I’ve been practicing my spoken Japanese by reading out loud and shawdowing. Because I’ve listened to a ton of vtubers I can feel when the way I pronounce things sound off; when I was reading out loud I felt really off. Because of that I started searching for light novel audiobooks, as that’s what I generally read. I found out that for ¥1500 per month I can listen to an unlimited amount of audiobooks. At first I thought it’s similar to the UK’s version of Audible where you get a token to spend on 1 Audiobook per month.
So far I’ve listened through volume 1 of 俺ガイル while working and really enjoyed it. Words I didn’t know I can sometimes guess from context, if not I’ve been exposed to it and it will make it easier to learn when I see it again. I’m also using it for shadowing, it gives me a much better flow of how it should be pronounced which I find to be very useful. Also another problem with reading novels itself is that sometimes I misremember the word and pronounce the word wrong, by reading along with the narrator I can be sure that I’m learning the correct reading as well as the tone of the word.
Some novels are voiced by well known voice actors. Volume 1 of Bakemonogatari is voiced by Sugita Tomokazu; a different volume by Hanazawa Kana. I will be listening to it sometime in the future as I’m a big fan of the Monogatari series.
There are tons of light novels as well as normal books such as IQ84 by Murakami Haruki. All together I believe there are around 120k audiobooks in Japanese, I’m sure everyone can find something that interests them.
5 comments
How do you access that part of Audible?
>Volume 1 of Bakemonogatari is voiced by Sugita Tomokazu
He’s one of my favorite voice actors and this is an amazing idea. My listening comprehension is still very very beginner level, but I’ve watched and read Bakemonogatari enough times that I should be able to at least have an idea of where I’m at while listening.
It seems that they’ve recently gotten serious about producing japanese audiobooks. Thank the maker
Similarly, if you have a US audible account you can search for books in Japanese on the US store. Obviously it won’t be as robust as the Japanese store but if you only have a US account like I do it’s a nice option to have.
Unless your N3 or higher this seems like an difficult task. I’m like N3 kanji, vocab, and grammar wise but spoken Japanese is so fast it’s extremely discouraging. Listening comprehension is my only hangup and i really don’t know where to start it makes me extremely upset. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for me.