I used to think Mixi was just the coolest place. I run a community there with nearly 7000 users, most of the native Japanese speakers. The purpose of the community is to 1) introduce English speakers to Japanese speakers and 2) be a place where people can post language questions of all types, get help with corrections, etc. While the Mixi community is cool because I can ask any question in Japanese and get almost instant responses, the problem is that people from the states can no longer join Mixi, so it doesn't benefit anyone but me.

Enter Lang-8. You may have heard of it before. It is a start-up Mixi clone created by developers in Japan. It is almost exactly like Mixi, but it has built in language correction functions - you post some stuff in your non-native language and native speakers can easily make corrections. Pretty cool. And unlike Mixi, you can switch the interface to English instead of all Kanji. Not bad for learners. You can also find friends to exchange on Skype.

I've made a community on Lang-8 for people studying English and Japanese. It has a fair nuimber of Japanese folks who have joined, and now those people are starting to reply to posts there. It definitely is different than RTK in purpose, but would probably be a nice adjunct. Please join lang-8 and the j<->e exchange community:

http://lang-8.com/group/103

Here's a forum for asking natives questions:
http://lang-8.com/discuss/548

Here's a review of Lang-8:
http://www.tofugu.com/2008/05/14/the-bes...e-writing/

Thanks! I'm not at a point where I can actually converse in Japanese yet, but I hope to be within a few months, and then that will -really- help. Especially the corrections... It's great.

I'm also a Lang-8 user, and I love it. People are enthusiastic commenters and correcters, and the journal correction system is set up really well. I would say it's probably the best place out there to practice writing.

One disadvantage is that all the blogs written in Japanese are by learners, so if you're looking for good reading material you're out of luck. This is pretty minor though, given the size of the existing Japanese blogosphere.

A video review can be found here.

Very cool site! I joined up today, and it looks really interesting.

I've been trying it for a while now and I'm quite happy with it.
Here's my page:
http://lang-8.com/?m=pc&a=page_f_home&l=...er_id=5076

Anyone else a member yet?

Looks like you're getting a lot of mileage Raichu! I have signed up but I still have a few more kanji to add before I start working on sentences. Once I get into sentences I'll start using this site, it seems fantastic.

kudos to jay

I joined recently. I really like the site because I can try out phrases I'm not sure about without feeling self-conscious about my skill level.

There seems to be a disproportionately large about of native Japanese speakers there compared to other languages. Is there a reason for that? (Not that I'm complaining...)

It's a Japanese run site, I think.

This site is an excellent resource.
Highly recommended!

I liked the site so much that I volunteered to translate some of the weird English of the interface - it isn't perfect, but it is better than it was. So, I happen to know the owner, and that he resides in Japan.

Just wanted to resurrect this post for those of you who haven't heard about Lang-8. It now has over 20,000 users, and the two largest groups are English speakers and Japanese speakers, although others (Chinese speaking, Spanish speaking, Korean speaking) are growing. It is very hand for practicing short sentences if you are trying to cement new vocab words or grammar structures (although you can get as long winded as you can manage).

The most active Japanese <-> English group is http://lang-8.com/group/103 and now there are almost 1000 users, roughly half or more are native speakers, but you can always get grammar help or whatever there (no matter how complex the question).

Plus, if you want to find a Skype friend to practice conversation, it is a great resource. Lang-8 isn't good for teaching you kanji, but it is excellent for letting you practice the kanji you've learned!

Thanks, jaystarkey.

This appears to be an excellent resource for practicing production.

Just in the few hours I have played with it, I have learned a great deal already.

Isn't it cool how easy it is to make friends - amazing how reciprocation works. I have no affiliation with Lang-8 by the way, I just think it is cool.

yes - it's addicting - I've made almost 20 friends in two days, and besides Japanese, I have found friends to help me correct my Mandarin. The only bad thing is, I find that I am correcting stranger's English instead of studying for the JLPT!!!

There's even a small number of us English/Japanese/Italian trilinguals. I've had a couple of trilingual conversations. Now all I need is to figure out how to input Greek...

And yeah, you have to watch how much time you spend, just like you do on forums...