Pera Pera Penguin

[Belton]

みんなさん、
At the Daily Yomiuri English site there are some text based Japanese lessons by Hitomi Hirayama san. Not updated very regularly (every 8 weeks?) but there are 70 episodes here in pdf format.
Not really beginner material but it is all very interesting and there should be something for everyones level.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/

[metablue]

Just visited, it looks good. I have her book, which is also very interesting. I read the "suki" page. The same thing happened to me. I was writing romaji to a guy at work and he asked if I minded him correcting me. I wanted to say that I liked it because it helped me learn, so I said "suki desu". That made him blush.

[Belton]

ハハハ

Among my stupid gaijin mistakes are talking about パンツwhen I ought to have said ズボン。(I'm not even American so I'd usually say trousers) .
Saying いただきます to waiters (annoyed the hell out of my Japanese friend)
I won't even go into when I tried to ask about segregation etiquette in the single but large bath at the ryokan I stayed in. (no displayed times or the hang out a sign system seemed in evidence)

Anyhow lots of good phrases with Pera Pera Penguin.

[Alan]

Saying いただきます to waiters (annoyed the hell out of my Japanese friend)

Ah. So you don't do that then

[metablue]

I won't even go into when I tried to ask about segregation etiquette in the single but large bath at the ryokan I stayed in. (no displayed times or the hang out a sign system seemed in evidence)

I can only imagine!

My worst one (so far) was when I tried to make up an example sentence about「かれのブーツ」= "his boots", but instead I wrote「かれのブツ」, which everyone read as "my boyfriend's thing". More blushing.

[jaypunkrawk]

I'm planning on printing them all out and putting them in a binder. They're really good lessons with tons of info.