I had an American friend when I was back at university in Sendai that loved his audio books. While working in the clean room and processing his devices, he'd be in his own world listening to whatever audio book in his iPod. I never really understood audio books back then because I read much faster compared to then I could listen and I would get irritated by listening at the pace of the speaker.
Fast forward 3 years, I started listening to a few audio books while exercising, riding my bike and while on the train. The lack of having a (sometimes) large, heavy book with me was definitely a good thing, because I had less heavy things to carry around with me and I'd be learning during times when I had nothing else to do, which means time productively spent.
An audio book can take about 6 hours to listen to (about 1 hour/chapter) but it isn't bad considering that for a normal commute to Tokyo takes about 1 hour one way meaning that I can finish 1/3 of a book just on a trip out to Tokyo and that doesn't include the time for me while walking around. The other nice thing about listening to audio books is that I find the information content from books to be much more nourishing as the topics covered in books are covered with greater depth compared to what you generally find on the internet. The only disadvantage for audio books is that books discussing complicated math or needs graphs to explain ideas becomes very hard to comprehend, so topics that do not require a lot of "rigor" are usually good to listen to. Hopefully I'll find some good Japanese audio books to further develop my Japanese skills.
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