Today I watched the flamingo video @omk3 shared the other day :3 (Thank you, omk3!)
Ahhh, I can’t, I love this so much Look at birb, so pretty! If I ever learn to draw skillfully with colors and everything, I’m gonna draw this. 感動しました。
Just a little bit of listening today - 2 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei (Beginners).
I had a lot of trouble concentrating today so I had to listen to them a few times.
When I was actually listening I was understanding everything pretty easily, but it was really hard to stop my mind wandering today!
I went to watch more ハイキュー!! and saw Netflix had the first episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom so I checked it out and wow was that a weird experience RWBY’s originally an American show so seeing all these characters reimagined in Japanese and in more direct anime style is definitely interesting. It’s like watching a Japanese dub except even more surreal because it’s just its own show actually, wild
I also watched another episode of ハイキュー!!; my brain didn’t really wanna watch much so just one, even though the 上善寺 match is up next and I love that one, it might be my favorite It’s just such a fun match, so I’m looking forward to watching that over the next day or two!!
Omg that’s an incredible word, I don’t know if I’ve ever related to anything more
I watched the first episode of “Stranger Things” two days ago with Japanese subs and dubs. It was so great that I ended up going through Intensively and looking up many, many words. Yesterday I started on episode 2. So great!
I want to make a flashcard deck for Stranger Things, episode 1.
Thank so much to whoever suggested that!
I watched a Miku Real Japanese interview. I understood a lot, and it felt really great. I still went over sections multiple times, but it’s finally getting to the point where I’m remembering enough fast enough that I feel much closer to “able to listen and understand”.
Then I went back to Chapter 5 of Harry Potter on audiobook. It was really like the first time that I could simply totally understood every word of every sentence of the first 5 minutes of this Chapter that I have studied intensely off and on over the past year and a half!! (then I fell asleep, happily)
It seems like the “unlocking” of listening is happening “across the board” (Yay!) But it still remains to vocabulary drill until that is “fast as thought”.
Listened to 2 more chapters of 殺人ライセンス. Story hasn’t developed all that much honestly. I’m immensely enjoying the bad acting for the narration of the adult characters though.
For those who enjoy spoilers:
So the middle school bully did show up on the news as murdered, and Kyuu finally decided to report the game to the police. The police didn’t seem to believe him, surprise surprise. Mari’s (the girl we’re repeated reminded is Very Cute) father was laid off and has since decided he will be a private detective, is trying to set up a website for his business. Mari hears from her father that he find making a website difficult so she tells him that Kyuu will help him with the tech stuff in exchange for listening to his theory about the murders.
There’s also a girl named Shouko, Mari’s friend. So far as I can tell her role is to be grumpy a lot.
I watched the last of the NHK hotspot videos I could find on youtube, this one on fishies! The whale sharks sucking vast amounts of water while they were swimming upright were a sight to see (on screen, I definitely wouldn’t want to be in a boat somewhere nearby…).
Then I got frustrated that I couldn’t find any videos of equal quality. I watched a rather simplistic one about penguins (might be for kids actually?) and then after a lot of searching I happened upon a channel called nippon pon, which seems to have several (very) simple videos on Japan geography and culture. I watched one on Japan’s geography. I can’t say the presentation is fascinating, but it was at about my level and the content is interesting enough, so I might come back for more if I don’t find anything better?
There are nature documentaries on Netflix that I can watch on Japanese dub, but I’m not yet prepared to listen for an hour straight, I don’t think… So the search continues…
Thing that I’m finding with videos is that I feel I can tell what to do just from the video itself, like I could have it on mute and have a vague idea of what it was about. Feels like I’m not focusing on the words so much. Why is listening so hard.
Thanks for hosting this @KJules ! I was just thinking about improving my listening skills alongside my reading skills with the Read Every Day Challenge! I think I’ll probably go for raw anime episodes + youtube videos as my go-to listening practice this time.
I don’t have a lot to say for listening updates while I’m plugging away at the same thing, but I’m definitely getting a little more confidence in my listening overall so that’s nice. Last night I listened to part 32 of my audiobook (out of 60 – 59% through the book) and was really pleased to see that I just straight up followed everything that happened on the first pass. I’m still missing words for sure, but most of that was easy to let pass. I’d say I missed the reasoning in one little conversation because it was crucial to know the word 土地鑑 (とちかん, familiarity with the land), but it was still rather minor. It just feels great to see this progress because I spent most of the first year feeling like my listening abilities wouldn’t budge.
Ahhhh that’s awesome! By the time you’re done with the book I bet your listening skills will be steller! You’ll be able to start picking up more/different audio sources and just dive in
Edit: btw alternative “spelling” is 土地勘 which imo makes way more sense at a glance.
Yeah thanks so much, I really appreciate the advice! I feel like talking to you did a lot to help me get actual confidence in listening.
And now that you point it out, I’m almost certain how you wrote it was how it was in the book. I was just being careless when I entered it. At least this allowed me to learn it has two readings now.
I watched 4 episodes of Season 2 of Fruits Basket today (with subs). I’m really enjoying it. I’ve loved Fruits Basket ever since I was a teenager, so even though I haven’t seen this series until now it feels really nostalgic
My brain feels more like reading today so I just watched one episode of ハイキュー!! I could feel my brain not easily grasping things it normally would’ve highs and lows in everything! It was part of the 上善寺 match so that was fun anyway; also had a bit of a realization with the connection of their play style and the whole beach volleyball thing? Like most of 上善寺's practices are just 2v2 games where everyone has to do everything which is really the same idea as the beach volleyball arc no wonder I love 上善寺 lmao. So yeah not the strongest listening day but that’s okay! Progress is progress regardless
Listened to two more chapters of 殺人ライセンス. It’s developing very, very slowly.
Spoilers for any that want them:
Kyuu told Mari’s dad about the game who told Maruta (detective who was a classmate in highschool). There was a lot of discussion about various other things, but nothing really plot relevant unless that whole occult bit means we’re gonna veer off into a supernatural explanation. Kinda doubt it though.
Also, someone posting in the read every day thread (not partaking in this challenge I believe so won’t tag them) reminded me of this 朗読 / read aloud of a short story from one of the 5分後に意外な結末: 【朗読】「隣に住む殺人鬼」【5分後に意外な結末 ベスト・セレクション】 - YouTube
It’s a fun story, and pretty approachable. Probably the most ‘unusual’ word in the whole story is the one in the title (殺人鬼 == killer (usually serial)) so a large vocab isn’t as necessary as it is for a lot of similar material. It’s not gorey or violent for anyone concerned about that.
July 6th
What did I listen to?: NHK nature video on whale sharks (thanks for linking, @omk3 !)
How much time did I spend listening?: 8.5 min
My mood has been all over the place today for whatever reason. I sort of wanted to skip listening because I got off work pretty late and I have to be at work super early tomorrow morning, but I decided I could watch this video because I thought the whale sharks might make my mood a little better (they kind of did, I love whale sharks <3 as people who have participated in past Read Every Day challenges may remember lol). I was able to catch some individual words (like ジンベイザメ ) but not much beyond that. I did manage to understand most of a couple sentences, though xD
It’s supposed to be a simple video but I didn’t manage to catch much other than scattered words for some reason. There were Japanese subtitles embedded, but I avoided looking at them. I may revisit all these videos later if they’re still available to see if I can understand more.