Podcast recommendation

Japanese
#1

Currently I am studying for the N2 and my weakest ability is listening. I do know a lot of words but I’m only able to read them. That’s why I’m looking for good podcasts that actually use more intermediate words, but at the same are not too fast and overwhelming.

I did use podcasts such as Nihongo con teppei, yuyu no podcast or japanese with Noriko, but I feel like they are all using quite easy words and therefore don’t really help.

Does anyone have a good recommendation ?

1 Like
#2

4989 American Life

It’s full speed Japanese for Japanese people but still somehow feels like a bridging podcast to native content. She speaks super clearly and doesn’t slur her words or mumble much. Also, she is just an angel and puts out a complete, human-written transcript of each episode on her website explicitly for the segment of her listeners that listen for Japanese practice. If your reading is better than your listening, I think this would make it a good choice.

4 Likes
#3

A couple of food related podcasts, which I occasionally listen to:

味な副音声 ～voice of food～

今日のおいしい

1 Like
#4

This might not be helpful for N2 study but badonkadonk is so good. It’s a manzai style duo of a Japanese girl and a half American guy and they joke a lot about the differences in culture on a lot of topics. It’s quite fast and casual with a some kansai dialect so I usually watch it in video form with JP subs.

1 Like
#5

I find “the konnichwa podcast” useful and fun. There are three presenters, native English, native Japanese and bilingual. The conversation switches between English and Japanese, so when I get lost, it is possible to reset. It’s mostly just everyday conversation.

They stopped making the podcast a year ago, but there’s four? years content available…

#6

I can recommend the following if learners podcasts are becoming too easy for you:

  • KNOWフードラジオ: Food science, but surprisingly understandable.
  • 台湾の彼と日本の僕: Gay person in Taiwan talking about LGBTQ+ topics, Taiwan, but also UX design, work life etc. - doesn’t seem to be updated anymore, but I’ve only gotten to 2020 in the backlog so far.
  • Rebuild: Tech podcast, somewhat Apple centric.
  • 好きになっても良いですか？: Two women talking about a thing they recently like and sharing life updates. A bit more casual than the others.

Also a big +1 to 4989 American Life (might be a bit easier than the ones above, so it’s a great bridge).

However 味な副音声 ～voice of food～ just wasn’t for me. It’s kinda cute, but it’s the one Japanese podcast I deleted so far. Long intervals of what boils down to “美味しい！” interspersed with intricate poetic descriptions of random food items that you can’t get over here… the difficulty just fluctuates too much for me :sweat_smile: