was joined by some of the other voice actors from the series on his café drink sampling adventures. It was cute and I understood mostly, like…the drink flavors Idk, I got a vague idea of what was going on but that’s pretty much it. I’ve been trying to avoid pausing and looking things up, just letting it go and catching what I can in real time. I did better at reading the captions though - they helped me a little more than yesterday, I think. (They might have been a little slower, which could be why) There are more parts to this series, so I’ll probably watch more of this. The title of the video leads me to believe that there might be karaoke later. My brain enjoys the weirdest things sometimes, I literally don’t even play this game anymore, why am I watching all the content Miura Ayme is giving me boatloads of serotonin right now for reasons I don’t fully understand but I’m just going with it I apologize for the fact that this content is probably not of interest to anyone else lmao
I’ve listened every day since my last post, mostly passive listening. The only thing I’ve listened to which I haven’t already mentioned is the JP SGDQ restream @Daisoujou mentioned (here is a link for convenience).
Alternatively, speak (converse) from textbook prompt (聞いた覚える話し方).
As far as I have tried, the audio aren’t really slow, but they are in the level that I can understand everything. (Also, short enough for me to think.)
But then, I’ll have to reply to them?
1 hour worth of podcast
This is actually possible on some day, on certain activities, like exercise or commuting.
Anime
やがて君になる EP.7+ (subtitled)
Death Note EP.10 (no sub)
Probably will hold back at 1 episode every two weeks now (even though I like the animation), to avoid going ahead and hold momentum for, the book club.
More ハイキュー!! today! I watched another three episodes and they were powerful; the first time Kageyama’s new spinny toss works… oooh boy, chills every time . It’s actually a really different experience watching it without English subtitles. ハイキュー!!'s already such a character-central show, but with English subtitles I end up focusing almost entirely on the content of what they’re saying rather than how they’re saying it. With the subtitles and audio being the same though, I’m experiencing the actual voice acting so much more and ハイキュー!! voice acting is wild The way some of these characters say things lmao, especially like Bokuto?? It’s so much fun, I look forward to meeting like Tendou
That’s a fun idea. Something about animals might actually interest me, even if I end up missing most of what is said…Was that a podcast or youtube video you could share a link to?
(I need to work on my Japanese googling/browsing skills…)
It was a tv show playing in the background (I was sitting with my back to the screen so that I could focus on listening… but I ended up focusing on reading my book )
It was surprisingly easy to find the program online (I didn’t check if it can be watched on demand, though)
Thank you for taking the trouble to look! It says it’s not available in my area, but it’s okay. I’m now on a mission to find animal documentaries in Japanese. It shouldn’t be too hard.
I got my listening in early today. Many thanks to @Naphthalene for the idea!
I watched these two NHK videos on various animals. The photography is just beautiful and the narration very clear. Some parts I understood perfectly, and some not at all. It may have to do more with (lack of) vocabulary than listening skills? A very enjoyable listening session, anyway.
Oh yeah so at the start they usually chat about this and that. I didn’t listen from the start of the series (nor do I fully understand everything) nor did I read any description but I think the host lives in San Francisco? So he somehow sounds like he’s craving for news from back home ^^ OTOH it’s usually about very recent things so I find that actually quite interesting as well.
I tend to listen to the podcast while I do other things that are not too noisy (e.g. cutting veggies or something) which works well enough for me.
I need to find something like that to keep me busy. As it was, I was just shaking my mouse pointer to make it larger (a nice feature on mac OS) and trying to keep it like that for as long as possible That made me frequently zone out to the point of not being able to really follow the conversation.
I’ll try it again tonight (either the same episode or another one)
Heh, the amount of times I had to replay the recordings… sigh. Mostly because I couldn’t process some of the words, which leads to perceived traffic jam in my brain and I miss whatever comes next.
・Also watched 36 min of NHK news and while I was at it, this video about birbs (14 min). There were crabs too. Cute There are apparently only 6000 left of this dinosaur-looking birb right now.
Moving ahead with the usuals. I’ve been rather liking listening to the aforementioned Sakura通信 while going out for a walk. Doing that as opposed to just sitting keeps me a little more focused anyway. What I’m finding is I still miss a lot of important words like I said before, but for whatever it’s worth, I’m following the overall… flow of the conversation? Like I have the basics internalized enough that I used to start losing the thread of what was being said and then everything would turn to gibberish, but now it’s not that hard for me to return to comprehension where possible and at least have an idea of the big picture. I think that’s pretty good.
Nihongo con teppei Shinjuki style. Its for the intermediate learner, of which I am not so I cannot do as much listening as with beginner as I start to get a headache just to try to understand like 20% of what is being said…but I am going to power through.
I watched three more episodes of ハイキュー!! It’s been a lot of fun interacting with native-speed spoken stuff more consistently is good, pushes me to comprehend stuff faster which always has room for improvement for sure. It’s so easy for me to get sucked into ハイキュー!! and suddenly it’s an hour later that’s the trick huh!
Day 1: 30 minutes of Gackt music from youtube.
Day 2: 2 short stories from Japanese short stories for beginners vol 2. 大掃除、年賀状。
Day 3: 1 hour of Gackt and Stereopony mp3s. 神様 by Hiromi Kawakami.
Day 4: 30 minutes of Gackt music from YouTube, re-listened to 神様 several times, 2 short stories from Japanese short stories for beginners vol 2. 化粧品、日本映画。
Listened to 2 more chapters of 殺人ライセンス and honestly just want to straight binge it but I should probably read the book I’m trying to finish instead of indulging myself in trash.
So far the vocab has developed to the point where I’m putting it on par with スマホを落としただけなのに in terms of difficulty. For those who don’t mind (or even like!) spoilers, the plot so far is that a high school boy nicknamed Kyuu was playing an online game called Murder License, and the next day saw on the news that a man with the same name as the target in the game was found dead. The man was known to be a stalker, a detail noted by the game and the news. Kyuu went to check for the game again, but it had been taken offline.
The same night Kyuu played the game, two of Kyuu’s classmates heard a strange voice coming from their TV and were talking about in in school next day. The father of one of those girls was laid off (in his mid-40s) and is trying to find a way to support his family again, so has somehow landed on ‘I will be a private detective!’ as the answer and is bothering his old classmate, a cop friend (coincidentally working on the stalker murder case!) for advice on this. Based on the summary of the book, this will eventually lead to him helping solve the murder game mystery, but we’re not that far yet.
Most recently the game came back up online and this time with a target who is a 15 year old boy, noted for bullying his classmates. Kyuu ponders that the targets are people who are a menace to society, but unable to be jailed for the things they’re doing.