have any of you checked out http://www.japanesepod101.com/? they have a podcast available on ITunes, which is where i discovered them, but at their website they have an extensive variety of lessons ranging from free to a premium with direct teacher feedback. there's a free trial of their basic premium account too which includes use of their learning library, vids, kanji and kana and from newbie to advanced lessons. if you really want to immerse yourself without a huge initial outlay, check it out. they are starting a chinese podcast series too, btw. these are the guys behind the excellent Survival Phrases podcasts.

i also enjoyed the podcast Learn Japanese with Beb and Alex. http://japanese.libsyn.com/ you'll come across their Fun Friday videos on YouTube sometimes. Japanese with an Osaka flavor and a bit of silliness sometimes thrown in. Alex Brooke is the guy behind this one. not as complex as the above, but an often entertaining adjunct to whatever you do. i've also gotten a lot of the recommended books like Kodansha's furigana Japanese dictionary or Kanji Learner's dictionary from Amazon. my only excuse for not speaking or writing better is a memory like a sieve.

I actually started with the Japaneseod101 podcasts! I downloaded a lot of the beginner lessons about a year ago. It has a lot of helpful materials in terms of conversations. :)

I took up to the 300-level Japn courses in university (including 301), and I guess I'm somewhat okay with the language.
I travelled to Japan for 2 weeks last year and managed to survive, so I'm not totally Japanese-illiterate.

Someday I would like to go back to studying Japanese from where I left off, and eventually complete my JLPT level 2 and 1.
Watching Japanese drama and listening to music are really the only things that keep my Japanese skills alive. =P

(06-11-2009, 11:05 AM)tracycoder Wrote: lolol i have my japanese coach its really good but if you dont use it every single day you forget or at least I do what you learned really fast. The best part of it though is it teaches you the essential 2000 kanji.

it only teaches 2000? My Chinese coach teaches 10,000 words each with their own Chinese character and it teaches 1,500 phrases.

anywho, my only nitpick on these My chinese coach, and it's probably the same for my japanese coach, is that the tests for writing the characters isn't perfect. There's ways to fool the game.

I am not fluent by any means. I can read some kanji and most romaji. Things like:
カズ = Kazu
さん = san
くん = kun
サマ = sama
犬 = dog

Things of the sort. I was taking some classes online but been too busy lately to catch up. I can listen to Japanese and hear words/sentences I recognize and then figure out what they are saying. Like the word Yama is mountain and nashi is pear. I also have a program on my cellphone that is a study of Japanese but its in romaji not kanji. But it teaches you simple words at first then moves you up to grammar which is difficult LOL. Like a whole paragraph all in Japanese which can be really difficult. I will keep studying however and listening to Japanese speak, which I think helps the most with pronunciation if you listen to a native Japanese speaker.

I made some vocab lists w/songs from the VAMPS album if you guys wanna prepare for the concert

http://smart.fm/users/PigeonXD#lists

If you click on the down arrow on the right side of the yellow START button, & then click on "BrainSpeed," you can play a game w/flashcards. If you click on the "iKnow!" one, you can study the vocab (some words even have sound & some show the stroke order for the kanji)

Plus you can make up your own vocab lists so you can pick what you want to focus on

The NHK web site has some (pretty interesting, IMO) material for those who are learning Japanese. Though not really for 101 learners.

You can find the lessons (audio) here and the textbook here.

Para los hispanohablantes, los cursos estan aqui y el libro de texto esta aqui.
Lo siento, no se donde estan los acentos en mi teclado

Check this out for other languages.

I know a little Japanese. Certainly not enough to carry on even a basic conversation, but a few minor words and phrases such as "Aishiteiru" "kawaii" "mabushii" "yasashi" "shinigami" and of course, my favorite, one that EVERYONE knows: "Baka" <3<3

I'm hoping to take the time to learn the entire language soon. I found this site which helps a lot with learning how to write Hiragana and memorizing the sound. As for everything else, it's too "one size fits all" like, which doesn't make for effective teaching. http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/

I definitely want to pick up My Japanese Coach too. Learning a language that's actually not too hard costs so much money -_-; - And it doesn't help that I have forced French courses to make it even more puzzling.

I listen to tapes when I drive sometimes. I understand the basic sentence structure to an extent and can basically express really simply things like what someone is doing but when I listen to a fluent speaker my eys roll to the back of my head and I collapse! (J/k about the last part! I'm not that dramatic)

(06-11-2009, 10:48 AM)VAMPS + American Street Team + Wrote: I took Japanese 1A at Berkeley, which is the first semester of the Japanese language course. A semester at Cal is equivalent to a year because they cram so much. Within the first two weeks, we had to know both Hiragana and Katakana. In the weeks following, we had to have about 33 vocabulary words memorized each week, as well as about 10-15 Kanji characters. By the time you complete the course, you're supposed to know at least 150 Kanji characters and can speak Japanese fluently on a conversation level.

By the time you take Japanese 1B, you're already writing essays in Japanese. I almost failed J1A and I've forgotten quite a bit. I still have the textbook, so I study it from time to time. I also participated in a conversation-exchange program up until I graduated from Berkeley. It helped a lot and I recommed it to anyone if you have the opportunity to participate in a conversation-exchange program. ;)

OMG! ....same here.....I took Japanese at CSULA and yes they cram so much Japanese on you, it's crazy. I was giving speeches and writing essays by the end of JAPN100A. I took a full year and now I just watch my fav. J shows to keep it going, plus I have quite a few Japanese friends that I practice with.....not fluent but I can at least defend myself somehow...lol

Enough to thank them for coming here.....