Job Discussion Forums

[Drizzt]

Dear Japan message board posters,

I've finally made my way to Japan, and have been living and working here for the last half year. I'm currently investing around 10 hours per week of my time in Japanese study, and I feel that I've had made some progress, albeit slowly.

Recently I've been trying to locate some more high interest methods of learning Japanese in order to keep things interesting and maintain my until now high level of motivation (which I'm sure won't last if I stick only with textbooks!)

In retrospect, as a learner, I thought about forms of multimedia that I had used before when learning languages. For example, if any of you studied Spanish, maybe Destinos (a drama series designed for second language learners of Spanish) will come to mind. Although I'm interested in any suggestions related to multimedia in general, more specifically, I'm wondering about video/movies, and any sort of Japanese learner focused materials which have been designed using this medium.

Although TV shows on regular TV would be a great source of input for more advanced learners, I wouldn't yet benefit much from this, as I am still upper beginner/lower intermediate level.

Are there any shows, programs, movies, products, ect. that you have heard of or used which have been designed or produced with the Japanese second language learner in mind? If so, I would be very happy to hear any suggestions you may have!

Many thanks in advance!

[Mr_Monkey]

Japanesepod101 has a good set of audio materials, and I think they do video too. The only thing is they spam the hell out of you to get you to sign up for their paid service, which annoyed me to the point that I stopped using the site during the trial period. You, however, may have a better tolerance for a very hard sell than I do.

If you're interested in practising your kanji on the go (I see you live in Beppu, maybe you would do this on the train/bus to Oita or Fukuoka, if you go to those places regularly) then I recommend Anki. There's a downloadable client available for it in the Apple App Store (about $15) and in Android Market ($0). If you don't have a smartphone, you can use Ankionline through your phone's net browser. It's optimised for bandwidth - so you won't rack up huge data bills - and low-resolution displays.

You can use "shared decks", the now-rebranded smart.fm's core 2,000 and core 6,000 kanji lists or kanji flashcards graded by JLPT level these canbe downloaded for free too. Alternatively, you can make your own vocab flashcards, kanji cards, etc... on the PC client (Linux, OSX, Windows) and associate each card with an mp3 or video file. You can keep your decks synced through Ankionline so that every machine you use knows where you are in each deck.

You might also benefit from using iKnow.jp, but I haven't used that site and can't comment on the quality. They talk the talk, though.

And no, I don't work for the guys who write Anki; I just love the program.

[M_Almeida]

Hmm...video dramas?

In high school, our class often watched a drama about a guy named "Yan-San", the series is simply called the "Let's Learn Japanese Basic" series. It's a bit dated (1980's), but, still rather hilarious and useful. Easily found on Youtube because I imagine finding hard copies of everything is near impossible by this point.

NHK also has an audio drama series called "Japan, My Love", along with their more traditional lessons they broadcast over shortwave/on the internet.

[Tuan]

Don't know if this can help you but at my school us students setup an online Japanese self help website that you might find to be interesting.


It's called JOSHU (Japanese Online Self Help Utility)
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/japanese/joshu/index.php

Has flashcards and other neat stuff.

[Solar Strength]

[deadzenpoet]

Ankimobile is $25 on Iphone! Good lord is it worth it?

[Mr_Monkey]

The price has definitely gone up!

I'd pay $25 for it, but then I know I'll use it. There might be free/cheaper alternatives that are compatible with it somewhere else in the app store/on the web.

[Drizzt]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, especially all those Mr_Monkey mentioned.

I just checked out iknow.jp website and it seems really developed, but I haven't yet had enough time to evaluate it. I will repost later will an update about how useful it turns out to be. Thanks for that Mr_Monkey.

Also, I would like to report that I found an interesting site set up by the Japan Foundation with free videos and follow-up listening activities. They have basic and advanced skits and you can click to watch with kanji/kana/roumaji/English subtitles as you wish. It has a ton of supplementary activities as well. Just thought I would pass that along because it's free and well developed. The URL is www.erin.ne.jp/en/. The storyline is about a high school exchange student and there's an ongoing plot line, so it's not so boring.

[Drizzt]

Just thought I would follow-up on the iknow.jp website.

It seems really great for learning new vocabulary in terms of frequency bands. I personally like this because I can have the assurance that the words I am learning are commonly used and will probably be more useful than a corpus of words organized based on the functional approach.

Also, I really like the integrated visuals, which helps me to recall the words better.

Overall I like it. Plus if you're studying Chinese characters as well, you can use one account for both.

Hope that is helpful.