Summary post
I’m back again for the off-month, after completing the read every day challenge!
I updated my original summary post with an additional chart for the month of September and a new listening plan for both languages . Once again, I’m going to try to do both Spanish and Japanese every day!
Honestly, it’s kind of amazing how much my listening has improved since June ended, despite the fact that I haven’t been doing much dedicated listening practice (well, I have been watching plenty of wrestling still, and that’s certainly not nothing).
On the first day of this new challenge, I watched one episode of La Casa de las Flores and watched a few Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling backstage interview clips that I was working on translating. In both Spanish and Japanese, my overall comprehension was markedly better than last time, which shocked me!
I guess it makes sense with Japanese, considering the amount of work I’ve been putting into these translations. I’m definitely better at following along with the text at a more natural speaking speed, and catching some parts of speech that weren’t perfectly transcribed.
These backstage interviews are not exactly the most ideal environment for listening comprehension, haha, because they’re often filmed in really echo-y hallways with a lot of background noise (you can often hear the entrance music for the next match, for example), and the wrestlers are often tired and/or excited and don’t speak the most polished sentences, but they’re fun to watch if you’re invested in the characters.
I’m especially enjoying the post-match interviews from TJPW’s last show on August 28, which was at Korakuen Hall and which had an all-women audience, who were allowed to cheer (their previous two all-women shows were much smaller and also were affected by coronavirus restrictions that prohibited cheering). The wrestlers were really, really excited to be performing in front of a crowd of all women, and it’s so much fun to see their delight in the videos of their comments .