My Japanese teacher in high school specifically taught us about where to place our tongue in our mouths to make the Japanese ‘r’ (らりるれろ) and I vaguely remember some diversion into nasally が 
It’s been too long to recall if there was anything else, but I agree that in general there isn’t a lot of focus put on pronunciation and it’s just 'Japanese pronunciation is the easy bit! 
’
3 Likes
Finished 魔女の宅急便 - 0.6 hours
Finished 少女終末旅行 S1 | L24 - 1.4 hours
京都寺町三条のホームズ | L29 Not much progress - 60% - 0.25 hours
Today’s total: 2.25 hours
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day 4
i was looking for a fun kids show to help my vocabulary out, and i rediscovered 꼬마버스 타요!!! i watched a lot of kids shows even as a teenager because of my younger brother, and this was one of my favorites to see on and secretely watch lol. i watched the first 4 episodes for a total of 40 minutes or so. i don’t think i’ll do much more listening tonight because i’m in a reading mood, but if i do i’ll add it to tomorrow’s total. 
today : 40 minutes / 0.67 hours
total : 5.67/30 hours
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Day 4:
Managed to listen to Japanese with Shun episodes 32-38 this morning before work, then episodes 39-42 this evening after getting home. Almost midnight here so will read for a bit and pick up more listening tomorrow.
Total for today: 1 hour and 44 minutes
5 Likes
Update for today and yesterday. I listened to 45 mins of audiobook and watched 5 eps of anime. Added 2.5 hours.
I think I am getting more used to focusing on the audiobook. Overall, my listening still feels really unstable with lots of ups and downs, but I am optimistic that it will get better.
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and
= 2.3 hours
京都寺町三条のホームズ | L29 - 66% - 0.5 hours
マブラヴ VN - 0.3 Hours
Shinobi app - 0.6 hours
Today’s total: 3.7 hours
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Day 5:
I didn’t manage to get any listening done today due to some unexpected health issues. Will need to see how I am over the next few days as well. I may need to take a few days off and pick things up next week, will see how things go.
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Oh no, hope you feel better soon!
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Finished listening to chapter 3 of Harry Potter #2 today; unfortunately all the chapters are around an hour long at this point, so I might end up breaking them down over a day or two. I normally like beginning and ending on pre-defined points; makes it easier to calculate times, mostly.
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Hope you feel better soon @CatDQ !
1.1 hours
Repeat listening on headphones, whilst doing household chores. This worked really well.
0.4 hours
1.3 hours
I was starting to get burned out with anime, so it was nice to watch a comedy show.
Japanese with Shun podcast
0.3 hours
京都寺町三条のホームズ | L29 - nothing!
マブラヴ VN - 0.3 hours
It’s a good level of Japanese for me, but I have no interest in the story…I’ll push on for a bit.
Today’s total: 3.4 hours
4 Likes
Day 6:
Managed 6 and a half hours today of listening though unsure how much will actually be retained. Most of it was easy stuff more for the experience of listening to stuff I do know than trying to figure out new stuff. Some of it may be less than the time stated (since films and anime don’t talk the whole episode) so there is that too.
90 minute of textbook listening questions, 90 minutes of watching Happy Gilmore (understood bits of it but not a lot), all 12 episodes (2 hours and 24 minutes) of Chi’s Sweet vacation, then 71 minutes of Genki 1 grammar points and listening exercises (a playlist from YouTube).
Total for today: 6 hours and 35 minutes
Thanks, I appreciate it 
7 Likes
Another 2 day update from me:
Adding 1.25 hours audiobook (still また、同じ夢を見ていた) .
About 4 hours from anime ( ふたりはプリキュア and ちょびっツ S1).
Month Total so far: 11.25 hours
I started watching ちょびっツ yesterday and it feels like the perfect listening practice for me. I find it amazing from a language learning perspective to see a character learning extremely basic things about the world and to see how other characters try to explain things.
It’s really refreshing to get so hooked on a show. I’m glad I didn’t let the Natively level scare me away. It’s currently level 26, but I feel I’m getting better comprehension than the level 20-22 shows I have been watching. This was a good wake-up call for me that I could be testing out more shows regardless of level to see which ones click for me.
8 Likes
I have failed to post yet this challenge, so I suppose this’ll be a weekly update
I’m at 8:35 for the challenge with about 3 hours coming from audiobooks, so I’m pretty well on pace so far.
I’ve been at my usual suspects of Dragon Ball, Wedding Peach, and my simulcast anime episodes when they update weekly. I also watched パーフェクトプロポーズ S1 | L26?? this week and enjoyed it enough. It’s got some… questionable consent (but I mean, it’s BL so…) but it was an interesting enough premise that I ordered the manga (although it helped that it was just a single volume).
I also finished up 放課後ミステリクラブ 1金魚の泳ぐプール事件 | L22 #2 and I’m on to #3 now. It’s becoming a lot less of a chore to get listening in (although part of that is definitely that I’ve been forgoing subs on things I otherwise would have probably watched with them).
Yeah, I’ve been trying to be braver around starting things that I want to read/watch even if I’m a little scared off by the Natively level. Especially since I’m usually a lot more willing to deal with more difficult content if it’s more enjoyable. Which is kinda a win win.
Edit: Huh, that’s definitely a series link for 放課後ミステリクラブ but it has the title of the first book in it. Weird.
8 Likes
Managed to do 2h today in one go. Although I could feel the concentration towards the end dipping hard.
Running a bit behind (only 3h / 30h and 7 days already in), trying to catch-up on the free days. Seems like the days where I have a morning shift will be hard to clock any time, at least until the work load decreases.
6 Likes
Watched 4 episodes of this - very interesting. I found some of the vocab in the first episode a bit hard to follow but on episode 4, I could almost not give it my full attention and still understand what was going on. Helps when one of the main characters has a very limited vocab too (「パンツ！」). 
Thanks for the rec @jtnix
= 1.6 hours
京都寺町三条のホームズ | L29 - 77% - only 3 more pages and I will be fully caught up with the bookclub 
=1.2 hours
マブラヴ VN
= 0.4 hours
Bite Sized Japanese podcast
= 0.5 hours
Today’s total: 3.7 hours
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Whoa! You’ve now passed me and I started with the club. I’m at 75% and gonna push out the last 20 or so mins today to get caught up for the week.
4 Likes
It’s been a personal challenge to catch up!
I’ve got to admit, this week’s section was a real slog to get through - twice the pages of other weeks…
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I had the same experience with episode 1, I had to rewatch a couple of scenes with subs back on to catch the details. By episode 3 it was really smooth sailing.
It feels like watching her learn Japanese in real-time, but not in a little kid way. The show probably has a very limited vocab range as a result, but that’s perfect for me as a beginner.
Glad you found it interesting!
4 Likes
Day 7:
Listened to 10 episodes of Miku real Japanese grammar playlist = 67m
Listened to all 62 of Genki 2 playlist = 79m
Total for today= 2 hours and 26 minutes
4 Likes
I’m also catching up on logging some time for the past few days…
Wednesday: 1.5 hours listened, 30(!)
minutes of shadowing
Thursday: 1 hours listened, 20 minutes of shadowing
I listened to some more of the book about Japanese pop culture and ukiyo-e and started 池袋ウエストゲートパーク | L31 since it got added to audiobook.jp and I’ve always been curious about it.
The 30 minutes of shadowing I did was with the ukiyo-e stuff and I had a much easier go of it than with 池袋ウエストゲートパーク | L31. Fiction is harder to shadow because of the cadence, but the phrases and vocabulary and easier to keep in my working memory and repeat so it kind of balances out? I am shadowing but repeating over the audio at a 0.5 second delay, so I need to listen, remember, and speak at the same time and it’s a huge workout for my brain. 
I was extremely proud of making it to 30 minutes on Wednesday!
Another issue I’m encountering is that my tongue and jaw muscles get kind of sore from moving my mouth in a new way, but I always get this when I spend time speaking a language that I usually don’t so I hope it’ll go away soon and I’ll get new muscle memory.
One victory I had was related to the post I made about き the other day, though! I put special focus on making sure I was palatilizing it when shadowing, and I already noticed an improvement in the ease of how I articulate words with it. Previously I always felt there was something slightly off with how I pronounced the volitional ending -きたい in words like ~ておきたい、書きたい、行きたい and I couldn’t get my tongue in position fast enough for the t sound of the following た、but pronouncing them now with my tongue slightly forward and devoicing the い sound like “k-tai” is giving me good results! It feels more comfortable to say and sounds more natural / comparable with the audio.
This is kind of turning into a shadowing log haha. 
On the listening front, I mentioned at the end of last month I want to really listen for compound words and correct in wrong pronunciation I have in my head. This week I heard another compound word that I had wrong in my mind! 涙目！
I always read this like ナミダ・メ in my head, but I heard it the other day and was surprised that it was different than I thought. 
It sounds more like ナミ・ダメ when it was put all together. Then I thought, why am I surprised when hearing words like this, and why do they sound different than I expect? So I looked up the pitch for 涙 and 涙目 and found some of my own answers there:
涙 is な↓みだ HLL
目 is ↑め H
I don’t have the pitch for either memorized, but assuming my brain is kinda familiar with how they sound, it makes sense that I’m expecting to hear that word like:
な め
みだ
But 涙目 actually has a pitch of
LHHL
みだ
な め
Which is the opposite!
So, it’s making me think that part of the gap between how I read compound words that I’ve never heard before in my head and how they sound is that they actually have a completely different pitch accent that isn’t compromised of the one from the single words together, and what I am hearing that sounds new is the pitch difference.
I don’t really know what to do with this info yet. I guess I’ll keep listening for similar words and look up the pitch if I remember to try to find patterns. I just thought it was interesting and worth sharing.
11 Likes
