Mina-san, Are you from Brazil? Do you listen to JapanesePod101.com? If so, we need your help. Our good friend Filipe-san from the Brazilian newspaper, "O Estado de S.Paulo" is writing a piece on learning languages with podcasts. He would like to interview some Brazilian listeners for his article. Please email us at contatcus@japanesepod101.com if you would like to participate. We’ll forward your information on to Filipe-san. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu. JapanesePod101.com

Mina-san, We have some big news! We - JapanesePod101.com, our subscribers, our community, our listeners, everyone who makes what we do possible - have all been nominated for the 2006 Podcast Awards in the Education category! The 2006 Podcast Awards contest is a second annual event that recognizes the best podcasters in the world by allowing the people (listeners and podcasters) to nominate, and then vote for their favorite podcast. Thank you so much for everyone who nominated JapanesePod101.com and provided all of US with this opportunity! Voting opens at 00:01 HST on Friday, July 28th, 2006 and closes at 23:59 HST on Friday, August 11th, 2006. Each person can vote once a day in each category. Contest award winners will be... Show more

皆さん、in order to improve the level of content in our podcasts, we are switching to a bi-weekly newscast on Saturdays. We feel this move will benefit the content of all our podcasts, as this will allow us to concentrate more on each individual podcast. Thank you again for your understanding. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu.

As we mentioned in today's news, we recently received a very interesting email from Jimmy-san in Virginia. Imagine driving down the road, listening to the latest JapanesePod101.com podcast (what else would you be listening to), when all of the sudden you notice something familiar on the license plate in front of you. You squint trying to make it out, and then it hits you - JPOD101. If this were to actually happen, you would be looking at Jimmy-san's car. That's right, he actually got JPOD101 on his license plate! As promised, here is the picture of the license plate! Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Hello everyone, just a quick post to let everyone know that the armadillo brigade is on to bigger and more prestigious prey. This time they have decided to bypass us and take down libsyn! While brash and ambitious, the early results seem to indicate libsyn has also underestimated their strength, quickness and the power in numbers factor. We're currently sharing intelligence with libsyn, but at the moment there is no estimated time of libsyn correcting the issue. We're thinking hours here, and we'll keep you posted. Update: It appears that libsyn has rectified their problems. Please let us know if you are still unable to access our media files.

Last Friday, March 17th, Sakura, Takase, Jonas, David and Peter gave a presentation at the Apple Store in Ginza for the Mac User Group, a great group of over acheivers! The presentation went extremely well as the Mac User Group went out of their way to make sure everything went off without a hitch. We would especially like to thank Bob-san (front row, red tie) for the invitation, as this forum provided us with an excellent chance to speak about what we are doing and meet some of our listeners! Quite a few showed up, including one from Florida!! (Although he was in town on family business, we like to think he came to see us!) Afterwards we went to a nearby pub, and chatted the night away! For those interested in Mac, this is the group for... Show more

Please join me in thanking our good friend and devoted listener Athena-San (aka Athara) for taking the time out to register Japanesepod101 on Frappr. For those of you who are not familiar with it, Frapper, which stands for Friend Mapper, is an online tool that lets you map out the city where you live or work, share photos, and leave messages. So put yourself on the map by clicking here.

Dear Listeners, We would like to apologize in advance for any trouble experienced as a result of the major overhaul of our naming system. After the stark realization that our hybrid naming system based on the Dewey decimal system and the direction of the wind blowing on that particular day was not adequate to bring you the best possible product, we undertook the MAJOR task of renaming and standardizing our naming system. Thank you for your understanding. We hope that our new naming system will reduce confusion and aid in the organization of our files. The change in file names should not impact your ability to download our daily podcasts. Please note that podcasts that you have already downloaded may appear as new files in iTunes,... Show more

Last Friday, we received a visit from Favianna Rodriguez a talented and sucessful artist from the Bay Area (California)! Everyone at JapanesePod101.com was wowed by her energy level, personality and the fact that she brought us Ghirardelli Chocolates (Gone in 60 seconds)! We can't thank her enough, as it was great meeting and getting to know her. You can find out more about the talented Favianna-san and her art work by clicking here. Favianna-san managed to track down some more members of the JapanesePod101.com team. So, we would like to introduce you to Sasahara-sensei, Takase and Jonas. Starting from the left: Kazunori (JPod101.com's Alpha-male), Natsuko (holding the Japanese Journal Favianna's art work appeared in), Favianna,... Show more