<show #102 / show #104>

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In this week’s podcast, Asuka teaches us how to use the phrase 落ち着くー ochitsuku. It has various meanings including to be calm or to settle down and can be used in various contexts to talk about people, places or situations.

Listen to the podcast to get an idea of how to use this phrase in natural everyday Japanese conversation.

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Learn Japanese Pod is four years old! Happy birthday to us! Four years, three apartments, two mac books and one relationship later, here we are still making podcasts for all you eager students of Japanese. I had no idea LJP would become such a great place to meet people interested Japanese and Japan. We’ve made some great friends and had a great deal of fun along the way.

Learn Japanese Pod started out under the vaguest and most pathetic of plans: “I guess I’ll just do it for a laugh”. So here’s to vague and pathetic plans. And here’s to all of you who listened to the podcast and supported it. Without your help, support, comments and general correspondences LJP would only be a mere shadow of itself and not the gargantuan, green, Tokyo skyscraper munching monster it has become.

As we are on the thankyous, a huge thank you to:

Beb: She made the podcast possible. Let’s face it, you only listen because of her don’t you?

Waka sensei: She spent countless hours recording podcasts, checking the show notes were OK and generally being cute.

Karamoon: He was the tech guy and ideas man for us. On one occassion he single-handedly saved the forums from digital oblivion.

Daniel and Yuki: They’re a cute couple. Daniel has been our audio engineer and Yuki has appeared on various shows teaching us Japanese.

You: yes YOU! Not you! YOU! Another huge shout out to all of you who listened to the show and are interested in Japanese culture.

This list is endless but for those of you who haven’t been mentioned you know who you are. Thank you, thank you, thank you and that’s three thank yous!

Here’s to another four years.

Here is a list of podcasts to help you learn Japanese in no particular order.

<Show 92 / Show 94>

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In today’s lesson, Waka sensei told us how to say “it’s a hassle” in Japanese which is “めんどくさい” or Mendokusai. We also got a very interesting email from Kaori, a student of English who listens to Learn Japanese Pod. She told us that she in fact listens to the podcast to study English. Apparently she is not the only non native English speaker who is listening to this podcast to learn English. I’m hoping we can attract more Japanese people to the site so we can start some language exchanges on the Forums.Check out this letter from Kaori san,

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<Show 90 / Show 92>

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In today’s lesson Waka sensei teaches us how to use the word 「より」yori which means “more than”. We will deal with other uses of より in a future podcast.

よりdoes have a few other uses. For example, when finishing a letter and you want to write “from Alex” you would write 「アレックスより」Alex yori. There are one or two other exotic uses but I’ll leave that to a future podcast. If you have any questions or ideas, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Your feedback is always very welcome.

Although totally unrelated to today’s grammar point, we also talked a little about Okinawa town which you can find in Saszuka in western Tokyo. It’s an awesome little street with some delicious Okinawan restaurants and supermarkets stocking specialty produce. Enjoy!

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In this video, Beb teaches us some interesting gestures in Japanese. Can you guess what they mean? Answers are at the end of the video

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<Show 88 / Show 90>

In this week’s podcast, Waka sensei teaches us how to use the phrase 間に合う/ ma ni au / to be in time. The easiest example of this would be “電車に間に合った” densha ni ma ni atta – I was on time for the train or I made it in time for the train. This is a really useful phrase that I hear all the time.

However I was interested to learn that this in fact has another meaning I had never heard of before which means to “be enough”. For example, “お金は間に合ってる” okane wa ma ni atteru – I have enough money. This isn’t quite as common as the first usage but it is used. Enjoy the podcast.

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