hi i'm alivia and today i want to talk about some of my favorite japanese youtube channels that i've
been using to practice my listening comprehension i have a really wide range of youtube channels
that i want to talk about today and of course these are only a handful of youtube channels
there are so many out there that are so great for practicing your listening comprehension so
if there's any that you really like to use that i don't mention today please let us know down in the
comments so that we can all share our resources. in another video i talked about some podcasts that
i really like to use for listening comprehension but when you're first starting out it can be hard
to use podcasts because you're not getting that visual cue to help you understand what's going
on. using youtube videos is also really great because it will usually just be someone sitting
there and talking to you using normal speech patterns. it's not going to be an actor who's
going really over the top and speaking in a way that isn't really natural day to day. so i find
youtube is kind of the best of both worlds between watching tv shows in japanese and podcasts because
you're usually going to get more regular speech than you would from a tv show and you're getting
those visual cues which you wouldn't get from a podcast. so if you haven't started using youtube
as a part of your study routine to practice your listening comprehension i highly recommend that
you add it to your repertoire and let's get into those recommendations. so let's start out with
the more beginner friendly youtube channels and the first one that i want to recommend
is comprehensible japanese. now this is by far the best absolute beginner japanese channel
that i have found so far because the woman speaks very simple japanese uses a lot of repetition and
sticks to a very specific topic in each video. so how it works is there will be a woman who's
speaking to you and it will be a voiceover while she is drawing on a whiteboard. so there might be
a video that is about different types of fruits and she'll talk about the different fruits and
draw them out so that you know which fruit she's talking about and it's just a really great way
to pick up on new vocabulary because for every new word that she introduces she will draw out for you
so that you know what she's talking about. so it is a really great resource for absolute beginners
because even if you don't understand anything that she is saying you will still understand what
story she is trying to tell because she will be drawing it out for you. my second recommendation
is japanese immersion with asami and it's really great because it is basically her holding a
tutoring session with another student you'll get to see them having really simple conversations
with each other sometimes she will tell a story to the student and then ask comprehension
questions and have the student try to answer in japanese. so it kind of feels like you're
in your own tutoring session and then you also get to see the student trying to understand and
trying to respond back to her and then you can also kind of pretend that you are that student
and see if you can answer the questions yourself. she also has some videos where she uses puppets
and is very repetitive and tells a very simple story so those are really great to get used to
listening to the language and hearing the same words over and over again. that is another
really great channel for beginners. my third recommendation for beginners is not technically
a youtube channel and it is peppa pig in japanese. so if you haven't heard of it peppa pig is this
cartoon for children and it's available in a lot of different languages including japanese and if
you check out the channel they actually have a live stream that is just always playing peppa
pig in japanese over and over and over again. so that's really great to put on in the background
if you just want to be listening to japanese a lot. because it's a children's show you can
kind of follow along what is happening even if you don't understand what they're saying as yet
because there's a lot of visual cues there's a lot of repetition so that's a great resource if
you're just starting out and just trying to get in a lot of quality content for your listening
comprehension. another great channel to check out is called benjiro beginner japanese and it is by
an american who speaks japanese at a pretty high level and he basically just skype calls people who
speak japanese and records their conversations and a really great thing about it is that while he is
talking to the other person he will have a little word document that is open on the screen and if
the other person or himself says a word that is not that common that he thinks that a beginner
probably wouldn't understand and wouldn't know what it meant he quickly will type out the word
in either romanji or hiragana and then he'll write what that definition is in english. so that is
a really great resource because they are talking at a slower pace and are pretty aware
that beginners are watching the videos and are trying to use really simplified language and then
his annotations on the screen are super helpful because i find whenever i'm watching something
with a english translation subtitle on the bottom it's really hard for me to not just read the
entire thing even if i understand what's going on and then i'm kind of cheating myself because
i'm just turning my brain off and not listening to the japanese and instead i'm just reading the
sentence so i really like that he doesn't do that and instead just writes just what that one word
is that might be difficult and then writes the translation because for me that is exactly what
i want i only want to know those one or two words that i didn't understand i don't want to see what
the entire sentence was. he doesn't upload anymore unfortunately but there is a pretty big bank
of videos on his channel and they're all around just under an hour long so that is a really
great resource to check out. now moving up to some more intermediate level youtube channels my first
recommendation is onomappu. now you've probably already heard of this channel because it is super
popular amongst japanese learners and for a really great reason. he talks very clearly he's very easy
to understand he doesn't use too complicated of language and basically in each episode he will
cover a different word of onomatopoeia in japanese so he'll just explain what it means,
when it's used, he'll go over some maybe stories that use that word in context. he has subtitles in
Japanese, English, and i think a few other languages as well so that's a really great
resource to check out if you haven't already. my next recommendation in the more intermediate level
is called moshi moshi yusuke and that basically means hello yusuke and it's a really great channel
it's basically a man who wears a gopro on his chest and just walks around town and just
narrates what he's doing. sometimes he'll meet up with friends and have conversations with them. he
hard subtitles all of his videos in japanese and english so while you're watching he will have
what he's saying in japanese and below what he's saying in english so that you can follow along
if there's a word that you didn't catch you can quickly look at the screen and see what it says
some of his videos only use hiragana and some of them also use kanji with the furigana on top
it's kind of a mixed bag there. it's a really great resource especially if you find the more
beginner materials too easy for you but you still are missing a word here or there
and really would benefit from having those subtitles right on screen for you it's also
really cool just to see like what city life is like in japan you kind of just get to follow along
in his life it's kind of like a daily vlog type thing but he is talking a lot he's using pretty
basic language he takes a lot of pauses in between his words so that it's not too fast so that's
another really great recommendation. now my final recommendation in the more intermediate level is
by a youtuber that i actually used to watch a lot in english and she just started a new channel that
is in japanese so that's really exciting and it is by a woman named mayuko and she is a japanese
american who lives in california and she's a software developer and she speaks japanese. so
she just started this channel and only has a few videos out right now but basically she just talks
about her life she talks about what it's like to be a software developer and she also subtitles all
of her videos so she has the japanese subtitles hard captioned on the bottom of the screen so you
can read along with what she's saying so that's another really cool resource that i've really
been enjoying because i already used to watch her when she was doing english videos and now i get to
also watch her doing her japanese videos so that's been really fun for me. so that's someone that you
should definitely check out. and finally i have a more advanced youtube channel that might be a
bit hard if you're first starting out but it's still really great practice just to hear that
natural speech that isn't geared towards beginners and this channel is actually one that one of you
guys recommended to me and i've been really loving it so thank you so much for recommending it and it
is called archipel i think is how you say it and it is basically a youtube channel that does all
these mini documentaries about japanese artists and creatives and they kind of just interview them
about their creative process the kind of works that they're working on and what their inspiration
was and it's just really interesting to listen to, it's really well done, it's very high quality.
it is a channel that is made for japanese speakers so it might be a little bit hard to follow along
because they aren't oversimplifying their language for the benefit of beginners they're just talking
normally. but i think it's still really great practice to listen to things like that to get used
to it because eventually you are going to have to reach into harder material and challenge yourself
another really great benefit of this channel is that it is subtitled in Japanese ,English,
french, spanish-- i can't remember everything off the top of my head but it is available in
so many languages. i will say though don't try to rely on subtitles too heavily because
your brain will kind of tune out the japanese and just focus on what it is you're reading
just use them as a supplemental resource to check your understanding to get the most benefit try to
do japanese subtitles or no subtitles at all but i know when you're first starting out it can be
a bit overwhelming so the option is there if you need a little bit of help listening comprehension
is really a skill and you're going to have to practice it a lot to get better at it
so even if you are just starting out japanese and it feels a bit overwhelming i really challenge you
to take the plunge and just try listening to it and see what you get out of it really it's just
going to take you putting yourself out there and trying it over and over again until it clicks it's
not something that you can study and memorize a bunch of words and then just be able to understand
it really takes you actually listening to language getting your brain used to hearing
the sounds getting used to the patterns the intonation and over time you'll get better
and better and your brain will kind of absorb all of that knowledge until you can understand it. so
definitely after watching this video go and check out some of those channels that i mentioned also
to make it easier for you guys i took all the channels i talked about today and put them
on my youtube channel page if you go along the top bar there should be a tab that says channels and
i have a big bank of all the youtube channels i talked about today and some others that are really
great for listing comprehension so if you're ever in a rut and you don't know what you want
to listen to you can go there i will continually be adding to it whenever i find something new.
if you have any recommendations of your own please let us know down in the comments. i'm
always looking for new channels to check out and i will definitely add them to my master list so
that everyone else can find them really easily as well. if you found this video useful make sure you
give it a thumbs up thank you so much for watching and that is all for today and i'll see you soon!