Day 19:
Watched the last 4 episodes of ダンジョン飯 (1h 38m), kinda sad it’s only 24 episodes but there is supposed to be a second season. Now I need to decide if I need to rewatch it in English or just wait til my Japanese is better to rewatch and understand more of it.
Also watched 思い出のマーニー (1h 33m), then re-started Terraced House boy & girls in the city and watched 11 episodes (split across the day - 5h 22m)
Total for today: 8h 33m
I’m so behind, and literally all my hours have come from anime 
, except that I finally got in some audiobook with ソードアート・オンライン1 アインクラッド | L34 . Level-wise it’s too high for me (vocab), but since I already know the content really well, I’ve decided to just let it roll, and just not do any lookups.
Honestly lookups have been my biggest barrier to doing more audiobooks, b/c all the audiobooks I’m interested in are higher than my comfort level, while also being things I want to fully understand. So I just end up procrastinating it.
Otherwise I’ve really been more of a reading than listening mode this month. But I am gonna start putting some effort in, to at least meet my 30 hrs!
Hit 88 hours. きんいろモザイク S1 | L18 continues to be cute. からかい上手の高木さん S1 | L21 is the live-action version and its been fun so far too. 犬王 | L30 was painful - mostly due to songs and some scenes were borderline completely incomprehensible. The chanting scenes and with Inu-oh before the Shogun However, it was a decent film - just no Japanese subs to fall back on meant it was unpleasant at my current level. Though I wasn’t thrilled with the plot.
What I coincidence, I was just considering adding this to my rewatch-in-Japanese list! I remember being able to catch some lines and parts of the songs when I watched it English subbed in the theatre, but it did seem pretty difficult.
It DOES have subtitles files available on jimakucc / kitsunekko, though, if you’re able to use those.
Thanks, but it is just Netflix for me. Anyways not planning on a rewatch right now. The rating of 30 is set based on me, but it did feel like Akira-level difficulty because of the dialogue and the subject matter. Was beyond my comfort level for sure. With subs it would have been fine for me though.
Day 20:
Watched all 13 episodes of キノの旅 (5h 25m). Second time watching it but I found it much easier this time to just listen and not have to read the English subtitles to understand everything. I was mostly not watching the screen unless it was the start of the episode because of the title written in Japanese, or the occasional quiet parts since I was checking what was happening in those parts. I understood a lot more this time just by listening and it was only the longer sentences I had an issue understanding the words but know the gist of what’s going on since I already know the rough story (originally watched in March/ April 2023).
Also watched Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike (1h 50m)
Total for today: 7h 15m
a bit of an overdue update on my progress as i haven’t been keeping up with my listening this past week:
I did manage to watch a vlog from 규진. it was fast, and i did pause to read the subtitles at times, so it wasn’t 100% listening. still, i understood some of it!
another video i watched, not because i was interested in it but because i wanted to bump up the mileage was from the 몰입한국어 Immersion in Korean channel. it was marked as intermediate, but i found it to be very slow and not very interesting.
and finally i watched a bit of a 태웅쌤 video, the level is still a good match for me, and the game is still entertaining, so no complaints there.
total for the week: 1h13. not good, but still better than i expected.
onwards!
Day 21:
Watched Okko’s inn (1h 34m) found it mostly comprehensible (though there were a few times JP subs would have been helpful).
Also watched another episode of Terraced House: boys & girls in the City (31m). I’ve noticed that as the episodes go on, the Vocabulary does get more difficult for me and I understand less.
Watched Wolf children (1h 57m). Already knew the story from reading the English Manga several years ago.
Then The Deer King (1h 54m) again with English subs as none of my DVDs/ Blurays have JP subs. Caught most of the normal stuff and some of the stuff about the plot but missed parts due to not knowing the Vocab. I will re-watch after reading the books, some time in the future.
Lastly, I watched 君の名は (1h 46m). Seen it before but understood a lot more this time, glad to see I kind of understood the plot when I first watched it as I’ve only ever seen it in Japanese and never used the subtitles.
Total for today: 7h 42m
No major update for me, haven’t been able to do much listening. Though I should be able to soon. Continuing to do One Piece East Blue and should be finishing up that this weekend, but not sure.
Day 22:
Managed to listen to an hour and a half of Japanese with Shun this morning at 1.5 speed (not sure how many episodes though).
I had my lesson today where I was asking more questions so about 25 minutes of listening to my tutor.
Then this evening I spent around 3 hours in total listening to people at the Japanese meet up. I did only a little speaking because most of it was higher than my ability to speak but I did try a little (about 25 minutes total), then smaller groups were speaking amongst themselves at the table at times, so I tried listening to multiple conversations (I don’t get a lot of practice with that but it seemed easier than I thought it would be, though I did miss a bit of each while I focused on a different conversation).
Total for today 4h 55m
Watched 3 more episodes of Cardcaptors with Japanese subs over the past couple days. I’m invested enough to continue with it now, and since I discovered seeking by subtitle in PotPlayer it’s been very easy to just sit down and watch without worrying about missing anything or getting frustrated.
As far as listening goes, I’m definitely leaning too hard on the subtitles; I’m finding the show extremely easy to understand, but if I wasn’t using them I’d probably be completely lost. I’m not really fussed about it at this point, though, because my goal for this month was to just find a form of listening I can stand engaging with without feeling stupid and quitting. Having something that FEELS easy keeps me motivated, which will help my listening skill start to catch up eventually.
Day 23:
An hour and 10 minutes of listening to an N4 level video on culture and etiquette in Japan.
Since I’m back at work and finish late, I don’t think I’ll get any more listening in today
Total for today: 1h 10m
Watch something you already went through before without subs. Once you hit a certain point, subtitles just become reading practice and like it or not, you’ll default to them much like English subtitles, making actual listening practice seemingly meaningless.
Now anime at first is great because of the visual context and generally clear lines - so I’d do them before hitting the audiobooks (non-stop and no visual content). My listening is N4ish it seems, and I can read N2 material comfortably. The bigger the gap in listening and reading the worse you feel because even trivial conversations are unintelligible. That’s why I am hoping a few hundred hours of listening will fix it too. After over 100 hours done - yes it is much easier… but I know I have a long way to go to correcting that audio deficit.
Thanks for the advice! I’ll keep it in mind for later. I’m not concerned about over-relying on subs or doing what would be most efficient for levelling up my listening at this point, though. I’ve been studying since 2017 and have done practically 0 listening practice in that entire time, so my goal right now isn’t really to get any better at it, it’s to just start regularly listening to things, period (and to not hate the experience).
I’m also the type of learner that has a ridiculously low tolerance for things I don’t understand. If I’m catching less than like 95% of what I’m engaging with, chances are exponentially higher that I won’t enjoy myself and I’ll feel like I’m wasting my time and stop. Stopping is the only way to fail at learning, and it’s why I’ve failed at listening for so long, so I’m okay taking a conservative approach and prioritizing what feels easy and fun in order to build confidence and stay motivated to continue. I’m not in a rush, so I’m not bothered that doing it this way makes my progress super slow. 塵も積もれば山となる (:
Day 24:
2 hours of listening to Japanese with Shun at 1.25 speed. I’ll only get another few hours across the next few days but hopefully catch up again from Sunday as I was liking the longer listening sessions mor.
Total for today: 2h
I watched some Youtube videos today from Rinajyo, a user suggested in the Japanese dialects thread. The first one was a longer “lesson” about the Hakata dialect, and then when I checked her channel I saw she reviews restaurants around Fukuoka, so I also watched a couple more short videos about motsunabe places. It made me so hungry for nabe, I miss the food in Fukuoka so much 
She speaks in a dialect, as mentioned, but it looks like most of her videos have subtitles and she’s a relatively clear speaker, so it wasn’t much of a barrier. I understood most of what I watched, but I think I was too distracted by the beautiful images of delicious hotpots to really take in what was being said during the motsunabe videos 
Food and cooking shows might not be good listening practice for me.
Day 25:
Managed 2 and a half hours of listening to Japanese with Shun.
Starting to find the short podcasts easier to understand and guess the word meanings, even on the faster speed. Also finding it easier to focus on these and remember what was discussed in the episodes without missing much.
Total for today: 2h 30m
As of last night, I hit my 15h Japanese goal! And there’s still a few days left, so I can go over it! Maybe I’ll hit 20h this month!
…Pardon? My other goal? Um, well…
91 hours now. Watching Ippo still. Started リトルウィッチアカデミア S1 | L26 but it is rather different vocab than I am used to - so it feels a bit rough to me right now. Though I think it is about as difficult as One Piece.
It’s already Friday!
Where did this week go? It feels like I blinked and then the week blew past! Last week I had visitors staying at my place and it kind of messed up my routine and it was a little tough getting back into it. I did still manage to get some good listening time in, though. Shadowing as well, but it wasn’t as focused as it’s been in past weeks. This post is a dump of what I’ve been up to.
Total: 2 hours listening, 40 minutes shadowing
I finished たゆたえども沈まず | L30?? finally. 
The end got a little bit too melodramatic and toxic for me which was to be expected since Vincent van Gogh was a troubled man, but not sure. This is maybe the 3rd 原田マハ book I’ve read where I love the first 30% and then it slowly goes downhill from there. 
It’s done though, and will stop blocking my progress!
I started ビジネスの未来――エコノミーにヒューマニティを取り戻す | L42?? and so far it’s quite interesting! I adore the author and would have way more to write about this, but I think I’ll save it for the “What are you reading thread”. I’ve been using it to shadow and phew, it feels like I’ve upped the ante on difficulty again. The book I just finished had so much art vocabulary that I managed to adjust to, and now this one is full of economic and philosophical terms that are tripping me up here and there…but I can’t stress enough how great of a good mental workout it is and that I wish I had dabbled in shadowing earlier. A lot of the words or phrases are higher level stuff that I’ve never said out loud or heard very often in Japanese before, but belong to a higher register than I’m able to speak spontaneously and fluently. I don’t really need to be able to have conversations like that often, but having the confidence never hurts! I hope some of those structures will get pushed further into my active memory.
Total: 3:20 hours listening, 1:20 shadowing (!)
I spent a lot of time listening to Korean this week, all with the Didi의한국문화 Podcast. 
It’s my first time using any sort of comprehensible input for Korean, so having something I am able to understand really well at my level feels really new and kind of addicting? It’s also very comfortable to shadow with due to the speed and the pitch of voice being somewhat close to mine.
Speaking Korean feels very chesty so far (lots of air from the top of the lungs in the chest region with some power but not as much as English) and it gives my chest voice a good workout, so it’s been great for shadowing in the morning. I just dive in and go and get a nice vocal warmup to start my day. Conversely, I feel like Japanese is very head voice and my head voice is usually weak in the morning, so it takes longer for me to get into the shadowing groove if I do it in the A.M. even though I can actually speak Japanese fluently but not Korean. 
Kinda weird. Just gonna blame it on my vocal cords and chest vs. head voice.
Very anecdotally, I do notice that my voice has a nice and clear but slightly deeper timbre and more chesty resonance on the days I start with Korean shadowing which is kind of a cool bonus for me since I have a quieter/softer speaking voice usually. Please subscribe for more weird rambling about voices, talking, and air. 
One thing I am really struggling with though is pronouncing Korean words imported directly from English, like 클럽. A lot of words like that are also the same in Japanese, so my brain just defaults to the Japanese pronunciation and I just CANNOT get the Korean versions down instead. 
Help.
