🔉 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge (Summer Edition) 🏖

Do you know your placement yet?

That’s rough. It certainly has been easier to find Japanese things on Netflix since I moved to Japan…

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I thought I’d do a quick recap after about a week and a half, for my status up to Sunday, 10th of July. I think I’ll do weekly or bi-weekly posts to keep it manageable from here on as well.

So far I listened to something 7 out of 10 days. Not bad at all, by my standards. :slight_smile: I’ll of course aim for a complete week each time, but anything is better than nothing~ And anything over 50% feels like a great success already. :blush:
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Details July 1-10

So far, I watched a bunch of :tv: 未来日記 season 2 on the 1st, before leaving the next day to set off to Paris, where I’d take the JLPT. I didn’t listen on the 2nd, my travel day, but I’m counting the :white_flower: JLPT on the 3rd as my listening for that day.

On the 4th, @NicoleIsEnough and I decided to start listening to the audiobook of :headphones: 魔女の宅急便 . From the 4th to the 7th we got in a respectable 2,5 hours over 4 days. :muscle: That was a lot of fun! I’ll definitely listen to the rest of it soon. The 8th was a travel day again - as soon as I got home from Paris, I had to re-pack and head off again. I spent the rest of the weekend at a festival with friends, where I didn’t get any listening in again. Sunday afternoon/evening, after getting home again, I did manage to get in a bit of :fast_forward: youtube.

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:sound: Listening Room: Date 20220711 :loud_sound:

Day XX: :japanese_ogre:

Watched the third yokai video of the series: 日本の妖怪

I love the costumes they wear for the red oni, it looks like a lot of fun to run around in one pretending you’re a big angry oni while getting beans thrown at you. :laughing:

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July 11th!

Today was a long day so I only did a little bit of listening.
Episodes 16 and 17 of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.

Episode 17 was about Family vocab, and taught me how to talk about in-laws which was great because thats one of those things I always mean to look up, but then forget to do.
I always end up talking about “My husbands mother” and “My husbands sisters” etc and thinking “I really need to find out how to say ‘-in-law’”…and then by the end of whatever conversation I was having I’ve already forgotten that I wanted to look it up :sweat_smile:

I’m probably going to watch some Fruits Basket later too, but I wanted to write my update now so that I can’t forget later :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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I ended up watching a few episodes of Pokemon Journeys on Netflix last night (i think that was the name. There are so many Pokemons shows, this is the one for the 8th gen pokemon), and that was really refreshing. I understood quite a bit, more than usual at least, (although the first 10 minutes of the first episode were literally just pokemon noises, so maybe that helped)

I actually did quite a bit of listening yesterday, I listened to two NHK easy articles (intensively) and I had my lesson also. Maybe i was trying to make up for last week where I missed 3 days. We’ll see how it goes today!

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Home post :guitar: July 11th

・Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 148 (just the main part). Topic: 喫茶店. Length: 30 min.

They talked about cafés, like Starbucks, but also local ones I’ve never heard of. :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :cake: I rarely go to cafés, but when they talked about it, it sounded really nice. さすが『二人がひいきにしているものについて楽しくて語らう番組』ですね。Didn’t listen to the お便り紹介 corner, will do next time.

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LEDC
Week 3

July 11

ゆる言語学ラジオ, episodes 1, 2 and 3 → 37 min.


Ho boi, that was quite a jump from Teppei. This one is wild fast, I can’t make sense at all of some of the sentences. And I’m back to “definitely not understanding virtually everything like Nihongo con Teppei”, I don’t even think I can quantify it… 50-60%? Doesn’t matter. If you asked me what one of the episodes was about, I don’t think I could really make a proper summary. I know what they were talking about, and at the time of listening I could make sense of a fair number of sentences and I thought “wow that’s so cool”, but it goes so fast that I don’t think I can make many connections and follow a determinate thread. My brain forgets as it struggles with the next sentence.

I still enjoyed it, though to be fair I’m also quite tired today and fairly sleepy when I was listening, so I might have a slightly better experience when I’m more rested. BUT, hey Teppei was kind of also this way for me back then and I just kept listening until it was not, so there’s hope! :muscle:

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Jul 12, Tue of Week 3 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

Today’s story is カッパの雨ごい (:studio_microphone:).

kappa-in-rain

I actually put a lot of effort into sound recording for today, so it looks like this.

In Audacity for PC

Story impression

Such a heartfelt story of カッパ (not written in Kanji – 河童)

In short, cut audio into segments, so that I can listen to each segments properly. [1]

While I don’t yet know enough about Shadowing, I might do it more properly for conversational dialogues (as opposed to storytelling), where I am more careful about each segments.


Yesterday, I probably didn’t watch much after yesterday’s post, but I might managed to watch about an author – [歴史探偵] 水木しげる 妖怪に隠された秘密 | NHK - YouTube, as well as finished half-watched ones. [2]

Also, watched the news update a little about Abe.


  1. I don’t really repeat each segments, because the audio is already 10 minutes long. Also, in the end, I record a long one without breaking, for the sake of storytelling. (Of course I know that storytelling skills are even further than (any) language alone.) ↩︎

  2. ↩︎
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I rewatched the episode of Old Fashioned Cupcake and got the majority of what I missed (one conversation had in the office was still ??? for me though) and so I thought, “oh I must have just been tired!” and started episode two. Lol nope. Back to like 80% comprehension. Guess this is one of those shows I gotta watch twice.

Also I was reminded today of Sayuri Saying as another option for people. She’s got beginner and more intermediate videos
ex: beginner, intermediate (conversation with another person)
Some videos have hard subs but listening ‘podcast style’ could work.

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July 11 :blossom: Home Post

Today I just watched a couple more of those Cities Skylines videos which were just as fun and wild as the first one :joy: It’s somehow easier to convince my brain to watch a couple short silly videos than listen to a podcast or watch an actual show or something, so whatever works! It’s all practice :man_shrugging:

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July 12 :yellow_square:

I half-watched, half-listened to a 50 minute episode of Our Planet on Netflix, audio set to Japanese. I was doing other things so I barely looked at the TV, and realized I still got quite a lot for the attention I was paying it. Am I getting better? It’s probably more that the narration was clear and on the slow side (think Attenborough in Japanese), and the sentences rather short. And that I didn’t worry about possibly missing something important. That’s one good thing about nature documentaries: there’s no way I won’t be able to understand what’s going on just because I missed what was said earlier.

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Weekly update:
5th - 1 and a half hours of Gackt, Over the moon (ultraluminary), Rainych - blinding lights (Japanese), then listened to Otsuichi’s むかし夕日の公園で several times and Shinji Ishii’s 肉屋おうむ several times.

6th - 1 and a half hours of Gackt, Over the moon (ultraluminary), Rainych - blinding lights (Japanese), then listened to Otsuichi’s むかし夕日の公園で several times

7th - 1 and a half hours of Gackt and Stereopony music

8th - 1 hour of Gackt music

9th - listened to Hiromi Kawakami’s 神様, Otsuichi’s むかし夕日の公園で, Shinji Ishii’s 肉屋おうむ and Yoshimoto Banana’s ミイラ.

10th - 1 hour of Gackt and Stereopony, First chapter of Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone.

11th - Kung Fu Panda, the following short stories: 電車、登山家、秘密 and Hiromi Kawakami’s 神様

12th - 2 hour of Gackt and Stereopony, second chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone.

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I’m finding it challenging to fit time in for focused listening on work days that doesn’t include just short stories but when I’m off work I find it a lot easier to sit and listen to something in Japanese, either a film, a chapter of a book or reading and listening at the same time. Most of the music sessions are either while driving or doing menial tasks.

Will update again next Tuesday. :slightly_smiling_face:

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:sound: Listening Room: Date 20220712 :loud_sound:

Day XXI: :durtle: & :boom:

Watched the 4th & 5th yokai videos of the series: 日本の妖怪

This first video is all about かっぱ, so it’s cucumber time! :cucumber: :cucumber:
I love how there’s an ancient text with diagrams seemingly detailing full kappa anatomy.
And a mummified kappa!! :caught_durtling:

The second (well, 5th) is about the Edo yokai explosion.
I love the book with all the prints of yokai in it!

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Picture book storytelling in the library, my dance class and then a couple of hours listening (and trying to contribute…) to discussions in Banshu ben (Kansai dialect from the sticks, they are lovely bunch :laughing:)). A language exchange meetup event. Then Yoga。Tuesdays are busy…

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Home post :guitar: July 12th

・Hiiki Biiki podcast episode 148 (continued). Topic: お便り紹介. Length: 20 min.

The hosts read mail from fans. This time about mountain bike and theatre student. A few grammar structures that stood out to me: にあたって and 相まって. The first one is a leech of mine on Bunpro, the second one I learned recently.

They usually do one topic per episode, but seems like the next two episodes will be about Star Wars. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

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July 12th!

Just a little bit of listening today
I watched another vocab building video from JapanesePod101 while writing my daily diary, and watched another episode of Fruits Basket during my lunch hour。 :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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July 12 :blossom: Home Post

I watched another Cities Skylines chaos video today; this man loves to flood cities with sewage :joy: Still a good balance of being silly and low-pressure while still having a lot that I actually am able to parse. I really need to get to a point where baseline listening doesn’t feel like a whole ordeal but realistically that might be a ways off :laughing: it’s all progress though!

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So yesterday was a rough day at work and I just needed to turn off my brain for a bit. So I binge watched the rest of Old Fashioned Cupcake (it was fun, but nothing noteworthy) also then followed it with several episodes of a truly trash romcom that I’ve already forgotten the name of. It was perfect because I found neither character attractive, the plot was asinine, and I had zero investment in whether or not they got together. 10/10 good for a bad mood.
Today was better at work, but I might binge watch some more just because that ball is rolling and I haven’t done this much listening in awhile.

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Jul 13, Wed of Week 3 of Summer :beach_umbrella: 2022

Today’s story is オオカミとウサギ (:studio_microphone:).

Yeah, this version of YouTube is a little different from Hukumusume’s (but roughly the same).

Honestly, today is a relatively easy reading and listening.

Also, today I started dialogue sound recording; but by speaking alone, I replied to the previous audio segments, or recorded an audio segment to be replied to.

Recording in Audacity

Additionally, I booked an italki tutor for the first time – trial 30 minutes. (I chose someone with some Mandarin Chinese experience, just in case. [1]) Well, my major intent is to be able to write, both in chat and in essay. Speaking in a conversation in a plus, but composing should be in sync with speaking, anyway.


Yesterday, I watched となりの怪物くん EP01 on Netflix. It’s generally good, but speaking is hard to catch sometimes. There is also JP subtitle. The truth is I was looking for shows with JP subtitle that is also the same with JP speaking. (Which is probably not the case for international shows with JP audio and JP sub, that can be somehow different.)

I thought on studying subtitle in advance or afterwards, however. Studying ahead is hard, as well as I don’t want to be spoiled. Studying afterwards is a toil with fun and sometimes audio, removed.

My current understanding is, practically anything written in manga speech clouds, or thinking outside speech clouds, can be spoken (going by Furigana that don’t necessarily match bottom text).


  1. To prevent the case of 日本人の知らない日本語, but not as far as learning some Chinese yet. ↩︎

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Home post

LEDC
Week 3

July 12

ゆる言語学ラジオ, episodes 4 and 5 → 34 min.

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