Dear fellow Japanese students!

I've been gone from my Japanese studies for quite a while and all of my kanji are scheduled for repetition again & I find that I miss most of them now. But it's okay, because I am again hard at work & enjoying it. However, I would like to add a little extra to my studies in the form of some minor degree of immersion.

I would love to be able to listen to Japanese music without having to look new songs up all the time, so a radio program of some description would be terrific. However, although not technically autistic, I lean in that direction & care enough about (keeping track of) (personal) data to want to scrobble all of the music I listen to to my profile on Last.fm -- it's to the point where I feel (mildly) uncomfortable listening to any type of music that doesn't get scrobbled.

So, my question is, does anybody know of a way to scrobble radio programs? Or perhaps specific radio programs where something like this is possible? In the latter case: I have a preference for traditional (or modern) enka music, but I suppose pop or anime music or some such would be acceptable too. In order for this to count as immersion, though, I guess there would have to be lyrics.

Sorry for the oddity of my request, and thanks in advance,
Vincent

There is a NHK radio application for android. There are three possible stations you can listen too. They range from talk to various genres of music. The stations often have playlists listed. Don't even want to think about the katakana spelling of "scrobble".

あまりむりしないでね

A

Hmm. As it turns out, I just got my first (Android) smartphone a few days ago, so I might just not understand the workings of it quite right yet, but I'm afraid I can't find the app you're talking about. I did find an app called "NHK WORLD RADIO JAPAN", but it (strangely) only offers radio programs in a number of other languages. Interesting languages, pretty languages, but not Japanese. Another app called "NHK WORLD TV Live" seems to be about news videos. Am I looking in the right place in "Play Store"? When looking in "Samsung Apps" for "NHK", I did find "NHK Radio News", but that refers me to Play Store for download and then it says it can't find it there.

Also, when looking online for "Samsung NHK app scrobble" and similar searches on Google, I couldn't find anything about any app actually scrobbling. Are you sure that functionality is included?

Regardless, thanks for your input. I'll keep looking, as well.

It's only in the Japan app store. Search for nhk net radio apk on Google or something and you should find it, though the streams only play if you are in Japan. Also it doesn't scobble as far as I know.

[RawToast]

You'll struggle with NHK radio out side of NHK World. The NHK tv and radio stations are sold on a subscription basis to those outside of Japan (like JSTV).

If you can find a nice Japanese VPN you can then trick the Android Market into thinking you are from Japan, then you can install the NHK radio app and use it. Alternatively you can use the website as long as you are connected via a VPN.

Thank you, Bokusenou and RawToast, for clearing that up for me. Explains why I couldn't find anything. I could try and get things going with a Japanese VPN, but if it still won't scrobble like Bokusenou said, it's probably not worth it -- Japanese radio in itself is quite readily available, and I have no particular attachment to NHK.

I found this blog post on Last.FM, which sounded perfect for me, but so far have not been able to get it to work. Posted a comment on it with my (lack of) progress. It does seem like a lot of effort, but if it would get me scrobbling Japanese radio music, it'd be worth it for me. I'll probably keep trying later on.

Yeah, it's frustrating that NHK and the big commercial FM stations are unavailable outside of Japan. That's just how it is.

I've only had luck getting the NHK Radio News podcasts (which are a PITA to find, but they're on the NHK site, they're just well-hidden) and listening to community radio stations.

In case anyone else is interested:
http://www.jcba.jp/map/index.html

edit: this one's probably better:
http://www.simulradio.info/

That's the community radio station map of Japan.

Also, TuneIn maintains a listing of available JP radio, but sometimes it's just wrong. (I use it with a Logitech Squeezebox when I'm away from the compy.)

Well, I suppose if I can't listen to music on the radio and scrobble it, I can at least listen to Japanese news and talk and such. It's not what I was hoping/looking for, but it'll still be some immersion of the sort that I can do while playing games or some such. Thank you, rich_f.

thenightwithin, the author of the blog post I mentioned above, has replied to my comment and apparently has or is going to upload screenshots of how she did it. Just for anybody checking out this thread and interested in the scrobbling Japanese radio music thing as well.