The topic title makes this sound like a guide. It isn't.

What I want to know is, how do you people go about when watching Japanese stuff like TV shows, anime, drama, movies... anything.

Personally, I've noticed that my Japanese isn't good enough to watch drama and TV shows (like gameshows), at least not good enough to really enjoy it. I can understand a fair share if I watch shounen anime, but that's pretty much as far as it goes. As for my Japanese ability, I can read manga without much of a problem, I can read novels as well... but I can't watch TV.

My first problem: I simply can't hear what they are saying. They say a line and I hear the Japanese sounds and I hear the particles, I hear some words... but some words just jump into a rumble which I can't really make out. This is probably based a lot on my second problem...
My second problem: I don't know tons of the words used! One could say "that's no problem, just listen to the word and look it up". The problem is, when I don't know a word, I get the above problem: They jumble together. Sometimes I can't tell if it's one or two words. Sometimes I can't tell if it's a long or a short o sound. Usually, I can listen to the sentence a few times and look it up, but then we have the other problem: Japanese is filled with homonyms! Which one did they say? Did they actually say one of them or did I make a mistake on one of the kana??

I'm pretty sure most people experience these problems and what I want to know is how do YOU guys deal with them? Do you rewatch everything several times? Do you use the rewind button and keep listening to the parts you don't understand? Do you ignore how much you're not understanding and simply keep going? (In anime, this might work since there's usually action etc going on all the time... but this is almost impossible in game shows where you might not even know what the hell is going on even from the start). Do you find scripts and stick to shows where scripts are available?

I don't have much experience watching stuff without subs simply because I feel it's really boring and I don't really feel it's helping if I don't understand most of what is going on. Hell, i didn't even start to enjoy reading manga until after finishing RtK, it just felt like a chore. I'm thinking that it's possible I will get used to it if I just keep going, but I'd thought I'd check how other people are doing first

Although I think your Japanese is a little better than mine, I have the same problem. Listening to more Japanese didn't help me learn things I didn't know.

After I finish with RtK I'm planning on inputting snippets of audio into SRS. I want to use something like the anime Monster, because has about 70 episodes, and there shouldn't be any exaggerated dialogue.

I am curious to hear how others have overcome this hurdle.

Tobberoth Wrote:...I don't have much experience watching stuff without subs simply because I feel it's really boring and I don't really feel it's helping if I don't understand most of what is going on...

When this happens to me, I drop the material and look for something else - or watch with subs once and then drop the subs/ignore them subsequently.

Most importantly, you need to find something that you enjoy watching or it will just sap your motivation. Whatever the media - manga, novels, movies, drama, anime - I drop it if it is not interesting or if I cannot understand at least 80% of what's going on.

Usually for me, it is lack of vocabulary, interest in the material, or experience listening. Usually, it's just not time yet.

BTW, it takes a long time before I could just "hear the words" to the extent that I could repeat what was said. This takes a lot of patience and persistence.

Not to give you an oversimplified answer, but first I would say you should try and listen to more and more Japanese. Just because there's no way you'd get good at something with out spending a lot of time doing it.

For unknown words, I personally just ignore them. As I do more and more with the language, they tend to get fewer and fewer. I can read manga and novels at the same ease you say (ignore dictionary and understand 80-90%), and I find that I also have the same problem listening. But most of the time, I don't even care about all the unknown words, I just try and listen for what I do know and go from there. So I guess, focus on what you do know and not what you don't know, is my solution. The reason is because it's just boring and hard to try and figure out everything I don't know, and when it's boring like that I don't do it.

Another thing I do, I read an entire manga series then watch the anime based on it. That way I understand practically everything when watching it. =]

alyks Wrote:Another thing I do, I read an entire manga series then watch the anime based on it. That way I understand practically everything when watching it. =]

That sounds like a really good idea. I'll have to try that.

I hear you. I've encountered (am encountering~) all those problems too. My advice:

1) Don't lose hope. Keep watching.

2) Find the lines if you can. It was posted awhile back that there was a book with all the lines to Tiger and Dragon. I ordered it used from Amazon.jp for about $15 total. It is not 100%, but it is pretty accurate.

3) If something doesn't make complete sense, skip on. Like, if you can't understand which homonym it is, just keep watching and forget about it. There are probably a lot of other things which you can learn from the show. When it is time for you to learn it (when it clicks), try to learn it then.

4) Watch things that interest you so you can watch them over and over.

5) Repeat things even if you don't understand them. Try to imitate the characters. This is more fun with variety shows/comedian acts. They are typically short and have a lot of energy so it is fun to copy them. If the comedians are famous, you can also probably impress any Japanese friends if you get good at the act.

6) Since you already have a high Japanese level, watch things you understand 90% of if you can find them. Try to understand that 10% that is above you right now. While doing that, also watch things that you may understand 50-75% of. For me, I like to watch Disney movies for easier stuff. It actually is MUCH easier than most tv shows/adult movies.

I've made an MP3 of an episode before and loaded it in audacity. Most importantly this allows me to easily replay parts if I want (since you can select a beginning and end in the middle of the track). You can also slow down the speech while keeping the pitch the same. Slowing down the stuff isn't too useful for trying to improve understanding, but can be really good for trying to improve your production since you can try to copy the actor's way of speaking very closely.

Audacity is also useful for me because I am trying to use tv show lines in my SRS now. I can export a section of the MP3 from audacity very easily and then use it in my SRS card.

Oh, and if you can find anything you've watched a lot in your native language/watched when you were a child, those things are goldmine. Again, I have to give out props to disney.

Simple: Watch dramas that have scripts. check dramanote.

It's that simple. Watch something, then look at the script, then watch it again. boom bang boom

I thought you had basic fluency? Shouldn't that cover most of the content you hear in TV programs?

I tend to watch my anime with subtitles, because that's the form it usually comes in. I do understand most of what is said, though. I'm not sure when that happened... I suggest heavy vocab study, reading, and, of course, more listening.

If you can't make sense of something, don't worry, chances are you'll figure it out without trying later on.

Also, if by subs, you meant English subs, drop them now.

They are a crutch; if someone wants to ever be able to watch tv in a foreign language without their native subs, they need to stop using the subs. Even if you get at a really high level, there will still be things that you can't understand every now and then (it even happens in our native language). Learning how to quickly process parts you don't understand through the context of what you did understand is an important skill too. Bottom line, subs impair that ability by giving you the answer right away.

I buy used variety show, karaoke and documentary DVDs from Japanese rental stores off ebay for about $1 each. Most have Japanese subtitles and I try to follow along while I listen.

yukamina Wrote:I thought you had basic fluency? Shouldn't that cover most of the content you hear in TV programs?

I do, at least according to my own definition of fluency (I was actually planning to make a pretty long topic about what I call fluency and what I do not call fluency and the different levels I have to it, for me fluency is not an absolute thing and depends on tons of factors, however I haven't actually thought about it enough to make such a topic yet). Unfortunately, I'm just fluent in basic conversation about really simple things. The fluency refers to how fast I can express myself etc, not how big my vocabulary is (it's small, let's keep it at that). If I sit around with a japanese person who is willing to explain words I don't recognize, I can talk about pretty much anything without it sounding odd. It's just a simple vocabulary.

Anyways, thanks for the advice everyone, especially sutebun. The idea to read a whole episode of something into audacity is a great idea, I will definetly try that.

As for finding things I understand 90%... I don't know. The time involved with downloading it all, the relatively scarce amount of resources... (d-addicts is GREAT but you can't really tell what level something is without downloading and watching it).

I think I will mainly try Alyks idea for now... simply watch and ignore what I don't understand, hopefully I will enjoy it enough to rewatch it.

Tobberoth,
After watching a lot of subless shows, I've grown content with not knowing a lot of what's being said. I think this also because for the past year, I've been listening to Japanese at all times aside from sleep and part time job. Reason 1 is that the listening untangled what was all gibberish, reason 2 is that I've become used to hearing stuff I don't always understand.

As for looking up words in the dictionary, I've gotten to know when I -really- need to look up a word. For example, the word is being repeated a lot within a minute's time, and I still can't quite figure out its meaning from context. Or, if it's a word that sounds familiar already (for instance, the word "懐中電灯” is said in a radio show I've heard like 5 times in the past week, and I suddenly hear it in a drama.) Or sometimes there's just one word said that will explain a whole situation in a show. If it's said clearly enough, I look it up.

I watch shows on repeat, but only the first watching of it has my full attention. During the next few hours after watching it, I put it on loop mode, resize the window so that it fits in the corner, and do SRS reps and read manga. As soon as I get tired of it, I watch/listen to something else

alyks Wrote:Another thing I do, I read an entire manga series then watch the anime based on it. That way I understand practically everything when watching it. =]

...and you can get a lot of audio for your SRS! I've been doing that with the Fushigi Yuugi anime lately. I've been trying to watch the episode as quickly as I can after the chapter it corresponds with, but usually I'd rather hurry up and read new material in the manga

Has anyone ever gone through an episode with the manga book/scans infront of you? That combined with shadowing sounds like a good idea. I've done this with manga+drama CD when I wasn't very good at reading. Manga+anime is most likely a lot easier to follow though since less scenes are usually left out than with drama CDs and you can see an animated version of the manga.

In the short term, to find comprehensible and enjoyable Japanese shows to watch, scripts are your best option.

To actually solve the problem of not understanding stuff in the first place, I think the only real solution is to increase your vocabulary. Even in a language that's as nice for the learner phonetically as Japanese, there's a limit to how much you will be able to comprehend by trying to look up words. Unlike a book, you don't have the sentences or the kanji and all the time in the world to work your way to comprehension, so in the end the only effective strategy is to know the words in advance.

This sounds stupid, but it's the right answer:

Just keep watching.

Listening is something that you can only improve by doing it. I'm in the opposite situation from you, actually. I think I understand more spoken Japanese than written thanks to having watched years and years and years of Anime with subtitles. For me, it isn't hard to pick out words I know and understand what's going on, but reading is slow and tiresome because I just started in the last year.

wccrawford Wrote:Listening is something that you can only improve by doing it. I'm in the opposite situation from you, actually. I think I understand more spoken Japanese than written thanks to having watched years and years and years of Anime with subtitles. For me, it isn't hard to pick out words I know and understand what's going on, but reading is slow and tiresome because I just started in the last year.

I've been watching anime for years too and I don't agree. Sure, I learned the extremely overly used words like まさか and ふざけるな！ but I personally didn't learn much USEFUL Japanese at all. I have always had a good ear for Japanese, it just doesn't help me in talk shows and dramas where unusually hard vocabulary is used. I would say that probably 50% or more of the words I have the main problem with, I've never seen used in an anime. The talkshows generally aren't about swords clashing, enemies dying, people going into space etc

Though yeah, I can certainly imagine you having an easier time watching Japanese than reading it if your main experience is watching Japanese stuff, though I think you will probably catch up with the reading very fast.

I've just noticed that reading and watching really are fundamentally different. I previously thought that they were the same thing, just audio instead of text, but it really goes a lot deeper. The speed, the inability to check that you're not misunderstanding the words used, the accents and dialects, the speed of the motions.. it all comes together to show, it's really a separate skill which needs to be trained separately.

yeah for drama just do what someone else said. Watch it, read the script and read/learn what you couldn't hear.

For like game shows/talk shows obviously find one YOU LIKE that also has like WORDS all over the screen (that way you can look up the words when everyone laughs hysterically, etc). For me I love watching shouwa x heisei (kat-kun's interesting sometimes- crunchyroll - has subs on early eps), I don't think it's that hard to understand for the most part as long as they don't have some old man guest (shouwa).

Watching it while just ignoring "stuff you dont' understand"t like I understand to an extent but if you don't work at it at all and only passively watch there's not much point. You have to in some way learn words/phrases while you watch either directly from the show or something.

Only way you're gonna be able to improving your comprehension with drama/talk/variet shows is by watching them and lots of them. They talk a lot more natural and normal (faster/mumblier/etc) than anime characters so obviously it's harder. I don't think listening to a crap load of anime is gonna help you understand drama/varity show, I tihnk listening/watching variety/drama/talk show themselves will be the directly helpful.

Honestly whenever people write my listening comprehension is good I usually doubt them because lots of people say they just listen to anime ( can people please just say what they can comprehend better now - if they just say they can comprehend/hear anime well that doesn't mean much in my opinion). Because comprehending/hearing talk/variety show is just completely different.

quote=my brother after using his media media center

"Please stop raping my computer with bad Japanese shows"

It tends to be much easier to listen to women than men.

In female speech, I mainly have difficulty just when there are words that I don't know. In male speech, I often have difficulty even when I know the words.

1) find something you really like and want to understand.
2) empty your mind.
3) enjoy it.

When I say enjoy, I say, pay attention to the details, to the sounds, to the music, to the expressions. Hear the sound, but don't try to understand it actively. Understanding audio is not something you do, your brain do it for you.

Katz numbered the listening stages into 4:

1) You can't understand anything.
2) You start to understand isolated words.
3) You eventualy pick some sentences.
4) You are used to understand more than not to understand, and you finally start to pick up vocabulary from listening.

I don't know where you are. But I did pimsleur and japanesepod for some time and they somehow helped me to go from 1 to 2. But no way they'd bring me to 3.
I only managed to go to stage 3 after listening to a lot of semi uninteligible audio that I loved. After that, it was just a matter of time to get to lvl 4. For some months I'm more used to understand japanese audio than not to do it.

You stop trying to find something you'll understand 90%. You should focus on something you really love to listen.

I think if you mention you watch Japanese with subs, it's best if you say with kanji subs or English subs. Tobberoth probably meant he watches with Japanese subs.

I concur about listening more, and maybe find dramas with similar talking (rapid fire pace, different accents) which I think Trick, Tiger and Dragon, IGWP, and Kisarazu Cat's Eye meet the challenge. This way you have the script online for verification but you're getting ear training.

I'm no where near this point, so take the advice for what it's worth (ie stolen from others).

In my opinion, it is incredibly inefficient to listen to pure Japanese audio with no mechanism at hand to understand unknown words. Skipping over them amounts to *not* learning them which leads to constant reenforcement but very little new knowledge.

If you want to go the dictionary route, just listen to a short audio clip over and over until you get a sense of where the word begins and ends. Sometimes you may have to guess at first when looking words up but you should improve over time. (Dictionary lookup tends to work better if you already have a firm grasp of grammar. Otherwise you might get confused into thinking that a particle is part of another word.)

The other option is scripts or subtitles. Just make sure you don't use them constantly.

And last but not least.... Continue to do at least one episode of Japanesepod101 every day! I usually start off my day with a dose of these podcasts before moving on to native audio. The former really aids the latter.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention doing the dictation exercises on Iknow. I have very little experience with this so far but it might really help with the problems you described.

Dragg, I think they're saying that they're not going for 100% (or even 90%) comprehension. I'm sure they're still doing the formal study portion every day: get a word, sentence, parable or something new into their brain and/or SRS. But like some of them, I find it tedious to rush to a dictionary at every unknown word. I hate doing that with English.

No hard info on it, but it "feels" like you go with the flow, your brain notices when something new you learned is in the mix. It also might notice a new word that it can piece together due to context, kanji or both.

That said, it's been pointed out you can go with the flow (not stopping for dictionary look-up) and still get your training for unknown words later. Now, with manga, it's easy to use a highlighter (or infrared marker) to note new words you can go back later and learn should you desire. Heck, there may be a tool that lets you "time mark" video on your computer (activated by the space bar or something) so you can go back a see parts you don't get. Plus, video with scripts, or even better text sub-title files make getting detailed explanation easier

What Tobberoth is mentioning above is that there's no way to do this with Comedy/Variety shows. Not everything is sub-titled (mainly the punch lines), it's rapid fire, it's lacking context (TV studio, lots of culture referenced humor), it's slang. Personally, if you can understand it, I think you can qualify yourself as fluent.

I guess now that I've been doing nearly 100 percent audio learning for some time, I forget that lots of people are doing formal study on the side. In that case, I agree that looking up every word becomes less important.

However, you can still look up the occasional word; If you keep hearing the same word over and over you might as well since it probably has a lot to do with the main subject of the audio dialogue.

Yeah, like nukemarine said, I'm also reading some manga and eating dictionaries.

I don't know about mentat_tgs advice on not trying to understand... seems like if you're not trying to parse it, your brain won't actively work with it... but maybe I'm misunderstanding what it means to "not trying to understand", I assume one still has to actively listen to the sentences, just stop trying to put english/native words to everything. If so, that's what I've been doing for ages, a lot of conversation makes sure that you do. When I lived in Japan and sat at a table with both Swedes, Americans and Japanese people, I really didn't notice when people switched from English to Japanese, it's just one understanding to another... the actual act of understanding was the same.