So I just discovered the wonder of free Japanese podcasts through iTunes . The only problem is, I have a million different ones to choose from and no idea of what most of them are. For those of you that listen to Japanese podcasts, what are your favorites? It can be any genre, from news to music to lessons, from political commentary to trashy talk shows (do they even have those?). List yours here (and be sure to include the genre!).

I like the Hideo Kojima/Metal Gear one, because it's funny and about games.

I subscribe to loads of podcasts and understand very little, but I still make sure I listen to them all.

I had no idea iTunes had japanese podcasts, I'm going to have to look through it.

This thread is right up my alley, since I'm in the middle of looking for interesting podcasts.

One of my personal favorites is Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime which sort of speaks for itself. The blog's owner, Kasumi, has the softest most beautiful voice for this sort of thing, and the content is always interesting to listen to (if you're even remotely interested in Japanese classical lit, anyway).

Many of the blogs in the audiobook thread are excellent resources for literature as well (Japanese and otherwise), although results will definitely vary. (Most of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories are great and highly recommended)

Also just stumbled upon Hideo Kojima's aforementioned podcast today, which looks pretty entertaining!

Wish I could contribute more, but I've never been too big on podcasts (in any language) so this is all sorta new to me.

Thanks very much! I went into iTunes at work today and picked 2 thinks randomly. One was a news podcast with just a guy talking (no music or anything else - just guy talking) about the news. The other was a Tokyo FM program called "Living Together," which is apparently a series on living with HIV/AIDS. Not that I'm offended by this at all (I'm actually in the middle of an interview process to be an STD advisor, which is my dream job); it just demonstrates how incredibly random an uninformed search is.

Plus it doesn't help that my computer at work doesn't have Japanese Language Support, and I can't figure out how to install in.

Keep posting your favorite podcasts!

As long as you have administrator access at your computer at work, installing Japanese language support is really easy.

In the control panel, just find regional and language settings (the name differs some between XP and Vista, but it's there), go to the language tab and check the box that you want to install support for east asian languages. It will ask for your XP cd. Just put it in, press OK and you'll be done

That's the problem - I have no idea where the support CD is. This computer was used by my old manager before he quit and moved to a job in a city 3 hours away.

jmkeralis Wrote:That's the problem - I have no idea where the support CD is. This computer was used by my old manager before he quit and moved to a job in a city 3 hours away.

Well, there's ways around that obviously, some legal and some not.

If a computer had been used by someone else, I would make it my first priority to format it and reinstall everything anyway. A clean computer is a good computer. Whether that means buying Windows or using a free OS.

jmkeralis Wrote:That's the problem - I have no idea where the support CD is. This computer was used by my old manager before he quit and moved to a job in a city 3 hours away.

Any XP cd will work. I'm sure you can find someone that has one.

Burritolingus Wrote:This thread is right up my alley, since I'm in the middle of looking for interesting podcasts.

One of my personal favorites is Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime which sort of speaks for itself. The blog's owner, Kasumi, has the softest most beautiful voice for this sort of thing, and the content is always interesting to listen to (if you're even remotely interested in Japanese classical lit, anyway).

She does have a nice voice, doesn't she. FYI it's also available on iTunes under the same name. Be sure to get the one under "literature" (it's the less popular one) as the other one has been discontinued.

Not any cd will work. It must match the service pack of the cd you used to install windows.

I always enjoy:

http://www.voiceblog.jp/merikendrama/

Weekly dramatisations with varied subjects (sketch comedy, improvised drama, sci-fi, and more). Each series is followed by a "Staff Talk" episode where the cast have an informal chat about the piece they've just done.

Also quite like:

http://fantajikan.tea-nifty.com/blog/

Classical stories and fairy tales similar to JCLAB mentioned before

http://www.voiceblog.jp/motemote/

Hosts chat about Manga and Anime, sometimes including creator interviews

http://www.c-radio.net/link/netrepor.html

Weekly tech news show

I am listening to a lot of others too, but these are the ones I tend to enjoy most (even though I understand almost nothing while listening to them )

captal Wrote:

Burritolingus Wrote:This thread is right up my alley, since I'm in the middle of looking for interesting podcasts.

One of my personal favorites is Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime which sort of speaks for itself. The blog's owner, Kasumi, has the softest most beautiful voice for this sort of thing, and the content is always interesting to listen to (if you're even remotely interested in Japanese classical lit, anyway).

She does have a nice voice, doesn't she. FYI it's also available on iTunes under the same name. Be sure to get the one under "literature" (it's the less popular one) as the other one has been discontinued.

She has also read a couple of classics available on http://librivox.org/

http://librivox.org/oku-no-hosomichi-by-...ash%C5%8D/
http://librivox.org/ogura-hyakunin-isshu...-no-teika/

I have one podcast that I picked off the list of top podcasts in the iTunes japanese area (start iTunes, go to the iTunes store, scroll all the way to the bottom where you can choose your store, then pick 日本 which is sorted at the very bottom of the list) then click on podcasts and on the right is a list of popular podcasts (some are english though, EnglishPod101 and CNN news). The one I have is #3 on the list right now:

TBS RADIO 954kHz
JUNK 爆笑問題 カーボーイ

(roar of laughter question cowboy???)

Anyway, whatever it is, seems to be pretty darn funny. I saved one that I want to find out what they're saying some day. It has the words "gaijin" then "Oops!" (in English) and then "You ok?" (in English).

まりもえお
marimoeo.seesaa.net/
Rye's new podcast
http://coffee-and-milk.radilog.net/
ともとものヤギさん、おいで～♪
http://www.tbsradio.jp/category/special/

cool interviews
ロバート・ハリス Planet green Podcast
http://j-pod.jp/planet_green/

anything TBS JUNK series is good for hearing male voices

Thank you guys so much! I found Planet Green and Japanese Classical Literature at Bedtime on iTunes, and I really like them both - I only catch snippets and certain words, but I'm enthusiastic about getting better. Now I have some more stuff for the AJATT method. 　ありがとうございました！

I found some more stuff on iTunes that looks interesting (to me, at least) from TokyoFM. Does anyone know anything about this radio station? I found a daily マーケートレポート that's aired in 3-minute segments every weekday, and what looks like a drama program that appears in 20-minute segments once a week. I also found a news podcast called "Yomiuri." Has anyone ever heard of this?

If anyone has any more that they'd like to share, feel free!

jmkeralis Wrote:I also found a news podcast called "Yomiuri." Has anyone ever heard of this?

I listen to that one every day. It's from the newspaper 読売新聞, which is Japan's (and the world's apparently) best selling daily newspaper. It has a selection of the days news and sport top stories and an editorial from the paper. If you go to the newspaper's website you can find the original stories, though it's all in Japanese, so you'll have to understand some of what you're listening to to find the text. Chicken and egg...

Other one's I listen to regularly are

http://www.tbs.co.jp/radio/dc/

which is from a daily radio show (TBS radio) discussing the day's news stories, and

http://www.tfm.co.jp/podcasts/avanti/

which is from a weekly radio show on Tokyo FM where guests are interviewed in a bar setting on a wide range of topics.

Unfortunately though these two both have plenty of natural conversation, there's no transcript, so it can be difficult to check what's being said.

If anyone knows of podcasts with natural conversation AND transcripts, I'd love to hear of them.

Wow, you guys went through almost all the Japanese podcasts I listen to already (all excellent suggestions of course). The only ones I have left are:

NIKKEI NET podcasts - business and "trendy" news (whatever that is haha, I usually can't follow what they're talking about anyway)
http://www.nikkei.co.jp/podcast/

Life - Fitting title, this is about pretty much anything
http://www.tbsradio.jp/life/index.html
All the TBS podcasts are worthwhile though.

Oh, in case you don't know, you can usually go back a lot farther in the history of the podcast if you use the RSS feed (in google reader or something) for some reason. I have all of these bookmarked and constantly playing when I'm at my computer.

Bumping,

I really don't have the nerves for fiction/ random talks(I like learning while learning Japanese!). but need to work on my listening skills.

does anyone know of a academic podcasts/ audio lectures that have transcripts?

just found the perfect podcast for pokemon fans!

Pokemon Radio Show! ロケット団ひみつ帝国
http://www.animate.tv/radio/details.php?id=pokemon

you can download it on itunes

joesan Wrote:

jmkeralis Wrote:I also found a news podcast called "Yomiuri." Has anyone ever heard of this?

I listen to that one every day. It's from the newspaper 読売新聞, which is Japan's (and the world's apparently) best selling daily newspaper.

So a slightly off-topic question... I've heard before that the three major Japanese newspapers are the most-read newspapers in the world... and I just down understand how that's possible, given japan's population... (126m) vs, for example, the NY Times/Herald Tribune in America (314m) and Europe (739m) having a population about 10 times as high. Is this just a case of Japanese super-corporatism, a la the Korean Chaebol idea... whereas in the west we break things up more often??