🔊 🎙 Listen Every Day Challenge - Spring 2023 🌼 🌱

May 10th!

Today I listened to the next episode of Season 1 of JapanesePod101’s Lower Intermediate series.

(Home Post)

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I found this series of manga-style skits about a high school girl and her shiba inu and it’s pretty fun. I don’t know if I can watch all 45 minutes straight (I prefer long-form content and this is just a stream of short form) but it’s still fun:

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asveri’s home post :seedling:

Hi everyone! This will be my first challenge (or anything in the WK community actually), and I’m joining late, but I’m very eager to stretch my listening muscles. My goals are just to listen more every day, regardless of what content it is, and be consistent. I would like to read subs less and focus on listening, too.

What I’m planning on using:
– some dramas (thinking that rewatching something I’m already familiar and comfortable with, but without foreign subs, would be a good idea, perhaps チェリまほ)
– videos from (JP) figure skaters, as I already watch them sometimes + am familiar with the vocab + it’s my big love
– stories in Bandori (バンドリ) since they’re fully voiced and I can check both JP and EN subs in different versions of the game
– some random Youtube videos

May
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
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Summary Post

May 10th
What did I listen to?: Speak Japanese Naturally goes to Roppongi
How much time did I spend listening?: ~9 min

Ok this was really cool >< I love art museums - how were those paintings done by high schoolers, they looked so good :weary: My personal favorites were the blue whale, tiny seal carving, llama with strawberry on head, 3D bald eagle (how) and all the shodo aksjksdghknv the calligraphy was so cool, I freaking love calligraphy, it’s so pretty :tired_face:

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:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 5月8日 and 5月9日 and 5月10日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Continuing to be kinda lazy

5/8 - 雑談しつつチェス配信 - YouTube - i watched this chess stream while getting ready for bed, don’t really remember much
5/9 - 2 episodes of ゆるキャン△ + 1 episode of skip and loafer
5/10 - 1 episode of ゆるキャン△, honestly I coul probably do this one comfortably with no subs or jp subs, but I’ve left the english on so far. Mostly not reading them, so might try turning them off tomorrow. Everyone speaks slowly enough that I should be able to look up words even without having jp subs

Over the course of those days I’ve also been listening to the Happy End discography (70s japanese rock band, one of the first commercially successful bands to write western style music w japanese lyrics), and sometimes I do pick up more than just bits and pieces, but it was largely background music while cleaning/working. Enjoyed their music quite a bit, especially the 2nd album 風街ろまん

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May 11, Thu of Week 7 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

吾輩は猫である Ch.2 [1/8]. As far as I have listened to and dropped last time.

Complete the YouTube from yesterday.

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:cherry_blossom: Day 41, 5 月 11 日 :herb:

:headphones: Back to my Home Post

:mount_fuji: Nihongo con Teppei - Episode 25 - 26
Episodes about reading the newspaper and magazines. Hard to understand, so note to self to relisten tomorrow.

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Home Post :hatching_chick:

May 7th

I watched the video about Jinbouchou by Speak Japanese Naturally. This one was way easier to understand than the one about Mount Fuji. But I had just woken up when I watched it which made it a bit harder to stay concentrated.
Later I listened to the Nihongo con Teppei episodes 173-175.

May 8th

I got a little unmotivated again so I only watched Akane’s Korea vlog. I ate something crunchy while watching so it was hard to hear what she was saying sometimes and I resorted to reading the subtitles from time to time.

May 9th

I listened to the Japanese with Shun episodes 15 and 16. His podcast is so much easier than his youtube videos that I have watched so far.

May 10th

I watched Naoko make tofu and realized that there are only a few of her videos left that I haven’t watched yet. :frowning: This one was an older video and I was surprised by how many english translations she showed on screen. I’m glad that she has changed her approach since then and only shows translations very rarely now. Overall I was happy with my understanding.
Next I tried Akane’s Kyoto vlog. This one was very difficult for me - especially when she was talking to her friend. When I watched the video a second time while reading the subtitles I could understand a lot more but still not all of it.

May 11th

Today I went for Akane’s Shin-Yokohama vlog where she taught a lot of phrases and words to use in trains and shops. I really enjoyed the video - especially the ramen museum part. It was very interesting and looked so cool!
After that I remembered that I hadn’t watched any Comprehensible Japanese videos in a while so I decided to watch the one about obon festival. It was very interesting! I finally learned what the cucumber horse and the eggplant cow items in Animal Crossing are about. :smile:

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May 11th!

Another tiny listen today - an episode of Nihongo con Teppei for Beginners.
I really need to get back to doing more listening each day, but this week has been super busy and I’m tired. I’ll try to do a bit extra over the weekend to compensate for phoning it in a bit this week :sweat_smile:

(Home Post)

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Summary Post

May 11th
What did I listen to?: Speak Japanese Naturally goes to Kofu
How much time did I spend listening?: ~28 min

Well first I tried to watch that shiba inu manga video that @pocketcat linked because it looked super cute, but within about five seconds it became apparent to me that it was way too fast and difficult for me to follow anything :sob: I’m sad sauce because I could catch juuuust enough to get the idea that I would probably really like it if I could follow it :upside_down_face: Alas, back to walk and talk videos for me :joy:

This one was quite long - not gonna lie, I got super lost when she was explaining things with like…place names, or historical people. I was looking at the subs quite a bit :upside_down_face: Also the opening gave me like…painful nostalgia, idek what it is about Japanese train stations but I miss them :cry: It’s not like I ever lived in Japan or anything, I have no right to be this emotionally bonded to them but for some reason there’s just some vibe there I miss terribly. It reminds me of my second trip to Japan (which, legitimately was the best time in my life, I love and miss that trip terribly too) - getting off the train in a new place, looking around, seeing all the things. So healing :smiling_face_with_tear:

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Oh no! The vocab is a bit advanced (IIRC one of the first skits was a joke about Schrodinger’s Cat) but you could try using the youtube speed option to bring it down to .75x or something and see if it helps at all. A lot of Japanese comedy skits are spoken super fast, I think for effect.

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Is that what it was about legitimately all I processed was like…big word! big word! WORDS ahhhh

Oh I forgot this was a thing :joy: I will try that - idk if it’ll help enough (like you said, it might be that the vocab is just too advanced) but slowing it down might at least give me enough time to process the words so I can tell whether the vocab is too advanced :joy:

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11/05/2023 :man_fairy:t5: Home Post Link

created this mini template to use for the next 4 days because I’m on a trip but don’t want to miss out on updating and maintaining the aesthetic of my home post hehe

resource: Nihongo Con Teppei

no. of episodes: 1

thoughts: i made a very silly mistake and confused the topic “cooking” for “travelling”, so i was very confused when they were talking about eggs and pasta :skull: I listened to the episode again and it was okay in terms of comprehensive lol.

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:hot_pepper: May 11

Frogs and dogs yesterday.

Zero Escape: 999 for ~25 minutes today.

Tough to get in the minutes right now.

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I think because Japanese was not my first language of choice to learn, I have fallen out of love with it. I am working here and love Japan and want to make my last year 2024/2025 the best and most comfortable for myself so I will continue to study it hoping I can actually improve, although right now I don’t feel like I have been improving.

That being said, I can only stand to watch Old Enough on Netflix and some of the NHK for school videos. Sigh…otherwise its just conversation around me that I can only pick out bits and pieces which is very frustrating.

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:cherry_blossom: :seedling: 5月11日 :seedling: :cherry_blossom: (Home Post Link)

Listened:

  • ゆるキャン△ ー i decided to try without subs today, and immediately got a 10 minute explanation of different types of tents and camping gear, some jokes about the people depicted on paper money, and a segment about borscht. sooooo gave up on that for now :laughing: Maybe this show just stays as a nice relaxing time where I can pick up on some stuff here and there, rather than me needing to turn it into active study
  • 野菜の水分のみで作るキーマカレー。オートミール&豆腐のヘルシーなお弁当を5日分作り置きして冷凍します - more cooking videos, I saw “oatmeal” and “curry” in the title and just had to know. Not convinced this would be very good, but it is a diet channel so… anyways, was totally fascinated and baffled by the image of someone mixing tofu and uncooked rolled oats together as a rice replacement. Even rewatched to make sure she was saying the things I thought she was saying
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I’m in exactly the same situation, tbh. I’ve decided to scale my studying back, and just enjoy my last year here. I’ll keep studying, but not with the intensity I have been. I can understand the instructions that the leader of my taiko group gives me, and what else do I really need :smile:

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Right now NHK’s ラジオ第一 are lightheartedly discussing Anarchism, lol! I mean, lots of laughing and occasionally someone said “how cool!”, and someone else reminiscing learning about the concept from their older brother who went studying overseas and bartending part-time in the UK (introduced through subculture and punk music), or at least that’s from the little that I understood.

Argh, I’m not at the level to fully comprehend, but this makes me stoked to continue my Japanese listening practice a whole lot more!

(Need to use a VPN with Japan’s connection)

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May 12, Fri of Week 7 of Spring Q2 2023 :cherry_blossom:

吾輩は猫である Ch.2 [2/8].

Also checked out that Shiba inu manga. It’s doable if I read (without rewind), just fast. Listening is just tight, maybe doable with 0.75x, but then I won’t learn new vocabularies. To compare with Kokoro and Wagahai, they both have weird Kanji making it difficult for reading, but Kokoro is more of the same level in listening, but not fast.

Time flies fast, didn’t do much these days. Perhaps Sunday.

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:eyes:

I thought this is just another murder mystery, but that sounds… interesting :sweat_smile:

By the way did I ever tell you how much I admire you (and everybody else) for being able to listen to him? In my ears he has such a complacent smugness in his voice, I seriously cannot listen to more than 30 seconds :woozy_face:

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