So I bought a cheap DVD of two Japanese Gamera films.

http://www.amazon.com/Gamera-Gyaos-Viras...rds=gamera

They come with the original Japanese audio track and you can turn off the English subtitles (there are no Japanese subtitles though).

So I turned off the English subtitles and sat back to watch one of the movies with Japanese audio.

And I understood basically nothing.

It sounded like blahblahblahblahdesune blahblahblahblahblah kara etc. Even this annoying little boy was unintelligible.

I thought maybe of ripping the audio track to my laptop and slowing down the dialog by 30% and then seeing if I could make out anything that way.

What if I listen to the Japanese audio but turn on the English subtitles? Anyone ever do that?

A Japanese transcription would be nice but this dvd doesn't have Japanese subtitles (though it does have two different English dubs but that's useless for my purposes).

In general, for listening practice I will select shows or films that have Japanese subtitles or transcripts available. Just because you don't have subtitles on the discs doesn't mean that the transcript isn't out there somewhere, but in this particular case you'd have to dredge around Japanese sites looking for it.

Of course you can watch the show with English subtitles - however, at the level of comprehension you're getting that's pretty much useless as practice. If you aren't already understanding the majority of sentences, you'll end up simply reading the subtitles. English subs as a listening aid only work when you're tuning out the subs most of the time and only referring to them for the occasional tricky bit.

You could still watch with English subs for one of two reasons - the obvious one being... to just enjoy the dang movie! There's nothing wrong with that - enjoying Japanese works is one motivator for many of us to learn Japanese!
However, if you're determined to make this listening practice, watch once with English subs and then watch again with no subs - simply knowing what is going on makes it easier to pick things out. Even though it's not terribly effective to listen with subtitles running, listening to material you already know the gist of is very effective for building listening comprehension.

How are you approaching this - as a study exercise or do you just want to watch some movies?

In case of study exercise: subs2srs.
Yes, I know - you don't like SRS and Anki and stuff, but you could fiddle with the settings easily enough to create something that works for you. The main benefit here is being able to go through line-by-line and understand everything, presented in a way that you can control (replay the audio, or control when you see the line or are just listening, take time to think, or whatever). After a while of subs2srsing stuff, you should just be able to watch movies without approaching them in any special way, given that you know the vocabulary.
Actually, I think I remember seeing a tool for doing this sort of thing outside of Anki, but don't remember the details.
Of course, you'd need to find something with Japanese subtitles online - DVDs and such are generally no good for this.


If you just want to watch stuff in Japanese - just use English subtitles. I think the disadvantages of them are vastly overstated. Actually, I don't think there are any disadvantages. At least before you start dissecting the audio, watch it through once for fun.

Really, I think without Japanese subtitles or at least a transcript, you're not going to be able to use these as good study material.

Aikynaro Wrote:In case of study exercise: subs2srs.
Yes, I know - you don't like SRS and Anki and stuff, but you could fiddle with the settings easily enough to create something that works for you.

I heartily second this. It took me a while of fiddling with settings to get the ones I wanted, but I finally hit upon an optimal solution (for me). There really is nothing better for enhancing listening, particularly of fast, informal Japanese.

Slowing down audio, IMO, is a good tactic if you get the general gist of what people are saying 70-90% of the time, but want to try and decipher a few key lines. But it's inefficient as a general tactic, especially if your current comprehension level is closer to 0-20%. You'll get much more bang for your buck if you find shows with Japanese subtitles. Fortunately there's enough material out there already to last you many years.

OP, I don't know your background, but don't beat yourself up too much, particularly if most of what you've listened to up until now is textbook, polite 標準語 Japanese. Non-classroom Japanese is a different beast altogether, and you need to train your brain not only to follow the speed of the conversation, but to understand the vocab, the grammar, and all of the various colloquialisms and contractions that are being used.