I wasn't sure where to post this question, so please accept my apologies if this is in an inappropriate place.
Hello staff of JapanesePod101.com!
First of all, thank you so much for making an amazing site, putting out fun podcasts, and fostering great dialogue among the community. I really appreciate how much you all care about really helping us Japanese language learners.
On that note, I was hoping you could give me a little more information on some things. I live in America and I only know one native Japanese speaker with whom I can talk to in person. Therefore, I rely heavily on the accuracy of your lessons - in the beginner podcasts, if Peter says "We might use this word in this phrase," I will assume that that is a commonly used phrase that native speakers in Japan would use. However, that may not be the case with all the site content.
I have been studying the Word of the Day, as well as the sample sentences. On February 23, 2014, the WOD was くつろぐ, relax, and the sentence was くつろいで映画を楽しみなさい. I asked my Japanese coworker if this was a common word, and he said that people would usually use リラックス, and that the sample sentence was a little forceful - it should be ...映画を楽しんでください. I showed him the sample sentence for February 27, 夜, evening: 夕飯の後の夜が楽しいです (which is supposed to translate to "After dinner we enjoy our evening") and he said it was a bit awkward, and asked if these were done by a native Japanese speaker. That worried me, so I decided to e-mail you guys and ask whether these sample sentences are automatically generated or whether a native speaker comes up with them. Are they worth memorizing, such that if I repeated them in Japan, they would sound natural?
I greatly appreciate any extra information you could give me about site content such as the Word of the Day. I am very excited about this great resource; thank you very much for your time.
Best,
Ayaka
