some anime? SOME ANIME? apologize right now! 
just kidding but it’s one of my favourite anime… though it’s been years since I watched it… 
but checking right now revealed there is a new season scheduled for October… 
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Day 19:
I’ve spent around 8 hours passive listening today (I put ふしぎ駄菓子屋・銭天堂 on repeat and kind of forgot it was on repeat so I just listened to the whole book several times 
). I kept wondering why I was having deja vu 
so I’m not sure if the passing listening should could towards my goal since it was definitely not in my focus.
I did manage to listen to chapters 2 and 3 again (active listening) and managed to do another 20 minutes of the Shinobi app so 66 minutes of active listening
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Sorry I’ve never heard of it, but I also barely watch anime so that’s no surprise
I think Netflix JP has a movie for it too? I almost watched that instead but figured a couple of episodes of a TV show was lower commitment
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Yesterday I broke my streak of meeting the 1.6 hour mark and only watched a single episode of ハナヤマタ S1 | L23.
Today I got back to it and finished ハナヤマタ. Highly recommend for anyone that likes CGDCT anime. It’s a lot of fun and I cannot get the opening theme out of my head.
I also watched a couple more episodes of 日常 S1 | L24 today. Should finish it tomorrow and hopefully get back to Dragon Ball after several days away from that series. Also might start ホリミヤ S1 | L24 soon.
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I ended up skipping listening for most of the weekend. I did manage to keep up with an episode of Wedding Peach on Saturday and Sunday, but that was it.
Today I started, and then binged up to the most recent episode, 先輩はおとこのこ S1 | L20. I actually wasn’t all that sold after the first episode but got totally hooked after the second.
2:06 today, 22/35h total. I’m probably back on track to at least get close to my goal if I don’t burn out again…
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I think the movie comes after… season 5? 6? somewhere later… it doesn’t really matter but there is very loose red thread going through the anime…
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Frieren - 4 episodes - 1.5 hours.
@暁のルナ you were right, it does get good - I started really enjoying it by episode 7.
Shinobi Japanese app - 1 level - 20 minutes.
Total: 1.8 hours
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Day 20:
An hour each of listening to “Japanese with Noriko”, “Japanese with Shun”, and “Nihongo con Teppei” podcasts.
3 hours total.
Did this earlier but thought I may have more to add, I did a 2 and a half hour language exchange group chat face to face (finally found a local group though they only meet every so often) but a lot of that was listening to other learners or chiming in with simple answers in Japanese or complex answers in English.
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I’ve gotten worse about posting daily updates, but I’m still going strong!
Today and yesterday I did a combined total of 4.5 hrs:
News - 30 minutes
令和 人間椅子 (文春文庫 し 73-1) | L28?? - 2 hrs
政治のことよくわからないまま社会人になってしまった人へ - 1:40 hrs
羅生門 | L38 - 20 mins
I was inspired by @cat to start 令和人間椅子 and, oh my…it’s kind of silly but entertaining at the same time. The author is not that great at writing but it has charm.
Wall of text musing about studying Japanese and improving listening incoming:
As I head into the last third of the month, I’ve been thinking about the evolution of my listening skills and where I want to go with them. I’ve spent years working on my listening, including a 500 hour personal challenge I did in 2022 only using audiobooks and podcasts as input. After all that, I can understand most audiobooks easily by now, so simply listening to a new one doesn’t feel like it “does” anything for me. One thing I’ve noticed is that Japanese sounds much different to me than it used to. I can clearly hear the sounds and the way they’re different from English. I can also mostly reliably hear pitch, too. There was probably a faster way to reach this point by doing something like explicit minimal pair or pitch listening exercises, but I’m kind of a quantity over quality gal when it comes to language input. But - at this point the quantity is giving me diminishing returns so I think I need to get focused and think about what I want to listen to or do, since simply just understanding the Japanese I hear is no longer my goal. As a start, I’ve been shadowing some of my listening material trying to mimic the sounds and speak at the same speed, which is pretty challenging (and I can hear my own accent which is cringe 
but at least I know what to target). Not really sure where I’m going with my plans but I’ll keep thinking!
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Wow! You inspire me to listen more but I think I need a more efficient approach. Can you give me some hints and tips to make the most of my listening practice? (Anyone else can chime in on this too btw)
A lot of the stuff I’m listening to, even at beginner level is either too easy so I feel I get nothing from it, or too hard so I don’t understand much except a word or two/ phrase here and there. I struggle to follow audiobooks even when I know the story (I can pick up roughly where I am in it due to what I understand but I’m still not understanding naturally what I hear). I feel my approach is not giving me the gains I feel I should be getting and although I’m seeing some small improvement, I feel it’s not efficient enough yet.
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I almost fell off the wagon yesterday but I count a day as “until I go to bed”, so it’s fine. 
I have been making my way through 優しい死神の飼い方 | L29 and after restarting like 3 times and a bit of help from our resident @cat, I have finally clicked into the story/writing style… I am not entirely sure what my brain had issues with but they are gone now. 
It’s leveled as 29 which should be well within my listening ability, so this was a bit of a blow to my confidence.
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Finally finished listening to ハリー・ポッターと賢者の石 | L29! I started this waaay back in April; I’d previously listened and read at the same time, and also have a good knowledge of the story, so I was somewhat confident it would work out, despite being way above where my listening comprehension currently sits. I think this worked out nicely; I definitely wasn’t catching 100% of things by the end, but it felt like a solid 80%-85%, maybe something like that, and I’m perfectly happy with that with such a high-level book. I have the audiobooks for volumes 2 and 3, and I definitely want to (slowly) make my way through them, as well as perhaps number 4 in the future; these first four books are my favorites in the series, haha.
Still working on デルトラ・クエスト 1 沈黙の森 | L26; I was doing great up until this past Saturday, which I knew ahead of time I wouldn’t be able to do my usual listening. I think after that the short break let my brain catch up and think, wait, this is a lot of work. Why are we doing this? I’m still definitely intending on finishing this book by the end of the challenge (since I don’t want it hanging around in my Reading list), but I might indulge in a short diversion and see if I can finish watching 十角館の殺人 S1 | L31 and catch up on ゴーストハント S1 | L26. The former I have subs for, at least; the latter… we’ll see lol. It’s all about pushing yourself, right? 
Only problem with the TV shows is that I can’t really watch those while I’m at work; far easier to slip some earbuds in my ears and listen to an audiobook… 
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I admire the way you are so thorough and revisit things multiple times to practice with! I certainly never had the patience to do that!
I’ve noticed that everyone has their own methods for getting used to native content, so my own approach may not work for you but I’m happy to share! I did not do anything especially efficient at all - my listening ability now is basically a combo of (pages I’ve read x hours spent listening). By pages I’ve read I mean actual pages of books without audio, since for me personally reading more was the single best thing I did for my listening. I can’t hear and understand a word unless I already know it, and I tend to learn new words better by seeing them visually. So, I started reading many books and at some point after reading maybe 50+ I started to listen to audiobooks. I wasn’t too fussed if I didn’t get 100% - I just tried to follow the story and focus on getting the hours in since I trusted my brain to do the work to catch up (and it did). 
This was all over the course of 5 years or so btw, so not what I’d call efficient! But I’m in this for the long haul anyways, so it’s been a fun experience.
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Cool 
thank you for sharing. Maybe I just need to read more and listen more to get better then which just means putting in more hours.
I’m definitely in this for the long haul, just wondered if maybe I was approaching things wrong, but maybe I just need more patience. Thank you. 
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As they say, all roads lead to Rome! If you’re having fun and feel like you’re making progress, I think that’s the most important thing for sustaining improvement over the course of multiple years.
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I accidentally made my listening at the same level or perhaps better than my reading skills this year. I decided to specifically focus on listening by watching TV shows (that I could stand) from the lowest Natively level upwards, plus I decided to only read books along to audiobooks. I’m at somewhere around 75 hours of reading + listening for the year (not including in progress and dnf) and … gee, a lot of TV. Maybe 150 hours if I had to guess. I’ve made it from struggling to understand anything above level 20 without subs to being fine up to about level 25 as long as there’s not specialized vocabulary. I still have a long way to go, but I’m absolutely stunned at the speed of my progress.
Caveat 1: I did a much less focused, but definitely push to be able to understand Japanese for learners 2ish years ago where I listened to a lot of YUYUの日本語, Miku Real Japanese, あかね的日本語教室, etc when I was driving and getting ready for work. I got completely comfortable listening to Japanese for learners materials and was rarely, if ever looking at subs on videos.
Caveat 2: I also had 20+ years of latent Japanese knowledge that maybe just needed to be unlocked with a lot of listening so as always, ymmv.
Edit: Also, headphones! I highly recommend listening with headphones!
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For this, did you look up anything you were unsure of or did you just cruise through it and eventually it started getting easier?
Also for the listening to TV and audiobooks, did you do intensive reading/ listening checking every thing you didn’t know?
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For the learners focused stuff, I often didn’t need to look things up because a lot of people will either explain harder words or repeat the same idea with different vocabulary. Others will also have difficult vocabulary on the screen if it’s a video, so I never felt the need to do a lot of lookups (and why I think all in Japanese for learners content is a really good bridge to native content).
For TV shows I will look up words when I hear ones that I don’t know (but usually only if it’s come up multiple times or I’m pretty sure I know the word and I’m just checking). I will rarely pause the show that I’m watching (unless I get full on distracted in my phone and realize that I’ve missed something ). For audiobooks + reading I usually read digitally in split screen with the text and the audio and will pause when I don’t know words and can’t follow the story. This is probably my biggest source of new vocabulary since this is usually my highest Natively level content I read/listen to.
Overall, I am a very not intensive learner anymore. I burned out on Japanese multiple times and have learned that that’s not a sustainable path for me. But mostly extensive reading and watching seems to be working fine. Maybe not optimally, but I’m also in it for the long haul now.
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It’s fascinating reading everyone’s approach to improving their listening.
My reading is so much better than my listening. When I’m struggling to understand something that I’m listening to, a quick glance at the text / Japanese subtitles and I can instantly understand it. If I watch something with subtitles, I will realise I’m not taking in any of the sound of the words, I’m just reading. It’s frustrating.
This month’s focused activity has definitely stepped up my listening ability. I think I’m going to need more like this ahead.
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Shinobi Japanese app - 1 level - 1 hour 10 minutes.
Frieren - 2 and a bit episodes - 1 hour.
Total: 2 hours 10 minute
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