Looking for a message board that's in Japanese

[tennisdude818]

I spend a lot of time on message boards, so I may as well visit some that are in Japanese. I'm primarily looking for political forums because I assume that the language there is the most "normal". Based on my experience on English forums, if I go on something like a gaming board I will probably spend a lot of time getting used to "Internet Language" and there is no point in me studying that right now.

So, does anybody visit any form of Japanese message boards, and do you find it to be a helpful form of immersion?

[Jessi]

Tennisdude818,

You don't happen to live in Japan, do you? If you did, I would recommend Mixi, which is actually a social networking service, but they have thousands of communities each with their own message board, which makes it really easy to find people to talk to about.. well... anything you want! You need a Japanese cell phone address to sign up though, unfortunately, so I'm afraid if you're outside of Japan you are out of luck

Hopefully someone else will come along with some other ideas!

[tennisdude818]

Thanks Jessi.

I'm not in Japan so Mixi is not an option unless I'm able to get somebody I know from inside Japan to get me in with a temporary phone number or something like that. I already use lang-8.com, and I say that just because I know that somebody will bring it up because it's good. For those who don't know, it's a language exchange site. So for example, I write Japanese and Mandarin on the site for Japanese and Chinese people to correct. Then I correct their English.

I'm using Google to search for a political forum. I'm assuming I should use the word 政治。Perhaps I should search for 政治の相談？ And for a while now I've been having a hard time finding the best word for "message board" or "Internet forum" because I've yet to find any of these in Japanese.

Lol, if my Japanese isn't at the level where I can even find a site like this, I shouldn't be posting on it when I finally find it.

[QuackingShoe]

http://chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/

http://kotonoha.cc/

Not message boards exactly. Just entertaining community websites. Particularly the latter is good for random, bored browsing.

[percent20]

There is always 2chan

http://www.2chan.net/

If you join let us now how it goes.

[tennisdude818]

I got on Mixi. You can get on with a .edu email address, so that was my way in. Problem solved! I've been on 2chan a little but I can't give much of an opinion yet. I'll be on that more later.