JapanesePod101.com Blog

Mina-san, our friend Tajee and her team have started a new short video series starring a Ninja Girl who offers insight into different Japanese things and events.

You can see Ninja girl in action here.

After weeks of development, we’re happy to announce the launch of the much anticipated My Feed. This fully customizable RSS feed lets Premium members decide exactly what lesson content they want on their Premium feed.

Setting up My Feed is a a simple 3 step process.

1. Choose the lesson types you want (e.g. Beginner, Newbie, Audio Blog, etc.)
2. Choose the type of content you want (e.g. Main Audio, Dialog Clip, Review Clip, PDF, Video Vocab, etc.)
3. Add My Feed to iTunes or other iTunes compatible feed readers like Juice, and just watch the content you want come rolling in.

To learn more about My Feed check out the video below or if you’re a Premium member, click here to get started now.

Thank you all for your continued support and feedback! Without it we simply could not do what we do. We hope you like this new feature and as always, if you encounter any issues with this new functionality or wish to see it enhanced in some way, please post a comment here or shoot us an email.

Mina-san,

As always, thank you for your support; we could never have come this far without you. We recently received an e-mail from JapanPodcasters.com informing us that we, our language learning community, were awarded the 2008 Japan Podcaster Award Winner in the category of Language Study Excellence Award.

We would like to thank our new friends at JapanPodcasters.com, a Japan podcast directory, for recoginizing our language learning community, and thank you, the listeners, for making this possible.
Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!
Team JapanesePod101.com

Mina-san, I hope you enjoyed the holidays!

Since we started doing the intros at the beginning of the lessons, we got tons of questions about them. To address these, we did 2 Japanese Culture Classes and explained a few of them. We’ll definitely be doing more Culture Classes on the intros (as well as other cultural topics). But we went ahead and added a new section to the Lesson Notes. Now you can find the Japanese transcript and corresponding English translation after the Grammar Point. We hope this helps make a little sense out of the madness （笑）. I think this will be particularly helpful for the 2008 intros which all involve a mini-drama running from Monday to Friday.

Enjoy!

マーキー

JapanesePod101.com was named one of iTunes Best Audio Podcast of 2007 under the Classic: Audio category. The list was compiled by the Apple iTunes’ staff and highlights a sampling of the top new and classic podcasts from independent producers and corporate entities in both audio and video formats. The entire Best of 2007 Podcasts list can be seen here (requires iTunes).

Thanks you iTunes for the tremendous honor and to all our iTunes subscribers for your wonderful reviews and continued support!

Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season. With the year coming to a close we managed to squeeze in two more exciting enhancements.

Lesson Browser
The new lesson browser was developed with simplicity and convenience in mind. Broken down into “Core Lessons” and “Extra Lessons”, this new features lets you quickly find the lessons you love. The new browser offers the following functionality:

• Brief description of each lesson level for new users coming in contact with JapanesePod101.com for the first time
• A Quick Jump menu to quickly find your favorite lessons within a particular level
• Sort functionality to arrange lessons by date (newest first or oldest first)
• A global search functionality to find any lesson by searching the title or description fields.

Grammar Bank Search
With over 100 Japanese grammar constructions, the Grammar Bank, available in our Premium Learning Center, was getting a bit unwieldy. So to make finding grammar items a bit easier, we’ve added a full text search functionality. Search the Kanji, Kana, English, Samples, Formation, Notes, and Explanation fields to find the grammar you want to master.

As for future features, our content and product development teams have a ton of new and exciting enhancements for 2008. So stay tuned for more announcements.

As always, leave us a comment and let us know what you think of these new features and how we can make them better.

Don’t forget our 25% Off Holiday Sale expires in just a few days, so now is the perfect time to pick up a Basic or Premium subscription. For more information about this promotion, visit this page.

Thank you for a wonderful 2007, and a happy and healthy New Year to everyone.

Hey guys, Marky here!

The year is coming to an end. I want it to hurry up and finish as soon as possible because I’ve been focusing all my energy on 2008.

But, the month isn’t over yet, so I’d like to get some important information out there about December.

◎　Mixi
We finally got off our lazy butts and set up a mixi community. I’ll be posting little tidbits here and there about upcoming stories and behind the scenes things. Next year we’ll be trying some new approaches, so if you’re obsessed with JPod like some people are, you’ll definitely want to check it out from time to time.
http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=2858106

◎　My Tokyo Travelblogue　
For fans of the Agnes Murakami saga, December is a good month for you! There are 4 Agnes lessons this month. Day 22, Day 23, Day 24 and Day 25. I can’t remember a time when the Agnes story went this long uninterrupted. I go into a little more detail about Agnes on the Mixi page, so Mixi members may want to check it out.

◎　Japanese Culture Class
We keep getting a lot of requests for explanations about the Intros gags. We recorded this one at the same time as the last JCC on the same topic. We are finally releasing it during the Holiday Break. Actually, we’ve gotten soooo many requests for this, that we decided to act upon it. in 2008, the intro scripts will be included in the PDF’s. I’ll talk more about that next month.

◎　Nihongo Dōjō - Welcome to Style You
This is probably the most popular thing we’ve done to date. The character Fabrizio has taken on a life of his own. I tip my hat to Naomiさん and Yoshikaiさん for that one. This 25 lesson newbie series will end on 12/17. But have no worries, Part 2 will begin next year!

◎　Holiday Schedule
Our usual schedule will be disrupted during the Christmas and New Years Holiday.

The Tokyo office will be closed from 12/28 - 1/6.
In past years we just shut down completely, but I’m happy to say this year will be different. We will still be releasing lessons for most of the holiday break.

On 12/24, we’ll put out a podcast detailing the lesson schedule. Intermediate learners will be loving it, I think!
The new seasons will begin 1/7. Again, I can’t tell you how excited I am to get these out to you!

Wondering what to give this holiday season? Give something special, give the gift of Japanese. Give a JapanesePod101.com subscription!

Our innovative, fun, and easy to use language learning system is the perfect gift, designed to get anyone speaking Japanese from the very first lesson.

From now through December 25th we’re offering a 20% discount on all gift vouchers. Ordering couldn’t be easier, choose the subscription level you want, give us the recipient’s email address, a short message, the date you want to have the gift voucher emailed, and we’ll take care of the rest!!!

Click here to order the perfect gift - the gift of Japanese!

Happy Holidays!!!

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If you don’t have a gravatar, you can easily get one for free at Gravatar.com. Just be sure to use the same email address that you use to post comments on the JapanesePod101.com blog. Please note that it might take a few minutes for your shiny new gravatar to show up on our comment system.

Mina-san,

We are pleased to announce that a new “remember me” function is now available. When you login to JapanesePod101.com you will now have the option to check a “Remember me?” box. If you do, you won’t have to login again from that same computer for up to 7 days!

To turn on the remember me functionality, simply click the checkbox next to the Login and Password fields. Then when you are finished interacting with the site - just close the browser window - do not logout (logging out erases the remember me ability).

If you accidentally clicked the remember me option, don’t worry - just be sure to fully logout of the site before leaving. The next time you visit the site, you will be asked to login again.

If you encounter any issues with this new functionality or wish to see it enhanced in some way, please post a comment or shoot us an email.

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!