Mina-san, I hope you enjoyed the holidays! Since we started doing the intros at the beginning of the lessons, we got tons of questions about them. To address these, we did 2 Japanese Culture Classes and explained a few of them. We'll definitely be doing more Culture Classes on the intros (as well as other cultural topics). But we went ahead and added a new section to the Lesson Notes. Now you can find the Japanese transcript and corresponding English translation after the Grammar Point. We hope this helps make a little sense out of the madness （笑）. I think this will be particularly helpful for the 2008 intros which all involve a mini-drama running from Monday to Friday. Enjoy! マーキー

JapanesePod101.com was named one of iTunes Best Audio Podcast of 2007 under the Classic: Audio category. The list was compiled by the Apple iTunes' staff and highlights a sampling of the top new and classic podcasts from independent producers and corporate entities in both audio and video formats. The entire Best of 2007 Podcasts list can be seen here (requires iTunes). Thanks you iTunes for the tremendous honor and to all our iTunes subscribers for your wonderful reviews and continued support!

Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season. With the year coming to a close we managed to squeeze in two more exciting enhancements. Lesson Browser The new lesson browser was developed with simplicity and convenience in mind. Broken down into "Core Lessons" and "Extra Lessons", this new features lets you quickly find the lessons you love. The new browser offers the following functionality: Brief description of each lesson level for new users coming in contact with JapanesePod101.com for the first time A Quick Jump menu to quickly find your favorite lessons within a particular level Sort functionality to arrange lessons by date (newest first or oldest first) A global search functionality to find any lesson by searching... Show more

Hey guys, Marky here! The year is coming to an end. I want it to hurry up and finish as soon as possible because I've been focusing all my energy on 2008. But, the month isn't over yet, so I'd like to get some important information out there about December. ◎　Mixi We finally got off our lazy butts and set up a mixi community. I'll be posting little tidbits here and there about upcoming stories and behind the scenes things. Next year we'll be trying some new approaches, so if you're obsessed with JPod like some people are, you'll definitely want to check it out from time to time. ◎　My Tokyo Travelblogue　 For fans of the Agnes Murakami saga, December is a good month for you! There are 4 Agnes lessons this month. Day 22,... Show more

Wondering what to give this holiday season? Give something special, give the gift of Japanese. Give a JapanesePod101.com subscription! Our innovative, fun, and easy to use language learning system is the perfect gift, designed to get anyone speaking Japanese from the very first lesson. From now through December 25th we're offering a 20% discount on all gift vouchers. Ordering couldn't be easier, choose the subscription level you want, give us the recipient's email address, a short message, the date you want to have the gift voucher emailed, and we'll take care of the rest!!! Click here to order the perfect gift - the gift of Japanese! Happy Holidays!!!

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that's associated with your email and follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar-enabled blogs. The comment section of the JapanesePod101.com are now gravatar-enabled. If you don't have a gravatar, you can easily get one for free at Gravatar.com. Just be sure to use the same email address that you use to post comments on the JapanesePod101.com blog. Please note that it might take a few minutes for your shiny new gravatar to show up on our comment system.

Mina-san, We are pleased to announce that a new "remember me" function is now available. When you login to JapanesePod101.com you will now have the option to check a "Remember me?" box. If you do, you won't have to login again from that same computer for up to 7 days! To turn on the remember me functionality, simply click the checkbox next to the Login and Password fields. Then when you are finished interacting with the site - just close the browser window - do not logout (logging out erases the remember me ability). If you accidentally clicked the remember me option, don't worry - just be sure to fully logout of the site before leaving. The next time you visit the site, you will be asked to login again. If you... Show more

On November 13th, Zune launched its new Zune Software, Zune Social, Zune Marketplace and the Zune firmware. This release marks the official support of audio and video podcasting for Zune. JapanesePod101.com was among 1000 featured podcast feeds to come pre-seeded in the Zune Marketplace Podcast Directory (KoreanClass101.com and SurvivalPhrases.com are soon to follow). Podcast lovers can now find, play, subscribe, share, organize, and give feedback about their favorite podcasts (hint hint) Here's a screen shot of the JapanesePod101.com podcast in the Marketplace Podcast Directory (click to enlarge) Next is a screen shot of my favorite podcasts in my Zune Podcast Collection (click to enlarge) Zune also supports an easy... Show more

Mina-san, Recently we started tagging lessons with Album Artwork that is viewable in iTunes, your iPod, Windows Media Player or any media player that supports Album Artwork. If you've already downloaded previous lessons, the artwork probably won't update automatically without a new download. If you'd like to apply the artwork manually, it's really easy to do in iTunes! 1) Download the artwork to your desktop. 2) In your "Podcasts" directory, press CTRL-A (on Mac press ⌘-A) to select ALL. 3) Right click and select "Get Info" (on Mac press ⌘-I). 4) Drag the album artwork from the desktop into the Album Artwork Box. 5) Click OK. Depending on your computer's speed, it may take a few minutes to update all the lessons. ... Show more

こんにちは、皆様。ジェイソンです。 Hi, everybody! Jason here to tell you about some enhancements we've recently made to JapanesePod101.com. Due to spam attacks on the forums, we've implemented a couple of security features to help prevent future attacks. One is that new users who have less than 10 posts will be required to enter a randomly generated security code when making a post to confirm that they are in fact human and not a spambot. The other is that new users will not be allowed to post images until they have both made at least 10 imageless posts and have been registered for at least a week. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to new forum posters, but we hope you will bear with us as we try to protect ourselves and our members... Show more