I have a lot of free time these days while I wait to get my work visa so I can go to Japan, and since I can't do RTK 16 hours a day, I'm trying to diversify my studies. I'm working my way through the Pimsleur course for speaking practice, and I started trying Rosetta Stone for vocabulary building recently, but I'm still hungry for more.

I know some of you all are using japanesepod101 for listening practice, and I thought it looked interesting, but there's so much stuff on the site I can't figure out where to start! I have taken 2 years of college-level Japanese (corresponding to the first two books of Japanese the Spoken Language). Anyone have a recommendation? Also, is the premium content on the site worthwhile or should I stick to the free content for now?

I suppose I could probably ask this on their forums, but...I'm shy around new people! :-P

i listened to the first 20 or so beginner episodes, and while i was learning a new word here and there it was mostly a waste of time, so i just started listening to the intermediate series. the grammar is still all review but at least there's a challenging level of complexity.

lately, i've been more interested in listening to *real* japanese podcasts aimed at japanese people, and watching japanese movies with japanese subtitles for practice. i think it's important to maintain some percentage of non-contrived material.

I never liked the beginner/intermediate lessons because they use way to much English IMO. The audio blog is good because it's all Japanese and there's an exact transcript on the site, which is really nice.

I can't say anything about the premium materials because I've never tried them.