Is Jpod101 trying to promote Japenglish?

[watermen]

When I start doing my revision, I realized that Jpod101 lessons have far more Japenglish words than a lot of traditional text books....I wonder if Jpod101 is trying to promote Japenglish or reflecting reality? Is Japenglish really so common in Japan as a whole? or just those among hippy young people...I don't want to learn those hippy youngster language...even tough they like to think they are cool, but they are not cool in my eyes at all...

I wonder if those Japanese Grand dad or Grand mom speak like this....

[markystar]

not sure what you mean about hippies... but

the linguistic reality of modern japanese is that a lot of 外来語 are used every day.
we are trying to teach real, usable japanese that you can hear every day in japan. we teach some slang too sometimes. but basically the conversations are made up of the kind of japanese you could speak to anyone and be understood.

the importation of 外来語 is a hot topic in japan right now. many people they borrow too much. (for example why say ホット when you can say 暑い, etc)... that said, if you check out the balance of our vocab, you'll see that the number of foreign words we teach are much smaller than the native japanese words. when we teach a katakana word in a lesson, it's because that word is the most common/natural for that situation.

as for hippies...
we don't have any greenpeace lessons planned, so no need to worry yet

[josiah]

we don't have any greenpeace lessons planned, so no need to worry yet

残念だった。。。
I'd love to see an episode on Whaling! It's making the news a lot here in Oz and I guess pretty relevant here at eh moment too!

[Psy]

we don't have any greenpeace lessons planned, so no need to worry yet

残念だった。。。
I'd love to see an episode on Whaling! It's making the news a lot here in Oz and I guess pretty relevant here at eh moment too!

What?! Whaling? It's not whaling, my dear friend, it's what we call investigative research!

I haven't run into one yet (54 and counting), but I think a lesson that revolves around the tatemae/honne aspect of Japanese culture would be a good way to talk about stuff like this.

Not wanting to drift off-topic: yes, as markystar wrote katakana words (外来語 gairaigo) are indeed that popular, like them or hate them.