Here's a site you can practice listening to beginner-level Japanese and enjoy watching anime at the same time.The anime depicts the daily life of university students in Canada. The Japanese used is based on Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.It's free of charge and there's no need to register.You can have fun listening to Japanese while watching anime, doing dictation, or taking comprehension quizzes in English.
- You can listen to Japanese spoken naturally, at a normal pace.
- The animation makes it easier to follow the conversations.
- The site comes with explanations in English.
- You can download the scripts for the conversations.
- This site has a smartphone version, too.
How to...
The anime is about university life in Canada.There are three main characters.
・Ren is studying Japanese at a Canadian university.She has lived in Japan before.
・Haruna is in Canada on a working holiday visa.She was already working at the local grocery store when Ren and Yuichi got jobs there.
・Yuichi is a Japanese university student studying at the same university as Ren, as an international student.
There are two types of contents, videos and lessons.
Let's first take a look at the lessons.
The Japanese used in each lesson is based on Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese.
Each lesson has dictation practice and comprehension questions.
Let's look at Lesson 8.
You can practice dictation with the video at the top and use the video below to answer comprehension questions.
Let's try the dictation.
After you start the video, dictation buttons will appear.
Use the blanks to enter the Japanese you hear, in hiragana.
Be careful because if you enter romaji or kanji, you'll get marked wrong.
Take the comprehension quiz with the other video.
You'll see some questions in English at the beginning of the video, which will help you to know what you should be paying attention to, when listening to the story.
At the end of the video, a button that says "open summary dialog" will appear.
Click it to take the quiz.
If you want transcriptions of the videos, click NIHONGO KIKUSASAIZU at the center to go back, then click VIDEOS at the top right
Click on a video, then click DOWNLOAD TRANSCRIPT, to automatically download the script in Japanese as well as the English translation, in text format.
You can also find the Japanese script below the video.
This is fun because you can learn about the daily lives of university students in Canada, through anime.
You can listen to natural Japanese in the anime, and both polite and casual forms are used here.
Even if you don't know all of the words, the anime might help you understand.
The videos are short, only about 1-2 minutes each, so you can watch them whenever you feel like it.
Don't you think this is a good site to practice your beginner-level Japanese?
This article was written based on information sent in to the eなInformation station.