🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

:coffee: :snowflake: Frankie’s home post :snowflake: :coffee:

I want to try and make an effort to improve my listening so I’ll be joining in.

the plan

I’m only going to count listening if there is no English to go along with it.

  • main things I’ll listen to will probably be things I find fun like Japanese youtubers, anime and dramas.
  • hoping to also push my self and start using things more catered to my level that I will understand more of (eg. beginner podcasts, Japanese grammar lessons in Japanese) but will mean I need to be a bit more active in deciphering it.
Jan
01
02 03 04 05 06 07 08
09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Feb
01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28

I’ll only be linking one day per update post.

Listened to media
  • hunterxhunter
  • nihongo con teppei
  • yuyu の日本語

:snowflake: My read everyday challenge home post :snowflake:

16 Likes

First day of listening! Right now it’s closish to the end of the day for me; I hope that I’ll be able to integrate it better into my day, so it won’t always be the last thing I do just because it still needs to be done. I guess that could also be part of the challenge for me…

Content-wise I listened to four N5 episodes of the (defunct, but archived) JLPT Stories Podcast. Trying to understand everything was a tiny bit challenging at times, but not too bad. I wonder if higher level “stories” are more like actual stories, and more interesting.

(Finding actual interesting content to match my beginner-level sure is hard. So far I haven’t found any podcasts that make me go “Just one more episode”…)

12 Likes

Hopefully being active in the community will help me keep consistent with learning! Today was a lot of anime catching up and finishing Chainsaw man. I’d like to go through listening to all the ending OPs and pick out just any words I remember. I also will be doing my Pimsleur audio book lesson that I (try to) do daily. A small success is still a success!

1/16 update
I was very unwell for a bit there but spent a lot of time after work today listening to some of the radio stations in Japan via Radio Garden. Sapporo City FM 88.8 seems to have a Vocaloid night going on which has been pretty fun. Some of the songs I was even able to identify via Google Voice and add them to a Spotify list.

14 Likes

:loud_sound: :snowboarder: softlyraining’s listening corner :headphones: :mountain_snow:

January 1st

It’s already late at night for me, so I decided to watch something relatively quick and easy: a video from Comprehensible Japanese. Still, there were a few words I didn’t know in here, like 松ぼっくり (pinecone).

16 Likes

January 1st :headphones:

Happy New Year!

I felt slightly unwell yesterday (great start of the year), so while in bed I just let the audiobook of かがみの孤城 play while I drifted in and out of consciousness. The parts I was focused on I felt I understood much better than last time I tried it, but I was still missing stuff. And of course there were parts where I was only passively listening, if at all. I’ll need to properly restart it one of these days.

13 Likes

Jan 2, Mon of Week 2 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

A little of bilingual JP-CN podcast, then audiobook 君の膵臓をたべたい Ch.1. After a while, I felt I want to read the book, so reading while listening, but not the same line, catching up and going over. I replayed the prologue and Ch.1 once, though.

Then, relistening かがみの孤城, March [3/10] while reading (下) of the same part. Although I manage to catch up reading to [3/10], I don’t manage to finish reading as far as this track. (I have no idea my last stop was around [2/10], simply made a rough guess.)

After that, I simply listened to Japanese songs on Youtube.

I also watched an episode of 緊急取調室 EP.4. First half was on my tablet (with VPN as well), while the latter was on PC (and Language Reactor). Watching on PC took more time, while not necessarily understanding more. Somehow happy ending.

11 Likes

:snowflake: Day 2, 2nd of January :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Two more episodes of Nihongo con Teppei (#3 and #4). It is quite astonishing how painless it was, when in the previous challenge I struggled with the very first episode and then quit listening to Teppei completely.

I like how he kept repeating very simple things, but then sprinkled in some more difficult to understand commentary. It keeps it from feeling stale and brings some humor into it all. I’ve seen many people on the forum say that they struggle when the media they consume does not engage them at all. I’m in the same boat but I think with Teppei there is a nice balance for me because of his comments.

13 Likes

:headphones: :desktop_computer: Sylph’s home thread :sound::snowflake:

Jan
01
02 03 04 05 06 07 08
09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Feb
01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28

I’ve been doing the reading challenge for a long time now but never tried this one so far. I expect to be mostly done with WK soon so I figured I could use the extra time to work on my listening skills since they are pretty far behind my reading. I’ve decided to try this challenge for January in least strict form possible just to get in the habit of listening to things and being mindful of it, so I’ll count basically anything as listening: podcasts, the voiceover of the VNs I play in Japanese… but even if I listen to anything with nonJP subtitles as long as the audio is in Japanese and I pay attention. Hopefully this sticks and I can up my goals in the future but for now let’s keep it simple and in February I can reassess.
Excited to do this challenge for the first time with everyone!

Edit: I’m doing February as well

14 Likes

January 2nd :film_strip:

One episode of ミステリと言う勿れ today. It’s been a while since the last episode I watched, but there was a very helpful recap. I started by ignoring the subtitles, but as the story progressed my eye fell on them more and more. I still listened attentively though, most of the time.

12 Likes

january 2 :snowflake: home post

Didn’t post an update yesterday, but I did listen to 2 episodes of Comprehensible Japanese (Beginner): オオカミ少年 and 日本一VS世界一. This morning I listened to a few more: ラーメン、運転, and アリとキリギリス.

10 Likes

January 2nd.

I listened to an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.

I also thought it would be fun to do some listening practise by trying to follow some origami tutorials on Youtube in Japanese. I figured even if I couldn’t keep up with the verbal instructions I’d catch bits and I could follow along with the visual part of the tutorial.

It worked pretty well, other than it turns out I’m not great at origami :sweat_smile:
I made a pyramid shaped gift box and a butterfly.
I’m quite proud of them, even though they are a bit smushed and wobbly.

(Home Post)

13 Likes

January 1st and 2nd :coffee:

1st - watched an episode and a half of hunterxhunter (no subs). Understood an ok amount but is probably not the best use of my time. Still very enjoyable though. :smiling_face:

2nd - watched another hunterxhunter episode while eating dinner. This one was quite rough because I’m pretty tired today. Also listened to a nihongo con teppei episode about curry and was really nice to understand 85%+ despite being tired. I even picked up the word 牛肉 [ぎゅうにく] through already knowing 牛乳 [ぎゅうにゅう].

Can’t wait to see what everyone else is listening to. :smile:

homepost

13 Likes

January 1st

Didn’t write this yesterday because I was lazy but I watched some various anime episodes, it wasn’t anything special to be completely honest.

January 2nd

While the day isn’t over and I may edit in some more things, I watched this video so far. I’ve been going through this small series of where the seiyuu of Hitori in Bocchi the Rock is learning the guitar to play the opening song. It’s pretty entertaining, I get what’s going on and there’s no real confusion, but there are words that I don’t know of course. Still, even if there many words I can’t recognize, it’s nice that it doesn’t hinder my experience that much. Will probably watch some anime later, but we’ll see.

homepost

13 Likes

Day 2! I watched the first hour of

It’s a VTuber talkshow where Kiara of Hololive EN (on the left) interviews a Hololive JP member. About 2/3 of the show is in Japanese, with Kiara talking with the guest, and 1/3 is in English with Kiara translating it to her English-speaking audience. The automatic YouTube subtitles seem pretty on point most of the time too - I sometimes use them for lookups via Yomichan.

Technically this is a bit above my level, but Okayu is one of the slower-speaking members, and every time JP members speak to EN members their Japanese sounds a bit easier to me. And most importantly, this is content that I’m actually interested in, much more than beginner podcasts.

And so far I actually got most of it before Kiara translated it to English! Although I often had to look up words in the subtitles. There were only two parts where I didn’t even get the gist, one of them being Okayu demonstrating her Aomori dialect while talking much faster than normally… :laughing:

edit: Bonus listening exercise for today: 【フルバージョン】Z会グループ × loundraw × FLAT STUDIO 受験生応援ムービー『ふたり分の証明』 - YouTube - a friend who studied only until the end of Genki 2 sent this to me, saying that he understood a lot, so I tried it too. Lots of easy vocab!

11 Likes

:sparkling_heart: Lima’s Listening Home Post :sparkling_heart:

Hello! :wave:

This will be my first time joining a challenge on WK. I will be taking it easy with it! :laughing:

I am going to listen to at least one episode of Japanese podcast for beginners (Nihongo con Teppei) Nihongo con Teppei per day :+1:

Jan
01 :headphones:
02 :headphones: 03 :headphones: 04 :headphones: 05 :headphones: 06 07 08
09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Feb
01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28
14 Likes

:sparkling_heart: Day 1 - January 3rd :sparkling_heart:

Today I listened to the first 3 episodes of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners to make up for my missed days since I joined the challenge late.

#1元気ですか?について!
#2どのくらい日本語を勉強していますか?について!
#3どこに住んでいますか?について!

These were pretty easy listening! Teppei-san spoke very slowly, I could understand what he was saying without many difficulties. Perhaps this podcast is a little too easy for me, though. So from tomorrow, I’ll listen to his other podcasts instead!

(Home Post)

12 Likes

I don’t know what your level is, but if his other podcasts turn out to be too hard for now, skip a few dozen episodes of the beginner podcast and try that for size. It definitely stays a beginner podcast, but the first few episodes are much easier than the rest, and it gets progressively harder afterwards.

8 Likes

I took N4 last July with an almost perfect listening score and had the opportunity to have a 1-month internship in Japan last November~December. I’m probably somewhere around N3~N2. I will take note of returning to the beginner podcast if I find the intermediate podcast too hard :eyes: Thank you for the suggestion!

7 Likes

Ha, fair enough! Then his other ones are probably a better fit, yeah. I just suggested it because I thought the same back then, and then was positively surprised when it kept getting harder. But I was more around N5, so it’s definitely a different situation.

Best of luck with your listening challenge!

6 Likes

Thank you! :sparkling_heart:

1 Like