JapanNewbie

Listen to Shitakiri Suzume over and over again

Posted on 17. Jan, 2011 @ 10:30 am by harvey in Books, Culture, Language, Media Views: 1,092

Shitakiri-Suzume, an Amazon MP3 Download

When you listen to a story that you know in your target language over and over again, you learn. It’s a proven fact!* So, put said story on your iPhone or iPod and listen to it on your commute, or while grocery shopping. Guaranteed results. Listening to Shitakiri Suzume (The Cut-tongue Sparrow) will improve your Japanese, and will also introduce you to some Japanese folklore that every Japanese person knows, increasing your cultural knowledge! This is a new audio-only product from TheJapanShop.com team, I checked it out, and can vouch for its awesomeness.

For $8.99 you’ll get 11 mp3s that present the Japanese knowledge locked inside Shitakiri Suzume in a variety of formats. You can also purchase each mp3 individually for just 0.99 cents. If your Japanese is beginner-intermediate and you only have $1.99 to spend, I would recommend getting the “Shitakiri Suzume in Japanese Normal Speed” MP3, and the “Line by Line Japanese and English Part 1″ MP3. This way you can hear the entire store start to finish all in native-speed Japanese, and also hear it broken down and translated line by line. Good stuff. If you’ve got a little more cash I would take a look at the audio Vocab lists.

For $8.99 cents you get…

• The story read in Japanese by a native speaker at normal speed.
• The story read alternating sentences in Japanese and English, both by native speakers.
• The story read in Japanese by a native speaker at slow speed.
• A audio vocab list in which the word or phrase is read in Japanese, and then followed by the English meaning.
• All of these are separate mp3 files so you can easily select your study method. You can also purchase them individually for $0.99 each.

All the audio is recorded by the folks at TheJapanShop.com, so if you have used their ridiculously popular Japanese Phrases App (free version) you’re going to be hearing some familiar voices!

Even if you don’t want to spend 8 bucks on the entire package, just getting the normal speed story mp3 at $0.99 is a ton of value for the price in my humble opinion! Check it out.

- Harvey

*Probably. I dunno. It worked for me anyway!