- Audio Lessons
- Video Lessons
- Reference Materials
- My Tools
- Community
- Help Center
Welcome to the Help Center
Get Started with JapanesePod101First Steps with the System
My Account
How to Download
Basic and Premium iTunes Feed Setup
Innovative Language on your Gadget
Billing and SubscriptionsSubscriptions
Billing
Subscription Info and Pricing
FAQ, Tech Support and MoreMost Frequently Asked Questions
Tech Support
Text User Guide
Video User Guides
More about Innovative Language
The JapanesePod101 SystemLessons and Methodology

5 Most Recent Forum Posts
Sentance construction series
1:42 pm by
drennic6111
Favorite anime?
8:50 pm by
miljana3686
simple question about this greeting
4:04 pm by
sheffieldmuse12145
Missing Newbie Lessons
6:47 am by
mmmason8967
Audio lessons
6:35 am by
mmmason8967
Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! In today’s Japanese lesson Dave-san returns to Japan after completing his research on shirokuma, literally white bear. To find out what this means and how his research turned out, tune in to today’s lesson. We’ll cover the conjugation of Japanese verbs in to the polite past tense.
Audio
|
Play
|
Popup
Lesson Notes
Kanji Close-Up
Lesson Notes Lite
Basic Lesson Checklist
About our Printer-friendly lesson notes
Follow along to our award winning lessons with detailed PDF Lesson Notes! These easy to print notes take a closer look at the grammar point and vocabulary words presented in the audio lesson. Plus, read more about language101 cultural topics related to the lesson.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the PDF Lesson Notes today!
Kanji Close-Up
Take a closer look at the kanji characters used in the lesson Dialogue with the Kanji Close Up Practice Sheets! You'll learn the meaning, readings, and stroke order of each character. Plus, improve your writing with kanji stroke order practice sheets!
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access the Kanji Close Up Practice Sheets today!
About our Review Audio Tracks
Listen and repeat with the Review Track. Hear the lesson vocabulary and main phrases and repeat after the native speaker - it's the best way to perfect your pronunciation!
Upgrade your account to access The Review Track and start perfecting your pronunciation today!
About our Lesson Audio
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
The audio lesson is a comprehensive, easy to use lessons that makes learning Japanese fun for anyone. Each audio lesson contains can be downloaded in seconds to your computer, iPod, phone, or mp3 player so that you can learn quickly and be speaking Japanese in no time at all. The audio lesson is your ticket to learning to speak Japanese with confidence and accuracy, and from your very first lesson!
About our Dialog Audio Tracks
Don't have enough time for an entire lesson today? Listen to the Dialogue Only Track to hear the native Dialogue. Listening to a little bit of Japanese everyday, no matter how much, will greatly improve your listening comprehension. Guaranteed!
Upgrade your account to access the Dialogue Only Track and other Premium Tools today!
About our Grammar Audio Tracks
Tackle grammar head on with the lesson Grammar List. We break down the grammar piece by piece so you fully master the structure and formation.
Upgrade your account to access the Grammar List and other Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!
About our Learning Center
Listen and read the line-by-line breakdown of the lesson conversation with this Premium Tool. Listen to each line as many times as you need until you fully understand the conversation and pronunciation. Line-By-Line Audio Transcripts are the perfect way to improve your comprehension - fast!
Upgrade your account to access Line-By-Line Audio Transcript and other Premium lesson tools today!
About our Videocasts
Our team of Japanese language specialists have been releasing new audio and video lessons weekly since 2005. That's a lot of Japanese language learning! All lessons are free for the first 2 weeks before going into our Basic and Premium Archive.
Re-activate or upgrade your account to access every single lesson we've ever created today!










This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Beginner Season 2 . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
16 Responses to “Beginner Lesson S2 #15 - Dave comes to Japan”
Wednesday at 6:30 pm
Mina-san, how was this year’s winter in your part of the world? Today in Tokyo it is very cold!
Thursday at 1:03 am
Funny enough, although it has been a warm winter, it’s very cold in Eastern Canada now too. In fact, yesterday was the coldest March 6th on record, with the mercury dipping to -24.3 Celcius and a windchill of a biting -38C during the morning rush to work. Temperatures are expected to soar by the weekend, though!
Interesting factoid about ‘white bears’: they’re not actually white. Polar bears have black skin and clear hair, and only appear white from a distance. It’s believed that part of the bear’s metabolism depends on solar energy trapped by their fur.
Patrick M.
Montreal, Canada
Thursday at 1:45 am
Thanks JPod101 for another great lesson! And just one question: if 暖冬 is “mild winter”, how do you say “severe winter” ?? Maybe its mild weather in other places, but here in Boston it has been literally FREEZING for the past month or so!
Anyways, I guess I’ve really noticed the cold weather here today since I was in ロスアンジェレス for the past couple days, for a 面接 (that is why I haven’t been posting comments lately…though I did take my macbook & nano with me so I could keep up with the latest podcasts!
). Anyways over there it was a gorgeous 70 degrees Fahrenheit the entire time .
ボストンに帰ったら、天気が凄く悪かった(it was like 10 F, but felt like -25 F or something with windchill)。
風が酷くて、針が顔を刺すのようです(don’t know if I said that right..someone please correct if necessary). Anyway, ロスアンジェレスに住んでいる人は、うらやましいなあ!
Oh, and BTW, don’t know if something’s wrong with my computer or something, but I couldn’t download this particular lesson or the PDF notes via the Premium Feed in iTunes (had to get it from the website). Even after I tried refreshing and updating the podcast, it wouldn’t show up in iTunes for some reason.
Thursday at 4:39 am
and just one more thing…so when using the potential forms of verbs, が (or は, i guess) must be always used instead of を, right? as in: アザラシが捕れません ”[The bears] can’t catch seals.” I guess it could also be translated as “The seals aren’t caught” but then wouldn’t that be expressed using the passive form, as in アザラシを捕られません? Plus it seems like the latter translation wouldn’t necessarily imply the inability of the bears to catch them, as the first one does.
Anyway I think I learned this sometime in 1st year Japanese but I always seem to forget that を shouldn’t be used with potential verbs. This point is really quite confusing because to me, sentences like ワインを飲めません still sound more natural to me than ワインが飲めません for some reason.
Thursday at 5:15 am
does someone know why this lesson can’t be downloaded on iTunes? tasukete kudasai!
sorry for the romaji, my IME is down again
Thursday at 5:30 am
This lesson is now available on the Premium Feed in iTunes. Simply update the podcast and it should appear. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Thursday at 8:22 am
It is indeed a warm winter in Tokyo. But, why exactly is that a “problem”?
Thursday at 9:14 am
> It is indeed a warm winter in Tokyo. But, why exactly is that a “problem”?
Sign of global warming? And particular for a nation with a high ratio of coastline vs land area such as Japan, the rise of sea level should certainly be a concern.
Has anyone seen the 2006 Summer movie 日本沈没 about the sinking of Japan?
Thursday at 7:38 pm
bakanekoさん、
I hope you don’t take that movie seriously.
And while the winter has been “warm” the summer was “cool”. All in all a fairly pleasant 12 months. Again, I don’t see why the warm winter in Tokyo was a problem.
But hey, that’s just me. I happened to enjoy it.
Friday at 2:01 pm
アニタさん、
The oppposite word of “暖冬” is “厳冬”.
I think it would be better to change “風が酷くて、針が顔を刺すのようです” to “風が冷たくて、針が顔を刺すようです”. “の” is not necessary. “針が顔を刺すようです” is the metaphor for very cold wind. So, I think “風が冷たくて” would be better.
Friday at 11:50 pm
Mayumiさん、
説明してもらって、どうもありがとうございました!
アニタ
Saturday at 10:49 am
I read in a book that in Japanese, ‘i’ is used to lengthen ‘e’ sounds (like ‘u’ is used to ‘o’ sounds). This has been true for practically all the stuff that I’ve heard so far, like ‘gakusei’ and ‘keizai’. But in this podcast, ‘meirei’ was pronounced with a definite ‘i’ ending rather than a lengthened ‘e’ sound. I was wondering if this is an irregularity in the language, or am I just wrong about the whole i-lengthens-e thing.
Saturday at 10:54 am
haha I’m really sorry, but I realise I’m in the wrong comments page. I was referring to the previous Beginner lesson “Who’s watching who”.
Tuesday at 12:41 am
もべんきょうになりました。白熊があざらしをたべての?かわいそなあざらしいね。
NYCにてんきがちょっと寒いですね。春がここですけどまでちょっと寒い。暖かいのたんきいたいんですんが。
Tuesday at 1:11 am
[…] jpod101.com: Episode 15 of beginner season 2 as detailed above […]
Monday at 11:33 pm
I have a question.
What is the difference between 捕る and 捕れる. or are they the same?
Leave a Reply