It seems like, to me, that you go through 3 stages watching native TV shows – kind of understanding, filling the bathtub and understanding and enjoying it. Now, I can understand a great deal of the show. And I started finding myself wanting to watch it more and more. But, slowly, gradually, I started to understand it more and more. There is a part where they visit some interesting person in the Kansai area, a part where they visit all the best of a certain kind of restaurant (like curry, or ramen) and so on, you get the idea.Īt first I watched it begrudgingly, because my wife would usually sat me out of the way if I happened to block her view or ask her a question. It is a very run of the mill TV show with standard sections that play out every day. She loves a morning program called よーいどん, that is available here in the Kansai area.

Morning ShowsĪbout 3 months ago, I started watching morning TV with my wife. I personally use all of these on a daily basis and highly recommend them. There have been several times that I’ve walked away either because I got too bored or I simply became unmotivated because I didn’t feel like I was making progress or I felt like it was taking up too much of my time. I’ve been through this process a few times, trying really hard to get good at listening and getting used to native speakers this way. And chances are pretty good that they’ll be speaking like what you heard in your textbook, but they will be shortening things, cutting sentences off, and generally communicating in a very unorganized way, which is how regular people talk. However, it is daunting at first to jump in and start listening to native speaker speed conversations.

It’s important to be able to take good fast notes for these higher levels.

And drill books like the Kanzen Master series for N1, N2, N3 are invaluable for helping you to get used to how questions are asked on the test. You still have to work on some of the basics. As a matter of fact, a lot of people who have passed the higher levels of the test (N2, N1) have gotten a good amount of their listening skills from just watching TV shows.

Time and time again I have heard from readers that watching Japanese TV shows is one of the best ways to hone your listening skills.

How to watch japanese tv in us