Hello Listener, Did you know that every new JapanesePod101 lesson is yours free? Fact: All new lessons are open to everyone for 3 weeks after the publish date. This is one of the major benefits of the Free Lifetime Account. Just sit back and learn. High-quality Japanese audio and video lessons come out every week. But here’s what’s new... You now get the newest lessons on your mobile device, anywhere, anytime! New update! Click here to download Innovative Language 101 for free! Users requested this. We listened. Innovative Language 101 for the iPhone, iPad and Android – the App that gives you your lessons on the go – has an awesome new update: Newest Lessons. If you’re learning Japanese and want to get all new... Show more

Hello Listeners, There’s a brand new feature out! But first, here’s a question... How long have you been actively studying Japanese? Why do we ask? Well, Einstein once said... "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” While most people quit, the smarter ones (or the stubborn ones) stick with Japanese long enough to break through and see progress. And if you think about it, time and effort are the two things that’ll ultimately dictate how far your Japanese will go. Look at it like this... Anyone with bigger muscles – they’ve spent more time at the gym than most. Anyone that’s a great artist – they’ve spent more time on their craft. Anyone that knows a ton of Japanese words – they’ve... Show more

Hello Listener, Just one thing is standing between you and speaking and understanding more Japanese. Japanese Words. But how do you learn more? Do you dig through a dictionary and write down every new word? Then memorize, memorize and memorize? That’ll take a long time. Or you can 1) master 4,000+ must-know words, 2) make unlimited flashcards for new words, and 3) learn faster on your iPhone or iPad. How? With our New Japanese Vocab Bundle! Get our 3 Best Japanese Vocab Apps for the price of 1! That’s 40% OFF the total $25.97 retail price and 3 unique ways to master more Japanese! Hurry, this quick bundle deal ends Thursday, November 13th, 2014! Click here to get the Japanese Vocab Bundle for your iPhone or... Show more

Hello Listener, Every Japanese learner wants to better at Japanese and say everything they’d like to say...without mistakes. But how can you get to that level of Japanese awesomeness? You need feedback from an actual Japanese teacher. Someone to tell you... “here’s how you fix your accent” “don’t use that. This phrase sounds more natural” ...”here is how to fix your mistakes” And now you can get speech analysis from your own Japanese teacher at JapanesePod101! How? We just released a brand new tool called Premium PLUS My Teacher! New! Perfect Your Speaking with Premium PLUS My Teacher! Premium PLUS My Teacher, exclusively for Premium PLUS subscribers, gives you 1-on-1 access to a teacher. Just record your... Show more

Hello Listener, Imagine having your very own JapanesePod101 teacher. They give you personal attention and fix any Japanese problem you’ll ever have. They can... Correct your writing Be a source of constant Japanese practice Give you insider tips on what words sound more natural in Japanese Correct your Japanese pronunciation (something most native speakers are too polite to do!) Point out your weaknesses Tell you how to best master Japanese Access to your own Japanese teacher was already available in our Premium PLUS subscription, but mostly via email interaction. Now, there’s a new Premium PLUS feature that gives you 1-on-1 instruction on the website or on the go via an App: Premium PLUS My Teacher (formerly titled... Show more

Greetings from Team JapanesePod101! We’re stopping by the blog today to tell you about an exciting new feature we’re slowly rolling out on the website. A few select users have been chosen to test drive the new Dashboard feature. Log in to your account today to see if you’re one of them! The new Dashboard aims to help you track your Japanese learning quickly and easily. We’ve produced a lot of lessons in our lifetime and while we pride ourselves on offering a wide variety of lessons to our users, we realized that it can been pretty overwhelming for some. Where do I start? What level is best for me? What series do I move on to now? These were common questions coming in from avid users like you, so we set out to solve these... Show more

It seems to us that studying through rote memorization is the best method for retention. While it works (to an extent), unless you encounter what you’ve memorized on a constant basis, you will forget it. After all, how much do you remember after you took that last test at school? Somehow, we’re under the impression that if we reread and repeat things enough times in our head, it will magically get stuck there. In a way, it’s the lazy and painful approach to studying. The difficulty lies in the fact that we’re introducing a new concept to our brain with nothing to relate it to. Do logarithms make sense to you? (let the non-math lovers answer please) The concept itself may have no relation to you or anything in your life. It’s too... Show more

Premium Members, your Premium Account just got a whole lot more powerful! My Flashcards now allows you to study the Japanese words you want by importing lists from audio and video lessons, your My WordBank and the Japanese Core Word Lists 2000. Here's a quick rundown of the new features: My Flashcards Dashboard: My Flashcards have a brand new interface. Import words from any audio and video lesson, My WordBank and the Core Word Lists. Create, edit and delete as many decks as you want! Create a New Deck: How you want to study is completely up to you! You control what displays on the front and back of cards. Create new decks out of the existing words in My Flashcards. Simple pick the words, name your deck and you're ready to... Show more

Hi Everyone, We just rolled out optional rōmaji support for our Premium lesson specific grammar, content, and vocabulary questions. Premium members can now choose to have rōmaji displayed from the My Settings page. Here's a quick video tutorial showing this new feature in action: We hope you enjoy this new feature! Send your feedback and comments to contactus@japanesepod101.com. We want to hear from you! Team JapanesePod101.com

Thanks for following us on Twitter! We hope you have been enjoying the mini lessons we’ve been updating everyday. Our next theme will be Compound Verbs, or 複合動詞 (fukugō dōshi) in Japanese. Over the next couple of weeks we will introduce you to a new Compound Verb everyday on Twitter. So what are Compound Verbs, you ask? Compounds verbs are verbs that are made up of two or more verbs (all of the ones we introduce will be made up of only two verbs). In Japanese, the first verb is in the masu stem form, which is the masu form of the verb with the masu part taken away. Let’s look at an example: 読む (yomu, “to read”) + 始める(hajimeru, “to start”) The masu form of yomu is yomimasu, so when we take away the “masu” we get the masu stem: 読み... Show more