I stopped learning Japanese in a classroom about three years ago, with passing N4 being my biggest achievement. Since then, I’ve been occasionally doing my Anki reviews and trying to read and listen from time to time.
As a molecular biologist, I was thrilled to find a couple of great thematic podcasts: Researchat.fm and 研エンの仲. A game-changer for me, though, was Nihongo Con Teppei, which I could actually understand.
The problem with the first two podcasts, which are not designed for Japanese learners in any way, is that while I’ve started to pick up some nouns and phrases over time, I can almost never, for the life of me, grasp the meaning of entire sentences. I can tell they’re discussing a specific topic, but the overall gist almost always eludes me.
Does anyone have advice on how to improve comprehension? I feel like verbs are the trickiest part to understand…
Watch videos with Japanese captions. Expect this to be a lot more like homework than enjoying a video. Be ready to pause the video and look up words regularly. Keep a notebook of words you’ve been learning.
That helped me a lot.
Another thing that helped me a lot was reading / listening to Breaking into Japanese Literature. This is not niche like you are looking for, but it really helps with listening comprehension.