am I the first post
Huzzah

Nick-san, Happy Easter! Chocolate eggs!! Sounds great! Hope you’re having a great holiday.

Gosh, I’ve forgotten about Easter -_-’
So happy Easter mina-san, Hope you’re enjoying yourself ^^

I was wondering was Peeps were.
Silly me! -_-’

ahh roll on the weeker. as you may or maynot have noticed i have had alot of free time this weekend so here i am again. I wish you all the best for this week and hope to see the new content as soon as possible. Thanks for all your work so far and we are looking forward to seeing how you can do it better.

and Peter if you do manage to get those wires installed into takase’s head without loosing a limb/ vital (heck even not so vital) organ I would love to see pictures.

Happy Easter everyone! speaking of Peeps, i actually had some this morning at church

I wasn’t able to download the file. There’s a little exclamation point next to it and it says, “There was a problem adding News #16 to iTunes. The file might be corrupted or a file type that iTunes cannot play.”

Anybody know about that? Or why?

Peter-san,
Don’t forget to record the video of your hectic week.

The file downloaded! Cheers!

Ditto what Stanley said. Thanks!!

Day 1 - So far so good! Still in good spirits, a lot covered; all-in-all, today was a good day!

Nate-san, same to you!

John-san, thanks for posting! Please keep them coming.

Stanely-san, thanks for the post! And as we always say, “Thank you for listening!” Without you, we’re just broadcasting. You the listeners make us what we are! Thank you!

Sierra-san, great news! Glad it worked out!

Mark-san, wow! That was fast! Probably should have let you know a bit sooner. Don’t worry we’ll be back with a lot more.

R-san, thanks for the great idea! At least today it seems like a great idea.

Jason-san, same to you! And thanks for the offer!

Joey-san, same to you! Peeps in church! Wow, haven’t tried that yet.

Nick-san, glad you liked the site. I thought it was hilarious!

Clienad-san, we’ll keep you posted.

Orlina-san, hey! must have just missed you yesterday!

;; = crying eyes
^^ = happy eyes, but I like to think of them as happy ears (chou kawaii~)

A spécial (^_^) for Laura-san.

And Peter-san, you’ve missed nothing, I assure you !

Orlina, there indeed are some slight changes, AFAIK.

The Kanji are always the same as in chinese or cas we find some changes between japanese’s kanji and chinese’s kanji?

I don’t know much about Chinese, but here’s what I do know. For one thing, Chinese has a traditional set of characters and a modern, simplified version. All of the kanji in Japanese are the traditional versions (I don’t believe the simplified versions were around yet then). While the general meaning behind the characters are usually the same, they’re used and read very differently. The average Japanese person can’t read Chinese (unless they studied it, of course ). It’s that different. So I’d be cautious of using a Chinese book for learning kanji for Japanese. Also, there are some kanji that were invented in Japan that don’t appear in Chinese. I don’t think they’re as common as the others, but you should be aware that they exist.

Orlina-san,

Short answer - get a different book Sorry, but the others are right. There are enough differences that other than giving you a general conceptual idea of what you’re seeing, you’ll be a bit confused

RobGillon-san,

Welcome back! Yes, let us know how it went!

Stan-san!! Get a hold of yourself, man!!

Can’t wait for Jppod……my days have been miserable…..

I have been listening to jppod for a month and it has become a very close friend. What a very long week when I go to bed without the voice of Peter, Sakura, Natsuko…
So long…

Day 2: starting to feel the pain. So much to do!! Oh my. Hope everyone is having a great day. Time to get my 3 hours sleep.

Oh, I should probably also mention, because of the staff, that I went to Nagasaki, and I also thought that was really nice, and I definately see what people say about Kyushu people being a bit more laid back than Honshu-ers.

Liz-san - Actually, and quite surprisingly, even though I *could* speak Japanese, it would appear that there were so many American and Australian tourists in the areas I was in that couldn’t speak Japanese, that people seemed to automatically assume that I couldn’t either, and when I demonstrated that I could, they still continued to speak in English. However, sometimes, people may assume that my Japanese is perfect, so they speak as quickly as normal, and with heavy accents. I found it especially difficult to understand what people were saying in restaurants, though not so much elsewhere. I guess that’s just a pitfall of a place with so few foreigners… in England, if I realise that I’m speaking with someone whose first language isn’t English, I’ll always do my best to speak slowly and simply, otherwise I think it’s pointless talking to the person at all, if you know they’re not going to understand you, it’s a shame I didn’t run in to the same sentiment in Japan. However, I do have a good time speaking to Japanese friends who are exchange students while I’m at university, so it’s not like I don’t get plenty of practice while I’m at home.

I did find that reading adverts / watching TV was great though, it’s good to be able to listen to it passively. This was my first trip, yes, and I went with my girlfriend (who can’t speak Japanese, so I had to on her behalf), our first holiday together. I was afraid that 2 weeks alone together might have been a bit of a strain on our relationship (and maybe we should have tried a weekend alone together first!) but I think it has actually made our relationship stronger, so that’s another plus… thank you Japan!

Ugh… smoking is bad enough, but I can’t imagine people carrying around their old butts… that’s truly disgusting! I wonder if people also carry around their own bins in their pockets as well!

Don’t get me wrong, I will definately be going back to Japan, the airline I went with, JAL, were quite good, although they didn’t have air conditioning, so the flight there was very hot, but coming back wasn’t so bad, but each time I watched 6 movies and played solitaire and tetris, and watched Japanese news channels on their in-flight entertainment system (and this is in second class, I was very impressed!), it was ok, and it wasn’t like I didn’t have lots to do (though if I were able to sleep on a plane it would make the time go a lot quicker), it’s just that watching 6 movies in a row can get rather tedious! But it’s definately worth it to get to Japan

Peter, it is actually a fact that you should get 8-10 hours of sleep so don’t stay up to late.

Peter-san, what Matt meant to say was “you should get 8-10 hours of sleep A WEEK”.

so no worries!

Matt I also recently read that it only takes one “catch up” sleep to get back to normal. That is to say, if you get only 3 hours sleep a night for 10 days, you don’t need to then sleep 50 hours in a row to catch up. Your body doesn’t keep a running total
ONE GOOD 10-12 hour sleep will reset you back to rights (as long as you sleep normal hours for a while after, not go straight back to 3 hour nights )
plus some people need more sleep than others, like to sleep in, etc etc

RobGillion-san: welcome back! Seems you enjoyed Japan. According to some research I read, the more trash cans you put out, the more trash will gather around it. If you don’t have any trash cans, people are more likely to hold on to their trash until they finally find somewhere to throw it. Interesting, huh?

Here at the office, we are really busy… Peter has been going non-stop for a few days now. Me too… But atleast i get a good 5 hours of sleep per day Have to keep it up to get everything ready in time. Just a few more days now!

Jonas

# Takase Says:

(snip…)

Jonas

Wha….? Oh, I see. Haha. I was about to say, “wow! Takase-san, your English has suddenly become extremely good!” Not that her English is bad or anything, but…

Nathan-san, yeah I don’t mind visiting Japan this summer if Peter-san send me a ticket.

Day 3 without jppod….

RobGillon,

Glad to hear you had a good time in Japan. When I was there I experienced the same thing. The problem is that staff of stores and restaurants use polite forms that you may not have studied yet.

For instance if you go to McDonalds instead of saying “koko de tabemasuka?” - Will you eat here, they would say “okyakusama kochira de meshi agarimasuka?” - (same thing more polite).

To make it more complex some young Japanese who work at these stores, hardly using polite Japanese growing up, use polite Japanese incorrectly.

Finally, some Japanese will automatically assume as soon as they see a foreigner that they can’t speak Japanese. I swear there have been times when I have asked for directions in Japanese only to have the person respond in broken English “I don’t speak English”. Fortunately these people are in the minority.

I hope the website re-working is going well. Looking forward to seeing the new look and features of the new one.

Day 3, help! Anybody located near Akasaka that would like to come in for a day or two, maybe three??
Time for my hour of sleep.
Hope everyone is doing great!

Peter-san - why so sad? Had I known you were waiting for me I would have come into the office to do a show with you! I think that would have been fun

Tim-san - you’re right, I haven’t been officially taught Keigo in my classes, but I am aware of some basic forms, like meshiagari and goran ni naru etc, the basic ones. I also had the same problem as you with people responding in English - I would understand if they were studying English and wanted to practice with me (though I would hope that they would ask me first), but when you ask a question and get a response like that, I think it’s just plain rude and ignorant. It’s true that the majority of Japanese people are nice, but as in any culture, there are those who are just plain ignorant. Fortunately, I have enough Japanese friends, teachers, classmates etc that this unfortunate situation hasn’t tainted my view of people as a whole.

I realise I may have said a few negative things about my experiences, but rest assured I was just venting my frustrations, and that the vast majority of my hoilday was an amazing experience that I can’t wait to re-experience! and yet… natsukashii!

Still hoping the project is going well, and I can’t wait to see how it all turns out!

Tim-san:
You said,
“Finally, some Japanese will automatically assume as soon as they see a foreigner that they can’t speak Japanese. I swear there have been times when I have asked for directions in Japanese only to have the person respond in broken English “I don’t speak English”. Fortunately these people are in the minority.” So funny!!
Also, Tim-san said that the jppod people (science fiction name? ) were “re-working the web site”. Hmm, let’s make guesses about the changes! I already made my guess about “version 2″. It will be two podcasts every day, one for Beginners and one for Intermediates.

My other guess is some kind of interactive kanji thing on the website???

Anyone else have ideas?

Oops, did I forget to close that tag? Yeah, I only meant to blockquote the first sentence.

Hi , Its my first time to post massage here, but i ve been listening Japanesepod101 since January, I absolutely love it! just wanna say thank you very much!

Jay-san,

I was wondering if anyone knew anything about mixi? I think its invitation only, but I don’t have japanese text writing capabilities ( I can read text on websites and such) and I don’t have the disk to instal East Asia language support, and I was wondering if there are problems with writing roman characters on there….I suppose I would just be on there to people watch mostly, and to find interesting ways to read Japanese, so maybe writing wouldn’t matter.

We live in Kent (England) and listen to Japanesepod 101 on our computer while cooking dinner in the evening - and we’re getting withdrawal symptoms! Come back soon - we miss you all so much! (Favourite repeats are just not the same!). Charlotte (12), Mark (7) and their ancient Mum and Dad (who are too old to be kakkoii and who cannot say ‘asameishimae’ fast enough to satisfy their children).

Laura:

Oh no!!! Gomen nasai!!!

Actually, it’s only broken for Safari. I noticed it last night, but it doesn’t completely break if you use Firefox or Camino. For those, only my post is blockquoted.

I can’t edit my comment so I must wait for the friendly admins to edit my post for me.