JapanesePod101.com Blog

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!!!

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that’s associated with your email and follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar-enabled blogs. The comment section of the JapanesePod101.com are now gravatar-enabled.

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!

On November 13th, Zune launched its new Zune Software, Zune Social, Zune Marketplace and the Zune firmware. This release marks the official support of audio and video podcasting for Zune. JapanesePod101.com was among 1000 featured podcast feeds to come pre-seeded in the Zune Marketplace Podcast Directory (KoreanClass101.com and SurvivalPhrases.com are soon to follow).

Podcast lovers can now find, play, subscribe, share, organize, and give feedback about their favorite podcasts (hint hint)

Here’s a screen shot of the JapanesePod101.com podcast in the Marketplace Podcast Directory (click to enlarge)

Next is a screen shot of my favorite podcasts in my Zune Podcast Collection (click to enlarge)

Zune also supports an easy “1-Click Podcast Subscription” process that allows podcast listeners and viewers to subscribe to their favorite shows. According to Zune, “this 1-Click process will launch the new Zune Marketplace software and place the podcast subscription in the users collection. The process will work best if the Zune user already has the new Zune Marketplace software loaded on a Windows PC, but if not already installed, will then ask user to download the software.”

We’ve added a 1-Click chicklet graphic (like the one below) to the sidebar of our JapanesePod101.com page.

Please be sure to post your experiences with the new Zune.

Mina-san,

Recently we started tagging lessons with Album Artwork that is viewable in iTunes, your iPod, Windows Media Player or any media player that supports Album Artwork. If you’ve already downloaded previous lessons, the artwork probably won’t update automatically without a new download.

If you’d like to apply the artwork manually, it’s really easy to do in iTunes!

1) Download the artwork to your desktop.
http://www.japanesepod101.com/images/itunes_logo.jpg

2) In your “Podcasts” directory, press CTRL-A (on Mac press ⌘-A) to select ALL.

3) Right click and select “Get Info” (on Mac press ⌘-I).

4) Drag the album artwork from the desktop into the Album Artwork Box.

5) Click OK.

Depending on your computer’s speed, it may take a few minutes to update all the lessons.

Marky

こんにちは、皆様。ジェイソンです。 Hi, everybody! Jason here to tell you about some enhancements we’ve recently made to JapanesePod101.com.

Due to spam attacks on the forums, we’ve implemented a couple of security features to help prevent future attacks. One is that new users who have less than 10 posts will be required to enter a randomly generated security code when making a post to confirm that they are in fact human and not a spambot. The other is that new users will not be allowed to post images until they have both made at least 10 imageless posts and have been registered for at least a week. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to new forum posters, but we hope you will bear with us as we try to protect ourselves and our members from spam. These changes will not affect established forum posters.

In addition to the forum security enhancements, the word dictionary in the Learning Center has also received some upgrades. You now have 4 search options: Contains (match your search query anywhere), Is (match your search query exactly), Starts with, and Ends with. The dictionary will also now match class 3 verbs (verbs that are made of a noun+する) whether or not you include する in your search query. You can see both of these new features in action in the screenshot below.

Thank you all for your continuing feedback and support! Without it we simply could not do what we do. We hope you’ll like these new features and those that will come. 今後とも、よろしくお願いします！

Mina-san,

Earlier this week we announced the launch of the Dialog and Review premium clips, which I hope everyone is enjoying. Today, we are glad to announce the much anticipated release of two more essential premium features which are sure to take your writing and speaking skills to new heights.

Kana Stroke Order Videos
The Kana Stroke Order Videos show you the proper stroke order for all basic Hiragana and Katakana characters. The videos, which include the sound of each character, show you exactly how to write each character stroke by stroke. They are available for all active Premium subscribers on the Hiragana Chart and Katakana Chart pages in the Reference Material section of our Learning Center. Below is a sample of one of these videos (requires Quicktime to view):

Pronunciation Practice
To address speaking practice, we have integrated a state-of-the-art software to allow you to record your own voice so you can compare your pronunciation to our teachers and continue to refine your speaking skills. This feature is available to all active Premium subscribers in the Kanji, Kana, and Romaji sections of the Line-By-Line Audio Transcript page for each lesson in the Learning Center (see screenshot below):

We hope you enjoy these new premium features and as always please let us know what you think.

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Mina-san,

Marky here! As you can probably tell, JapanesePod101.com is truly a labor of love for us! We love learning and teaching Japanese and honestly, we’re having a lot of fun. But we’re always trying to think of ways to improve what we’re doing or thinking “how can we do something different?” And often the best ideas come from you all!

Introducing 2 new Tracks added to the Premium Feed!

The Review Track

A lot of people have asked us to leave some blank space when introducing vocab so they could have some time to repeat and practice. Well, if you’ve been with us a while, you know we tried a while back. We had some good feedback about that, but it dragged the podcasts on with silence and ate up time for going through grammar points and focusing on the stories. But now we’ll begin offering a separate audio download that will focus on getting your pronunciation and pitch accent correct. We’ll review the vocab and phrases introduced in each podcast lesson. In future lessons, we may vary this a little, so we’d love to hear your feedback.

The Dialog Track

Again, a lot of people asked us if we could include a separate track that has only the conversation without the lesson. Again, if you’ve been with us a while, you know we toyed around with this idea in the Learning Center in the past (combining 2 part stories, etc…). Well, now we’ve decided to officially include this in the Premium Feed so you can take it with you on the go!

Introducing Newbie Appendix Tracks

Included with our usually free podcast lesson, we’ve decided to supplement Naomi Sensei’s Newbie course with some occasional appendixes. This week we were covering numbers, so we thought it would be nice to dedicate some audio specifically for this reason. This won’t be for every lesson, but when we tackle some important topics we thought it’d be better to separate this detailed info from the regular podcast lesson. Hopefully we can stay more focused this way. (fingers crossed, LOL).

Of course, the occasional bonus track will be called for. These will be anything from supplementary material, off-topic discussions, studio outtakes, etc. We’ve always had a lot of fun with these so we’ll keep at it.

Ask a Sensei!

Also, this week we will be going into the studio with Yano Sensei to address the questions you submitted to us. We’re really excited about this because a lot of you have told us you don’t have a Japanese teacher or can’t take classes in your area. I think this is a cool way to put you in touch with a man who has A LOT OF EXPERIENCE teaching Japanese. If you don’t know what this is all about, then please check our earlier post:
Your Turn to Interview a Sensei

O-Bon Kaidan

And if that wasn’t enough to keep us working late while everyone else has お盆休み, I wanna talk about something I’m really excited about.
We’ve been talking up our ghost stories lately. But why did we decide to this?
Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, Yūki-san and I were talking one day about the Edo Period tradition of 百物語怪談 (100 Ghost Stories). This happened duing O-Bon season, families and friends would gather together and light 100 candles. People would take turns telling a ghost story. After the story finished, 1 candle was put out. This carried on until the last story was told and the final candle extinguished. It was said a ghost would come into the room at this time. Now, exactly why people wanted to hang out with a ghost, I can’t really say. But I’m sure a lot of great stories were told! So we thought, let’s try something totally different from other JPod lessons. Let’s take a break from the lesson format, and just tell some stories. It’s our way of thanking the Basic and Premium listeners for supporting us. It also gave us a chance to do something really cool. Like I said before, we love what we’re doing so this was a bonus for us too! We really hope you enjoy these stories.

On that note, I’d like to refer to you a cool site. This is for Zenshoan Temple which has a famous (well, not really) gallery of 幽霊画 (Yuurei-ga), or paintings of ghosts. Very, very cool stuff.
http://www.theway.jp/zen/html/gallary/somnailindex.html

As with anything we do here, we’d love to hear your feedback!

宜しくお願いします♪

マーキー

Today our friend Yukako Tajima, AKA Tajee, has informed us of another useful website that can be used as a tool for Japanese language acquisition. The website World Podcasting News, still in beta, provides short audio clips in Japanese about podcasting and related topics. The audio clips are based on articles from Podcasting News, and a link to the article is available in the post. Therefore, if you read the article and then listen to the short audio clip, this may prove to be a useful tool in your quest towards mastering Japanese.
We would be very interested to hear what you think of this site.

Mina-sama, here at JPod World Headquarters we’re always trying to think of more and more ways to help you learn Japanese! And now we have something very special for you!

In April, we will have a very special guest with us. His name is 矢野先生 (Yano sensei) and he has nearly 20 years of experience teaching Japanese! His resume includes not only university classroom instruction, but also private and corporate instruction. He also founded the 矢野アカデミー which specializes in training Japanese teachers how to teach Japanese. It goes without saying; Mr. Yano will bring to us a wealth of expertise and wisdom about the process of learning this amazing language!

But it gets better!
Rather than merely introduce him to our staff, we thought it would be much more fun if we could bring Yano sensei directly to you! So, that’s what we’re going to do.

Now is your chance to ask this seasoned sensei for advice about effective study methods, avoiding pitfalls, breaking bad habits and picking up good ones. If you have a question about studying Japanese, we’ll ask Yano sensei during a very special podcast whose contents are totally determined entirely by YOU!

How cool is that?

The entire interview will be conducted in Japanese, so if you wanna try to ask your question in Japanese, go for it. (Of course, if you don’t want to, that’s OK, we’ll be translating everything!)

Let’s get a big ol’ list of questions for the sensei!!!
Post your questions here in the blog or send them to marky @ japanesepod101.com!

宜しくお願いします

Marky and Yuki and everyone at JapanesePod101.com