On a rainy day in February, 2005 as a freshman in college I got the idea into my head that I'd like to tinker with a website. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I really wanted to be serious about it. I didn't want a MySpace page. I wanted my own thing, and I knew I could have it.

Well, here we are, 3 years later. The website I started lasted about 9 months; a WordPress blog. In that time I wrote nearly 100 pieces about anything I could think of. Most of them were 500-1000 words. I didn't care. The important thing was that I did write about and develop my thoughts. I wanted to know what I could do. I'm still shocked that I did write that much.

Why do you need to know this? Well, with nearly 100 pieces of original content there are an unfortunate few that just don't really stand up so well 2-3 years later. That's the nature of writing, and this blog was my public journal for those 8 months. It's a mixed bag. So please take note of the date that things were published on this site. It may not adequately represent my views or writing ability in the present day.

Currently, this site functions as my home on the internet. The things I write, ideas I have, videos I produce, and recordings I make all have a home here for the few people that care to look for them.

今日は! Over the past few weeks I've been very interested in raising my Japanese listening aptitude. I realized that podcasts were a great way to do it. I had tried to find some before, but was never successful. I finally realized the key, search with Japanese terms. I searched for テレビ、ニュース、and 文化, and these are some of the great podcasts I found.

• 小西克哉 松本ともこ ストリーム
  • TBS Radio Stream Podcast
  • 3 New Podcasts Every Weekday
    • Chat with Shingo, et al.
    • News Round-up
    • 花道 Opinion Column
      
• 読売ニュース ポッドキャスト : YOMIURI ONLINE（読売新聞)
  • This is a longer news podcast put out by the Yomiuri Online Shimbun. Usually 20mins in length, and is extremely similar to the next podcast, except in Japanese.
• BBC Radio NewsPod
  • What's an English podcast doing here? Simple, it is very helpful early on to know what to expect when you're training listening. 例えば、if you hear about the stock market crash effects from China then you know to listen for things like 経済、中国、etc. when you listen to the 日本語のニュースのポッドキャスと。
• 文化系トークラジオ Life
  • This is a discussion of Japanese culture. It's usually put out once a day, and they discuss a new topic every week. It's extremely interesting to hear native Japanese talk about Japanese culture and their perceptions of it.
• Japan Talk (Japundit Podcast)
  • This is yet another English podcast in my list, but this one is too good to pass up. It's a weekly review of Japanese news with explanation from an American who has lived in Japan for the last 40 years. It's extremely informative, reliable, and interesting.

The best part about all of these is that they're all available on iTunes, and all of them except Japan Talk are every week day. That's more than an hour of new Japanese material everyday to learn from. Go forth, become linguistically aware. Mazel tov.