048 How To Use This Podcast

In this episode, I'll be taking a step back and making an introduction episode again. I'll be talking about Quantity vs. Quality, and also about how listening to a podcast can help your English! As always, I'll be mixing in personal stories from my life, and everything will be at a "Kuli English Level" which means an intermediate level.

Bookmark Chapters:

00:00 Start
05:33 Quality vs. Quantity
22:06 Preview of Episode 2: Going to a bunch of wrong hospitals in Japan

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to Kuli English podcast. It's me, your host, Chris. So this is episode 48, but if it's your very first time listening to this podcast, like you haven't listened to any of the previous episodes, that's totally fine. 

Um, I'm going to make sure that this episode is going to be very friendly for even if you've listened to no other previous episodes. And, uh, I, I just wanted to make a more recent, like self introduction video because the episode one that I had, um, I don't think it's bad, but it's from a long time ago. It was from last year. 

And, uh, so I just want to make sure that if somebody's trying out this podcast, I do think when you try out a podcast, it's really good to start from the most recent episode. So not episode one, but whatever episode that they uploaded most recently, usually that's the one that I usually try to listen to. Uh, so this one, I can make it kind of more friendly. 

And then hopefully if you like it, then you can continue listening. And if you don't like it, it's totally fine. You shouldn't listen.

If you don't like it, you shouldn't listen. Um, and so in this episode, I'm going to be talking about English tips. Uh, and in particular, like how can you use this podcast to help you learn English? And then also I'll do like, you know, a little bit of like self introduction stuff. 

So I'll tell you about like, you know, like where I was born, uh, where I live now. And then, uh, you know, what is my background with teaching English and stuff like that. So I can tell you that right now, actually. 

Uh, so I was born in the US and I was, I was raised in the US too. So I lived all my life in the US until, until three years ago, uh, when I moved to Japan. And then, so in Japan, then, you know, eventually I got fluent in Japanese. 

So my best language is English by far, and then Japanese. And then also I can speak some Chinese, but I'm not actually that good at it. Um, and, uh, also I should also mention that like, after I came to Japan, like I stopped working as a software engineer.

So for five years, I worked at Google as a software engineer that was like writing code and stuff, and then talking about code with people. And then, uh, I basically completely changed jobs. And then in Japan, I've been an English teacher. 

So like, I meet with people all sorts of different ages. So sometimes kids and sometimes adults, and then they all have different goals, right? So like some people are like, Oh, I want to, I want to like take something called the Eiken, which is like an English test to get into a college. So you have to like take an English test to see how good your English is. 

And then you can use that to get into a Japanese college where they don't speak any English at all. It's kind of weird. Uh, and then some people, they, I don't know, want to like be able to speak English with foreigners. 

So foreigners to Japan, uh, meaning like anyone that's not from Japan and like, they want to be able to speak English so that they can like have conversations with them. And then, uh, you know, there's kids too. And kids always have like all sorts of goals. 

Like I asked them like, what's your goal? And they'll say like, Oh, I want to eat pasta. And it's like, it's not really what I'm asking, but you know, kids are kind of kids and you don't really know. And, um, I, I used to teach like at a conversation cafe. 

I've worked like at a bar kind of place. And then I've also, I used to teach Fortnite. So if you don't know what Fortnite is, you don't have to know, but Fortnite is like an online game where you're like, you shoot people, you shoot a bunch of people. 

And then if you, you know, shoot a lot of people, then you win. And then if you like get shot, then you lose. But I used to play Fortnite with the Japanese kids. 

And then like, I have to talk to them in English and then they respond to me in Japanese and I have to say, no, no, no, let's say that in English. And then I'm like a human translator. But anyways, um, that's like the short little introduction about myself. 

I tried to make it a bit more interesting than like the normal one that I normally give. I can also give that one, but it's kind of really boring. It's like, hi, my name is Chris and I'm an English teacher in Japan. 

And then I like pause and I say, in my free time, I play guitar and I record a podcast. It's like really boring. That's the same introduction. 

The funny thing is anyone who teaches languages. So it doesn't have to be like English teachers, but anyone who teaches any language, for example, like a Japanese teacher or like a German teacher, any language teacher knows that you have to do the self introduction so many times. And that is like so boring and tiring. 

Uh, so I guess what I try to do is I always try to make it a bit more interesting. Um, so then I gave you that story. I talked about like the Fortnite kids and I also, what talk about, I don't know. 

I have a lot of confidence in cooking curry and, uh, what else? Um, I also like karaoke and, and, and like lying to people. So anyways, maybe that's enough. Um, as always in this podcast, what happens is in the introduction, I talk about some stuff like a little bit, and I talk about what we're going to talk about as in like, I introduced the topic, which is going to be how to use this podcast to get better at English. 

That is the main topic of this podcast episode. And then after I do the introduction, then we take a short little music break where I play some music that I recorded a long time ago on my guitar. And then I actually come back and start telling stories and stuff. 

So we're at that point now. So let's take a short little break. And the while I take this short little break, you have like, I don't know, like 10 seconds to do whatever you want to like take a short little break. 

And then those are like really good points for if you weren't really listening, you can tune in for the next section. You don't have to rewind. If you didn't really understand all of it, it's fine. 

You can do whatever you want. You can like go back and try to listen to it and try to understand, or you can just ignore it and say, nah, it's fine. I'm just going to try to understand from here on out. 

That's totally fine too. But as always, what we're going to do is we're going to take a short little break here and then I'm going to come back and then I'm going to tell you more about how to use this podcast to get better at English. 

All right, so let's go ahead and get started with the real contents of this episode. 

So the real meat of this episode, the real stuff that I want to talk to you about. But first, I want to talk to you about quality versus quantity. Okay. 

So quality is like how good something is. So for example, like a high quality jacket, a low quality jacket, it means like a good jacket or like a kind of cheap jacket. And the quantity is like how many there are. 

So for example, um, maybe like, I don't know, three jackets versus like one jacket. And let me give you a more concrete example. So for example, suppose that, um, it's your birthday or something.

So, you know, happy birthday. And, uh, I'm going to give you something. Okay. 

So I want to give you something. And that something is I'm going to give you one of two choices. I'm going to give you two choices and I want you to pick one. 

And so in my mind, I'm thinking like, okay, so I've got a budget of like, I don't know, let's say a hundred dollars and I'm going to give this person a gift. It's actually a pretty big gift, but that hundred dollars, I'm going to ask you, which of these two ways do you want to spend it? Do you want the one with high quality or do you want the one with high quantity? And the one with high quality, as an example, it's like, I'm going to take you to a nice like restaurant. I'm going to take you to a nice, fancy sushi restaurant, and then I'm going to buy you a meal and then, you know, we can eat it and you can order whatever you want. 

And then I'm going to pay for it, but you only get to do it once. Okay. And after this, there's no more presents. 

It's just that. Okay. So that is a high quantity, low quality, uh, sorry, high, high quality, low quantity restaurant, because you only get to do it once, but it's really high quality. 

And then now suppose that there's the second choice. Okay. So I promised you, I was going to give you two choices. 

So the first choice is high quality restaurant. And the second option is high quantity restaurant. Okay. 

So I promise I'm going to get back to talking about English in a second, but I give you these two options. And the second option is instead of taking you to like a fancy sushi restaurant, I take you to like an okay sushi restaurant, and then you can order whatever you want there. And then I'm going to pay for it, but you can do that like three times. 

Okay. And it's because like the money that I have in my mind, I have a budget in my mind of let's say a hundred dollars and like a fancy sushi restaurant, a fancy sushi meal in like the Bay area or like in California, it's probably like a hundred dollars. It's pretty expensive. 

And then if I take you to like some okay, like sushi restaurant, that's not super expensive. Then probably, I think $30 is probably a good estimate. So it's actually a realistic option. 

If I only have $100, then there are these two choices. Do you want the high quality choice or do you want the high quantity choice? Do you want the one with really good quality or do you want the one that just has a bunch? Because, you know, if you go to the sushi place, like three times, you can eat a bunch and, you know, maybe you want that. And so, um, you know, if I gave you this question, like nobody would say, oh, there's a right answer. 

The right answer is, of course you have to go to this one or of course you have to go to that one. And it's because everybody has the different preferences. And actually, so now I'm going to bring it back to talking about English, but I think learning English is very similar. 

A lot of people have different preferences of like, you know, how they like to study and what works for them. And it's not only like quality versus quantity, but I guess there's also style as well. So for example, some people learned a lot of English from watching TV. 

There's this one TV show called friends, which a lot of people like watch. And then it's a really, really long show. And I've watched like a little bit of it. 

I don't think it's actually that interesting, but you know, like some people have watched a lot of that and they say that they studied a lot of English successfully from that show. And so that's like a lot of watching TV. And then some people do a lot of reading. 

So they like, I don't know, read like the entire Harry Potter series in English. And then they read it from like beginning to end. And then they do it a second time reading from beginning to end. 

And then I, I find it hard to like reread books that I've already read, but you know, whatever works for them. Right. So some, some of these people, they watch TV. 

Some of these people, they read books and some other people, they like, maybe they just study from like a textbook and they study from a textbook because that's what they did in school. And then they just do that. And that's what works for them. 

But I think the truth is it's kind of hard to know like what works best for you because people have experiences of doing stuff, but they don't actually know if it's like actually right for them. So for example, the person who watched a lot of friends, like they may have watched a lot of friends, but they didn't try reading Harry Potter. They didn't try like, you know, taking these like special weird classes that they found online or something like that. 

And so, because in my opinion, I think nobody really knows like what really high quality lessons are. Um, I think the best answer is instead of picking high quality, you want to pick the option that gives you really high quantity. So you want to pick the option that you can do a lot of. 

So if you watch friends, if you watch like the English show, and then like, it's pretty easy for you to like watch it for a long time. And then while you're watching it, your mind is kind of thinking about English. I think that's good enough. 

Okay. So it's not, it's not like the best quality, but what really matters is it's a lot of quantity. So if you like are listening to English a lot, that's also good. 

And then if you're reading a lot, that's also good. Like anything, anything is good. Okay.

Anything is fine. People are going to tell you like, uh, for when you learn Japanese, uh, for example, people say like, Oh, if you watch anime, you're going to learn weird Japanese, you know, because they say like weird stuff, like kisama, omae, or they have like all these like weird things in anime and people say, Oh, you're not supposed to like, you're not supposed to copy that because then you're going to sound weird in real life. But the truth is in my experience in Japan, like the people who are usually the people who are really, really good at Japanese, usually they have consumed a lot, a lot of quantity of something.

So of anime or like some of the things. And so some people who watched a lot of anime, they get like really good at Japanese. And yeah, maybe sometimes they say like a couple of weird things, but the end product is because they consume so much quantity, like they get to a pretty high level, higher than someone who, you know, tried to study a little bit and then studied hard for like a week and then they quit. 

So I think the most important thing is just quantity and like continuing to do it. And so as I talk about this, let me also talk about, I guess, my process of learning Japanese. So for me, um, when I moved to Japan, like three years ago, um, I couldn't really order food or like, I can order food if there's like an English menu or like a, an iPad or something, or like touch, because you can always use Google translate to like, you know, take a picture of the thing and then it'll like translate it for you. 

And then I don't have, I don't need Japanese. Right. But then sometimes like, uh, the scariest thing is like you go to a place and I thought you can order it via a tablet, but actually like, it's a person who comes and it's like, (speaks Japanese) or something like that. 

And then they ask you like, oh, can I, can I take your order? And then that's, that's when I get nervous. Right. So I'm like sweating. 

I'm like, um, um, I don't even know what the word chuumon means, which means order. But, um, so, uh, for learning Japanese, I tried a lot of different things. So I took a lot of different private lessons with different teachers. 

And then the thing that I think, uh, the one thing that I think stood out to me the most was listening to a Japanese podcast. And so I talk about this podcast a lot because I'm a big fan of it and you don't have to listen to it, but you know, if you're learning Japanese, you can listen to it. It's called the Yuyu's Japanese Podcast. 

And then, uh, there's the Japanese guy and he kind of talks in like an easy to understand way in Japanese. And I didn't really understand all of it, but it was really easy to listen to a lot of it. And there's like, there's like multiple reasons for why it was easy to listen to.

Number one, like the way that he talks is like easy to understand. And then also number two, I guess if I didn't understand, like it wasn't stressful. Okay. 

So if I like went to like a, an event and then like, I'm like talking to people in Japanese and I have to work really hard on using my Japanese that I'm not yet comfortable with, then that might be really hard. It might be hard because I don't want to mess up. It's like awkward to meet people for the first time. 

And then sometimes I might feel like stressed or I might feel like tired. I want to go home, but listening to a podcast, it's like really easy to fit into your life. Okay. 

So, um, like I would listen to the podcast while I did laundry. I would listen to the podcast, like before I went to sleep. And I'm not saying that you have to do it, but I'm saying like, I think a lot of people will find podcasts easy to listen to, um, like, and, and fit into their life. 

So even when you're like going to the bathroom or like getting ready in the mornings, like a lot of the times you're actually just kind of available and maybe you're busy doing something, but you're not 100% busy. Okay. 100% busy meaning like you're really focused on work. 

You can't listen to music. You have to really focus on work, but a lot of our lives, um, in, in, you know, like everyday life, it's like kind of boring and it's boring in a good way because it's like calm and stable. So like, if I'm like eating something alone, um, and I'm not talking to anyone, then, you know, I could be looking at my phone or I could like, you know, put in some earphones and listen to a podcast. 

So I always thought that the Japanese podcast was a really good way for me to learn Japanese. And it's not the only thing. Okay. 

So just listening to that podcast does not make you like, like fluent in the language. So just listening to that Japanese podcast was definitely not enough for me. I still had to go to Japanese school. 

I still had to take like Japanese lessons and I still had to experience making so many mistakes in Japanese before it got to a point where I'm like happy with it. But, um, that's why I made this podcast, right?

So like after I heard that Japanese podcast, I was thinking, oh wait, I wonder if there's like an English version of this. And there are so many podcasts and YouTubes and like lots of different stuff, lots of different content for learning English. But something that I noticed was there were like out of like, you know, the 10 or 15 or so that I tried like inspecting, I tried to like listen to it and think like, oh, I wonder if this is one that I can recommend to my friend. 

Uh, because my friend was asking me like, Hey, what do you recommend that I listened to for an English podcast? And then, uh, I couldn't actually find a one that I thought I was happy with. And it's because most podcasts, they are either, they're, they're usually like too easy. If they're too easy, then it's kind of boring. 

All right. And so the easy podcasts, they usually go like, hello, today we will be talking about the word can, for example, can you come to my house tomorrow? Can you come to my house tomorrow? Please repeat after me. Can you come to my house tomorrow? And then it's like, these are like kind of really boring. 

So you can imagine, you know, if you're like really like, you know, just doing normal everyday stuff, let's say I'm like doing the laundry, I'm washing the dishes or something. Uh, then, you know, I want to listen to something that's a little bit interesting. So even though it's easy to understand and it's good for me because it's not that interesting, like I I'm just, I don't really want to do it. 

And then there's the opposite extreme, which is like, if you're listening to something that's too hard and so stuff where people are just talking about their everyday stuff, I think a really good example is, um, my friend sent me this other podcast and there are these guys from California and they just talk about like random topics. And sometimes it's, it's usually like interesting topics, like dating stuff. So they're like, oh, okay.

So when you date someone, like how tall do they have to be before you date or something like that? And then, um, I guess like the way they talk and the topics that they talk about, that's fine. It's interesting, but it's just hard to understand. I think for most people, unless you're at a level where like you're pretty high level, if you're pretty high level, then you can probably listen to that. 

And that's fine. But, um, I didn't find any like good, like intermediate level podcasts. So I want something that like is pretty interesting, but, um, at the same time, it's not like too hard. 

And then, so because I couldn't find any of those, I thought, okay, well, why don't I go ahead and make one? So then like, you know, two years ago or three years ago, like I started making a podcast and it was my old podcast. It was called Chestnut English podcast. Uh, but then, you know, after a year or two, I decided, okay, actually there are a couple of different things I want to change. 

I want to make it really high quality. So what I did was I basically stopped making that podcast and I like took down the episodes so that people don't listen to them. And then I started making a new one, which is this podcast.

So Kuli English podcast. This is like version two of my podcast of, of like teaching English stuff. Um, so anyways, that was all to say, I think what I recommend for you is if you want to improve your English listening, then, um, what I recommend is you want to increase the quantity as much as possible. So if you like watching English TV, that's fine. Just watch a lot of English TV, watch it and make sure that you keep that feeling of, oh, this is kind of interesting. 

Or like, oh, I kind of enjoy this. Because if you don't enjoy it, like if you are only motivated by, I don't know, I want to like pass this test or something like that. Then like, as soon as that test is over, then you're not really going to continue your studying and you want to continue for a long time and continuing for a long time and consuming a lot of quantity, no matter how low the quality is, I think you'll get pretty good at it.

I, I'm just waiting for some day. Like I meet someone that's like, Hey, I played 10 games, like all in English. And I've played over like 10,000 hours of English games and I still can't speak English or something like that. 

I still have, I still haven't met someone like that, but I'm like really excited to meet someone like that. Uh, so anyways, um, to increase your quantity, what I'm trying to say is if you listen to a lot of English content, um, I think that's a pretty easy way to increase, increase your quantity. So you can use it. 

You can like listen on the train. You can listen when you're like pooping, you can listen, you know, right. As you wake up in the morning, when you're like laying around in bed, like there are a lot of small, tiny moments of time where you can like fit in something. 

And if you can do it in a way that doesn't really cost you emotional energy. So by that, I mean, like when you listen to it, it's not like tiring, it doesn't stress you out, then that's good. So then like, that's my goal with this podcast. 

I want people who are like pooping to when you're sitting and they're like, you know, pooping and they're thinking like, okay, I, uh, I'm like looking through Instagram and then they think, oh, well maybe, you know, looking through Instagram is fine. I like looking at pictures and stuff, but I'm not listening to anything. And then they're like, aha, why don't I listen to Kuli English podcast? Why don't I go ahead and try, try out this thing that he said.

And then, so you're like, you know, you run that in the background while you're pooping. And then, you know, in the podcast, it's like, hello everyone. I'm, I'm Kuli English podcast, and I'm going to teach you English or something like that. 

And then, uh, then they can take that while they scroll through Instagram. So I'm not saying that when you poop, you must study hard. You must bring your book in there or something. 

No, no, no, no. I just mean like, if there are small amounts of like areas of time, small amounts of time where you can fit in a little bit of listening, then I think a podcast is a pretty good format for that. And of course, if you like prefer something more active, then you could watch the YouTube version. 

So every single podcast episode that I have, uh, there is a YouTube version where it has the exact same contents, except you can see the recording of like my face talking. And so I'm like, you know, standing in my room, I have like my special microphone and then I'm recording. And then also on YouTube, I upload like the transcript, the transcript, meaning it has like all the subtitles and all the words. 

So then like, if you wanted to read along like subtitles, or if there was like some part where you couldn't really hear it, or you want to check, wait a minute, how do you spell this word or something? Then you can look at the subtitles. Uh, so I guess that was the really long spiel, spiel, meaning like a, like a sales pitch. Like I'm trying to tell you that this is good.

That was a long spiel of this like podcast thing. Um, but that was so long that now I need a break. So let's take a short little music break and then I'm going to come back and I'll tell you about something a bit more interesting.

All right. So, um, I talked a lot about like this podcast and how I recommend you use it, which is basically to say like, I think it's good if you want to listen to more English and then that English that you listen to, you can try to like fit it into small parts of your life where normally you wouldn't put anything in. So if you were going to eat dinner and then like scroll through some social media stuff, maybe you could listen to a podcast while you do the same thing.

And so that was all that I was trying to say. And, so to also explain this podcast a little bit, I think it's not just that I talk about studying English stuff, which I think actually might be kind of boring. And so the podcast that I like, he is a Japanese teacher and he does talk about learning Japanese and I'm interested in learning Japanese, but at the same time, the best part of this podcast is he just tells very human stories about like himself.

And so, uh, so I tried to do the same things too. Um, so I like tried to tell stories about, you know, like some of them are like mess ups in Japan. And so, um, I think, if you haven't listened to episode one or two, and like this episode is meant for those people who are just like starting out in this podcast, episode one and two tried to do that, right? So in episode one, I talked about, you know, like, oh, welcome to this podcast.

And then like, here's how I recommend you learn. And then, uh, there's episode two, which is where I talk about like one of the big failures that I had in Japan. And so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to talk a little bit about that same story.

Uh, but it's also like an updated version because, you know, I'm kind of experiencing the same thing now. But, um, I, um, in, uh, three years ago when I moved to Japan, there's something in Japanese called a Kafun Sho, which means like, if you put it into Google translate, it says like hay fever, but hay fever, dude, nobody knows what hay fever means. Nobody uses that word in the US or at least amongst all my friends.

But if you say allergies, then people will understand that. So it's a little bit less specific. Like the actual term is probably hay fever.

And if you Google it, like it'll say hay fever, but I think just allergies in general is a fine way to say it. So if, if you wanted to say, if you were Japanese and you wanted to say, ah, like I have Kafun Sho, then you would say, oh, I have allergies or I have pollen allergies and that's what it is, right? It's pollen allergies. Because like in Japan around like, you know, February, March and April, like because it starts getting warm again, what happens will all the trees they've been holding in their pollen, right? They've got their pollen and it's like, wow.

And then they just like let it all out. And then, uh, what happens is the air gets like these tiny little things called pollen, and then for a lot of people, it like makes them, it makes their nose kind of stuffy and then it makes their throat itchy. And I'm not sure if you can hear the difference, but actually I feel some of that now.

And, uh, so some people actually don't have this at all. So those people, like, even if there's tons of pollen, like they're totally fine, but that's not me, I am not fine. Okay.

So unless I take medicine, like I feel a lot of, I feel a lot of stuffy nose and then like I sniff a lot and like I have a lot of like snot like coming out of my nose, but, but when I first came to Japan and now this is going to be the start of personal story time. Okay. So I'm going to be telling you this story, which I already talked about in like episode two, but it's going to be like the short version.

And if you want to listen to more, you can actually like listen to the full episode, episode two. But, uh, so three years ago I like came to Japan and then like, I started feeling, you know, like a little bit sick. Right.

So I was like, Oh wait, why is my nose runny and like my throat itchy? And the thing is like, I've been sick before. Okay. It's not like I have never been sick in my life.

No, no, no. I've been sick a lot of times in my life. And what do you do when you're sick? Well, I guess you like, you know, you lay in bed, uh, you try to, you know, drink a lot of fluids.

So like soup and water and stuff like that. I really like coconut water. So I like try to drink more coconut water.

But, uh, so I was like not really getting better. So then I, uh, I, um, I remember about three years ago, like I, I didn't really read much Japanese and I also couldn't really speak much Japanese. So, um, I, I had a lot of trouble finding like the right place to go to.

And the real answer is you just need to go to a clinic, okay, so not a hospital, but a clinic.

And, if you go to a clinic, then you, you like talk to the doctor and you say, oh, I have, you know, the pollen allergies and the doctor will be like, okay, that's fine. Well, why don't you try taking this medicine? And then you take the medicine and then that's it. Either that, or you like, look it up yourself.

If you like Google, you know, oh, what do I do for pollen allergies? Then Google will tell you the answer. And then you can like go buy it yourself at some, you know, some like drugstore. Uh, but, but I didn't know that.

Okay. Because I just moved to Japan. And so what I did was like, okay, well, uh, I, I know how to say like hospital in Japanese.

Cause I learned it in Japanese school. It's byouin. So then I like searched in Google maps, like byouin and I'm like searching for a hospital.

And then I went to like a bunch of, a bunch of wrong hospitals. And that is like the sad or it's, it's probably funny for you, but it was sad for me at the time and a little bit embarrassing, but I went to a bunch of different, like wrong places. Like I went to this place and it was a hair loss clinic.

So hair loss is like, you know, if your hair is like, if you don't have much hair and I've never had this problem in my life, I have a lot of hair. So I actually, it like grows out to be pretty long and it's kind of annoying. But, um, I went to a hair loss clinic and because I didn't speak enough Japanese, like I basically, like I went to a bunch of different wrong places.

I went to the hair loss clinic and then I was like, I need to speak to a doctor. And they're like, what kind of hair loss product do you use? And then I was like, I don't know what that means, but I need to speak to a doctor. And then, uh, so I have all these experiences where it's like, I go somewhere and I'm like, I want to talk to a doctor, but actually it was the wrong place.

So first I went to like a hair loss clinic and then I went to like a breast cancer clinic and then breast cancer is like, usually like 99.9% is only women that have it, like men usually don't get it. But so I went to a breast cancer clinic. I went to, um, I even went to like an STD clinic.

So an STD, STDs, uh, uh, you know, it's not really an explanation for kids, but basically, you know, like if you, if you are an adult and you do a lot of like, you know, shady things with other people, uh, then sometimes you get these special, like, like sicknesses called STDs. And then for those, you have to go get checked. And then so like, uh, I went to even one of those and then when I went there, like, I didn't know that it was an STD check, uh, cause I didn't really speak or read Japanese.

So then I just like try to talk to the employee and I used Google translate a lot and it was really awkward. And so that is like the really long story and the really long chain of embarrassing events. Okay.

So it was not one embarrassing thing. It was like a whole day, probably like four or five hours of just going to hospitals and then realizing, Oh, it's the wrong one. And, um, so as I say this, I should also mention that I am also kind of grateful that I had this experience.

Grateful might be kind of a weird word, but it means like, I appreciate it. I appreciate it because making these kinds of mistakes has like made me become smarter as a person. So if I didn't do this, if I went to the clinic and then got medicine, like a normal person, then maybe I wouldn't have had all these experiences and I wouldn't have these interesting stories to tell.

And at the same time, I might make the same mistake later, but because I made all these mistakes early on mistakes or how we learn, and so, uh, it was a good experience for me overall. And in the end I did get the medicine that I needed and it wasn't painful. It was just embarrassing.

And so like, as I talk about this, I do feel like, Oh man, I can't believe I did that. It was only, it was only three years ago, but, uh, you know, we all have come a long way. So I'm sure that if you imagine, you know, three years ago, probably a lot of stuff has changed for you and, uh, also all the mistakes that you've made over the past three years.

Maybe you weren't happy to make them at the time, but mistakes are how you learn. And it's the same for language stuff too. If you are trying to speak something, some language that you're learning and then you mess up and then like a teacher fixes what you say, then it's like easier to remember.

If you get it right the first time. Uh, that's also fine, but it doesn't stick as well. Um, and this is like something that, um, like there's some research that shows that when you explain something, uh, if you start with like a misconception, misconception, meaning like something that people believe, but it's wrong.

If you start with like the wrong version and then you explain why it's wrong. And then you talk about the right version. Like usually that is like a easier to remember than if someone were to directly explain the right version.

And, uh, I don't really have a good example of that. Um, uh, but in the end, I think, uh, you know, it's going to be more quantity and more quality if you spend a bunch of time on this one thing. So anyways, uh, maybe that's, I'm not sure.

Maybe that's good enough for this episode. Um, as an introduction, the main things that I wanted to talk about are like, how can you use this podcast to study English? And the main answer is like, you know, the short answer is like, listen to this podcast while you poop or something like that. And then I also want to mention if you do not like this podcast, you do not have to listen to it.

Okay. So all of these episodes, um, like I'm trying to make interesting content, but if it's not interesting for you, that's fine, like you can listen to a different podcast, um, because my goal is not for you to listen to this podcast. It's my goal is to like help people with their English learning journey.

So if they want to like, you know, practice their English listening and they think this is something that they could do, then yeah, give it a try. And, uh, you know, if you haven't really thought that much about it, what I'd recommend is the next time you poop, listen to this podcast, and then when you finish pooping, pause it. And if you want to keep listening or you're curious, then that's, that means like I'm doing the right job.

It means I'm telling interesting stories. So then that means I'm doing the right thing. Um, but with that, that's probably a good point to end this episode.

So what I usually do is I have a couple of different sections where I talk about stuff, and then eventually in the last part, um, I like wrap things up. So to wrap it up, if you want to study English and you want to get better at listening, uh, you can listen to this podcast. And then if you think that listening will never help all the other stuff like speaking or like reading, uh, actually I think you're wrong.

So all of them, they kind of go together. If you do a lot of listening, your other skills, like they also get helped or they get boosts because as you listen to stuff, you learn new words. And, uh, sometimes I'll teach you slang and stuff like that as well.

And then, uh, you know, I also have other stories. So if you're interested in listening to that, like wrong hospital story, like I talk a lot about it in depth and that's episode 2. So you can feel free to listen to episode two, if you want to hear more about that.

But for this episode, I think that's good for like a first little mini introduction episode. And then, uh, uh, I also talked a little bit about pollen stuff, which, oh, it's honestly quite terrible, but anyways, I think that's good enough. Let's go ahead and call it a day.

So thank you so much for listening until the end of Kuli English podcast. I hope that you find it like fun or useful or ideally both. And then, uh, if you find it helpful or useful or whatever, you can feel free to subscribe or follow, but you don't have to.

Okay. So if you, if you think that following me or subscribing to me is going to give me more money, that's not true. If I wanted more money, I would go be an engineer and like, that is going to make much more money than teaching English for sure.

So, uh, if you like it, you can follow, you can support, you can share it with people, but remember my goal here is to help a bunch of people. So if you want to help people, then feel free to send it out to people that you think it'll help. Uh, but with that, thank you so much.

And I hope to see you next Tuesday. Remember, we always have new episodes release on Tuesday. So Tuesday 7 AM Japan time, that's when I launched the new episodes.

And that's the time that this episode is also going to launch. I'm actually recording it beforehand. Uh, so thank you so much.

And I hope to see you next Tuesday on Kuli English podcast.