Title says it all. Note that you don’t need to watch the full streams, and those 切り抜き (clips) are your best friend becuase they are:
1. Easy to access
2. Short video length
3. HAVE 字幕 (SUBTITLES)
Point 3 makes this partular form of entertainment the best way to learn Japanese imo.
Most of the forks outside of Japan only know vtubers, or actually hololive only. But as a matter of fact, the streamer/gamer industry flourishes and improves vastly over these two years. They provide some of the best contents I’ve seen which are also not realised by English content creators, as far as I’m concerned. (streamer servers of rust, gta and etc) I’m not talking about hololive really. I actually don’t think they are a good way to learn Japanese once you reach intermediate level and beyond, because of the facts that:
1. A lot of them speak like a anime character, which does not translate well outside of this community and real life. I’m talking about the tones, the pitch, the pace, and the limited choice of words.
2. They speak too slow, for various reason. This will be a plus if you are not comfortable listening to Japanese but this will also provide limited help once you past the level.
3. The comment section / chat is too peaceful and monotone. You gain little from reading the chat.
Well then, what’s so special about my recommendation? Firstly these will be for gamers, which have not been mentioned elsewhere despite their popularity. While twitch streamers can be hard to understand, I believe that gamers are gamers, there are still many similar patterns in speech across different languages.
Now are my recommendations, which are influenced by my personal preference of course.
1. VSPO groups (vtuber that focuses on FPS)
2. 釈迦 fps (biggest Japanese streamer, ranking 6th world wide in most viewed time in Twitch, covers nononline AAA game as well)
3. スタンミ (plays league, which is kind of not-so-common in Japan, also a lot of 雑談. Also that guy who asked faker how to grind out of diamond in an interview just to get laughted by the internet at the time)
A good start will be you just search them on youtube and look for the clips.
I especially recommend VSPO because:
1. Their clips are relatively commonly uploaded and densed with 字幕.
2. They are technically still vtubers, so you have your cute anime avatar, which good be a big plus for a lot of people.
3. They collab with EVERYONE in gamer community. Literally. You start from VSPO you can reach every other streamers or content creators in Japan.
4. They are generally really good at gaming. Diamond + in valorant and master + in apex is very common and some even reach immortal and preds. If you care about the skills, this vtuber group is for you.
The only downside is the way they talk is very casual and internet-oriented which could be difficult to understand at first glance. (Well the difficulty also stop you from getting out of touch of noraml Japanese. That’s why prefer these streamers over hololive)
Slangs such as えぐい、マ！？、 脳死、ないなった（and other variation of pronounciations) 、ホンモノ、ピ、船降りろ、終わってる do NOT generalise well outside so just beware of that.
Happy gamers and happy learning Japnese 🙂