Listen

みんなさん、こんにちは。(minna san, konnichiwa)
Hello!

One of the things that I have heard everywhere I have looked for tips on how to learn a language is this:
Listen to real people speaking the language.

I've been trying to listen to spoken Japanese a lot more lately, so I'd like to share some of the things that I try to watch and listen to. (note, pretty much all of these are from Youtube. I was going to add another site that's not Youtube, but it had been I while since I went there and so I wasn't sure if they still had as much Japanese as I remembered them having.)

First is Twin Planet Channel. I found this because of DANCEROID's leader (Ikura-san) as well as their former member Kozue-san. The talking in the videos is really fast, and I can't understand a lot of what they say, but listening to how words are said and the pace of the language has helped me a lot and I can understand more now that I could when I first started watching.

Second, ジェット☆ダイスケ (jetdaisuke). I found his channel on Youtube a long time ago thanks to another Youtuber that I follow, Ciaela. When I started watching his videos, he talked about a lot of techie stuff (computers and such which I'm interested in) and also food. I haven't had a lot of time to watch many videos on Youtube lately because of school and homework, but I think he still does a lot of that.
Since he's a guy, I like to hear how he speaks because guys and girls have differences in some of the words they use and such. I don't want to be able to only understand what girls say, I want to understand what guys say as well.

You know, Jetdaisuke and Ciaela have a whole group of friends on Youtube that I follow, so if you look at the people they make videos with or who they subscribe to (in some cases) you'd be pretty well off for listening to Japanese for a while. Just in case you don't want to go looking through their videos though, I'll put a couple of them here:
Afternoon no Hirusagari, JyuusanKaidan, mimei, PDSKabushikiGaisha.

Outside of the circle of Youtubers in Japan that I follow, there's Grace and Hannah in England who speak in Japanese quite a bit. They really inspire me to study Japanese more because they're both younger than me and already they speak Japanese so much better than I do.

This post is a lot longer than I had intended, I'm sorry it's so long! And I know that there's a lot more good online sources out there for listening materials, these are just the places I go to listen to Japanese when I have time between going to classes and homework/studying and spending time with friends.

Thanks so much for reading this! I'll write again soon!