Did you know that the lowest-scoring section of the JLPT Exam is the listening section? Luckily, PlaySay's JLPT 1-4 Vcabulary and Kanji Audio Downloads, now available in the JapanesePod101.com online store, are here to save the day! New Version 1.2 Released! PlaySay's convenient audio download system will simply and practically enable you to achieve oral vocabulary competency - on the go, one word at a time, one minute at a time. Supplement your JapanesePod101.com studies, and turn your iPod or favorite mp3 player into a walking, talking, dynamic, and intelligent vocabulary flashcards study tool. Shuffle and study all individual JLPT Core Vocabulary and Kanji with audio on your iPod or other mp3 Player! A Combined... Show more

Summer is here and school is out! For all of you students, we have a sizzling hot deal! Sign up for ANY Basic or Premium subscription and get 25% Off instantly! Don't wait until classes begin in Fall, start now and be ahead of the curve once school is back in session!!! This limited time offer expires on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 11:59pm EST.

Mina-san, When we first started JapanesePod101.com, we only had a few lessons and a few levels, so it was very easy to figure out how to use the site. But now with over 700 lessons and many different levels and series, a lot of people have asked us “Where should I start?” While there are many ways to use the site, we definitely have a few recommendations! We grouped the lessons in 4 categories Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Miscellaneous. Also we designated each level linear or non-linear. Then we listed descriptions of the each course and included the first and last lesson so you can better gauge which levels are perfect for you! Check out the page here: Also, since it's Golden Week, we're running a special Promo... Show more

Thank you for all the name entries, for all the votes, and of course, we can't forget the feedback. This has been a very interesting contest, not without its challenges. We apologize for the delay in posting this prize announcement, but the logistics of a contest of this scale do not allow for a very quick turnaround. We've decided to award the first place prize, a lifetime subscription to all of our existing sites, to all 8 finalists. We will be contacting all winners by email with the next step. In addition, for everyone who submitted an entry, we are offering a FREE 1-Month Premium Subscription to JapanesePod101.com + a very special coupon. Look for a follow-up email in the next few days with details on how to claim your prize.... Show more

Sign up for our Premium 12-Month subscription TODAY and we'll ship you our top-selling "Japanese Kanji Flashcards" for FREE (a $35 value). If you really want your Japanese learning to start with blazing speed then you must have a set of Kanji Flashcards. Not just the digital kind, but the hard, hold-in-your-hands cards that will speed up your learning and recall by at least 250%. Click to sign up for a 12-Month Premium subscription TODAY! * Can't be combined with any other offer or coupon. Prior subscriptions are not eligible for offer. Limit one per customer, non-transferable. Only while supplies last!

We would like to start with a big, make that a very BIG, "Arigatou gozaimasu!" In total we received over 5,000 submissions! We were blown away by the incredible response to our request for help. We would like to thank everyone who submitted a suggestion, and also would like to let you know we'll be sending along a very special e-mail for you in the near future. Please keep an eye out for it. Below are the finalists. After 7 straight days of analyzing, testing, comparing, brainstorming, and more, below are the finalists. We would like to ask you help one more time, as we would truly appreciate a vote for your favorite. Thank you everyone for voting. The final results are below: Thank you again. It is you, the listeners,... Show more

Some of you may have noticed that the "Contains" and "Ends with" search methods of the word dictionary in the Learningcenter are gone. We changed the way the dictionary works to improve performance, and to take a large step closer to providing you more accurate search results. Therefore it now returns results ordered by relevance. The order is not perfect, processing natural language with computers is difficult, but it should be much better than before ;) Now I will explain by example how the remaining search methods work: The default "Is" method will now also search inside English phrases. A search for "way" for example will still find "途中 - on the way, en route, midway". It will also find "one-way traffic", but will not find... Show more

Mina-san, our friend Tajee and her team have started a new short video series starring a Ninja Girl who offers insight into different Japanese things and events. You can see Ninja girl in action here.

After weeks of development, we're happy to announce the launch of the much anticipated My Feed. This fully customizable RSS feed lets Premium members decide exactly what lesson content they want on their Premium feed. Setting up My Feed is a a simple 3 step process. Choose the lesson types you want (e.g. Beginner, Newbie, Audio Blog, etc.) Choose the type of content you want (e.g. Main Audio, Dialog Clip, Review Clip, PDF, Video Vocab, etc.) Add My Feed to iTunes or other iTunes compatible feed readers like Juice, and just watch the content you want come rolling in. To learn more about My Feed check out the video below or if you're a Premium member, click here to get started now. Thank you all for your continued... Show more

Mina-san, As always, thank you for your support; we could never have come this far without you. We recently received an e-mail from JapanPodcasters.com informing us that we, our language learning community, were awarded the 2008 Japan Podcaster Award Winner in the category of Language Study Excellence Award. We would like to thank our new friends at JapanPodcasters.com, a Japan podcast directory, for recoginizing our language learning community, and thank you, the listeners, for making this possible. Yoroshiku onegai shimasu! Team JapanesePod101.com