Hi everyone, I’ve been studying Japanese for a while now, I’d say I’m somewhere on the way to N3 level. I’ve been noticing that my grammar, reading and speaking skills are progressing OK, but my listening skills seem to be stuck on basic conversational Japanese and I can’t seem to push through. I know this is because I don’t really listen to anything other than conversations around me (I live in Japan), since I happen to really dislike watching tv/Netflix/etc. I’m also not a big fan of listening to radio or podcasts, so although I’ve tried listening to a number of them, I can’t seem to find anything that I like enough to stick with it. I’ve been doing some thinking and I came to the conclusion that the reason I don’t like listening to podcasts, watching anime, Japanese tv etc is because I don’t like doing so in any language. Basically the only audio-visual content I enjoy are documentary type, informative shows.
Although living in Japan I have easy access to materials, the sheer amount is really overwhelming and I’m having trouble finding anything good. Even recommendations from (Japanese) people around me always circle back to either anime or very over the top tv shows. Therefore, I was wondering if anyone here has any suggestions? I’m pretty open to different themes – history, nature, culture, tech, travel, science, sociology, psychology.. anything really (except maybe politics). Example of a show I like on Netflix would be ‘Explained’.
If anyone has any suggestions I’d be super grateful! Thanks 🙂
よろしくお願いします
1 comment
The best ones available are going to be on WOWOW, where they have some originals but also foreign shows, like BBC Earth nature documentaries, dubbed into Japanese. [https://www.wowow.co.jp/documentary/](https://www.wowow.co.jp/documentary/)
FOD has plenty too: [https://fod.fujitv.co.jp/genre/documentary/](https://fod.fujitv.co.jp/genre/documentary/)