Shadowing Practice: Japan's Anti-Procrastination Café - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
This is the world's first anti-procrastination cafe.
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And of course it's in Japan.
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All of the coolest stuff is in Japan.
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In this cafe, once you enter, you aren't allowed to leave until all your work is done.
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You write out all of your goals for the evening and choose one of three difficulty levels.
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Level 1 is a verbal confirmation with the staff upon leaving that you completed everything you set out to do.
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So, it's pretty simple and honestly it seems quite easy to get out of doing the work in this one.
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You can just lie whenever you're leaving, just lie to the staff like, yeah, I got my work done.
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That's by design though, this is the easiest difficulty.
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Level 2, which is normal difficulty, sees a staff member check in on you every hour.
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And finally level 3, the hardest difficulty, has staff members frequently standing directly behind you and applying pressure.
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That one seems a little excessive, but hey, I mean, if you've got a deadline for tomorrow and you work well under pressure, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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Customers pay around about 85p or a little over a dollar every 30 minutes, and with that they get Wi-Fi and charging ports for their laptops.
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Interestingly though, there are no food products to buy at all.
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The only beverages are self-served tea and coffee that come at no extra charge.
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Which you might really need, because the owner is so committed to you finishing your work, that he will keep you there even if it means staying past cafe opening hours.
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But apparently the people of Tokyo really love this place, and is incredibly effective at helping them achieve their goals.
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Could this really be the answer to the world's procrastination problem?
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I'll just have to see for myself.
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Okay, so maybe I don't have the budget to just go to Japan and go to one of these actual anti-procrastination cafes, but what I'm going to do is experiment to see how this actually works.
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I went to my local cafe with an excessively long to-do list
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and I was not going to leave until I completed everything.
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Let's see just how effective these anti-procrastination cafes really are.
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Okay, so I just got out of there, I actually got everything I wanted to get done, done, to a really high quality, much faster than I thought I would.
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So I got it done faster than I thought I would, and to a higher quality than I thought I would.
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Now at this point these cafes probably seem amazing, and you're probably wishing you had these in your local area, but there is a caveat here.
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You see, I've tried sitting down for other big work sessions before in other cafes
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and libraries as I'm sure most of you watching have as well, but I wasn't nearly as productive.
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With the difference being, every time I've done it before, I was doing work that I just didn't care about, I just didn't naturally enjoy.
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Whereas this time it was something I was genuinely passionate about, YouTube.
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People are always looking for a quick fix and a hack for procrastination, and sure those things can work in the short term,
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but in the long term you're always going to struggle if you don't actually enjoy your work at all.
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But hey, even the most passionate workers procrastinate sometimes, so these cafes are perfect if you're just looking for that little bit of extra incentive to meet the deadline.
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And who knows, maybe one day Tokyo won't be the only city to have their local anti-procrastination cafe.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Japan's Anti-Procrastination Café”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: cafe, procrastination, difficulty, anti, staff. This video has 34 sentences and 615 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:18. The speaker talks fast, about 187 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| procrastination noun | /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/ | The act of postponing, delaying or putting off, especially habitually or intentionally. |
| café noun | /ˌkæˈfeɪ/ | A coffee shop; an establishment selling coffee and sometimes other non-alcoholic beverages, simple meals or snacks, with a facility to consume them on the… |
| cafe noun | /ˌkæˈfeɪ/ | A convenience store, originally one that sold coffee and similar basic items. |
| passionate adjective | /ˈpæʃənɪt/ | Fired with intense feeling. |
| deadline noun | /ˈdɛdˌlaɪn/ | A time limit in the form of a date on or before which something must be completed. |
| caveat noun | /ˈkæviɑt/ | A warning. |
| excessively adverb | /ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/ | To an excessive degree. |
| procrastinate verb | /pɹoʊˈkɹæs.tə.neɪt/ | To delay taking action; to wait until later. |
| interestingly adverb | In an interesting way. | |
| beverage noun | /ˈbɛv(ə)ɹɪd͡ʒ/ | A liquid to consume; a drink, such as tea, coffee, liquor, beer, milk, juice, or a soft drink, often excluding water. |
| verbal adjective | /ˈvɜː.bəl/ | Of or relating to words. |
| incentive noun | /ɪnˈsɛntɪv/ | Something that motivates, rouses, or encourages. |
| confirmation noun | /ˌkɑn.fəɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/ | An official indicator that things will happen as planned. |
| genuinely adverb | /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/ | In a genuine manner; truthfully, truly. |
| excessive adjective | /ɪkˈsɛsɪv/ | Exceeding the usual bounds of something; too much (of amount); extravagant; immoderate. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| check in on verb | To pay a visit in order to monitor the health, security or safety of (someone or something). |
| write out verb | To write at full length or in expanded form. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've tried · I've done |
| Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group | the coolest · the easiest · the hardest |
| Comparatives -er than / more … than — comparing two things | faster than |
| Present continuous am/is/are + -ing — something happening right now or around now | you're leaving · you're probably wishing · are always looking |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 19 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, didn't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: procrastination /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, passionate /ˈpæʃənɪt/, confirmation /ˌkɑn.fəɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: procrastination /pɹəʊˌkɹæs.tɪˈneɪ.ʃən/, excessively /ɪkˈsɛsɪvli/, procrastinate /pɹoʊˈkɹæs.tə.neɪt/, confirmation /ˌkɑn.fəɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like procrastination, café, cafe.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.