Thanks, ファブリス

Didn't realize that "Signatures are disabled for everyone here", but could have sort of understood it since I couldn't recall seeing any signatures around :-)

>> You're welcome to introduce a new website, even a commercial one.

Sounds good to me. It was my impression that this has taken place a considerable number of times in the past.

>> But repeated self-promotion is frowned upon.

Don't worry!!! It was a full-time job to post my very first introduction :-)

BTW: Happy New Year! Keep up the great work 2009!

Kanji Hanzi

...so anyway, :lol:

Nah seriously, thanks again everyone for all the advice. Much appreciated!

Right, my free trial with jPod has ran out. I think I did a pretty good job of bleeding this nice gesture dry by downloading all the lower intermediate lessons and all unknown words from the premium centre (may as well have got them while I could).

But now it seems I can't download anymore of the audio. None of it's under the 'free content' category (save one or two (presumably promotional) lessons). Was I under the wrong impression when I thought the audio lessons were free, just the text etc. needed a subscription? :o

Virtua_Leaf Wrote:...so anyway, :lol:

Nah seriously, thanks again everyone for all the advice. Much appreciated!

Right, my free trial with jPod has ran out. I think I did a pretty good job of bleeding this nice gesture dry by downloading all the lower intermediate lessons and all unknown words from the premium centre (may as well have got them while I could).

But now it seems I can't download anymore of the audio. None of it's under the 'free content' category (save one or two (presumably promotional) lessons). Was I under the wrong impression when I thought the audio lessons were free, just the text etc. needed a subscription? :o

*COUGH*Get another free trial under a fake email address?*COUGH*

Seriously though, I've heard a few of their lessons, and I'm under the opinion that they're worth subscribing to. Support them! They're good!

Not sure what part of the UK you live in, but while I was in London I arranged a couple of language exchanges with Japanese people on gumtree.com. You speak to them in English for an hour, then you do an hour of Japanese, or whatever.

I used to meet a Japanese lady in the British Library coffee shop once per week and of all of the things I did before coming to Japan and starting the AJATT method I would say that was by far the best and most productive.

I also got a Japanese girlfriend off a gumtree.com language exchange, so you might get lucky eh (although she spoke good English, so after a month or so we stopped speaking Japanese, but that was me being lazy and at the time I wasn't very focussed).

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'd ignore all these comments, pick your favorite show of all time in Japanese and listen to it continuously.

Where exactly do you pick up your favorite show of all time in Japanese if the show is not a Japanese one? Like, where can I find a Japanese Angel, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can find Japanese shows easily.

@kazelee:
check out jpophelp.com, amazon.jp (duh), and yesasia.com. If the show has a japanese dub, you should be able to find it on one of these. the first and last site are in english, too.

I'd also take metat's advice to just listen. I turned off the subs a little while ago and I've seen my understanding jump from 10% to 30-40% pretty quickly (I just pulled that statistic out of nowhere, though; it's just a guess...)

Yeah, I've been listening. It's a part of my study routine. I just can't seem to find any more Jdramas I like, and I'm getting siiiiiiiiiiick of the ones I've been watching lately. I want to take a look at series with more than just 12 episodes.

I tried Amazon.jp, but I only found English for the particular series I was searching.

Well, I already watched anime and doramas with subs, so I have to say: Good question!

kazelee Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'd ignore all these comments, pick your favorite show of all time in Japanese and listen to it continuously.

Where exactly do you pick up your favorite show of all time in Japanese if the show is not a Japanese one? Like, where can I find a Japanese Angel, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can find Japanese shows easily.

Google perfect dark p2p. It's a Japanese p2p client/network, and I've used it to download about 150 gigs of Japanese and American shows (dubbed in Japanese) and movies.

The Matrix trilogy, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek TNG (they also have Voyager), Aichiteru, Anjush, Densha Otoko, Downtown (lots of different shows with those guys), Drunk Dragon, Game Center CX, Haneru no Tobira, Impulse, Jinnai Tomonori, Oriental Radio, Salaryman NEO, Taka and Toshi, The Laughter Problem (Ota and Tanaka!), Ungirls, Untouchables, and Yarinige Koji (plus a bunch of movies I can't yet read the titles of) are what I've downloaded so far, and there's still a *lot* of stuff I have yet to grab.

vgambit Wrote:

kazelee Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'd ignore all these comments, pick your favorite show of all time in Japanese and listen to it continuously.

Where exactly do you pick up your favorite show of all time in Japanese if the show is not a Japanese one? Like, where can I find a Japanese Angel, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can find Japanese shows easily.

Google perfect dark p2p. It's a Japanese p2p client/network, and I've used it to download about 150 gigs of Japanese and American shows (dubbed in Japanese) and movies.

The Matrix trilogy, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek TNG (they also have Voyager), Aichiteru, Anjush, Densha Otoko, Downtown (lots of different shows with those guys), Drunk Dragon, Game Center CX, Haneru no Tobira, Impulse, Jinnai Tomonori, Oriental Radio, Salaryman NEO, Taka and Toshi, The Laughter Problem (Ota and Tanaka!), Ungirls, Untouchables, and Yarinige Koji (plus a bunch of movies I can't yet read the titles of) are what I've downloaded so far, and there's still a *lot* of stuff I have yet to grab.

tempting...

is the thing itself available in english? It says so on the wikipedia page, but it doesn't on the site itself...I'm not good enough at japanese to do this yet...

edit: gotcha, i figured it out. but on install, it asks for my ip address. I know i sound paranoid, but, is this safe?

igordesu Wrote:is the thing itself available in english? It says so on the wikipedia page, but it doesn't on the site itself...I'm not good enough at japanese to do this yet...

edit: gotcha, i figured it out. but on install, it asks for my ip address. I know i sound paranoid, but, is this safe?

Dude, you installed it on your computer and you're worried if putting in your ip is safe?

kazelee Wrote:Yeah, I've been listening. It's a part of my study routine. I just can't seem to find any more Jdramas I like, and I'm getting siiiiiiiiiiick of the ones I've been watching lately. I want to take a look at series with more than just 12 episodes.

I tried Amazon.jp, but I only found English for the particular series I was searching.

Amazon.jp generally has the Japanese titles, and the same might be true for many other Japanese language sites. Japanese Wikipedia generally gives both titles, so you might want to search that first to get the title: ja.wikipedia.org.

Edit: I looked some more on Amazon. English titles turn up more than I realized, but I still think it'd be useful to check the Japanese title if nothing is coming up with English.

@vgambit: Now I'm starting to wish I had an interest in more than just one of those shows. Save for Voyager, I can honestly say... [omitted]

@KH: So I have to search the Japanese titles? I'll take another look.

igordesu Wrote:I'd also take metat's advice to just listen. I turned off the subs a little while ago and I've seen my understanding jump from 10% to 30-40% pretty quickly (I just pulled that statistic out of nowhere, though; it's just a guess...)

Honestly, I learn better with the subs on. This way, I'm hearing words in Japanese and seeing them in English, and my brain automatically links them up. I've found myself understanding words that I've never studied before, all just from my brain subconsciously storing them away from repeated exposure.

Personally I found perfect dark to be a really crappy P2P client.. the speeds were extremely slow and I couldn't find anything worth downloading. It also seemed to demand a HUGE cache on the harddrive...

I found some Japanese torrent sites, but the activity wasn't good enough to be worth it.

igordesu Wrote:is the thing itself available in english? It says so on the wikipedia page, but it doesn't on the site itself...I'm not good enough at japanese to do this yet...

edit: gotcha, i figured it out. but on install, it asks for my ip address. I know i sound paranoid, but, is this safe?

You're actually supposed to enter the node list into the Encrypted text field. Try to find a tutorial on using perfect dark, and it should have a link to the node list.

And Tobberoth, while I agree that the download speed tends to be slow (it has never exceeded 1/5th of my maximum), 300 kb/sec is better than 0 kb/sec.

vgambit Wrote:

igordesu Wrote:is the thing itself available in english? It says so on the wikipedia page, but it doesn't on the site itself...I'm not good enough at japanese to do this yet...

edit: gotcha, i figured it out. but on install, it asks for my ip address. I know i sound paranoid, but, is this safe?

You're actually supposed to enter the node list into the Encrypted text field. Try to find a tutorial on using perfect dark, and it should have a link to the node list.

And Tobberoth, while I agree that the download speed tends to be slow (it has never exceeded 1/5th of my maximum), 300 kb/sec is better than 0 kb/sec.

I've never downloaded in over 5kb/s on Perfect Dark. On d-addicts I get over 300kb/s easily.

Tobberoth Wrote:

vgambit Wrote:

igordesu Wrote:is the thing itself available in english? It says so on the wikipedia page, but it doesn't on the site itself...I'm not good enough at japanese to do this yet...

edit: gotcha, i figured it out. but on install, it asks for my ip address. I know i sound paranoid, but, is this safe?

You're actually supposed to enter the node list into the Encrypted text field. Try to find a tutorial on using perfect dark, and it should have a link to the node list.

And Tobberoth, while I agree that the download speed tends to be slow (it has never exceeded 1/5th of my maximum), 300 kb/sec is better than 0 kb/sec.

I've never downloaded in over 5kb/s on Perfect Dark. On d-addicts I get over 300kb/s easily.

How long did you let Perfect Dark run? It prioritizes the cache over your selected downloads until your cache is 2 gigs, which shouldn't take more than a day or two.

kazelee Wrote:

mentat_kgs Wrote:I'd ignore all these comments, pick your favorite show of all time in Japanese and listen to it continuously.

Where exactly do you pick up your favorite show of all time in Japanese if the show is not a Japanese one? Like, where can I find a Japanese Angel, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can find Japanese shows easily.

Heh,

LOL

Brings back memories of when I saw "Boy Meets World" dubbed in Japanese
while staying at a cheap hotel in Tokyo. Seeing Corey and Tapanga speak fluent
Japanese was kind of weird.

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally I found perfect dark to be a really crappy P2P client.. the speeds were extremely slow and I couldn't find anything worth downloading. It also seemed to demand a HUGE cache on the harddrive...

I found some Japanese torrent sites, but the activity wasn't good enough to be worth it.

I agree. Japanese just don't know how to pirate for some reason. For example yesterday just for kicks I searched and tried to download a couple movies. The next day they're still at 0%. As opposed to my favorite torrent sites, the same sized files would be done by now.

You need to listen. There's no way around it. It's not a "method". Just listen. BTW, there are now a number of American movies available in the US in Blu-ray format with Japanese language tracks AND Japanese subtitles. Too bad I won't be watching any for a couple of years at least.

Cheers.

reineke Wrote:You need to listen. There's no way around it. It's not a "method". Just listen. BTW, there are now a number of American movies available in the US in Blu-ray format with Japanese language tracks AND Japanese subtitles. Too bad I won't be watching any for a couple of years at least.

Cheers.

MMM Blue-Ray. Let' hope it doesn't go the way of the dodo.

julz6453 Wrote:

igordesu Wrote:I'd also take metat's advice to just listen. I turned off the subs a little while ago and I've seen my understanding jump from 10% to 30-40% pretty quickly (I just pulled that statistic out of nowhere, though; it's just a guess...)

Honestly, I learn better with the subs on. This way, I'm hearing words in Japanese and seeing them in English, and my brain automatically links them up. I've found myself understanding words that I've never studied before, all just from my brain subconsciously storing them away from repeated exposure.

I used to say the same exact thing. Just trust me. Even if you don't want to try it permanently, turn off the subs for a week. Just a week. You'll see what I mean.

playadom Wrote:Seriously though, I've heard a few of their lessons, and I'm under the opinion that they're worth subscribing to. Support them! They're good!

If I was to sign up for the cheapest sub going (think it's $8 for a month), is there the option to download every audio lesson at once?