Just hit my 30 hrs!! 6.25 of those hours are from a mix of audiobooks, game playthroughs, YouTube vids, etc. The rest are from anime (12 different shows). Upping challenge hours to 50 at this point. Between the SAO audiobook and 8 seasonal anime per week, I should hit 45 easily, and I plan to do 2 SAO audiobooks by the end of the month. So very likely I’ll hit my 50 hrs this time around. That feels nice, after I didn’t quite make it the last 2 months.
Anyway - onward & upward!
I pushed through another ~30min of 白砂 this morning before work and I’m reaching the point of ‘I have how many hours left?’. There are some interesting hooks in the case, but the writing isn’t the most compelling and I have to keep pushing myself to focus and not drift off while listening. I’m debating whether it’s worth pushing through (8.5 hours, assuming 30min/day would be ~17 days) or if I should drop it for something else. I’ll probably give it another few listens before deciding one way or the other
I made myself listen to a couple of podcast episodes, just so I wouldn’t be so embarrassed at the end of the challenge.
Sooooo, total for today: 12 minutes.
I’ve intended to post here weekly but that’s more of a challenge than the actual challenge at the moment lol. This is why I need challenges to get anything done in the first place.
I’m currently at 5.5 hours with Korean. So I’m on track to hit my goal of 10. I did also track my Japanese hours out of curiosity and I’m at 10.5 there.
This month I’ve watched more idol content and listened to more podcasts. The podcasts I’m using are all appropriate for my listening level. There’s more range in idol content I watch. However, I’ve been allowing myself to lean on the native subtitles more this time. I’ve also moved from NCT to ENHYPEN videos. They have Korean and English soft subs for all of EN O Clock. So far, it’s been serving me well.
I’m now about 1/3 of the way through 白砂 and I’ll probably just stick it out and finish it? It’s still not really grabbing me, but it’s easy enough to listen to for ~30 minutes each morning and the cast is small enough that I’m not struggling to keep people straight in my head (a major problem for me and audiobooks in any language).
Oof, and I repeat, OOF. We’re nearly halfway through the month and I’m at 6.5 hours in Japanese and 3h 15m-ish in German. I don’t know what I was thinking when I made 20h in Japanese my goal. I was listening to the Genki CDs while driving to and from work, which gave me 15m-30m of listening practice each day. While it was good practice, I got tired of them and now that one of the local radio stations has started to play Christmas music, I’m listening to that now. 
17/34 episodes
Halfway there on Goal #1! Feels very doable to reach it now, even if I miss a day here or there. I’m not sure if it’ll stay that way after the challenge is over and I don’t have that goal pushing me, but so far I’m really happy with how well I’ve been able to work watching an episode or two into my routine every evening.
Goal #2 of finding something to listen to on walks is still in the feeling-out stage, and I’m not really confident I’ll hit on something I can form a routine out of long-term. This week I started listening to a playthrough of Hotel Dusk (ウィッシュルーム) on the way to work instead of material aimed at learners. I’m getting more of it than I thought I would, but it’s still not much, so I’m not sure how much it’s doing for my listening… I have the advantage of having dumped the script and studied vocab lists from it in the past, and it was just luck that I found videos of someone with a clear voice who reads out all the dialogue lines, so even though I’m enjoy listening to a beloved adventure game, this genre of content isn’t going to be a reliable source of approachable listening after I exhaust this one game and this one player.
About 40% done with 白砂 and I’m started to get relationships confused 
the dead woman had a bit of a complicated family situation
Week 2!
5 videos of Comprehensible Japanese finished this week: Complete Beginner Playlist: Time Difference → Hydrangea (10:19 + 5:44 + 14:26 + 9:46 + 5:32 = 45 min + 47 seconds) for now a total of 75 minutes and 6 seconds. No comment really except that I need to find better times to get in listening practice.
At 34 hours for November - most of it from One Piece, Ippo and Shaman King. Not to much to say, but I am in a slump right now for sure.
So I’ve been pretty bad at updating this, but here’s my listening so far this month:
 Date |
 Name |
 Type |
 Amount |
 Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-11-16 |  ガヴリールドロップアウト |
 Anime |
 2 Episodes |
 0h50m |
| 2024-11-15 |  二ノ国 |
 RPG |
0 Quests |
1h00m |
| 2024-11-14 |  のんのんびよりS1 |
Anime :durtle: (BAC) |
2 Episodes |
0h50m |
| 2024-11-13 |  4989 American Life |
 Podcast:durtle: (PC) |
1 Episodes |
0h32m |
| 2024-11-12 | 二ノ国 |
RPG |
5 Quests |
2h10m |
| 2024-11-11 |  ガールズ&パンツァー 劇場版 |
 Anime Film |
 0.5 Movies |
1h00m |
| 2024-11-10 | ガールズ&パンツァー 劇場版 |
Anime Film |
0.5 Movies |
1h00m |
| 2024-11-09 | 二ノ国 |
RPG |
3 Quests |
1h50m |
| 2024-11-08 | のんのんびよりS1 |
Anime :durtle: (BAC) |
2 Episodes |
0h50m |
| 2024-11-07 | のんのんびよりS1 |
Anime :durtle: (BAC) |
2 Episodes |
0h50m |
| 2024-11-06 | 二ノ国 |
RPG |
5 Quests |
2h30m |
| 2024-11-05 | ガールズ&パンツァー S1 |
Anime |
1 Episodes |
0h25m |
| 2024-11-04 | ガールズ&パンツァー S1 |
Anime |
1 Episodes |
0h25m |
| 2024-11-03 | ガールズ&パンツァー S1 |
Anime |
3 Episodes |
1h15m |
| 2024-11-02 | ガールズ&パンツァー S1 |
Anime |
2 Episodes |
0h50m |
| 2024-11-01 | ガヴリールドロップアウト |
Anime |
4 Episodes |
1h40m |
In total, that’s about 18 hours of listening, out of my target of 30 hours, so pretty on track so far.
I’m nearing the halfway point of 白砂 and debating dropping it again 
I’m just not that into this story. I also decided to use an Audible credit on the Japanese version of Anne of Green Gables and am somewhat tempted to just listen to that because I know the story so well I won’t have to focus very hard to keep up with names and places.
I gave 白砂 another 20 minutes and someone stole this woman’s husband’s cremated remains so I’m back to being mildly interested.
I also started 赤毛のアン and it feels a lot like listening to stories from Aozora Not surprising given how old it is. I’m keeping up with the dialogue just fine, but the descriptions of the landscapes sometimes have words that escape me. Despite being a very familiar story I wouldn’t recommend this as a beginner audiobook.
Also Matthew using わし is just too cute
I’m now 55% into 白砂, yet again considering dropping it, now because I’m realizing that my ‘meh’ attitude towards the book has me drifting in attention a lot and I realized I really don’t know why we care so much about why this lady was married to a dude and people were kind of against it? Like wasn’t this years ago? I’m sure there is mildly good drama here and I might appreciate this more as a written book than an audiobook with one male voice actor trying hard (but not quite able to) make multiple female voices. Why does the 20 something daughter sound the same as the (I think??) elderly lady?
Anyways, I’m also 16% in 赤毛のアン | L33 and it remains a chill listen. This one I suspect is better as an audiobook than reading because to @Belerith 's point, there are a lot of flower names here. But, since I’m listening to the audiobook, I don’t need to look up any kanji or even think about it. I just heard a weird name, consider context, think 
and move on I’m currently right about the section where Anne has to work up her courage to apologize to the nosy and rude neighbor lady 
Poor Anne, always getting into trouble.
23/34 episodes
Today I finished what Natively calls Season 1 of Cardcaptors, but when I set the goal I thought the first season = Clow Card arc, so I still have 11 episodes to go to reach my goal. Totally doable to complete by the end of the month, though, so I may make it a stretch goal to watch the movie(s?) too, or get started with the Sakura Card arc. (I don’t actually know what the watching order is supposed to be after the first part )
On my walks to work this week I’m trying “audiobooks” of Japanese folk tales (that’s technically what they are, but it feels like a stretch to call a 7-minute long story an audiobook lol) that I’m borrowing from the Japan Foundation Digital Library. Borrowing and listening with Libby feels like much less hassle than fighting Youtube/NewPipe, so it has that going for it, but I have to apply a different strategy when listening to narrative content I have no familiarity with, and I’m not sure yet whether I’m enjoying it or what it’s doing for me.
Yesterday and today I listened to くらげはなんでほねfがない (Why Do Jellyfish Have No Bones), picked because it sounded silly and simple, but on my first walk to work (which was 2 repetitions of the story) I got next to none of it besides that monkey livers were a crucial element. So over the next couple walks I listened to it several more times at 80% speed; I was able to get more than half of it the first time I slowed it down, and then after a couple more times I was able to get most of it. Then I listened at regular speed one last time, and was able to catch what was said and understand pretty comfortably. Doing it this way made the first walk listening really miserable and I felt really stupid catching all of 5% of a children’s story, but subsequent walks were increasingly rewarding as my comprehension improved every time… I don’t know if that means my listening skill was actually being honed, though, or if I was just brute-forcing the story into my brain and relying on memory to catch parts on each repetition. I’ll start a new folk tale tomorrow, but I’m dreading the painful first-listen already 
Just my 2c, but at this stage in your listening I think it would be worthwhile to look up the gist of the story beforehand if possible. It will prime your brain for what to expect and then you can relax a bit more into ‘ok I got that word, I got that sentence’ instead of the overarching stress of ‘ok I need to keep track of literally everything because I have nothing to rest on’.
Similar idea as to why I find listening to the Japanese translation of Anne of Green Gables relaxing compared to a similarly leveled book I’ve never read, actually
Thanks for the advice! I actually didn’t realize the synopsis of the audiobook on Libby summarized the whole fable before I returned the jellyfish one 
Really would have helped if I read it first.
The second one I just finished with, ねずみのすもう (Mouse Sumo), went much easier, I think because I’m more used to the narrator’s voice now, but also I actually read the summary this time First listen at full speed wasn’t totally painful, I got at least half of it, and then subsequent listens slowed down quickly got me understanding as much as I was going to get without a text to follow along (there was one part I just couldn’t catch at all, but thanks to the summary I at least know the gist of what I missed).
It’s really crazy how much of a difference it makes being able to expect the story beats beforehand… or rather how crippling it is not knowing lol.
–
Off-topic, how are you finding the translation of Anne of Green Gables? I’ve actually never read it in English to be able to compare, but I picked up a Japanese copy because I was running into a pattern of telling Japanese people where I’m from, and they react with “Anne?! Do you know Anne?!”, so I feel like I have to experience the Japanese version
I think it probably would be a bit tedious to read in Japanese actually, if you don’t already know the story. A lot of text is devoted to detailing how the landscapes look, what sort of clothes Anne wears and what sorts she wishes she wore, Christian moral storytelling, etc. In English it’s charming and lovely, especially if you read it as a child and it’s nostalgic, but as an adult, through a second language…? I’m not so sure
Hello, how’s it going everyone? I am definitely not going to make my goal. I’m at 11 hours in Japanese right now and next week is the last week of November, and between work and Thanksgiving and how my month has went, there’s no way.
Well, I guess it’s par for the course overall for this year: I had some rather lofty goals for this year (in my languages and other things) but life happened and… I don’t know.
Anyway, I salute everyone who will either reach their listening goal for this month or have already surpassed them and set new ones.
Haha, I’m in the process of drafting my goals for next year and realizing I need to be a bit more realistic one of the things I’m going to do actually is only track my audiobook listening hours for Japanese and leave the rest untracked. Knowing I have to remember to log or time my YouTube and TV watching actually makes me less inclined to do it at all which is counterproductive
