🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Winter 2023 ❄ 🧤

I don’t count listening with English subs as listening practice for me but still, I am currently rewatching 恋はつづくよどこまでも Love Lasts Forever. I am actually listening to the Japanese intensively and picking out phrases I understand. The first time I watched it, I disliked the female lead up until halfway through but this time around I appreciate seeing her growth more, so liked her from the jump.

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February 11th!

Another tiny listen today - one episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

I didn’t quit the challenge, I just didn’t want to post :upside_down_face: I mentioned this in the reading thread too, but it was nothing personal to anyone or anything, I was just in a very “don’t look at me” mood the whole week :see_no_evil: Work is very busy so I might not post here super often, to keep my stress at a manageable level while still doing the challenge. Trying to make sure I don’t fall into the trap of “I don’t feel like posting about the thing, so therefore I’ll just avoid doing the thing.”

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been listening to while I’ve been not posting :laughing:

February 6th
What did I listen to?: Onomappu’s video about Exo
How much time did I spend listening?: ~14 min

This was pretty comprehensible for the first 2/3rds but then I stg he started talking 50 times faster all of a sudden and I didn’t understand anything for the rest of the video :joy:

February 7th
What did I listen to?: The Midorikawa videos that basilsauce linked
How much time did I spend listening?: ~24 min

Me the entire time:

But it seemed like they were having fun and that was enjoyable to see :laughing:

February 8th
What did I listen to?: Atashin’chi episode 1
How much time did I spend listening?: ~6 min

February 9th
What did I listen to?: Atashin’chi episode 2
How much time did I spend listening?: ~9 min

February 10th
What did I listen to?: Atashin’chi episode 3
How much time did I spend listening?: ~8 min

February 11th
What did I listen to?: Atashin’chi episode 4
How much time did I spend listening?: ~8 min

I didn’t know how I’d feel about this animation style, but it’s grown on me quite a bit. Man, these little episodes are easy to just throw on after a day of work. My level of comprehension is pretty variable, sometimes they talk quite fast or in a panicked way which makes it more difficult to understand xD But overall I’m enjoying them and will continue them for sure!

Extremely belated replies

Who has that kind of time :sob: Literally just break it into shorter episodes, I don’t understand why the majority of podcasts seem to default to these ridiculously long episodes. I assume the majority of podcast listeners must prefer it that way because it’s so common but I can’t for the life of me figure out why :joy: Even if you listen to it at 2x speed (which I’ve heard of people doing, though I couldn’t do it myself), a 10-hour podcast is still 5 hours :sob:

This is something I always lose sight of, I feel, so this is a good reminder that it’s ok to not do it “perfectly” the whole time. Like, some listening is better than none, and none is not the end of the world either. I feel like me giving myself permission not to post this week was a positive step toward that kind of mindset. I realized it’s not always the listening itself that’s the problem, but a desire to avoid the stuff around the listening that holds me back from listening. Removing those unnecessary pieces can help me actually do the thing, which is the goal all along.

This is something that weirdly never occurred to me as a thing I could do. I think part of me assumed that non-learner-focused Japanese podcasts would be in some weird inaccessible place but from the list you linked it seems like there must be a pretty decent selection on Spotify? I don’t use Spotify and generally disapprove of Spotify’s entire existence but I would begrudgingly use it for that purpose as long as I don’t have to pay for it lmao I’ll check out some of the Youtube channels you linked, too :slight_smile: And when I have more time I’ll definitely be searching out the Japanese side of K-pop Youtube - I can safely say that if I can find content about my boys I will have no trouble sitting through it regardless of how much I understand :joy:

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I’ll admit it’s all pretty nonsensical but I hope it was at least a little funny :sweat_smile:

I like BTS (in addition to visual kei) but usually when I watch stuff about them on Youtube it’s performances, interviews, or crack, which are all subtitled. If I’m reading subtitles I’d rather do it in English.

But this got me wondering if there were things like unboxing and reaction videos in Japanese, because those are more likely to have a lot of speech. It wasn’t hard to find, once I actually looked for it. Apparently the keywords are 開封 and リアクション, and maybe 初見 too.

A 14 min unboxing video for BTS’s “Proof” by a young woman unpacking 4 CD sets hoping to find Namjoon and Hoseok trading cards. She likes some other kpop groups too and I saw videos about TWICE and others in her video history.

A 13:30 BTS reaction video by two professional dancers to a “Run BTS” rehearsal video. I actually watched a few reaction videos to various BTS songs today (lol) and this was the best one I saw, in terms of language practice, entertainment, and also just seeing what they noticed about the dancing/choreography. They also have reaction videos about other kpop groups and Johnny’s.

I’ve gotten a little further in listening/reading Honzuki 2 this past week. Honestly watching junk on Youtube is more fun though.

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:snowman: :snowflake: February 12 :snowflake: :snowman: :speaker:
Home Post

シャーマンキング :ear:
とある魔術の禁書目録 :ear:

I ended up trying とらドラ! last night too, and I think I actually finished the whole first episode, but already knew it had some tropes I don’t enjoy at all. Aka the I can’t communicate well so I just beat everyone up trope. Plus almost everything else didn’t work for me either.

Then today, I tried Index and couldn’t even finish the first episode before I had made sure that yeah, it seemed to have some of the same tropes as the spinoff that I don’t find enjoyable.

And then, hoping maybe I could find something interesting to watch, I tried on the Shaman King anime, remembering that I did like the first few volumes of the manga when I read them as a teen. But… I barely got through the first episode. The story around the samurai ghost would have been so nice, if it actually got to take up the whole episode and you actually got to engage with it, but nah, barely 5 minutes at the end of the episode and the rest of it felt very meme-y/trope-y. I don’t remember that at all from the manga, but then I read it a decade and a half ago, so my memory is probably faulty…

Does anyone have recommendations for anime on Netflix? I’m currently looking for the easy way, so, since I have Netflix I’m sampling their anime. My overall taste is a bit everywhere. I have certain tropes that I find annoying, but even those I’ll overlook if the rest of the story elements/characters/plot is good. Like Food Wars had fan service for sure, but since the rest of it was so darn good, I could ignore it.

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Feb 12, Sun of Week 7 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

おいしいごはんが食べられますように [1/12]. This one has male and female narrators. Audiobook is free in 聴き放題, but not the text (Bookwalker). A little expensive, in fact.

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.2 [7/7]. Various question types.

Death Note EP.34.

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The impression I get from podcasts is that they’re popular among people with long downtime at work, drivers/truckers, people with long commutes or people whose work doesn’t require a lot of attention and therefore can multitask. For those people long episodes make sense, I guess. There are people who consume podcast episodes like it’s nothing everyday. In my case in particular, the longest podcast I’ve ever listened to was like 1h something of one of the Japanese podcasts for natives I’m subscribed to, which I divided into two sessions of half an hour or so. If the episode is too long I just stop in a spot I consider alrightish and just resume it some other day. In the case of language learner podcasts it makes sense that you don’t want to overwhelm people with too long episodes when they’re starting. But I agree, super long episodes automatically make me go “oof”, and also when I see a podcast that there is no way on earth I could ever catch up because of the sheer amount of content they put out :smile: . I’m not too deep into podcasts anyways so it doesn’t bother me too much in the end, but I would like to eventually catch up if I commit to something.

They should be available everywhere, Spotify just retrieves them from each podcast’s website just like any other podcast app. The person making the list might be using Spotify for them and that’s probably why they chose it to easily compile the links, but you can use pretty much any podcast app. I use AntennaPod, personally.

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Last night I watched one episode of 仮面ライダー BLACK SUN

Two episodes left! Not sure if I’ll watch both tonight as there’s some other (non-Japanese) films I want to watch before my sub runs out (gotta get as much as possible out of that 99p :upside_down_face:), but I’ll try to get at least one in.

I had a browse at the other Japanese stuff, there’s another series but I don’t really have the time left nor does it really look like it’d appeal to me, and they also seem to have every single Gamera film ever, not sure if those really appeal to me either, they do have the Evangelion rebuilds but I don’t think I have the time to view those either… and that’s kind of all they have… I think. There could be more lurking somewhere, it feels that they’ve made searching on Prime as counter-intuitive as possible so you just end up scrolling mindlessly until you find that which you’re after. I’ve tried filtering by language (which is awkward to get to in the first place) but sometimes things appear and then they don’t. So who knows.

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:snowflake: Day 43, 12th of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Wow I didn’t do a lot this week, huh? Hopefully the coming week will leave me less congested, because it’s really ruining my beautiful checkboxes. :joy:

I listened to some more Minecraft. I know, what a surprise. But I decided to finish the videos of あかがみんクラフト that have English captions in Captionfy (by user flashofaurora). Sadly they left out the majority of videos, so I only watched episodes #13, in which they futilely searched for a desert for cactus for green dye (not knowing you could craft it from blue and yellow dye), episode #14, in which they race to see who can harvest the most, and episode #15, where they visit someone’s secret base and go to the nether.

The next episodes translated are #48 and #50. I don’t think I will watch any more. These people were fun but I’m used to a better production quality for my videos from watching so much Hermitcraft, so this is barely keeping my attention. Thankfully I still have PiroPito.

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February 12th!

Today I had a lesson with my tutor. We’ve been practising making my speech more natural recently, so it was an hour that was focused entirely on having conversations.

I also listen to the next lesson in JapanesePod 101’s Upper Beginner Season 1.
It was another one focused on announcements you might hear on trains. Today’s was about a train being delayed by snow, and also explained the use of 拝見する.

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

February 12th
What did I listen to?: Atashin’chi episode 5 + 6
How much time did I spend listening?: ~16 min

I feel like I understood a bit more of these episodes, they were funny xD Probably helped that there was less talking involved in the jokes lmao

Replies!

The shouting was quite fun :joy: I’m sure the videos would have been more funny if I’d understood more words but alas my listening comprehension was insufficient :upside_down_face:

OMG yes, you get me :sob: This is exactly the type of content I was thinking of, and now I even have keywords :face_holding_back_tears: I don’t watch a lot of that type of thing in English (I also tend to watch more performances/practice videos/interviews) but they would certainly be interesting enough as a way to practice my Japanese. It would actually be interesting to watch unboxings for groups I don’t follow, too, it’s fun to see all the pretty packaging and inclusions that I probably wouldn’t get to see otherwise (I’ve already seen all the pretty packaging and inclusions for my group because I own all their albums in all the versions because I HAVE A PROBLEM)

Anyway, I am 100% going to watch those BTS videos tomorrow, I don’t really follow BTS terribly closely but I love dance-related videos and I’m curious to see what all they put in those Proof albums :joy:

See, in all those situations, I would just listen to music, but to each their own I guess :joy: Regardless of that, couldn’t they just…make shorter episodes and put all those episodes in a big playlist to get the same effect? While simultaneously not alienating the people who take one look at the length and nope out? :joy: The idea that I could pause somewhere in the middle of a 4-hour audio-only thing and actually remember where I left off is kind of laughable to me tbh, I would absolutely forget (either my spot, the majority of the context and content that came before it, or both) and just never finish it. I already have enough trouble keeping track of what episode of things I’m on. :upside_down_face: But I guess that’s a personal problem :joy:

Is that how that works?? I didn’t even know :sob: Don’t ask me what I thought, because the answer is I did not :joy: I could not name a single podcast-specific app, so I’m glad you named one, I forgot those exist too :joy:

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To my knowledge, YUYU posts mostly in Spotify. I believe creators have to post to Spotify themselves; and not sure about creators’ income / encouragement.

Another one I have been using is Podbean, where can switch region to Japan. UI can be much better, imo.

Certainly, length chooses people and eventually, followers. Measurement of loyalty and dedication too, perhaps.

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Miku Real Japanese and The Stranger by the Beach/Shore. I…was not expecting them to show so much but I’m not mad at it (if you know you know). I understood maybe 80% because there were some parts I couldn’t figure out because there were some grammar points I am missing seeing that I am still mid N4.

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February 10 :film_strip:
February 11 :headphones:
February 12 :film_strip:

It seems I haven’t updated here in a while. On two days I watched an episode of Heaven and Hell. It’s a fun watch, but not my favourite. The supernatural element bothers me a little, and it generally feels very simplistic in many respects. Not saying that I won’t watch it to the end though :grin:
On the 11th I had a bad cold and low energy, so I took the かがみの孤城 audiobook to bed with me and listened to it while half-asleep. Poor thing, it never gets the attention it deserves, it’s always when I’m too tired or sick that I turn to it.

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Podcast discussion replies

People usually use podcast players and they automatically save the spot you stopped at ^^ . I guess the podcasts that have websites mostly use them as a repository but I’ve no idea if people use them as their main way of listening to them. They’re certainly super inconvenient :smile: .

Actually you’re right, YUYU doesn’t seem to have a dedicated website. But it’s also weird, because the description of his YouTube videos says “Spotify” and yet the links redirect you to Google podcasts :joy: .

I like AntennaPod because it’s open source and privacy focused, and it’s great if you know what you’re looking for but it’s not good for new discoveries because there is no discovery function at all. I’ve used others in the past but some seemed very nosy in terms of privacy. I wonder if there’s like a website or something in Japanese with rankings, genre subdivisions and so on that doesn’t just list a few of them but like a whole library :thinking: .

But yeah there’s like a million podcast apps out there.

Edit: Actually nevermind! There IS a discovery function in AntennaPod :joy: it just doesn’t seem very extensive… at all.

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Feb 13, Mon of Week 8 of Winter Q1 2023 :snowman::snowflake:

So-matome N2 Listening Ch.3 [1/5].

Death Note EP.35. Expecting the end soon, seriously.

おいしいごはんが食べられますように [2/12].

My physical book for ガラスのうさぎ arrived just today, so started from the first chapter; but I count that as reading. The tracks are usually pretty short, so accordingly, the reading chapters.

Regarding podcasts, I tried AntennaPod with Coten Radio just now. The topic and content is interesting (福祉 around the world, from past to present), but I don’t feel ready for podcasts yet.

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:snowman: :snowflake: February 13 :snowflake: :snowman: :speaker:
Home Post

Cardcaptor Sakura :sparkles:

I started watching Cowboy Bebop and quit like 7ish minutes into the first episode. One of my brothers love that series, and I had a feeling it would be one of those he liked but I didn’t. I sometimes feel so harsh on anime, there is a reason I don’t watch much of it. :sweat_smile:

So I went ahead and watched the next episode of Cardcaptor Sakura. I was a big fan of magic girls when I was younger, and Cardcaptor Sakura is okay. Pretty fluffy most of the time, but I can watch it with only Japanese subs and not get lost, unless there is a lot of Kero, since he talks too fast. >_>

But because it is so fluffy, it rarely manages to keep my interest for long, so I always wander away after watching an episode a day over a couple of days. The fact that I can watch only one episode and then feel done is kinda telling. When I find anime I like I tend to binge it. :sweat_smile:

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:snowflake: Day 44, 13th of February :snowflake:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

Wanted something short and sweet today, so rewatched the snowman episode from Comprehensible Japanese. Once without looking, then another with looking, then another with the Japanese subtitles. Felt it a bit overkill to also do another one with English subtitles, so skipped that one.

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February 13th!

Today I watched the first video in a series from Dir en Grey’s Drummer, Shinya, in which he walks around the Yamanote Line.
I didn’t understand everything, but the fact that a lot of it was subtitled in Japanese means I was able to follow along fairly well.

(Home Post)

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Doesn’t Kero also have a Kansai accent, or am I misremembering? I have a soft spot for CCS because it was the first anime I watched unsubbed and could actually understand all of an episode of, back in the day.

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