April has been the month of bad health for me. We finally found a cause for the big thing at the beginning of the month, only for me to get a massive cold (Flu?) days after. Oh well.
Motivation is slowly returning. Continued to watch more of that BotW playthrough, which I think she’s largely finished with now? I’m not that far. As well as a few videos from スーツ旅行/Suits Travel, a Japan travel channel I like a lot.
Not much in the way of podcasts. A lot of Persona 4 Golden while sick, but I’m not counting that. Not quite at my goal yet, but I should hit it tonight or tomorrow.
Where is April and why do we already have the 23rd / 24th of it?
I was on a business trip the second week of April and thought I would have a lot of free time that I could use for listening, but I was literally too busy and totally forgot about this challenge. However I’m not giving up. Let’s see how much time I am able to dedicate these last days of the month!
This morning I updated my calendar and listening log. So until now I have got 1h15m. I also logged the Satori Yuyu podcast episodes but for those it was kind of difficult to add the time. I did not find it on the app and just estimated with 5 minutes each. Need to keep track on time next time I’m listening to an episode.
Today I also thought about maybe adding listening to songs, because I sometimes feel myself paying more attention to what is actually sang instead of the musical emotion.
Well, I was hoping I could do a little bit of listening while traveling, but that did not work at all. It’s not too bad, though; I’ll just aim to hit my minimum 30 hour goal this month (only about 8 hours left, so very doable) and not worry about the stretch goals.
Yesterday I had a lot of leisure time and binge-watched an old anime series, which story I love: Skip Beat! Apart from some acting industry specific vocabulary I could follow along very well +proud+
I’m also reading the manga (translated). The anime adaption is great & fun to watch. But it’s quite old, which we will notice with the video quality and the feeling. Though I can totally recommend watching it, if you enjoy the story
Awww. That’s so nice to say Let me know your thoughts about it! And if you don’t know the story, the first two/three episodes may seem a bit like “wtf!?” Please survive those
Continuing on the series of trying to do more daily life things in Japanese, I drove for the first time today with a Japanese GPS navigation system totally blind because the car I drove does not have a screen and I had nowhere to fix my phone onto, so it was pure listening. TIL the word ロータリー
The first time driving in Japanese happened to me, I was in a rental car (also no screen), halfway across the country (work trip), and totally not expecting it… that was an adventure I learned the word およそ
Somebody should make an anki deck or vocab list for gps nav
9h40 of Nihongo con Teppei Original podcast (now at episode #134)
2h43 of Antihero — That may sound like I’ve watched multiple episodes but in reality, I just rewatched the final episode again and again because I didn’t want the series to end.
30mins of Japanese Number Listening Practice from 1 to 10’000— Why is this so hard? For some reason I keep misunderstanding ろっぴゃく as 400 instead of 600.
Total for this week: 12h53 (more than half of my initial goal in one week lol)
Finished off the last day with 甘城ブリリアントパーク - Lv 30. I really like it. I’m also reading the novels alongside it, and its fun to compare. They’re relatively easy reads. It’s sad it will probably never finish, though completely understandable.
I finished up the month with 107h 37m of listening, beating my goal, and 178h 59m of Japanese total. If anyone is curious, it broke down to:
Finished with 28 hours! I’m going to…try to keep up with listening on my commutes but who knows lolol. Probably won’t join the next listening challenge until I’m ready to go a little harder
1h20 of Nihongo con Teppei original (now at episode #142)
30mins of Japanese Number Listening Practice from 1 to 10’00
1h44 of 法曹三者-related YouTube videos
YT videos
Lawyers, public prosecutors and judges take turn explaining what they like about their jobs, during 1 hour:
The topic of the 八咫鏡 worn as a badge by judges was brought up in Antihero, so I looked it up and found this video by a so-called “jinja somelier” ( ), going in-depth about the history of the three divine symbols of the Japanese imperial throne. Needless to say, I was totally lost. Crazy high level language right there.
More videos about the symbolism of the badges worn by Japanese law professionals.
Total achieved for the month of April: 45h35.
I nearly doubled my goal of 24h of Nipponese. However, I am still below my stretch goal of 72h but that was expected.
In the end, I haven’t opened a Twitch tab, let alone watch and participate in a Japanese live stream but I did grab bonus points with 37 mins of Hakata dialect from みことね.
I excluded anime from the challenge but for the sake of interest, I also counted how many hours I spent watching unsubbed anime during April and my calculations, based on tracker data, sum up to 6h37.
Finished out my month with 45.6 hours (which beat my soft goal of 40 hours this month )
My final breakdown:
Type
Time(h)
Podcast
6.2
TV
16.5
YouTube
0.4
Audiobook
22.6
I think I watched like 2 YouTube videos total
I’ve been finding audiobooks in the L24-L26 range pretty accessible, and have been listening to them when I’m doing chores around the house. The hours add up really quickly that way!
I think I’ll be joining again next month for the same soft goal of 40 hours of listening, so I’ll catch you all in the May listening thread.
Apart from some acting industry specific vocabulary I could follow along very well +proud+
Let me know your thoughts about it! And if you don’t know the story, the first two/three episodes may seem a bit like “wtf!?” 
Please survive those 
), going in-depth about the history of the three divine symbols of the Japanese imperial throne. Needless to say, I was totally lost. Crazy high level language right there.
)