NHK World Japanese Lessons

This website provides you with the reedited versions of “Basic Japanese for You” and “Brush Up Your Japanese” that are designed for the Internet users. Their original versions are on the air on NHK World Radio Japan, that is the overseas shortwave service of NHK.

Gyao

Japanese TV on demand has been around for a while, at least in a limited sense with downloadable bulletins from NHK. All that changed last April with the launch of Gyao, a new free internet TV service which has everything from TV dramas to J-pop to cooking shows and anime. This is great for anyone curious about modern Japanese culture and of course students of … [ Read more ]

Mayumi K’s Osaka dialect 大阪弁 Japanese Podcast

Don’t let the full title fool you: “Osaka dialect 大阪弁 Japanese lesson in English” – Mayumi K’s podcast is fully bilingual, with Mayumi speaking in Osaka-ben and then repeating the words in English. Along the way she also throws in vocab explanations and speaking tips. At 5 minutes a serve the podcast is a good length for repeated listens. The level is intermediate and it … [ Read more ]

ちまたの日本語 – “Real World” Japanese

This site has animated every day situation conversations in Japanese. There are 3 levels for every conversation: beginner, intermediate and advanced and the conversation becomes of course more and more complicated (and more natural sounding) within every level.

Japancast.net

Learn Japanese with our free Japanese lessons in podcast format. We use examples from anime and everyday conversation to teach you Japanese that is useful for everyday life. Hitomi-sensei is from Tokyo and will teach you to speak with the most common Japanese accent.

365日物語 (365 Days of Stories)

365日物語 (365 Days of Stories – my translation) is a series of three minute readings from the book of the same name. Each episode ties into a historical event linked to the same date – I listened to episodes about Mary Shelley’s publication of Frankenstein, Churchill’s take on the Iron Curtain and how Franklin Roosevelt was never photographed in his wheelchair. Very easy on the … [ Read more ]

mp3japan

Is your audio cupboard looking bare? You may be interested in this cache of listening goodies. mp3japan is an archive of mp3 files from the NHK audio series “Basic Japanese for You” and “Brush Up Your Japanese” which are only available in streaming form on the NHK site. 100 and 50 episodes respectively, 3-4Mb per episode. Knock yourself out. [courtesy of Nihongojouzu.com]

Kanda (神田) Podsayings Podcast

Bite size pieces of intermediate Japanese for your ears 神田Podsayings is a daily podcast featuring Japanese sayings with brief explanations, which at 30-60 seconds per episode won’t spoil your listening appetite. The site is all Japanese, but nothing a judicious application of rikaichan or LiveDictionary can’t fix. [courtesy of Nihongojouzu.com]

TalkSushi Learn Japanese Podcast

A podcastin both English and Japanese, geared mostly toward beginners (based on my very limited sampling).

JapanesePod101.com

JapanesePod101 is a well put together podcast aimed at beginner level students of Japanese. Each podcast is approximately 10 minutes long and just right for people starting out because:
-the lessons focus on one main concept and drill it solidly
-the lessons are very easy to understand
-even simple words like きれい are broken down and spoken slowly ”き れ い”、which is perfect for beginners
-the skits, despite being cheesy, provided good … [ Read more ]

Nihongo Juku – A resource for students of Japanese

Another excellent podcast, but this one is aimed at intermediate and advanced students of Japanese. While Learn Japanese mixes wry English commentary with samples of Japanese conversation, Nihongo-Juku is an all Japanese affair. Narrator Rieko discusses common mistakes and areas of improvement garnered from her efforts teaching her American husband to speak Japanese. The material is relevant and practical – for example, how to accept … [ Read more ]

Learn Japanese Podcast

Not only does this podcast have the coolest title image ever it features some of the most laid back yet instantly useful Japanese lessons around. The lessons contain real samples of language as actually used by Japanese people plus commentary by host Alex Brooke, who is obviously having a good time recording the material – a point which makes the whole thing so much easier … [ Read more ]

Nippon VoiceBlog

This unique voice blog is great for reading and listening practice. Generally, posts are of various Japanese cultural topics (e.g. setsubun, business cards, geisha and maiko, Valentines day, etc.) and are long enough to be challenging but short enough to not be discouraging for less advanced students. And each post includes a native speaker reading the text. I recommend listening first to see how much … [ Read more ]

fM Google Video Downloader

If you find any interesting videos on the Google video search, use this site to enter the URL and it will convert the file to a .FLV file which you can download and view offline.

wwwiTV (World Wide Internet TV)

Your broadband Portal to watch live TV broadcasts and on demand TV broadcasts on the Internet (wwiTV.com is an index to streaming media available on the web). When I last checked there were 19 live television feeds listed and 15 broadband TV feeds listed.

Japan-A-Radio

A streaming Internet radio station that focuses on JPOP and anime music.

Petit Kanji

This site lets you study Japanese, and especially kanji, while singing along to your favorite songs and practicing for your next karaoke!

The targeted audience being very specific, it’s not likely that this site will appeal to many people. Actually I made it for myself only, but hopefully it may also be helpful or interesting to others. 🙂

If :
– you are learning Japanese
– … [ Read more ]