Have you heard Mouse on the Keys yet?

No? Oh, well that just won’t do will it deary?

Just listen to “Toccatina” and you’ll see what I mean.

Tasty! It’s got a lot of texture to it. I can’t get enough of the song; the beat never gets old.

Site recommendation: Renshuu.org

I just stumbled on it recently, and I looove it. Even though I don’t have any of the books it uses, it’s great for vocab. Especially useful is the Kanken and JLPT study sections.

Have le look: http://renshuu.org

In other news I’m up to 50 failed kanji and I’ve reached lesson 24

A love-hate relationship with JapanesePod101

This is a semi-review, hmm new category? Reviews? Yay!

Ok let me delve into this. It’s gonna be short and sweet, no hem-hawing around. In fashionable bullet points.

Why I like it:

• Lots of lessons
• Great dialogues for the most part
• Interesting cultural facts
• Out of the loop vocabulary
• Very active forums
• The intermediate lessons cut out most of the English, just enough for you to understand
• Great sense of humor
• Cheap basic plan gives you transcripts of the lessons

Why I don’t:

• Peter is in almost all of them (only the older ones, lately there’ve been new hosts)
• Peter’s Japanese accent sucks..sorry
• Too much talking not enough learning (once again, it’s getting better with the newer ones)
• They charge you a premium subscription fee just to eliminate the jabber
• They make the lessons blabbery on purpose to make you want to pay the premium fee
• The lessons could be organized better
• It’s not the cheapest thing in the world but not bad
• The later, newer lessons have started to repeat themselves

Arguably some of these aren’t complaints but just rants. But I digress.

So form your own conclusions, I give it a 7/10. It’s a good idea but unfortunately unless you pay you really don’t get much out of it unless you take notes.  And that’s exactly what they want

What happened to Jtalk?

I just happened upon this podcast searching for some Japanese tech, and I love it. But it’s not been updated since 2006. I really really wish it hadn’t died, it’s a superb format. It’s mostly English but it’s a great listen.

Jtalk

Somewhat related, I’m trying to find some decent tech podcasts but I’m not having much luck. Help pwease?

Update 7/2: I emailed them a couple days ago and got a reply yesterday. It appears it’s going to stay dead. However he did mention plans to bring it back but it would probably be in a new format.