This question is addressed to other Mac users.

I've had great results with passive listening in other languages, and would like to do the same with Japanese.

What I find works best for me is some free online long-running (preferably continuous) audio source consisting exclusively of speech in the desired language (i.e. no music), and that will work well with my Mac[1].

Ideally, the spoken audio becomes "aural wallpaper", which I can tune into or out of, depending on whatever else I'm doing (paying bills, fixing my bike, buying groceries, whatever). Therefore I avoid dramatic pieces (e.g. soap operas, radio dramas, etc.), because I don't want to become too absorbed by what I'm hearing. (My main goal with passive listening is to accustom my ear to the sound of the new language; everything else is secondary.)

The best passive listening source I have found in any language is France24 through freeetv. This is my current "passive listening standard". The content and the playback are excellent, the segments typically short and varied, and best of all: it's on all the time. (The content loops, to be sure, but this turns out to be a plus when you're trying to learn a new language, since you get multiple chances to listen to difficult material.) Interestingly, I find that I can profit from France24 even if I just listen to the sound track without watching the video. Typically I watch the video only when I don't completely understand what the spoken track is saying.

I have had good results also with long (30-60 min) podcasts in other languages (mostly in French), via iTunes.

So far I have very little for Japanese, though. The best I've found is freeetv's streaming of FNN News, which I like a lot. (Yes, I prefer it over what I have found at the official FNN site.) It is almost as good as France24, except that its content is not as varied and it doesn't loop automatically. (When the end of the content is reached, playback simply stops; at least this is the case when I access it via Chrome on the Mac. This is not a big deal: I just need to manually restart it.)

Any other good Mac-friendly sources for passive listening?

TIA!


[1] I need to add this bit about Mac-friendliness because I've had trouble with some popular websites that don't work at all for me, and I conjecture that the reason is that they have been optimized for Windows.

I usually listen to live streaming Japanese television in the background for passive audio. I watch it on Freshverse. It uses Flash and Silverlight plugins, and it works fine on my Mac.

ars3nal,

Have you ever gotten the high quality flash streams on Freshverse.com to work on your Mac?

I've never gotten them to work.
Only the Analog Low Quality Stream works for me...... :-(

I'm running Snow Leopard (and they never worked on Leopard either).

About a month or so ago, the high quality mirror stopped working for me. Since then, I've only gotten some of the low quality ones to work. But I'm happy as long as those keep working!

check out keyhole TV. I can have that on all day for continuous streams of radio/japanese tv etc. You don't have to be in Japan to use it either; I listen from the UK.

http://www.livestation.com/

This is the best one I've come across~ The audio quality is many times better than Keyhole

http://radiotime.com/region/c_101255/Japan.aspx

I've been playing around with some radio stations, trying to find one that I like. I don't have any recommendations yet, but it's nice to keep on in the background.

Plus, they have other countries/languages too. I sometimes pop in my local radio station back at home, just to see whats going on

Nuriko Wrote:http://www.livestation.com/

This is the best one I've come across~ The audio quality is many times better than Keyhole

I've just checked out the web version and downloaded the desktop viewer - quality is excellent, but there are zero Japanese channels on there.

Do different channels come on at different times, and if so when?!