For sleeping you can't beat this:

「谷村新司・まぁるい日曜日ポッドキャスト」 - "Tanimura Shinji: Round Sunday Podcast," although it looks like it ended in April. He has a very relaxing voice, so he can knock me unconscious in about 5 minutes. Less if I'm tired.

link: http://podcast.1242.com/tanimura/index.xml

rich_f Wrote:For sleeping you can't beat this:

「谷村新司・まぁるい日曜日ポッドキャスト」 - "Tanimura Shinji: Round Sunday Podcast," although it looks like it ended in April. He has a very relaxing voice, so he can knock me unconscious in about 5 minutes. Less if I'm tired.

link: http://podcast.1242.com/tanimura/index.xml

Totally agree with you on that! I usually listen to that on my way back home from work when I am really tired and I usually end up sleeping within a few minutes...

Thank you so much for introducing Tanimura Shinji! I really love his voice and although you can be knocked out by it, it is a very clear voice and I can understand a lot of what he says

I recently discovered the 'anytime andante' podcasts ( https://itunes.apple.com/jp/podcast/xing...d494537933). They're really easy, and she has a really soothing voice. They are just short 5-7 min podcasts on different topics such as stress, habits etc...

Anyone know of a good sports / sports-talk podcast? Thanks.

So, sadly, Dig is ending this week. TBS put the kaibosh on the show, and are changing up that entire block of programming. They had a call-in show on Monday where they reminisced. Hearing the producer talk about how he approached working on that show made me really sad that it was ending. Getting someone like him to produce deep news coverage aimed at people who don't know a lot was really smart. He used to do like teen radio or something before.

I liked Dig so much that I stopped listening to any other Japanese podcasts, but now I have to try to find some more. An hour a day of in-depth conversation about a single topic in the news along with 25 minutes of headlines. Now it's just gone, ugh.

Sorry, I'm in deep mourning.

erlog Wrote:So, sadly, Dig is ending this week. TBS put the kaibosh on the show, and are changing up that entire block of programming.

Noooo! :'-(

But Cunning Takeyama is the coolest dude alive!

squarezebra Wrote:I recently discovered the 'anytime andante' podcasts ( https://itunes.apple.com/jp/podcast/xing...d494537933). They're really easy, and she has a really soothing voice. They are just short 5-7 min podcasts on different topics such as stress, habits etc...

Thanks, these are really good.

Oh wow! This is such a comprehensive list! I found myself subscribing to a lot of podcasts after reading the list. I have Nana life, Ne ne Kiite, Tenshi no Morning Call

BTW, do you have problems with the audio on “Japanese Listening Advanced”? It keeps on stopping when I play the audio.

I hadn't checked my podcasts and was sad to see Dig gone as well :\. But anytime andante seems promising. Most of the other TBS podcasts on iTunes are worth checking out too.

I found this thread really helpful, thanks.

I would like to suggest some podcasts I found searching around for beginner podcasts (they are often hard to find).

http://www.voiceblog.jp/onomatopets/ this one seems very interesting but I haven't found a way to download the tracks yet. Actually the only one beginner-friendly podcast I found.

https://itunes.apple.com/jp/podcast/soko...d553781151‎ a nice podcast about anime.

http://podcaster.jp/story/534/ this one seems nice, too.

Please note that I'm still a beginner so I can't really tell if the contents are good (the voices are nice, though).

EDIT: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/podcast/qu-y...d415975793 this is one of my favourites; they speak really fast and the audio quality is good, too.

[RawToast]

I wonder if anyone has mentioned this Bilingual news podcast:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bair...d653415937

Wonderful thread! I would also like to recommend a podcast:

Music Hyper Market

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/musi...27814?mt=2
http://www.j-wave.co.jp/radiobar/hyper.htm

Good music, good humour, two people chatting about all sorts of things, that would be the gist of the podcast. The pace is rather fast and one of the hosts isn't a native Japanese person, though he's still very good.

Does anyone have any recommendations for anime, manga or gaming podcasts? I'm just starting to think I'd like to start listening to some podcasts but am not really sure where to start.

Wish I had some recommendations based on experience, but I tried Googling アニメポッドキャスト and 漫画ポッドキャスト and the results were somewhat useful... but there are some old/dead series in there, too. I'll probably try something similar for a photography podcast.

This podcast looks like it might be pretty good for anime. (At least it's current, which is more than I can say about a lot of podcasts!)

This blog/podcast site might also be of help, since it covers manga, anime, and games. (And is also current.)

Splatted Wrote:Does anyone have any recommendations for anime, manga or gaming podcasts? I'm just starting to think I'd like to start listening to some podcasts but am not really sure where to start.

http://sokoani.com is really good, if you keep up with currently airing anime, or don't mind hearing comments about them. They comment on pretty much every airing show, and sometimes talk about anime movies.

http://www.tfm.co.jp/asemamire/
If you like Studio Ghibli, this is the podcast for you. Interviews with Ghibli staff, Ghibli news I've heard there first, and the host is kind of fun to listen to.

As for finding more, if you have a smartphone with a podcast app (for Android I use BeyondPod, iPhone users can probably just search iTunes), that's where I would usually start searching. If that fails, I Google something like ポッドキャスト ランキング + the subject I want to find podcasts on.

Thanks, I'll check them out.

Podcasts were indispensable to me back when I took the old JLPT 2, but they are even more transient than blogs so it's hard to find good ones that are consistent. At any rate, just came across this "matome" post at Naver:

【2015】今聴くべき最新おすすめポッドキャスト番組【PODCAST】

Seems to have a good range of topics spread among the recommendations.

How do you guys incorporate podcast into your styding routine when your listening skill is still rudimentary? I realize that most of the podcasts are difficult for me due to the fast speed, the colloquialism and my still limited vocabulary. My ability to comprehend video news on NHK and FNN has gradually improved because I can look up the key words from the written articles and the occasional subtitles but podcast doesn't have any transcript.

pearlyriver Wrote:How do you guys incorporate podcast into your styding routine when your listening skill is still rudimentary? I realize that most of the podcasts are difficult for me due to the fast speed, the colloquialism and my still limited vocabulary. My ability to comprehend video news on NHK and FNN has gradually improved because I can look up the key words from the written articles and the occasional subtitles but podcast doesn't have any transcript.

My advice is to stick to things that are at your level. If its feels too hard for you, then you would probably just be wasting your time on it. Go for the easier ones, or things that DO have a transcript available, and work from there. Once you get a little better, then you can jump into the more difficult things.

In addition to the ones you mentioned, you might check out Japanesepod101.com or News in Slow Japanese. You might also be interested in some of the children's stories on here which have downloadable audio tracks: http://hukumusume.com/douwa/English/index.html

Zarxrax Wrote:News in Slow Japanese

Thanks for this. It's a perfect fit for my level right now.

Zarxrax Wrote:

pearlyriver Wrote:How do you guys incorporate podcast into your styding routine when your listening skill is still rudimentary? I realize that most of the podcasts are difficult for me due to the fast speed, the colloquialism and my still limited vocabulary. My ability to comprehend video news on NHK and FNN has gradually improved because I can look up the key words from the written articles and the occasional subtitles but podcast doesn't have any transcript.

My advice is to stick to things that are at your level. If its feels too hard for you, then you would probably just be wasting your time on it. Go for the easier ones, or things that DO have a transcript available, and work from there. Once you get a little better, then you can jump into the more difficult things.

In addition to the ones you mentioned, you might check out Japanesepod101.com or News in Slow Japanese. You might also be interested in some of the children's stories on here which have downloadable audio tracks: http://hukumusume.com/douwa/English/index.html

Thank you for the advice. I realize that I'm slightly better at listening to Japanese news than talk-show podcasts. I have graduated from NHK Easy News and now I can understand roughly 70% of news spoken at normal speed (I cheat a bit thanks to the visual cue and keywords displayed on the screen) but I can't understand Junk.
Speaking of podcast in general, what do everyone listen to recently? Are there any good short radio dramas out there other than The Last Wave?

http://www.1242.com/program/zoom/
http://podcast.1242.com/zoom/index.xml (for podcast software/apps)

Lately I've been playing that podcast. I used to listen to talk radio, but I started to want something a bit more informative. With "Zoom" there's talk, but it's mostly discussing current news stories. I find it pretty interesting to hear their views and how they differ from the US take on things.

This thread rarely gets regularly updated. What are some good, current podcasts? I'm a big fan of the Bombcast if anyone here listens to Giant Bomb, and finding a comparable Japanese one would be cool. Otherwise something general. Always have the Hotcast or Bananaman to fall back on. Preferably I'd like a podcast that doesn't follow the obnoxious trend of having tons of music and sound effects. It's driving me insane.