happy sunday & japanese radio

Happy Sunday! Happy Valentine's to those with valentines!

I have started to listen to Japanese radio. I have been listening to Ninomiya Kazunari's "Baystorm" and Oguri Shun's "All Night Nippon." Listening to radio shows is a lot harder than watching television for several reasons. The most obvious reason it's more difficult is that I don't have any subtitles to these radio shows. The second reason is they tend to speak faster and much more informally than on television so it's a little unfamiliar to me. Nino is much easier to understand because I've watched him not only in dramas and movies but variety show programs. So his informal speaking is actually easy for me to understand. Oguri's radio show is a lot harder to keep up with.

The radio shows are forcing me to be more active in my listening. I heard that lots of immigrants (in the past?) learned how to speak English via watching television and listening to the radio. I've watched Japanese television for the past 5 years. Now I'm upping the game a little by listening to Japanese radio programs. It's not as boring because they're not talking about complex issues and I like listening to the two actors.

While I'm pretty bad at learning formal rules (I cannot explain to you how the language structure works), I think I'm pretty good at learning things in a haphazard manner. I can pick up on things rather quickly. While I can't explain how the grammar works, I am a good listener and a good imitator. That's how I learned Korean in the beginning. Later, I forced myself to learn it in a more formal manner to improve my writing.

Lets see how this goes! I still haven't heard back whether I'm allowed to go study abroad at Waseda or not. I think a decision that would allow me to go will make me a much happier person. It will also motivate me to become more deliberate in improving my Japanese.