I listen to a lot of podcasts in English, and I’ve been trying to find good, interesting podcasts in Japanese as well. Audiobooks are also good.
I found すずめの戸締り, but I’d love to hear about other resources that people have found.
I really like Japanese with Shun (on Spotify, I don’t know about other platforms?) and also Comprehensible Japanese (here on youtube) which has lots of free content, also a dedicated site with extra material for Patreon supporters.
Shun’s good cause he speaks slow enough without being annoying, and enunciates quite well.
Basically the same for Comprehensible Japanese! Though these are extra nice since there’s an extra modality (namely video) which she uses so that you can continue listening with context.
If you’re at an intermediate or higher level, I really like listening to NHK radio dramas, like ＦＭシアター for slice-of-life dramas and 青春アドベンチャー for more genre-based stories so the stories and settings are way more varied.
What’s nice is if one drama is too hard to follow, you can just try another. The difficulty varies widely, as some are just set in everyday settings and usual casual language, while others can have more anime-type language, and others are set in the past so can use more formal or pseudo-archaic Japanese. You can usually find one that’s appropriate to your current level.
I used VPN to listen to them but I haven’t tried recently but I assume it still works. I found a huge archive of them on YouTube and downloaded them before the channel got deleted so I’ve just been going through those. People will still often upload them to YouTube but they’ll eventually get copyright stricken and taken down, but you can usually find some. You just have to keep checking every week as people will just post them to new accounts. Or just google. You can find links to other sources.
TBS’s ラジオ図書館 series is also one of my favorites, but it is no longer being made. They are older radio dramas from the 80s and 90s. I really like old-school vibe, often dealing with mysteries or sci-fi. If you google ラジオ図書館, you should be able to find some video uploads of the radio dramas.
For audiobooks, 鳥さん学級 has a playlist of 朗読 (read aloud) short stories. Unlike other 朗読 channels, he posts the text on the screen so you can read as listen to him narrate it. It’s a good way to expose yourself to older authors.
フリーアナウンサーしまえりこの朗読読み聞かせ is also good. She’s a former NHK announcer and she’ll also include the text in her videos as she reads.