Another mixed week, but I ended strongly. I listened to something five out of seven days and hit my content and time goals four days. I’ve also reestablished my Japanese study schedule, which I’d strayed from due to end-of-semester job pressures. Overall, I feel I’m in a good position moving forward.
One new observation: I don’t think I’m making a lot of progress with native-level material. However, the level-appropriate material feels a lot slower now, probably due to my efforts with the native-level stuff.
That’s about it. Once more over the breach, as they say…
Watched YouTube shorts in Japanese for around 15 to 20 minutes.
A few videos from Takashii from Japan and a few from Study In Daily Japanese. I’m not subscribed to these channels but I come across their shorts frequently so I ended up watching all of that.
I watched 2 more episodes of Invisible on Netflix and I’m enjoying it greatly. It’s very bingeable because unlike the two shows I need to finish (最愛 and 桜の塔) it’s pretty easy (language wise) and unemotional for me. While it’s not a purely formulaic cop drama and does have an overarching plot, I’m not that invested in it and am just here for the ride.
Completed this weeks Zero Escape: 999
I also read 電車の中で若者に注意 from Read Real Japanese Essays.
I read it before I listened to it. I think I prefer listening alone once before reading.
Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 13 - 14
I think two episodes is a good basic commitment for now. My goal is to reach at least one hour of active listening each week, so two episodes a ~4 minutes each day will get close to that. Then I can round it off with something else for flavour.
Watched a few youtube shots in Japanese and watched Suzume in the theatre finally! I enjoyed it and I have thoughts but now I’m super tired and can’t articulate any of it. Feels like I have less and less time these days gaaah.
I listened to episode 13 of Japanese with Shun and watched a Comprehensible Japanese video about traditional japanese sweets. I can’t wait to try those sweets. They look delicious!
April 28th
At this point I kind of lost motivation to keep listening to Japanese every day but I thought I would at least watch one video to keep my streak going. I chose another video by Comprehensible Japanese about language learning.
April 29th
Akane’s Nara vlog was okay to understand I think. Tbh I have already forgotten most of the video. There were cute deer of course but that’s pretty much all I remember.
April 30th
Yesterday I watched the news story about the capybara falling asleep in the water that everyone was talking about. This reminded me of the video about the capybara with a mandarin orange on its head. So I watched that one right after. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to understand some of the stuff that the presenter said in the video. The last time I watched it I couldn’t understand anything.
I also watched a video about kitchen objects by Akane. There was a small quiz where you can guess what different objects are called. I could only name one of the objects so I learned a lot of new words.
May 1st
Today I listened to Nihongo con Teppei episodes 161-165 and it felt pretty easy.
Overall I feel like I have made decent progress over the course of the last month. My understanding has increased considerably. I am very motivated now to keep studying grammar and vocabulary because I feel like this is what is holding my listening comprehension back the most.
I’m looking forward to the second month of listening.
May 1st
What did I listen to?: Animal videos on Youtube
How much time did I spend listening?: ~28 min
It is time~
Unlike last challenge, I had something I wanted to listen to right away, and it was the capybara video that @Zakarius posted earlier (I was saving it for this day to motivate myself ) Then I found an important sequel - Capybara with mandarin orange on head
I wasn’t planning to start 硝子の塔の殺人 immediately, but here I am, already about an hour in. The audiobook so far is way better than I feared, quite good actually. For some reason they chose some rather intense scenes for the sample, and I nearly didn’t get it because of them. But so far the performance is not over the top at all, and the narration especially is very much to my taste. A lady’s voice is a bit grating, and a certain man is nearly incomprehensible, but this is all good practice in small doses.
It’s 夢読 (I think that’s her name, Yume something) isn’t it? She sounds pretty much exactly the same in the other book recording based on the sample. That’s just her character type
Oh well her being hyper is a character trait but in that case you might have liked the Audible version a little better. They gave her an actress with a deeper voice so her “hype” doesn’t feel so intense.
My life was incomplete until I saw that capybara. I am now on a whole new level of consciousness and I am happy that we can experience the wonderous world of the capybara together.
Watched 極主夫道 (live action ver) epidsode 2. Writing and watching episode 3. I wish I had time to watch all of it but I already need to get to bed. ok, I really didn’t have time to watch all of episode 3 but I just had to. These goof balls have some really sweet moments.
Today I watched this video for some listening and conversation practice.
Tried it out because the cartoons looked cute. Understood all the questions but I found the speaking part useless. The example answers were pretty fun though.
It was a smol listening sesh, and I think I prefer vlogs compared to something like this.
Frog video from my new favourite youtube channel. So many frogs! Many fun facts that I want to listen to when my Japanese is better. And obviously the best part is that their ultimate goal is to be bitten by every kind of frog in the world.
Capybara video 1 , video 2
One can’t but help to aspire to become as chill as the humble Capybara.
Today I wasn’t feeling like concentrating hard on comprehension, so watching the videos other’s linked in this thread it is.