I wanted to share something I have been doing lately. I'm not sure how much I've stressed this but for me It's painfully obvious how much I've been saying I'm into Hey Say Jump lately right? I've been listening to their radio shows on YouTube for a few days already. That and 嵐の二宮和也の Bay Storm. There are no English translations, so I am semi forced to know what words are for what they really are. I try to get the sense of the conversations and I feel like I've been kinda getting better at it. I don't know maybe my vocabulary is getting better? I hope so. I'm going to do grammar lessons later tonight, but now I feel like challenging myself to listen/read radio shows. I don't know maybe this actually lets me focus better on the language rather than TV Shows like I used to. I'm more focused on the shows themselves rather than what they are saying, so I guess this is better? I don't also depend on English texts but Japanese texts, so maybe my kanji reading would also improve? I know I've been telling other students about it but I still want to share. For me learning Kanji is really essential and something important when learning Japanese. These radio shows are helping me so I recommend trying them for my friends who want to learn Japanese! :D Also a student of mine recommended to have bilingual news! I recommend this too but unlike the radio shows on YouTube, you can't see any texts. So you might tend to listen to it a lot more than you would. hmmm I think I might need to explain this a bit?

When I listen to radio shows on YouTube, as much as possible a try to read and listen at the same time, but sometimes there are texts that I feel like I can read, so before the member who gets to say the script I pause it first and try to read myself. I kind of reward myself if I hear them say the same thing as my guess. I also can write down exactly what they say and don't have to worry too much about getting the kanji wrong because it's right in front of me and I can somehow do furigana if I'm not familiar with the kanji I just wrote. For grammar? I'm actually trying to learn how to express, want, wish, need, command, requests etc recently so it also kind of give me clues on how to express those. I feel like I'm lucky if I can spot them. Or more like I make myself try to notice them. I really wish I can hold my own when trying to have conversations in Japanese. すごく2019年に日本に行きたい。I hope by then I can have normal conversations. Next year really! I will aim for JLPT! ೕ(`･୰･´) がんばります

ーメイコ