If you're an anime watcher, I'd recommend the そこ☆あに podcast which you can find through itunes or at their site at sokoani.com ; it's an hour's worth of talk about anime each week, usually a different anime each week.

I like バーボンシアター too, but they don't have a regular schedule. Every few months they do an episode, but they're quite overdue, maybe they've stopped or maybe they'll be back when something catches their attention.

It should be really easy to follow any discussion of an anime you've seen, for obvious reasons.

PS: I do listen to NHK radio news too; it was really hard to follow at first, but I found it's easier to follow if I've read articles related to the story recently so that I have both context and recent exposure to the vocabulary. It's still hard to catch everything though because they speak moderately quickly, almost expressionlessly, and never pause. Taking a moment to search my memory for a vocabulary word derails the whole listening process because they've gone on to another story by the time I've worked out the earlier sentence.

Last edited by SomeCallMeChris (2013 December 04, 10:12 pm)

If you're into Youtube videos, I'd check out this person. She's fluent in both Japanese and English. Usually her videos are mixed with English and Japanese at the same time, but sometimes there are some monolingual videos. Perhaps you can study from them, I don't know if it's just me, but her Japanese sounds so smooth so it's very easy to understand for us learners.

http://www.youtube.com/user/cyoshida1231?feature=watch

you should focus on stuff you actually like (search for them like youtube and whatnot) as well as NOT watching/listening stuff that doesn't really interest you that way there's a higher chance you'll actually engage or look up words. All the japanese shows I have for my "immersion" I watch them because I really enjoy them and find them to be quality tv programming.  I don't even think of it as immersion per se since it's so natural and enjoyable to watch.

you don't necessarily have to listne to NHK news to learn the words that appear frequently on the news. I personally have no interest in news so I don't bother in english or japanese but i know/understand practically all the words in japanese news give or take really specific words that you wouldn't hear outside the news (I do not follow it as well without TEXT in front of me... it's kango thing though) from immersion via other media and japanese is made of kanji so  regardless of what media you're primarily immersing yourself with eventually you're gonna understand the news.  at this point I have  so many other things i'd rather/hear about/listen to than the news because I found so many things I'm interested that's in japanese rather than "it's in japanese" so i "should" listen/watch it.  I remember a long time ago I did the news like listen or read/listen and then i came to the realization "why am i listening to this"... since I don't care about the news and the language doesn't really change that neither is my increase in comprehension (I was thinking even if i gained the ability to understand japanese news 100% without any txt in front of me, I would never listen to the news after reaching that goal anyway since i don't care about news).  basically there's no need to compromise and listen/wach stuff you don't really care about or you're luke-warm about because there's so much out there.

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2013 December 08, 6:56 pm)