Irasshai!

Someone on the Kendo World forums was asking about tips to learn the Japanese language. Having studied the language for a couple of years now, I thought I would offer some of the things that worked for me.

One of the resources I gave was this television show called Irasshai that aired on Georgia Public Broadcasting back when I was in high school. At the time, I had just been starting out in learning the language. It really helped me in memorizing hiragana and katakana which paved the way for learning kanji and grammar.

The show consists of two seasons. The first has 73 episodes and the second has 63 episodes about 25 minutes each. Generally, each lesson starts off with a short skit to introduce the topic, continues on with the main lesson and then finishes of with some hiragana/katakana and maybe a cultural lesson. Some of the devices they use can be kinda corny (like jump roping while singing the days of the week), but they generally work for me.

If you've been interested in starting out learning the language, I definately suggest going to the Irasshai website and at least take a look. These sorts of video lessons of decent quality can be kinda difficult to come by.