audiobook.jp has a promotion until 11/17 where you get 50 “coins” each day you listen to at least 15 minutes of qualifying books. I’ve already been listening at least 15 minutes a day for that, so I figured I’d track my progress here too.
Currently over halfway through 成瀬は天下を取りにいく | L29, which has been a nice chill audiobook read for multitasking.
I haven’t been really tracking much (tracking listening hours is more tedious to me than book pages and whatnot. I think because I like to just casually consume bits of pieces of things to see if they interest me) but today I had a YouTube Rabbit Hole Day and watched an hour (and counting) of videos on witch hunting (魔女狩り).
I should be studying for the JLPT but alas, I am not in the mood. Hope a listening section on witch hunting comes up! I’m super prepared now
Also two videos so far have pointed out that the famous witch hunting text (which one video said was written by a guy who really hated women) became so influential and resulted in so many witch hunts because it coincided with Gutenberg making his printing press. I checked the dates and there was like 30 years between the two, but since these videos are on the scale of centuries, close enough I suppose.
I’m joining in again this month!
I’ve gone with 20h.
I’ve also started a new youtube account just for Japanese. Essentially leaning into the youtube algorithm abyss , but I feel like on my normal account’s youtube feed, I get more ‘Here’s how I passed JLPT in {insert sensationalist time period here}’, than actual Japanese content.
My best youtube tip is to mark as ‘don’t recommend channel’ anything where you see the two little anime girl heads in the preview. There is a 95% chance that will be annoying AI voices. I can’t find one to give an example right now because I’ve blocked them pretty aggressively, but you’ll recognize them after the first time you see them.
Ah, the Touhou yukkuri of Reimu and Marissa are basically blob heads of the characters and are popular icons for explaining things in a crude text-to-speech fashion. Sometimes they have incredibly good information, but they do grate on the ears and they really encompass a unique niche - I recall a few videos which went into otaku-levels of dedication on things like Final Fantasy and Minecraft. When I see them as an ‘explain’ type channel I know I am in for a lecture.
Listening:
釣り鯛焼き - 24:24
カリスマボンボン - 27:17
All 10 30 day mastery chapter 3s - 10:01
Shadowing:
YouTube N5/N4 video - 24:02
Managed a 20 odd minute shadowing video. Understood almost all of it but the longer sentences were a bit of a struggle and I did pause it a few times to catch up before the next part played. I’ll count the video as 1 session towards my total instead of having both time and sections.
Thoughts:
I’ve also realised that I have all the はじめての日本語能力試験 N5-N1 単語 series in audiobook and they have separate audio sections for just the sentences using the vocabulary which may also be good for shadowing (there is a slight pause between each sentence that should allow me to catch up). I’m trying to think of ways to keep me shadowing because I know it’s only 3 days but so far I’m kinda bored, and can’t be bothered to take the extra steps to set up the CD player or the headphones (since I don’t actually like wearing them).
Already want to go back to what I was doing before with the listening but I feel the shadowing is essential for my study and I should be doing it more regularly. I think my focus is wandering too much atm because of the change from last month to this month, not quite sure how to fix that atm or if it will get better or worse going forwards, might need to take a break if it gets worse and then try again with a fresh outlook afterwards
I was already 12 episodes into Cardcaptors at the start of the month, and watched 2 more this weekend, leaving 32 more episodes for me to fit into a routine after I start work again tomorrow. That averages to more than 1/day (8/wk), and since 2 consecutive episodes in a row is my brain-soup limit, I’m not sure this will be as easily accomplished as I originally thought Not without some dedication out of the gate, anyway.
I also just considered today that I’m not sure how badly, or if at all, working full-time again will impact my stamina for watching things when I get home… we’ll see if I’m up to daily Cardcaptors after work every day
I always find when there is annoying friction like this that creates a hurdle to doing something that is already new for me or uncomfortable, it’s more likely that I abandon it. Good luck finding something that works for you, or a new focus for this month.
in my quest to diversify the content i listen to this month (though 태웅쌤 will always have my eternal love & devotion), i found another youtube channel that does comprehensible vlogs, called Korean Patch - 한국어 패치.
i have only watched 2 videos, they were really easy to understand and very chill. once i’ve watched a bit more i’ll probably add it to the korean youtube channel recommendations thread.
anywho: 24 minutes for the beginning of the month.
Thanks. I tend to find that as well.
I’m currently now following a YouTube video playlist for Japanese Shadowing but thinking I may just switch to the sentence patterns on my app instead since those are very accessible even if a little too difficult at times. On a plus note, they do span from N5 to N1, there’s hours worth of content (that was free) and it practices grammar patterns from the N Level it’s for so hopefully should be a decent source
First day of the back-to-work routine! And trying to find something to listen to on the walk to the office.
I found this playlist of dialogues from NHK’s “Easy Japanese” lessons; I haven’t done the lessons so I didn’t have any context for them, but they’re aimed at very early beginners so all of the language was quite easy and I didn’t have a lot of trouble following. But it’s only around 40 ~30second long dialogues, so even if I go through it all several times for practice, it’s only good for a couple days of walks before I have to find something else.
I also share the hurdle of it being hard to motivate myself to set something up if I run into any inconveniences… I was on track to be early for work this morning, but then I spent 20 minutes battling my headphones and my phone and NewPipe to make sure I was listening to something on my walk, and was nearly late |: The point of me making this a goal was to find some kind of content that I can just pick up and turn on without fighting, so I have no reason not to be listening when I leave the house – obviously if I wasn’t expecting it to be a challenge I wouldn’t have made it part of my listening challenge, but at the same time, getting this frustrated with it on Routine Day 1 is really discouraging ):
I did have the energy left after work to watch another episode of Cardcaptors, though! Barely
For listening today I did one of the official N1 recordings to see how I would score. Not bad! 83%, or 25/30 questions. 4 of the 5 questions I missed were in the first section (each section is a type/style of question) so I have a very clear idea of what I need to work on
I also watched some brain-off voiced manga on youtube
I’ve mentioned here before I think, but office related speech just doesn’t click as well for me. I guess I could try to find office related dramas or content on youtube, but realistically I’m going to just review the questions I missed and then just keep doing practice questions Not exciting, but simple and effective
I’ve been able to keep up at least 1 episode of Cardcaptors a day after work this week, and today I managed 2 It does feel like a bit of a chore to make myself focus on listening when my brain’s already tired from working all day, so I’m still not sure I’ll succeed in watching every day, but I’m pleased so far.
I’ve been continuing to look up dialogue skits to listen to on the way to work and used this Genki playlist the past couple days. The content ramps up to be more challenging than the NHK ones (in a good way), but when the guy is intentionally slowing down his speech to be more beginner friendly, I find he has a weird cadence that’s actually harder to understand, so I’m kind of glad to have exhausted the playlist.
Simple dialogues work well for me because I can get them as long as I focus, but searching for new dialogue playlists every couple days is going to be annoying /: I’m also using NewPipe to listen to Youtube on my phone, and the UX (for navigating playlists in particular) is pretty poor, which is another strike towards it being too much hassle to bother with when I’m getting ready to go to work. Maybe on the weekend I’ll just look up a bunch of stuff and download it in advance to avoid the morning content search and app fight, but that also feels like too much work to put into simply having a stream of sentences to listen to while I’m walking…
At 14.7/30 hrs so far - so very on track this month (finally)! 3 of those hours are from an audiobook, and the rest from anime and games (dialogue scenes). One thing that’s new for me is that I’ve started shadowing - both as I’m viewing/playing, and as a separate exercise. Shadowing while viewing/playing is mostly just an attempt to get the words out fast enough. As a separate exercise, I manage to eventually get the words out fast enough, and work on my intonation and vocal tone.
So far I’ve just done part of 1 anime episode - just the the lines I thought were useful or interesting. So after an hour of shadowing, I’m at the 7:06 mark But I definitely felt like I really accomplished something during that hour. It’s fun switching btwn different characters, and speaking along to my favorite characters! Hopefully I’ll keep at it some more.
and watched an hour (and counting) of videos on witch hunting (魔女狩り).
, but I feel like on my normal account’s youtube feed, I get more ‘Here’s how I passed JLPT in {insert sensationalist time period here}’, than actual Japanese content.
It does feel like a bit of a chore to make myself focus on listening when my brain’s already tired from working all day, so I’m still not sure I’ll succeed in watching every day, but I’m pleased so far.