Nihongojouzu

Digitizing cassette tapes

Many moons ago, in the pre-Google era, I listened to audio cassettes in my car. Specifically the cassettes which accompanied each month's Nihongo Journal. Twice weekly I had a two-hour drive from the small town where I lived to my karate dojo in Matsuyama - prime listening time.  I listened, shadowed the conversations and shuffled the tapes for variety. Low-tech but effective - two trips a week was 8 solid hours of listening practice, and repeating phrases helps stave off driver sleepiness.

These days I use an iPod in the car - it takes up less room than a bunch of tapes and digital files are conveniently broken into individual tracks. Very occasionally I will throw a tape in the care and listen to it (yes - my car still has a cassette player).

But I am moving to Tokyo in a  couple of weeks and  selling my car.  I'll be swapping the expressway for the subway. So I decided to digitize the tapes.

This was a simple process. I already own a copy of CD Spin Doctor - it came with my copy of Roxio Toast - so all I had  to do was buy a stereo cable to connect the line-in input of my PowerBook to my stereo headphone jack, press play on the stereo and then hit record on the software. CD Spin Doctor gives you the option of listening to the audio as you record it so I have begun the nostalgic process of listening to the contents of tapes from 1998-2000 as I transfer them onto my hard drive.

For example, the tape in the photo contained the following:

食品添加物                            Food Additives (6 min)
問い合わせる                   Keigo for Every Occasion: Making an Enquiry (6 min)
模擬テスト                            JLPT Practice Test for Level 1 (16 min)
１２月                                    Japanese Through the Seasons:December (4 min)
最近の若者は                        Young People These Days (8 min)
「ことしの別れ」幸田文        "This Year's Farewell" by Aya Koda (13 min)

The resultant files are in AIFF format and about 250MB a side but it is a simple matter to squeeze them down to AAC or MP3 using iTunes or similar application. CD Spin Doctor automatically breaks the audio into tracks, but listening to and labelling individual tracks is a fiddly task best left for a rainy day - for the time being I just want a file I can stick on my iPod Shuffle.

And you don't even have to buy software - Audacity is a free, cross platform recording and editing application (Mac, Windows, Linux).

At 50-60 minutes per tape I now have an additional 22 hours of Japanese audio to  keep me  busy.  How many hours of audio do you have hidden away in tape format?

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a great way of tracking down cached copies of websites but it is also host to a plethora of sound files, including a whole lot of Japanese recordings. My first search in the Audio section using the term "Japanese" threw up a copy of Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech from 1945, Tae Kim's podcast lessons, parliamentary discussion proposals regarding the constitution and some pop songs. The second page of results included Akutagawa Ryunosuke's "Kappa", the NHK children's story Gurasuhoppaa Monogatari and a Japanese version of Barbie Girl. Some of the file descriptions came up as mojibake (文字化け: those collections of symbols associated with cartoon characters cursing or encoding settings failing) and there was also a lot of irrelevant crap thrown up by the search but with 351 files in storage there are enough gems to make digging worthwhile.

Botchan on audiobook

There is so much free stuff available on the web that it is sometimes easy to forget the old fashioned way of acquiring something - paying for it. I was browsing the Japanese iTunes Store when I discovered  the audiobook version of Botchan (坊ちゃん), Natsume Soseki's (漱石夏目) semi-autobiographical tale of a gormless Tokyo teacher making his way in a school in  Matsuyama, in rural Ehime. I enjoyed reading Botchan in English years ago and long maintained the ambition of tackling the Japanese version but being an essentially lazy individual I never did read the book. However, after a few mouseclicks, 7 hours of audio Botchan was mine for the price of 1700 yen.

Listening, unlike reading, can be done as a background activity to something else so the barrier to entry for an audiobook is lower than that of printed text. I loaded the mp3 files into my iPod shuffle and started listening to Botchan when I went running. The language is Meiji Era Japanese - Botchan was published 100 years ago - old fashioned but not incomprehensible.  The narrator, Aibara Marii*  (相原 麻理衣) is superb and when she did her 'little old Japanese lady' voice I could swear that an obaachan was standing right next to me (they often do - obaachan are not scared of gaijin) . This has lead to me shadowing the characters' speech, walking down the street talking to myself. I even went out and purchased the book - only 286yen - and I am using it to decipher the more archaic expressions (see my post on approaching materials from multiple angles).

Just as I cannot access the US iTunes store, not everyone can access the Japan iTunes Store so I looked around to see if the Botchan audiobook was available elsewhere. The Ibunko online shop has it but at 10,000 yen for the CDs set or 4000 yen for the mp3s you would have to be very keen or very well off. Audiobook Kotonoha does not itself retail the audiobook but it carries links to sites which do, including Rakuten,  Listen Japan and OnGen. I haven't researched each site exhaustively yet but I noted  that  Listen Japan has audio samples from each chapter and  Rakuten had  Botchan for only 1429 yen!

A worthy addition to the audio library  of intermediate learners and up.

*Marii Kinoshita on the audiobook cover - she obviously got married after making the recording

Botchan 坊ちゃん Audiobook

Author: Natsume Soseki 夏目 漱石　

Narrator: Marii Aibara 相原 麻理衣

Published by Audible, 7hrs+, 1700 yen

Pros: great story, easy to get into, fantastic narration, culturally important

Cons: archaic language, not free, can lead to talking to oneself

Overall: Great stuff

available from iTunes Store Japan, Rakuten, Listen Japan, OnGen 

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ビールの話 Talking Drunk Podcast

Like beer? Study Japanese? Want to combine the two? The ビールの話-talking drunk- podcast is just a guy sampling different beers and talking about them - that's it. There's a bit of small talk about the weather too but basically just a beer-fueled monologue. For example, Episode Four deals with Kirin's autumn beer 秋味 (あきあじ), 一番搾り（いちばんしぼり and Classic Lager. What makes it a good resource (besides the subject matter) is that the podcaster, Kodaredera, is easy to understand and he is always covering similar ground (colour, taste etc) so there is a good amount of repetition. Listen up and soon you too will be able to say more than simply "ビールが好きです！”. In fact if you plan ahead you could buy the same beer that Kodaredera is drinking and drink along to the episode, providing even more context (taste, smell) for your learning.

There are only four episodes on iTunes at the moment so fingers crossed that Koderedera keeps drinking on the job. The companion blog is here. For intermediate learners and up. Be warned - the beer sounds effects are seductive and if you are not drinking when you start listening you probably will be by the end.

Mayumi K's Osaka dialect 大阪弁 Japanese Podcast

Don't let the full title fool you: "Osaka dialect 大阪弁 Japanese lesson in English" - Mayumi K's podcast is fully bilingual, with Mayumi speaking in Osaka-ben and then repeating the words in English. Along the way she also throws in vocab explanations and speaking tips. At 5 minutes a serve the podcast is a good length for repeated listens. The level is intermediate and it is a nice touch that Mayumi doesn't make concessions in her speech but zooms along at normal speed. Easy on the ears, useful content and full scripts on the accompanying website. Even if you aren't keen on speaking the Kansai dialect you should at least get accustomed to its features - who knows - you may even start enjoying manzai. Recommended.

Tags

learning Japanese | podcast

3 Yen: Learn Japanese Podcast

Tae Kim of 3Yen (see his interview here) has been running free introductory Japanese lessons using Skype. The lessons have been available on the 3Yen website for download as mp3s (plus notes) but now Tae has now made these lessons available as podcasts via iTunes. On the technical side there is still a fair bit of background noise to clean up but the content is solid and for beginners the podcast is a great way to get to grips with the language. Tae Kim is a stern taskmaster - in Beginner Lesson 3 he doesn't let even slight intonational defects slide past without jumping on them and beating them into shape - something the students should be overjoyed about because the average Japanese listener would problem let the error go, thus denying the learner the chance to improve. Besides the lessons Tae has also included as a podcast a conversation with two friends under the title "So many ways to say 'say' !" in which he discusses casual forms of "言う” and gets to strut his J-speech which is very natural and idiomatic. Almost all in Japanese and perfect for intermediate listeners.

Tags learning Japanese

Flash listening practice

Great listening practice for beginners - Richard Graham, of GenkiEnglish.com, has just uploaded some Flash animations dealing with amounts of money, left/right/up/down and north/south/east/west. Very simple stuff and amusing too - listen for all the different ways the chirpy female Japanese voice tells you off for getting an answer wrong! (I picked the wrong answer a dozen times just to hear her tell me "dame!")

Tags learning Japanese | Japanese for beginners

Japanese listening practice for people living outside Japan

Think that you have to live in Japan to get good at Japanese? Crap! Didn't you read the Tae Kim interview? Here's a quick example of the kinds of things those of you learning Japanese outside Japan can do to increase the amount of Japanese you are exposed to every day:

• Fire up your computer and listen to the NHK News as you eat breakfast: 10 minutes

• Grab your iPod. Jump in the car/on your bike/on the train/on the bus and listen to 2 or 3 episodes of the Learn Japanese podcast as you head to work/school: 30 minutes

• Lunchtime. Go to the Yomiuri Shimbun website and read the Japanese news online using rikaichan: 30 minutes. Then go outside - you need the exercise. Go for a walk for half an hour, listening as you go to the Yomiuri News podcast.

• Go home. You are probably tired after work/school but try not to fall asleep on the bus. Keep yourself awake by listening to Japanese music, say Orange Range: 30 minutes.

• Get home. Listen to the afternoon version of the NHK News: 10 minutes.

• Rent a Japanese DVD. Turn the subtitles off. Watch it. 120 minutes.

Total listening time: 230 minutes (give or take a few minutes because the Learn Japanese podcast has English commentary)

Total reading time: 30 minutes (I am focusing on listening, but reading the news will reinforce your comprehension of the news you listen to)

Notes:
1. This is by no means exhaustive - please add lots of suggestions to the comments section.
2. I am assuming you have an iPod and an internet connection. Then again if you don't have an internet connection I doubt you'll be reading this......If you don't have an iPod.....Christmas is only 8 months away.
3. I am assuming you don't have a significant other who is Japanese. If you do, you could easily add a couple more hours to your tally.

Tag learning Japanese | self learning | study Japanese

365日物語 Podcast

365日物語 (365 Days of Stories - my translation) is a series of three minute readings from the book of the same name. Each episode ties into a historical event linked to the same date - I listened to episodes about Mary Shelley's publication of Frankenstein, Churchill's take on the Iron Curtain and how Franklin Roosevelt was never photographed in his wheelchair. Very easy on the ears, especially on multiple listenings - the narrator's almost imperceptible lisp reminds me of the endearing Atsushi Ito from Densha Otoko. Lots of great vocab and if you are not careful you may even learn something about history too. Intermediate and above.

Tags learning Japanese | podcast

mp3japan

Is your audio cupboard looking bare? You may be interested in this cache of listening goodies. mp3japan is an archive of mp3 files from the NHK audio series "Basic Japanese for You" and "Brush Up Your Japanese" which are only available in streaming form on the NHK site. 100 and 50 episodes respectively, 3-4Mb per episode. Knock yourself out.

Tags learning Japanese | NHK | mp3 | Japanese lessons